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ralphio

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ralphio ,

Mr. Grimm pleaded guilty in exchange for an agreement that prosecutors would not seek the death penalty. But under Virginia law at the time, the crime was not eligible for capital punishment.

Where was this dude’s lawyer?

ralphio ,

There are holes in Israel’s story here.

www.cnn.com/2024/06/10/middleeast/…/index.html

Aljamal lived on the first floor of a multi-story building, according to Euro-Med. The IDF said the hostages were found on the third floor.

ralphio ,

What Euro Med said was also based on the testimony of locals. Sounds like he said she said and since the IDF destroyed all the buildings in that area it’ll be tough to prove definitely.

ralphio ,

No one who feels like they can’t purchase a house is gonna say the economy is good. Very simple concept.

ralphio ,

When people rate the economy they are looking at their personal situation. The article is complaining that people aren’t looking at all these economic indicators, but it’s not clear why they would care about them if they personally are facing hardship.

ralphio ,

If you’re wondering why Biden won’t give an inch:

www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary?cycle=All&…

ralphio ,

This seems to imply that there aren’t already ICC warrants for Putin. There are…

ralphio ,

Hmm, I wasn’t aware of that. Thanks for the info.

ralphio ,

www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/…/516774/

From this interview in the Atlantic, looks like the guy being interviewed thinks it’s probably not constitutional as written. Basically it could run afoul the first amendment and they’d have to write a more specific law to enforce it.

ralphio , (edited )

Feels like Trump’s ties to the Saudis and Emeratis don’t get enough attention. The Russia stuff is definitely important as well but in these cases you have business dealing with actual state officials.

Edit: actually the other thing was with Oman not the UAE.

pbs.org/…/trumps-business-deal-with-oman-raises-n…

ralphio ,

Good for a dem primary, literal cancer for a general. That said I think this is safe district.

What’s really gonna sink Bowman in this primary is all that AIPAC money.

ralphio ,

Gorsuch is definitely one of the better conservative justices. Really Thomas and Alito are the only irredeemable ones. Kavanaugh, admittedly I don’t know enough about to say much.

Japan’s births just fell to a new record low. Tokyo hopes a dating app can turn that around (www.cnn.com)

Japan’s fertility rate, which has seen a precipitous fall for many years, has reached another record low as the government ramps up efforts to encourage young people to get married and start families — even launching its own dating app....

ralphio ,

That doesn’t solve the lack of labor available though.

ralphio ,

Main reason it’s news worthy is that Clinton actually did pardon his brother. Trump would absolutely pardon any family members though.

ralphio ,

It’s a team of prosecutors that started at 4, now is at 3 after Wade got kicked off. Now it would be down to 2 if she steps down. Typically simpler cases only have 1 prosecutor so if most of the legwork is done they might be able to proceed with 2 or add someone. I agree though this case is much bigger than one persons career.

ralphio ,

No doubt. Starting to look more and more like none of these other 3 cases will be resolved before the election.

ralphio , (edited )

BRICS is less about alliances, in fact the UAE and Iran are enemies to the level of the US and Russia. It’s more about reducing the influence of Western sections on global politics. Basically anyone not reliant on the West financially would benefit from joining BRICS since it reduces the leverage the West has over them.

ETA: it’s a similar concept to OPEC where many countries are outright enemies.

Iran's allies in Iraq are firing at Israel. Could that trigger a wider war? (www.reuters.com)

Iran-backed Shi’ite armed groups in Iraq have ramped up rocket and missile attacks on Israel in recent weeks, raising concerns in Washington and among some Iranian allies of potential Israeli retaliation and regional escalation should they draw blood....

ralphio ,

For these particular groups the article says the exact opposite.

But on Nov. 2 they claimed their first ever attack on Israel.

In general it is pretty rare for anyone to directly attack Israel other than groups they created through their various occupations, mainly Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.

ralphio ,

Ah OK, I can’t read apparently. I thought you meant the attacks from Iraqi militias have been going on longer than the current Israeli invasion. I agree with your original comment.

Biden's Gaza plan 'not a good deal' but Israel accepts it, Netanyahu aide says (www.reuters.com)

Netanyahu is under pressure to keep his coalition government intact. Two far-right partners have threatened to bolt in protest at any deal they deem to spare Hamas. A centrist partner, ex-general Benny Gantz, wants the deal considered. Hamas has provisionally welcomed the Biden initiative.

ralphio ,

Axios seems to have some more details in this article:

axios.com/…/israel-gaza-hostage-ceasefire-deal-co…

Basically the deal is a temporary cease fire that would then allow negotiations for a full ceasefire after that. It’s a gamble, but the US seems to think that if they can get the conflict to a very low grade state, they can convince the Israeli’s not to go back in. In a vacuum this isn’t a terrible strategy, but there is broad public support for the war in Israel and the ruling coalition knows their days are numbered if there is no war. Even a temporary ceasefire is better than nothing though.

ralphio ,

I’m pretty doubtful that much progress has been made to destroy Hamas. They use Israeli unexploded ordinance to make bombs which they now have more than they know what to do with, and they couldn’t ask for a better recruiting tool than this war. At a certain point you have to be realistic about the situation and realize they will have to deal with Hamas in negotiations.

ralphio ,

However, the three Egyptian intelligence sources told MEE that Burns was among several mediators who reviewed the draft before it was sent to Israel.

So they could be lying, but MEE is saying their sources are Egyptian intelligence familiar with the negotiation. I don’t think your characterization of the article is correct.

ralphio ,

I feel like the mere reminder that Hillary exists is a detriment to Dems electoral prospects.

ralphio ,

Yep. And the subheading I really have a problem with.

Reading too much into the language seems, at this point, to be less of a danger than reading too little into it.

The implication being that it’s low stakes to make this accusation without solid evidence. In reality the whole justification from the West for the state of affairs between Israel and Palestine is that Arabs are a bunch of backwards savages, and this extends to the way the West has acted throughout the Middle East.

ralphio ,

It was a consulate which is also covered by the Geneva convention as all diplomatic missions are. There really isn’t a significant distinction here.

ralphio ,

I don’t think you understand. There were two buildings, the embassy and the consulate. The embassy was not directly hit, the consulate was.

latimes.com/…/syria-says-deadly-israeli-airstrike…

While Iran’s consular building was leveled in the attack, according to Syria’s state news agency, its main embassy building remained intact. Still, the Iranian ambassador’s residence was inside the consular building.

Also looks like the Vienna Convention defines diplomatic missions not the Geneva Convention. My bad.

ralphio ,

Every trade has two sides. Someone has to sell you the options contract. No one is out there selling “free money” contracts. Why wouldn’t they just give you the money and skip the song and dance?

To everyone else: please don’t trade options if you don’t understand them, there is no quicker way to drain your savings.

ralphio ,

This is the closest question in the survey to the article title (which I couldn’t bypass the paywall on):

1000000145

Looks like net favorability is still positive for continued support to Ukraine even absent more US aid outside of southern Europe.

No, electric vehicle sales aren’t dropping. Here’s what’s really going on (www.cnn.com)

You’d be forgiven for thinking the American market for EVs is collapsing. But in the last quarter of 2023, EV sales were up 40% from the same quarter a year before, according to Cox Automotive. In fact, EV sales in the United States hit a record last year, topping 1 million for the first time....

ralphio ,

Unfortunately most of the world’s cobalt comes from the DRC, so I doubt any automaker’s supply chain is clean of child labor.

ralphio , (edited )

The Pentagon leaks should give some insights here:

businessinsider.com/russians-ukrainians-killed-pu…

The US estimated that about 16.5k UA soldiers were killed in about the first year and change of fighting so the 31k estimate is possible after 3 years but seems pretty low. It would extrapolate out to about 45k, but the fighting has been different every year.

Edit: apparently it’s only been 2 years of fighting, my bad, numbers from Zelensky look pretty legit to me then.

ralphio ,

The leaks were legit, the guy got prosecuted and everything. Snopes thinks they’re legit as well as every other major media outlet:

snopes.com/…/ukraine-war-plans-leak-discord-serve…

ralphio ,

Well Germany didn’t acknowledge the Namibia genocide until 2021. They’re fine with acknowledging the Holocaust since they can pin that on a rouge actor, the Nazi’s. Since they can’t pin their support for Israel on anyone else, they have trouble acknowledging Israel’s conduct.

ralphio ,

Well in your scenario she would become the problem of Syria, and whatever you think of the Asaad regime there’s a reason these types of exiles are not accepted under international law. When a large county uses a smaller society as its de facto prison it doesn’t tend to work out too well for the natives (see Australia), so it’s just not allowed in principle. In reality the British are trying to say it’s Bangladesh’s problem since her parents are from there which doesn’t really make sense.

ralphio ,

I guess we’ll call it even after the US provided support for the Judicial coup of Rousseff in 2016 which is the main reason Bolsonaro’s party came to power in the first place.

A longer read, but worth the time:

theintercept.com/…/united-states-justice-departme…

ralphio ,

So the argument from Assange was that all relevant information from the cache was already public from previous publication. The entire cache was public when FP published the article you’re referring to so they could have pointed out what was actually worth reporting if there was anything.

Here’s the article for everyone else:

foreignpolicy.com/…/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-o…

The point about the 2012 Syria emails is more interesting, but the whole point about Wikileaks running cover for Russia never made a lot of sense to me since they have published damaging info about Russia.

ETA: I’d be remiss not to mention that the discussion of Assange’s biases is a red herring to the real problem which is the US’s attempt to criminalize publication of state secrets.

ralphio ,

Why do people keep saying this? It doesn’t even make sense. Why would the Russians give Assange the RNC emails if they didn’t want them to be published? There is no evidence that I can find that the RNC emails were ever given to anyone.

ralphio ,

The DEA issue will never get resolved since any lawmaker that tries to reign them in will be accused of fueling the drug crisis.

ralphio ,

In addition to what others have said NK spends about 1/3 of its GDP on its military. It definitely punches above its economic weight when it comes to war.

ralphio ,

Let’s be even more specific. Sweden has a history of looking the other way on US extraordinary rendition:

publicintegrity.org/…/post-9-11-renditions-an-ext…

The men were later subjected to torture.

ralphio ,

Whatever you think of Assange, you should know why the US government wants to prosecute him. He published this among other things:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8xhH0FkCQg

Context: that’s a US gunship firing on Reuters journalists among other civilians including kids.

ralphio ,

It’s definitely “why” they want to put him in jail regardless of what anti-journalism charges they hit him with.

ralphio ,

It’s definitely insufficient as a condemnation, but it does seem like he’s implying that Navalny was killed for political reasons?

ralphio ,

India hasn’t sold any weapons to Russia at least since the war started.

Trump hawks $399 branded shoes at 'Sneaker Con,' a day after a $355 million ruling against him (apnews.com)

As he closes in on the Republican presidential nomination, former President Donald Trump made a highly unusual stop Saturday, hawking new Trump-branded sneakers at “Sneaker Con,” a gathering that bills itself as the “The Greatest Sneaker Show on Earth.”...

ralphio ,

I don’t think this type of scheme is even illegal which is the main problem.

ralphio ,

Might makes right arguments don’t resonate with me.

ralphio ,

Framing the Arabs as the mighty over the Europeans is a new one for me.

ralphio ,

Israel was supplied arms from Europe during the war.

ralphio ,

I’ve have not read any analysis that has not said the Czech weapons were superior, but I’m not a weapons expert. The Israelis also had more fighting men than the combined Arab forces. This Israel underdog narrative is mythology.

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