#Programme Biden
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presslakay · 7 months ago
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FLASH : le Programme Biden ne sera pas renouvelé pour les Haïtiens et d’autres bénéficiaires
Les autorités fédérales ne renouvelleront pas le Humanitarian Parole Application communément appelé « Programme Biden » qui a permis à des milliers d’Haïtiens, de Vénézuéliens, de Cubains et de Nicaraguayens de venir légalement aux États-Unis aux cours des deux dernières années. Lancé pour la première fois en octobre 2022 pour le Venezuela, puis élargi en janvier 2023 au profit d’Haïtiens, de…
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netalkolemedia · 8 months ago
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Relance du programme Biden : un tournant vers une sécurité renforcée et des parrainages plus stricts
Le 29 août 2024, le ministère américain de la sécurité intérieure (DHS) a officiellement relancé le programme Biden, après une interruption de plusieurs semaines. Si cette relance marque la fin de la suspension temporaire des autorisations de voyage, elle introduit également une série de mesures susceptibles de redéfinir les critères de parrainage et d’entrée sur le sol américain. Dans un souci…
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freepalestinenews · 7 months ago
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Israël-Iran : la guerre nucléaire, entre spéculations et manipulations !
Les tensions entre Israël et l’Iran ont atteint des niveaux sans précédent, alimentées par des menaces de frappes nucléaires et une guerre des mots dans les médias internationaux. Alors que la situation évolue rapidement, certains experts et commentateurs émettent des hypothèses alarmantes, faisant craindre le pire : une escalade nucléaire potentielle dans la région. Mais au-delà des gros titres,…
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justaskingtoask · 9 months ago
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madamepestilence · 1 year ago
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Just as a reminder as I've just noticed myself - arab.org has more pages to support on
In case you're unfamiliar with how this site works, it confirms ad revenue via your clicks, which allows them to donate money to various funds
These go to:
Children -> UNICEF (United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund)
Fight Poverty -> UNDP (United Nations Development Programme)
Environment -> Greenpeace MENA (Middle East and North Africa)
Palestine -> UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency [for Palestine Refugees in the Near East])
Refugees -> UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees)
Women -> UN Women
Do more with your daily clicks! You can help each one once per individual (perhaps per IP address?) per day, letting you help out with six things at once?
US-specific advice for helping Palestine below cut.
Side note I'm keeping beneath the cut since it's relevant to US folks only: if you're really determined to help Palestine, vote for Dr. Cornel West, Ph.D. for President of the United States.
He's the most openly vocal about a free Palestine and is the only candidate who has demonstrably shown he is the most committed and prepared to immediately cease US support to Israel.
Joe Biden isn't going to cave if he gets re-elected. We all know that. Voting third party is a lot less risky than you've been taught - the two party system can replace one or both parties with new parties if they lose public favour.
We have both the people and the ability to unseat the Democratic party and install Socialism, and between Socialism and Republicans, Socialism is going to lock in place immediately and become the dominant political force in America.
Cornel West's Platform
Cornel West's Volunteer Events
Cornel West's Ballot Access Tracker and Ballot Access Plans
Tumblr thread I have of Primary/Caucus polling dates in the US (includes US territories)
Not on your Primary/Caucus ballot? Write-in, "Cornel West," on your ballot, or urge your Caucus representatives to do the same.
In a state where it's difficult for Independent candidates to get ballot access? Dr. Cornel West, Ph.D. thought ahead and has created a new party for those states called the Justice for All Party.
(Addendum: Claudia de la Cruz is not a viable alternative. The Party for Socialism and Liberation has a Conservative 5th Column and has frequent issues with discrimination.)
Free Palestine. Vote for Cornel West.
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black-fist-order · 2 months ago
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Holyshit. Well here's a conspiracy theory for ya.
I've been wondering why Trump has allowed Elon free reign to upstage him and do what he wants. I'm sure he has to know the public has been calling Trump Elon's lapdog. And then there's the Time cover with Elon sitting behind the presidential desk. Trump should be fuming, but during Elon's press meeting in the White House, Trump just sat there like a castrated sad clown while Elon's kid told him to shut up.
But why? Why would Trump let himself be upstaged and mocked - especially by a child? He already won the election. He doesn't need Elon's money anymore.
But then Jess told me something Elon's kid said during an interview with Tucker Carlson.
When asked if Trump would win the election, the kid says "yes" and then says "they’ll never know."
https://gizmodo.com/elon-musks-kid-keeps-saying-weird-stuff-about-trump-2000563118
During the election, I knew something was up when Trump began accusing Kamala for cheating in Pennsylvania. That's very specific. And historically, he only blames others for things he's doing.
As a programmer, I know anything is hackable. An 11 year old girl at the hacking convention DefCon in Vegas was able to hack into a voting booth in 10 minutes. And that was back in 2018!
And while the voting machines aren’t connected to the internet per-se, it only takes 10 minutes to pop in a USB and get out. And it just so happens there was a bomb threat in PA where they emptied the building. But it wasn’t just one building, it was 67!
Of the 67 locations, 56 were in 11 counties that voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 election, including the eight most populated. Those high-population Democratic counties include voting locations for Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Detroit, Michigan; Phoenix, Arizona; Atlanta, Georgia; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna179006
Hacker kids do this stuff for the fun of it. Imagine if they were getting paid millions of dollars?
And now, Musk has surrounded himself with these kids who have notoriously gained access to federal records, our records, with ease.
Four hours before election results were called, Elon announced that Trump was the winner and he had an "app" to prove it.
And then, there's this... Trump is a complete idiot and actually said this out loud after the election...
"He (Musk) knows those computers better than anybody. All those computers. Those vote-counting computers," Trump told the crowd. "And we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide."
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-elon-musk-voting-machine-2017657
"They will never know."
Trump even said repeatedly before the election, "I don't need your vote." It's a weird brag that indicated he had already won.
I had been saying Trump was going to cheat long before the election. But the comment was instantly shot down by both sides. Conservatives thought we were being hypocrites, and progressives thought we should be above Trump-style conspiracies and gracefully accept the outcome.
Looking into this now, I'm not surprised I wasn't the only one. The internet is all over this stuff.
https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1i5uovx/donald_trumps_voting_computers_comment_sparks/
Will this info ever come out? Will it even matter? I have no doubt Elon's guys are at the top of their game, and the only way this will ever see the light of day is if one of these guys talks.
But for right now, it's obvious to me why Trump is letting Elon do whatever he wants.
Because all it would take is for Elon to turn to a camera and say a few words to the world, "I helped Trump steal the election."
Boom.
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eightyonekilograms · 1 year ago
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C is now illegal by order of President Biden; all C programmers report to the nearest FEMA camp for your mandatory thigh-highs and estrogen injections as you begin your new life as a Rust developer.
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probablyasocialecologist · 1 year ago
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Interviews with current and former US Agency for International Development (USAID) and State Department officials, aid agencies working in Gaza and internal USAID documents reveal that the administration rejected or ignored pleas to use its leverage to persuade its ally Israel – the recipient of billions of dollars of US military support – to allow sufficient humanitarian aid into Gaza to stop the famine taking hold. The former officials say the US also provided diplomatic cover for Israel to create the conditions for famine by blocking international efforts to bring about a ceasefire or alleviate the crisis, making the delivery of aid almost impossible. “This is not just turning a blind eye to the man-made starvation of an entire population, it is direct complicity,” former State Department official Josh Paul, who resigned over US support for the war, told The Independent.
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From the time of the first warning signs in December, intensive US pressure on Israel to open more land crossings and flood Gaza with aid could have stopped the crisis taking hold, the officials said. But Mr Biden refused to make US military aid to Israel conditional. Instead, the Biden government pursued novel and ineffective aid solutions such as airdrops and a floating pier. Now, some 300,000 people in Gaza’s north are experiencing a “full-blown” famine, according to the World Food Programme, and the entire 2.3 million population of Gaza is experiencing catastrophic levels of hunger. The level of dissent within the US government agency responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and combating global hunger has been unprecedented. At least 19 internal dissent memos have been sent since the start of the war by staff at USAID criticising US support for the war in Gaza. In an internal collective dissent memo drafted this month by numerous employees of USAID, the staff assail the agency and the Biden administration for its “failure to uphold international humanitarian principles and to adhere to its mandate to save lives”. The leaked draft memo, seen by The Independent, calls for the administration to apply pressure to bring “an end to the Israeli siege that is causing famine”. Not acting upon repeated warnings like these was a political choice.
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At least 254 aid workers have been killed throughout the conflict, including 188 UN staff – representing the highest number of UN personnel killed in a conflict in the history of the organisation. Multiple aid convoys have come under Israeli fire. UNRWA, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, said that despite sharing GPS coordinates, the number of trucks and the contacts with the military, three of their aid convoys have been hit by Israeli naval artillery and gunfire.
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truth-has-a-liberal-bias · 1 month ago
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US President Donald Trump's administration has said it will revoke the temporary legal status of more than half a million migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Those migrants have been warned to leave the country before their permits and deportation shield are cancelled on 24 April, according to a notice posted by the federal government.
The 530,000 migrants were brought into the US under a Biden-era sponsorship process known as CHNV that was designed to open legal migration pathways. Trump suspended the programme once he took office.
It is unclear how many of these migrants have been able to secure another status in the interim that would allow them to stay in the US legally. [...]
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presslakay · 8 months ago
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Le programme Biden est officiellement relancé
Plus d’un mois après sa suspension en raison des cas de fraudes graves enregistrés, le programme Biden est officiellement relancé par le gouvernement américain. C’est ce qu’a annoncé la presse américaine. Communément appelé “programme humanitaire”, l’Humanitarian Parole Application, mis en place par l’administration Biden, a permis à des dizaines de milliers d’Haïtiens, Cubains, Vénézuéliens et…
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netalkolemedia · 9 months ago
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Suspension temporaire du programme humanitaire Biden : répercussions et nouvelles mesures
Depuis le samedi 3 août 2024, les compagnies aériennes sont contraintes d’interdire l’embarquement des personnes disposant d’une autorisation de voyage dans le cadre du programme Humanitarian Parole. Cette décision fait suite à la découverte de plusieurs cas de suspicion de fraude dans certaines demandes, ce qui a entraîné une réaction rapide des autorités. Les passagers concernés par cette…
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mariacallous · 2 months ago
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The Communist movement in the West is today made up of a handful of grizzled geriatrics standing around trestle tables exuding a flavour of moth balls. Yet as the historian Richard Hofstadter wrote in 1963: ‘The right-winger needs his Communists badly, and is pathetically reluctant to give them up.’
Which is why braying Marxists are once again at the gates. According to Donald Trump, Joe Biden is ‘controlled’ by ‘Marxists, & Communists’. Elon Musk says ‘neo-Marxists’ and ‘full-on Communism’ are responsible for the estrangement of his daughter. ‘World renowned’ psychology professor Jordan Peterson rails against ‘post-modern Neo-Marxists’ and ‘cultural Marxists’. The conservative pundit James Lindsay claims that anti-racists want to impose a ‘total Racial Bolshevik Revolution’ on America.
There is no shortage of irony here. Isaiah Berlin once observed that a stratagem of totalitarian regimes is to present all situations as critical emergencies. Yet Berlin is too measured a thinker to carry weight among the frenzied populist currents sweeping today’s right. Instead we get initiatives like ARC (the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship) where a person only has to make a certain kind of noise to be welcomed onto the stage and into the fold. A Legatum and Paul Marshall-funded initiative, Arc’s stated aim is to ‘help re-lay the foundations of our civilisation’. In practice this means attacking ‘radical leftists’ and anyone it is expedient to pretend is a ‘radical leftist’. To paraphrase Lionel Trilling, the recent ARC event in East London saw a succession of speakers take turns unleashing a stream of ‘irritable mental gestures which sought to resemble ideas’. Kemi Badenoch claimed that western civilisation would fall without the Tories. Psychology professor Jordan Peterson said the West was in a ‘civilisational moment’. Douglas Murray talked of ‘civilisational renewal’.
Some, like the YouTube pundit Konstantin Kisin, spoke in a more optimistic key. Thanks to Trump’s election victory across the pond, ‘The tide is turning [and] our American friends are leading the way,’ Kisin proclaimed between hammy jokes about Chinese and trans people. ‘DEI, a system of anti-meritocratic discrimination, has been dismantled,’ crowed the alumnus of Clifton College Boarding School (term fees £17,650).
Were screens and short bursts of video not now the dominant sources of information about the world, I suspect a lot of these newly-minted culture warriors would be languishing noisily in obscurity. Instead, as we revert to a pre-literate oral culture, pre-literal pundits are in the ascendant (Kisin has appeared multiple times on BBC current affairs programmes and Badenoch has appeared on his podcast). Intellectuals are being knocked off their perches by influencers; politicians dislodged by game show hosts. As the Times columnist James Marriott has observed:
Among the attributes of oral societies are an addiction to the memorable, such as formulaic and cliché language, ‘heavy’ crudely-characterised personalities (like Cerberus or Donald Trump or Marvel superheroes) and to more violent forms of expression. This is in contrast to print which fosters subtlety, logical argument and emotional distance.
Kisin at least pays tribute to the vanishing world of letters. ‘Words are something of a speciality and a hobby,’ he writes in An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the West (2022). Not that you would know it from the prose in this mercifully slim volume, which gurgles with cliches and off-the-shelf banalities. Censorious persons are ‘Orwellian’; bad ideas ‘spread like wild fire’; conversations about difficult subjects ‘have become a way to separate us rather than bring us together’.
Having emigrated to Britain from the Soviet Union aged 10, Kisin credits the West with ‘saving’ him. Today he wants to repay the favour despite nobody asking him to. ‘As people seek to destroy [the West], I want to save it in return,’ he writes. Clearly some are pining for a diminutive Russian saviour: the book was a Sunday Times bestseller. Yet as an expression of love it is the equivalent of a clump of sun-baked Chrysanthemums purloined from a petrol station forecourt. A potted history of the Soviet Union is followed by a torrent of whiney non-sequiturs. Portraits of life under Communism function as a warning that the West is facing ‘the exact same threat’ from progressive reformers.
Conservatives are often the left’s best students. As much as Kisin likes to rail against identity politics, he is quick to use its conventions as a cudgel when the need arrises. The most reactionary arguments in his book are cleverly placed in the mouths of women and token minorities. The pseudo-feminist Camille Paglia blames gender non-conformity for societal ruin. A Black Catholic cardinal is wheeled out to warn about an ‘invasion’ of the West by ‘other cultures’ (perhaps with Sunday Times readers in mind, Kisin wisely emits comments by the Cardinal comparing homosexuality to ‘Nazi-fascism’).
Elsewhere Kisin disparages the ‘lived experience’ of others while expecting us to defer to his own. We must ‘deal with reality as we find it’, warns Kisin, or else find ourselves subject to the ‘cruel lessons’ of the ‘Soviet virus’. It doesn’t take long for the 7 million Ukrainians who perished in the Holodomor to be similarly employed for the purposes of relativism. ‘This tragic chapter of Russia’s past [more tragic for Ukraine one would think] didn’t emerge overnight. It grew slowly from some well-intended but seriously misguided ideas…To a much lesser extent [italics mine], a similar thing is happening across the West in today’s society’.
From Butyrka to bathos. The most grizzled camp prisoner probably did less hard labour than those five words. All the same, it is good to see Kisin taking his own advice to heart and seeing reality as it really is.
Jordan Peterson has been a regular fixture on the lucrative culture war circuit since his confected ‘cancellation’ back in 2016. As the years have rolled by his outfits have taken on the timbre and hue of his politics: everything has become more zany, lurid and bilious. The Peterson of 12 Rules for Life (2018) has been replaced by a blazing eyed YouTube prophet. Somewhere in the Peterson household a dog-eared copy of Iron John is sitting in a drawer gathering dust; today he seeks to begin the reformation by nailing a copy of The Gospels to the boudoirs of ‘the modern whores of Babylon’ (i.e. pornstars and e-girls).
I recently wrote a profile about Douglas Murray for Prospect magazine. Murray comes close to Peterson in terms of popularity. However what most struck me during my research was the gulf between Murray’s public persona (erudite intellectual) and the underwhelming nature of much of his written work. As I wrote in the piece:
Whereas on YouTube anti-woke pugilists may be content to chase the same brass ring into the gutter, a published author (not least one with pretensions to be an intellectual) must work up something more substantive…Yet Murray’s research is sometimes sloppy and the opposition trenches in his culture war are largely manned by straw men.
InThe War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason (2022), Murray misquotes Karl Marx to make it sound like he was in favour of slavery. He also repeats a long-discredited claim that the French philosopher Michel Foucault was a child rapist. Not that these bungling forays into western civilisation are any impediment to claiming a monopoly of insight into how to ‘reconstruct’ it. Indeed, Murray has been lauded by the Wall Street Journal as ‘Europe’s Paul Revere’ (Murray’s radioactive forebodings about the ‘opportunistic infection’ of Islam are apparently redolent enough of Revere’s warnings to the Minutemen that ‘The British are coming’. Talk about waging a war on your own culture.)
Ukraine is a good litmus test as to whether the incessant bleating about western civilisation is anything more than a rhetorical weapon. Are Russian tanks and bullets more or less of an imminent danger than Islam, pronouns and Kamala Harris?
Hard to say, apparently. Prior to the American election, former prime minister Liz Truss stated on numerous occasions that Trump’s election victory was vital for ‘saving’ the West. ‘The world needs Trump,’ preened Kisin, who, like Murray, occasionally professes to care about Ukraine while acting as a stenographer for the politician who has been promising to sell the country out (and is presently doing so). Crawling out of the slimy entrails of Mar-a-Lago on election night, Murray declared triumphantly that Trump was going to ‘show what American leadership on the world stage actually looks like’.
A protection racket is what it looks like. It has taken less than a month for the self-serving prognostications of ‘heterodox’ intellectuals to collapse under the weight of their own contradictions. The hysterical cant about western civilisation was never about the defence of democratic principles - neither at home or from a revanchist Russia. Indeed, Peterson has blamed Nato for the war in Ukraine and pondered whether Putin might be on the right side in the civilisational struggle against ‘wokeness’. Not that it is hard to see why a partnership with Russia might be attractive to our own purveyors of reactionary piffle: the Kremlin also purports to be defending Christendom against gender freedoms and ‘spiritual catastrophe’.
‘This is the most important election of my lifetime,’ proclaimed the Somalian-born pundit (and one-time muse of ‘new’ atheist men of a certain age) Ayaan Hirsi Ali on 7 November 2024. ‘The situation could not be more dire. At stake is the very survival of our republic.’ Predictably enough these words formed part of a larger excretion on why she was voting for Trump. Concerns about the candidate who failed to concede the last election were merely symptomatic of (another stock phrase) ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’. Kamala Harris had to be stopped for the sake of the republic. ‘The Democratic Party is a machine, taken over by the far-left wing of the party,’ Hirsi Ali warned.
As you may have noticed by now, it isn’t only washed up pundits who see the left as the primary adversary to be conquered. American vice president JD Vance recently turned up in Munich (of all places) to lecture Europeans on the ‘threat from within’.
In 1963 the historian Richard Hofstadter noted of McCarthyism that:
Communism was not the target but the weapon, and it is for this reason that so many of the most ardent hunters of impotent domestic Communists were altogether indifferent to efforts to meet the power of international Communism where it really mattered - in the arena of world politics.
McCarthyism was more about discrediting democratic Socialists, social democrats, liberals and supporters of the New Deal than unearthing Soviet subversion. These days the orchestra may have changed but the conductor has not. Bureaucratic McCarthyist intrigue has merely been supplanted by algorithmic appeals to the mob. Hierarchies find new ways of authorising themselves. Every day the envelope is pushed a little further, the rhetoric ratcheted up a little more. As John Ganz has written, we have reached a point where Nazi salutes are treated as an irreverent lark.
It seems clear that Michael Anton’s infamous ‘Flight 93’ essay has been taken as more than a figure of speech by many conservatives. As the Intelligencer describes the piece:
Anton chose the arresting metaphor of Flight 93, the hijacked plane from September 11, 2001, whose passengers stormed the cockpit in a desperate bid to stave off certain death. Electing Trump, he conceded, was risky (like seizing a plane from terrorists midair), but the alternative of electing Hillary Clinton posed certain political and demographic death.
Following the events of January 6, 2021, Anton suggested that the Republicans should prevent a national popular vote from taking place altogether on the basis that it ‘guarantees a Democratic win in every presidential election henceforth’. He was wrong of course but don’t imagine the thought has gone away. In order to preserve a narrow and exclusionary vision of civilisation, many are willing to take such a gamble.
Lest anyone should think this is a North American problem, plenty of castor oil-ish proclamations are being emitted here in Britain. The race science movement appears to have infiltrated Westminster. GB News presenters bleat menacingly about ‘foreign’-looking people walking British streets and champion ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the AFD (following last week’s German election, apologists for the Waffen SS now sit alongside admirers of Putin in the party’s parliamentary group). Right-wing publications advocate for ‘Caesarism’ as an alternative to democracy; or for locking up ‘traitors’ in government for having the audacity to give away Britain’s last African colony. A Conservative peer has been hosting far-right activists in parliament.
Surveying the political landscape, I am reminded of Ignazio Silone’s description of fascism as ‘a counter-revolution against a revolution that never took place’. Imaginary enemies can be just as powerful as real ones. You just have to convince enough people that all reform leads to revolution.
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beardedmrbean · 24 days ago
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Iran has ordered military personnel to leave Yemen, abandoning its Houthi allies as the US escalates an air strike campaign against the rebel group.
A senior Iranian official said the move aimed to avoid direct confrontation with the US if an Iranian soldier was killed.
The official said Iran was also scaling back its strategy of supporting a network of regional proxies to focus on the direct threats from the US instead.
Tehran’s primary concern, the source said, was “Trump and how to deal with him”.
“Every meeting is dominated by discussions about him, and none of the regional groups we previously supported are being discussed,” the source said.
There have been near-daily attacks on the Houthis from the US since group chat messages from senior Trump officials discussing the strikes were leaked to the media last month.
The strikes, which Donald Trump described as “unbelievably successful”, have destroyed important military targets and killed commanders.
A Pentagon spokesman said more warplanes would be sent to the region but did not provide specific details.
However the US’s 124th Fighter Wing announced late last month it was sending “multiple” A-10 Thunderbolt II ground-attack aircraft and 300 airmen to the Middle East.
A Russian military expert in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, is also believed to be advising the Houthis on how to carry out their attacks while preventing them from targeting Saudi Arabia.
The kingdom has bombarded Houthi forces in Yemen since intervening in its civil war in 2015, and has hosted high-level talks between the US and Russia over a potential ceasefire in Ukraine.
The Houthi rebels have said they have been attacking US warships in the Red Sea, including the aircraft carrier USS Harry S Truman, which has been leading efforts to strike the rebel group.
No ships have been hit yet, but the US Navy said the Houthi fire was the heaviest its sailors have faced since World War II.
The USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier, currently in Asia, is also on its way to the Middle East to support Truman.
The regime source in Iran said: “The view here is that the Houthis will not be able to survive and are living their final months or even days, so there is no point in keeping them on our list.
“They were part of a chain that relied on Nasrallah [the former secretary-general of Hezbollah] and Assad, and keeping only one part of that chain for the future makes no sense.���
Mr Trump has been ratcheting up pressure on Iran to come to the table and discuss limiting its nuclear programme. Last week Mr Trump moved stealth B-2 bombers to the US-UK Diego Garcia military base in the Chagos Islands.
The US position on Iran and the Middle East has radically shifted since Mr Trump came into power.
Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at the Chatham House International Affairs Think Tank, said the increase in US strikes on Yemen was the Trump administration’s attempt to distance itself from the previous administration.
Joe Biden removed the Houthis’ designation as a terror organisation in 2021 – a decision Mr Trump reversed in January.
“Trump is trying to prove that he is more effective at ending and solving conflicts than the Biden administration was,” said Ms Vakil.
“[The strikes are] connected to the maximum pressure campaign that he has endorsed and he wants to simultaneously send a message to Iran and to the axis of resistance that his administration is going to take a bolder approach to destabilising regional activities.”
Mahmoud Shehrah, a former Yemeni diplomat and current associate fellow at the Chatham House, said the US had a “defensive strategy” against the Houthis during Joe Biden’s time in office.
From Amman, Jordan’s capital city, Mr Shehrah told The Telegraph: “The previous miscalculation about the Houthis in the US had made Trump carry heavier strikes against them now and [the US] have started to target individuals and key actors of them.”
He said weapons the Houthis possess are more sophisticated, which makes them more powerful than other non-state actors in Iran’s proxy groups across the Middle East.
Mr Shehrah added: “After the collapse of Hezbollah and Assad’s regime, the Houthis are now on the front line and they have been conducting very intensive attacks – they are escalating and taking adventure because it makes their political life longer in Yemen, according to their own calculation.”
“They get missiles and drones from Iran and rebrand them with Houthi names because they don’t want to show they have links with Iran because of domestic propaganda.”
Israel’s successes against Hamas and Hezbollah, key nodes in Iran’s network of proxies, have created an opportunity to weaken the Islamic regime’s influence.
Analysts also believe Iran’s failed missile strikes on Israel last year have damaged Iran’s ability to present a credible deterrence against external attacks, and also weakened the morale of its allies.
Israel’s military has destroyed much of Hamas’ infrastructure in Gaza, and inflicted heavy losses on Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Iran also failed to protect Bashar al-Assad, the former Syrian president and a key ally, against a rapid rebel offensive that overthrew the dictator in December.
With Hezbollah’s influence diminished, the Houthis have tried to take its place in leading the fight against Israel.
Since the Hamas-led Oct 7 attacks on Israel in 2023, the Houthis have improved their tactics and missile capabilities and built a strong public image.
They control Sanaa, print money, collect taxes, divert aid, smuggle drugs, sell weapons to terror groups in Africa and disrupt international shipping routes in the Red Sea.
They also have a geographic advantage. Yemen’s mountainous terrain, similar to Afghanistan, helps them hide stockpiles of missiles and drones in caves and underground.
Mr Shehrah said: “They are not experienced like Hezbollah but are more aggressive and more dangerous at the same time – Abdul Malik al-Houthi has an ambition of leading the axis of resistance.
“Yemeni streets are full of anger – the Houthis are not paying salaries and have absolute taxation with zero representation so the social base for the Houthis is not very strong, that’s why they rely on the Gaza war.”
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magnetictapedatastorage · 1 month ago
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forsetti · 10 months ago
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On Political Responsibilities: Put Up Or Shut The Fuck Up
As easily predictable as “The sun will set in the West,” a whole lot of Democrats are ONCE AGAIN falling for Republican propaganda and scurrying around like frightened little bunnies. This time it is about “Biden’s age.”
They should realize this is nothing more than a Republican ploy to sow discord among Dems and tamp down voter enthusiasm. This means either they are not very bright and their political hot takes should be completely ignored or they do realize but play along and parrot right-wing talking points either for attention or money, which really means they should be completely ignored.
Is President Biden old? Yes. Does it matter? As long as he has been and continues to do a good job pushing progressive policies it shouldn’t. When my maternal grandfather passed away at 91, he was still physically active, mentally sound, and able to do intricate, complex tasks. Because Pres. Biden had one bad debate (which is, no pun intended, debatable,) that doesn’t/shouldn’t mean a damn thing unless you are a frightened little bunny.
The right has been pushing, “Biden is too old,” since the 2020 election. They’ve also been pushing, “Biden is the head of a complex, international crime family who uses the Deep State and Dept. of Justice to do his bidding.” If you don’t see the logical problems between these two views, you are part of the problem and really shouldn’t be throwing out your political opinions like they are pearls of wisdom from on high.
Of course, it hasn’t only been the right pushing the “Biden is too old,” claim. The Far Left, especially the white far left, have been doing the same because they are still upset about Biden, with the help of black voters, kicking Bernie Sanders’ ass in the South Carolina primary and going on to curb stomp him on Super Tuesday. It doesn’t matter that Sanders is a year older than Pres. Biden to the far left. All that matters is doing damage to the person who beat their candidate of choice.* (*see also Hillary Clinton and the 2016 election.)
The media loves the “Biden is too old,” nonsense because it allows them to attack the president while hiding behind, “many people from both parties say….” However, the real reason they love it and push it nonstop is because it generates views/clicks which sells ads which generates profits. Any political race, especially one with national implications that is one-sided doesn’t get eyeballs on screens. If Pres. Biden was leading by 10 points, which in any sane country he would be, the race is all but over and no one is going to tune into media outlets for their “analysis” of the race. Any for-profit enterprise that relies on viewers HAS TO HAVE a horse race. The owners of these companies know this. The programmers know this. The hosts know this. The guests know this. It seems the only people who don’t know this are the frightened little bunnies on the left who flee to their holes any time someone in the media says something they don’t like or fear might be true.
All you have to do is look at the number of media outlets and talking heads who have pushed the idea that Biden needs to step aside because he “looked bad on television one time,” but not a single one of them has demanded the same of Trump for any of the legitimate bullshit he’s done. Just his role on Jan 6th should make him a toxic candidate, let alone his being found guilty of sexual assault, 34 felony convictions of fraud, and taking, lying about, and refusing to return highly classified documents after leaving the White House. Any one of these actions should be a reason to question and demand he step down as a candidate. Yet, NOT ONCE, has this happened in the media. That’s because they NEED Trump for horse races because it brings in money.
Just look at the post-debate analysis from the media who were intently focused on Biden’s speech patterns, how he looked, and how he sounded (all optics,) while completely ignoring what he said and the massive totality of Trump’s lies (all factual things.)
All of this “Optics Police” analysis has given rise to the whole “Biden needs to step aside,” idiot hot take.
When someone in the media says something like, “Pres. Biden needs to step aside,” a whole lot of Dems clutch their pearls with both hands and run to their fainting couch as fast as they can while screaming, “Pres. Biden needs to step aside!” because they are frightened little bunnies who have a compulsive need to parrot anything negative about their party and candidates, regardless of the source.
They are so afraid of losing elections that they do everything in their power to make sure elections are lost.
Let’s talk about the idea of Pres. Biden stepping aside. It is a remarkably stupid idea from remarkably stupid people. There is a reason the right has been pushing “Biden is too old,” “Biden is a criminal,” and “Biden cheated to win in 2016.” It is the very same reason Trump asked Zelensky to just lie about Biden being under investigation in Ukraine in 2016. Biden is the NUMBER ONE THREAT to Trump getting reelected. If the right believes Pres. Biden is the biggest threat to Trump, why in the fuck would replacing him on the ticket be the smart move? It wouldn’t.
I’ve read all the reasons for why Biden should step aside. They are all devoid of any logic, a basic understanding of U.S. elections, or American political history.
The latest reason for him to step aside is by comparing him to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and using her death and subsequent appointment of a right-wing hack, Amy Coney Barrett, to the Supreme Court. The same people on the left demanding Pres. Biden step aside are the same ones who blamed RBG for allowing Trump to appoint another conservative justice to SCOTUS.
It wasn’t RBG’s responsibility to prevent Trump from appointing a conservative justice. That responsibility was on Democratic voters in 2016 and they failed to live up to it. Don’t blame RBG for Amy Coney Barrett. Blame everyone on the left who decided to sit out the 2016 election or who voted third-party. They are the reason Trump was in a position to appoint three Supreme Court justices. While RBG was working hard to protect progressive ideals and rights, the people bitching about her not retiring were not doing a damn thing to help her.
It’s not like the far left wasn’t warned about the potential damage a Trump presidency would have, especially with regard to SCOTUS. They were, vehemently. Their response to being warned about what could/would happen to the Supreme Court if Trump won was, “Go fuck yourself. How dare you use the threat of years of progressive policies and rights being taken away to get my vote.”
These were the same people who now are screaming about how horrible the Supreme Court is hurting years of progressive policies and rights being taken away and blaming anybody and everybody other than themselves. They are the ones blaming Pres. Biden for not protecting Roe (something he has/had no way of doing.) They are the ones blaming RBG for not retiring (something that would not have made a difference because, even if she was replaced with another liberal justice, the Court would still be 5-4 in favor of conservatives and there was a good chance her replacement would not have been given a hearing and her seat left open ala Merrick Garland.)
The reason we have a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court is too many people on the left thought it was a good idea to not vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016. That’s it. Full...fucking...stop.
Many of the same people on the left who didn’t take the makeup of the Supreme Court seriously in 2016 are the very same people now demanding Pres. Biden step aside. Sorry, we are in this mess largely because of the horrible ideas and actions of these people. Why on earth should they be taken seriously now? They shouldn’t.
There is no “magic bullet,” to prevent Trump from being reelected. There isn’t some magical candidate out there, waiting in the wings for Pres. Biden to step aside so they can swoop in and save the day. There is Pres. Biden and VP Harris. That is it. It doesn’t matter if that is who you want. It doesn’t matter if you are upset about this or that policy or action. It doesn’t matter if Pres. Biden is 81, 61, or 91. What matters is winning the 2024 presidential election. That’s it. If/when that happens, then you can bitch and whine about not getting your dragon-unicorn hybrid in the exact color you want.
Do your fucking civic duty and vote for the candidate who will do the most good, the least harm to the people and policies you love. In the upcoming election, that choice will be, whether you like it or not, and you don’t fucking have to like it, is between Pres. Biden and Donald Trump. Either put up and do the right thing or shut the fuck up, now and forever about the state of politics in America.
A couple of days ago, Charlie Pierce from “Esquire,” tweeted this gem from Tbogg (one of my favorite old-timey bloggers.) It perfectly sums up exactly how a lot of people on the left view voting and my response to them.
"Every year in Happy Gumdrop Fairy-Tale Land all of the sprites and elves and woodland creatures gather together to pick the Rainbow Sunshine Queen. Everyone is there: the Lollipop Guild... ...the Star-Twinkle Toddlers, the Sparkly Unicorns, the Cookie Baking Apple-cheeked Grandmothers, the Fluffy Bunny Bund, the Rumbly-Tumbly Pupperoos, the Snowflake Princesses, the Baby Duckies All-In-A-Row, the Laughing Babies, and the Dykes on Bikes. Afterward, they spend the rest of the night dancing and singing and waving glow sticks until dawn when they tumble sleepy-eyed into beds made of the purest and whitest goose down where they dream of angels and clouds of spun sugar. You don’t live there. Grow the fuck up.” -TBogg
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sourcreammachine · 1 year ago
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✨My Favourite Moments of 2024!✨
uk prime minister keir starmer resigns in disgrace after accidentally referring to a trans woman by her correct pronouns
elon musk attempts to prove the safety of the tesla truck by letting mitch mcconnell drive. both men die within seconds of entering the vehicle
in response to worldwide famine, the World Food Programme appoints taylor swift as its director-for-life
the IDF continues carpetbombing occupied gaza after the ghosts of hamas are spotted. all gazans are required to evacuate into a shallow grave
the conclave repeatedly fails to elect a new pope, causing a schism. one conclave elects some italian bishop you’ve never heard of while the other conclave elects agent Q
the IMF buys pakistan
donald trump wins the republican primary carrying 60 states, 14 countries, and 8 circles of hell. during his victory broadcast from prison he suffers what it clinically described as a MegaStroke, removing his ability to move and speak. he declares one of his busty nurses to be his running mate and leads biden by 30 points
following the death of musk twitter is divided by gavelkind amongst multiple rival warlords
joe biden finally finishes his 13th genocide, winning a bet he made with obama
after it retreats from ukraine and georgia, putin personally murders every single member of the russian army. he is reelected in a landslide
his holiness the ayatollah ali khamenei dies peacefully of old age surrounded by his loving family and a grieving nation. days later he is found in a disused oil pipeline hiding from protesters while off his tits on heroin, and is dragged through the streets and beaten to death
the largest war in human history erupts in africa, costing dozens of millions of lives. it is a slow news day at the UN
president millei attaches argentina to the dollar. the us economy immediately crashes and undergoes apocalyptic hyperinflation, the dollar becoming the first currency to have a negative value. the only surviving american industry is joe biden ‘i did that’ stickers
the PLA begins its amphibious invasion of taiwan. the war claims the lives of one million PLA soldiers, ending within 20 minutes when the generals learn that tanks can’t swim
donald trump wins the us presidential election carrying all 100 states. during his victory broadcast from the intensive care unit, he suffers what is clinically described as a Heart Apocalypse, rupturing every single artery in his body and leaving him as pile of blood and gore. the supreme court rules that despite being, quote, “the most dead person ever recorded”, he is still eligible to be president. he and vp-elect Busty Nurse will be inaugurated on 20 january
due to a weird loophole, elon musk’s trans daughter inherits his entire estate. she immediately uses all her wealth to found a mutually-owned food distribution network, ending world hunger
the switch 2 still doesn’t have fucking analogue triggers
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