#REUTERS-LEGAL

[und-dann-war-es-fast-gut]

Wenn er NICHT mit DIR ins Kino will, ist das ein Zeichen für eine queere Storyline und weil Nolin einmal zusammen im Kino waren, konnte das nichts werden…

[techpedo]

Americans less welcoming of immigrants without legal status, Reuter

* Americans less welcoming of immigrants without legal status, Reuter Poll shows modest decline in support for allowing immigrants without legal status to remain in U.S. * Majority oppose detention camps for immigrants awaiting deportation * Trump’s deportation plans face political risks, experts say By Jason Lange and Ted Hesson WASHINGTON, – Americans have grown less welcoming toward…

[engineering-world]

Thomson Reuters & HighQ: Legal Business Management

Thomson Reuters, HighQ & Legal Tracker in the UAE, KSA, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, and MENA. We offer Legal Business and Legal Spend Management

[headlinehorizon]

Thomson Reuters Unveils Groundbreaking AI Tools for Legal Research

Discover the latest news from Thomson Reuters as they revolutionize legal research with their state-of-the-art AI tools.

[randombusinessoflawthoughts]

REPORT: Dynamic Law Firms consistently invest more in Business Development than Static Law Firms

The numbers have been crunched and the results are in: ‘Dynamic Law Firms’ invest considerably more in their business development and marketing activities/departments than static firms are willing to do. According to the latest (8th) iteration of Thomson Reuters Institute’s 2023 Dynamic Law Firms Report, Dynamic Law Firms consistently invest greater sums in their business development and…

[zvaigzdelasas]

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered billionaire Elon Musk on Wednesday to name a legal representative for his messaging platform X in Brazil within 24 hours or face the site's suspension in the country, a court decision showed.

Lol [29 Aug 24]

[maaarine]

Russia bans 'child-free propaganda' to try to boost birth rate (Reuters, Nov 12 2024)

"Russia's lower house of parliament voted unanimously on Tuesday to ban what authorities cast as pernicious propaganda for a child-free way of life, hoping to boost a faltering birth rate.

Official data released in September put the birth rate at its lowest in a quarter of a century while mortality rates are up as Moscow's war in Ukraine rages on.

The Kremlin called the figures "catastrophic for the future of the nation".

President Vladimir Putin, who has cast Russia as a bastion of "traditional values" locked in an existential struggle with a decadent West, has encouraged women to have at least three children, saying that will help secure the future of Russians.

There are already financial and other incentives.

The law, expected to be swiftly approved by the upper house of parliament and Putin, joins other restrictions on free expression including a ban on content deemed to promote "non-traditional lifestyles" such as same-sex relationships or gender fluidity, as well as on dissenting accounts of the conflict in Ukraine.

Authors of "child-free propaganda" will be subject to fines of up to 400,000 roubles ($4,100) for individuals, twice that amount for officials, and up to 5 million roubles ($51,000) for legal entities. (…)

But some women were sceptical.

Alina Rzhanova, a 33-year-old who lives in Yaroslavl, 250 km northeast of Moscow, was once determined not to have children but now has an eight-month-old son.

"People want children, but there's no money," she said.

"That's why people are not having children. Not because someone somewhere wrote something.""

[vague-humanoid]

The 20-year-old shooter who attempted to assassinate former President Trump was a dietary aide at a nursing home, a bright student, and a member of a gun club.

Thomas Matthew Crooks belonged to a shooting club based in Clairton, Pa., nearly nine miles from his family home in Bethel Park. Attorney Robert S. Bootay III confirmed to The Times that Crooks, who was shot and killed by Secret Service agents Saturday, was a member of the Clairton Sportsmen’s Club.

“Obviously, the club fully admonishes the senseless act of violence that occurred yesterday,” said Bootay, who represents the organization, in a statement. “The club also offers its sincerest condolences to the Comperatore family and extends prayers to all of those injured including the former president.”

Bootay declined further comment, citing the pending FBI investigation.

The Clairton Sportsmen’s Club, on 180 acres south of Pittsburgh, bills itself as offering “one of the premier shooting facilities in the tri-state area” and has more than 2,000 members. It offers youth events, archery facilities, safety courses and multiple rifle ranges, including a highpowered-rifle range with targets up to 187 yards away.

BBC News first reported Crooks’ affiliation with the club.

Kevin Rojek, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh division, said in a news briefing Sunday that Crooks used an AR-style 556 rifle in the shooting that was legally purchased by his father, Matthew Crooks. The elder Crooks is a licensed counselor in Pennsylvania, according to state and federal records.

A local gun shop owner, Bruce Piendl, told Reuters that there are “a ton of gun clubs” in the area around Bethel Park. “We have a rich tradition of hunting and fishing and outdoor stuff,” he said.

Rojek said authorities found a suspicious device in Thomas Matthew Crooks’ car, which was inspected by bomb technicians and rendered safe. He said the FBI was in the process of analyzing it further.

[otherkinnews]

New York bill proposes criminalizing costumes and masks in public

[This article was originally posted on the main blog for Otherkin News, on DreamWidth: https://otherkinnews.dreamwidth.org/95526.html Orion Scribner @frameacloud wrote it on January 8, 2025.]

During the previous two years, Republicans in the US have penned "anti-furry bills." These come from Republicans rumoring that schools also provide litter boxes for students who believe they are animals. The rumor has been debunked by the fact-checking sites Snopes and Reuters. Anti-furry bills oppose what the legislators variously and inaccurately describe as people who are furry, anthropomorphic, transspecies, identifying as animals, or having the "perception of being any animal species other than human". Sometimes the text of the bill itself uses those words, and sometimes the legislators only spell that out in interviews. The bills are based on the satirical urban legend about litter boxes, not on the behavior of any real people. The purpose is to satirize transgender students' requests to use the correct restrooms in schools. Republicans care about this as part of a vendetta against public schools and LGBT people.

The bills began in 2023 with North Dakota House Bill 1522, Oklahoma Senate Bill 943, Indiana Statehouse Bill 380, and a proposed amendment to Montana Senate Bill 544. 2024 had Oklahoma House Bill 3084, Mississippi House Bill 176, and Missouri House Bill 2678. No anti-furry bills have yet passed into law as such. Fellow volunteers and I have been reporting on these in the Otherkin News blog all along, which you can read in the tag for that purpose. I expect to see Republicans propose some more anti-furry bills this year, too. Here is the first relevant bill for 2025 that I've found, though it is not specifically what I would categorize as an anti-furry bill.

New York Senate Bill 723 would make it be a class B misdemeanor to wear a mask and/or costume in public places. It describes these as "deceptive wearing of a mask" and "disguised by unusual or unnatural attire." It would be a crime even for people who are doing harmless activities, such as "loiter[ing], remain[ing] or congregat[ing] in a public place with other persons so masked or disguised while engaged in a protest, rally or other public assembly." The explicit purpose is to make it more difficult for peaceful protestors to maintain any anonymity.

Today, one common tactic of protestors is "Black Bloc," in which all the protestors cover themselves in sunglasses and black clothing from head to foot. They hide their body shape as well as hair and faces as much as possible. Because Bloc makes the whole group look uniformly similar and anonymous, it makes it more difficult for police to identify an individual for later legal punishment or single someone out for immediate brutality. Covering one's skin and eyes as part of Black Bloc also gives some protection from pepper spray. If Black Bloc is banned, protestors will be more vulnerable to injury and police violence. If common attire of protestors is criminalized, then the bill could be used to some degree to limit or effectively ban peaceful protest, which is a First Amendment right. For centuries, disguises have played a role in how protestors protect their anonymity, show who they're together with, or invoke cultural symbols and beliefs (Leslie Feinberg, Transgender Warriors, pp. 75-80). In American history alone, disguises were a part of the famous protest that led to the US becoming an independent nation in the first place: the Boston Tea Party in 1773.

If your city in the state of New York requires permission from the police or other authorities for entertainment events, then Senate Bill 723 would require you to specifically get permission for people to wear disguises to the event, because it makes an exception for those. The bill also makes an exception for attire worn for religious reasons.

This bill could have an impact on other sorts of gatherings. It leaves itself open for various sorts of people to be considered to be wearing "unusual or unnatural attire." It doesn't specifically mention people who wear costumes and masks as part of hobbies such as fursuiting, cosplay, and quadrobics, but it could have an impact on them. There are other bills that oppose transgender people in much more explicit ways, but couldn't this one also be stretched to be used against people whose outfits don't conform with their assigned gender?

The bill was prefiled on January 8 by Republican Senators Steven Rhoads, George Borrello, Patricia Canzoneri-Fitzpatrick, Jack Martins, Mario Mattera, Dean Murray, Peter Oberacker, William Weber, and Alexis Weik. Here is the bill on the New York Senate government website: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/S723

If you care about costuming hobbies as well as the First Amendment right to peaceful protest, what can you do about this bill? My partners Page Shepard, House of Chimeras, and I have presented a convention panel about that. In the recording of our panel, skip to the timestamp 23:44 to hear what ordinary people can do about bad bills. In the written script of our lecture, see Slides 21 through 25.

[allthegeopolitics]

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on Sunday he had ordered his ministry to start legal proceedings against French President Emmanuel Macron after Paris banned Israeli firms from participating in an upcoming military naval trade show, Reuters reports. The decision to bar Israeli firms is the latest incident in a row fuelled by the Macron government’s unease over Israel’s conduct in the wars in Gaza and Lebanon. Euronaval, organiser of the Nov. 4-7 event in Paris, said in a statement last week that the French government had informed it that Israeli delegations were not allowed to exhibit stands or show equipment, but could attend the trade show. The decision affected seven firms, it said.

Continue Reading.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Greg Sargent at TNR:

There are still nearly two months to go before Donald Trump assumes the presidency again, but Republicans or GOP-adjacent industries have already begun to admit out loud that some of his most important policy promises could prove disastrous in their parts of the country. These folks don’t say this too directly, out of fear of offending the MAGA God King. Instead, they suggest gingerly that a slight rethink might be in order. But unpack what they’re saying, and you’ll see that they’re in effect acknowledging that some of Trump’s biggest campaign promises were basically scams.

In Georgia, for instance, some local Republicans are openly worried about Trump’s threat to roll back President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. The IRA is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into incentives for the manufacture and purchase of green energy technologies, from electric vehicles to batteries to solar power. Trump endlessly derided this as the “green new scam” and pledged to repeal all uncommitted funds. But now The New York Times reports that Trump supporters like state Representative Beth Camp fear that repeal could destroy jobs related to new investments in green manufacturing plants in the state. Camp worries that this could leave factories in Georgia “sitting empty.” You heard that right: This Republican is declaring that Trump’s threatened actions could leave factories sitting empty. 

[...]

Something similar is also already happening with Trump’s threat to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. Reuters reports that agriculture interests, which are heavily concentrated in GOP areas, are urging the incoming Trump administration to refrain from removing untold numbers of migrants working throughout the food supply chain, including in farming, dairy, and meatpacking. 

Notably, GOP Representative John Duarte, who just lost his seat in the elections, explicitly tells Reuters that farming interests in his California district depend on undocumented immigrants—and that Trump should exempt many from removal. Duarte and industry representatives want more avenues created for migrants to work here legally—the precise opposite of what Trump promised. Now over to Texas. NPR reports that various industries there fear that mass deportations could cripple them, particularly in construction, where nearly 300,000 undocumented immigrants toiled as of 2022. Those workers enable the state to keep growing despite a native population that isn’t supplying a large enough workforce. Local analysts and executives want Trump to refrain from removing all these people or create new ways for them to work here legally. Even the Republican mayor of McKinney, Texas, is loudly sounding the alarm.

Meanwhile, back in Georgia, Trump’s threat of mass deportations is awakening new awareness that undocumented immigrants drive industries like construction, landscaping, and agriculture, reports The Wall Street Journal. In Dalton, a town that backed Trump, fear is spreading that removals could “upend its economy and workforce.” At this point, someone will argue that all this confirms Trump’s arguments—that these industries and their representatives merely fear losing cheap migrant labor that enables them to avoid paying Americans higher wages. When JD Vance and Trump pushed their lie about Haitians eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, Vance insisted that he opposed the Haitian influx into Midwestern towns because they’re undercutting U.S. workers. But all these disparate examples of Republicans and GOP areas lamenting coming mass deportations suggest an alternate story, one detailed well by the Times’ Lydia DePillis. In the MAGA worldview, a large reserve of untapped native-born Americans in prime working age are languishing in joblessness throughout Trump country—and will stream into all these industries once migrants are removed en masse, boosting wages.  

But DePillis documents that things like poor health and disability are more important drivers of unemployment among this subset of non-college working-age men. Besides, migrants living and working here don’t just perform labor that Americans will not. They also consume and boost demand, creating more jobs. As Paul Krugman puts it, in all these ways, migrant laborers are “complements” to U.S. workers. Importantly, that’s the argument that these Republicans and industries in GOP areas are really making when they lament mass deportations: Migrant labor isn’t displacing U.S. workers; it’s helping drive our post-Covid recovery and growth. This directly challenges Trump’s zero-sum worldview.

[...] Here’s another possibility: In the end, Trump’s deportation forces may selectively spare certain localities and industries from mass removals. Trump’s incoming “border czar,” Tom Homan, suggests this won’t happen. But a hallmark of MAGA is corruptly selective governance in the interests of MAGA nation and expressly against those who are designated MAGA’s enemies, U.S. citizens included. One can see mass deportations becoming a selective tool, in which blue localities are targeted for high-profile raids—even as Trump triumphantly rants that they are cesspools of “migrant crime” that he is pacifying with military-style force—while GOP-connected industries and Trump-allied Republicans tacitly secure some forbearance.

Donald Trump’s threats to green energy initiatives and resistance to his mass deportation proposals are facing headwinds against him, even from local Republicans who fear losses of jobs in their communities.

Even if Trump does get to implement his mass deportation policy, he’ll likely create several exemption carveouts (mainly for industries likely to favor him) and use selective enforcement (light touch for red states, heavy and punitive for blue states).

[attheexactlyrighttimeandplace]

For the people who still think the colony of Israel has a right to defend itself:

They're not defending anything, they're just having fun killing:

Update 1 (17/10/2023) for the confused and sceptics :

Update 2 (10/22/2023): To add some context to this post following Reuters (direct link to article) attempt to verify the reality of the IDF Facebook post.

In fact, Reuters failed to verify anything: as the agency admitted in its article, its journalist "could not find the impostor's Facebook account or the publication on the platform social network".

They then contacted "a spokesperson for the IDF", who told them that " the Facebook post was not shared by one of its official accounts. He added there was only one official IDF Facebook page in Arabic that carries a verification tick "

A Reuters reporter also contacted"a representative for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, told Reuters the page was removed".

In this total absence of material evidence, and relying solely on the statements of these two sources which are the least reliable when it comes to commenting and sharing information and facts about the war against the Palestinians (the Israeli army is party to the conflict therefore It is biased and will protect its agents and soldiers- and Facebook has a history of censoring Palestinian content that could be used to document violence and help legally qualify zionist crimes).

Reuters came to this hasty conclusion:

Their main arguments are that

The Israeli occupation army never admitted to bombing the hospital and blamed Islamic Jihad, so it had no reason to celebrate.

Reuters journalists conveniently ignore the timeline. The IDF message welcoming the bombing of the Baptist hospital in Gaza was published immediately after the attack, while the controversy over the perpetrators of the attack began a few hours after its deletion.

Until the controversy, no one wondered who was behind the attack. The zionist army has always publicly assumed its crimes: it even ordered (according to the clerics who were in charge of the administration of the hospital) on several occasions the hospital to evacuate, knowing perfectly well that it was impossible. It was only when outrage became widespread that western media, including Reuters, began to question the origins of the strike. There's a post on Tumblr that pulls together the subtle changes in headlines to make it seem like Israel never took credit for the attack (even though it destroyed different 2 floors of the hospital a few days before the biggest attack).

There are other videos on Mohammed El Kurd's Twitter account showing the zionist army celebrating its strikes. There are videos on social media of zionist soldiers humiliating prisoners in their custody, so gloating on social media is not a new practice for them.

There is no reason why they should not celebrate what they consider a victory: their ministers have already publicly and clearly stated that civilians who do not leave northern Gaza, whatever their reasons, will be assimilated to Hamas fighters. So everything is consistent; in their minds, hitting innocent and defenseless civilians is legitimate and they are happy about it.

On its Twitter account, the Israeli military removed a video that purported to prove that Islamic Jihad carried out the attack, but ultimately did not prove its claims. So they also have a habit of deleting their own content when they realize that it exposes them more than it helps them.

Other journalists (Al Jazeera uses its own images: it is the only media that remained in Gaza and they filmed all the attacks, information from Channel 4) and independent experts on weapons of war and geolocation worked on the question of identifying the perpetrators of the bombing of the hospital. So far, their preliminary conclusion is that the Israeli military's claims do not match the facts and material evidence on the ground.

Full details of this debate are on the X/Twitter accounts of Lowkey and Mohammed El-Kurd (look for posts made on October 17).

2. I don't really know how Facebook/Meta works: I never had an account on it (I mean I never used it properly: I opened an account years ago, exclusively to follow the activity of a group that I was part of in life but closed it after a few weeks without interacting beyond a few likes), but on Twitter you can hide the checkmark.

Even if the checkmark cannot be hidden, there is nothing in the Reuters "report" to indicate that the Zionist army does not maintain multiple accounts - some with checkmarks and some without - and does not delete accounts that are not officials when it does not suit their interests.

They have a history of spreading fake news: from rumors about 40 beheaded babies, to accusing Palestinians of bombing themselves, to creating fake documents to accuse Hamas of planning attacks on primary schools while manipulating parents by buying YT ads shown during videos aimed at children to improve their image damaged by their violence with families, and to justify the harm they do to the children of Gaza.

I'm only making this long argument because Lowkey and Mohammed El-Kurd deleted the tweets I reposted and I think they shouldn't have done so. I understand why: it actually seems like an insignificant speck in an ocean of real crimes, but I personally consider it symbolic and indicative of the true and greater zionist project: genocide.

Genocide in international law is based on proof of intent to destroy a group, and the zionist army's mocking Facebook post establishes beyond doubt that nothing is accidental on the zionist side, everything is premeditated and based on their superiority complex over the Palestinian people.

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last Week - June 6, 2023

1. Biden orders 20-year ban on oil, gas drilling around tribal site in New Mexico

Hundreds of square miles in New Mexico will be withdrawn from further oil and gas production for the next 20 years on the outskirts of Chaco Culture National Historical Park that tribal communities consider sacred, the Biden administration ordered Friday.

The new order from Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland applies to public lands and associated mineral rights within a 10-mile (16-kilometer) radius of the park. It does not apply to entities that are privately, state- or tribal-owned. Existing leases won’t be impacted either.

2. Groundbreaking Israeli cancer treatment has 90% success rate

An experimental treatment developed at Israel's Hadassah-University Medical Center has a 90% success rate at bringing patients with multiple myeloma into remission.

The treatment is based on genetic engineering technology. They have used a genetic engineering technology called CAR-T, or Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell Therapy, which boosts the patient’s own immune system to destroy the cancer. More than 90% of the 74 patients treated at Hadassah went into complete remission, the oncologists said.

3. Federal Judge Makes History in Holding That Border Searches of Cell Phones Require a Warrant

With United States v. Smith, a district court judge in New York made history by being the first court to rule that a warrant is required for a cell phone search at the border, “absent exigent circumstances”. For a century, the Supreme Court has recognized a border search exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.

4. Indigenous-led bison repopulation projects are helping the animal thrive again in Alberta

Indigenous-led efforts are reintroducing bison to their ancestral lands in Alberta, bringing back an iconic species that was nearly extinct. These reintroduction projects, such as the one led by the Tsuut'ina Nation, have witnessed the positive impact on the bison population and the surrounding wildlife.

The historical decline of bison numbers was due to overhunting and government policies that forced Indigenous peoples onto reserves. These initiatives aim to restore ecological integrity while fostering spiritual and cultural connections with the land and animals. Successful results have been observed in projects like Banff National Park, where the bison population has grown from 16 to nearly 100, providing inspiration for future wilding efforts.

5. Breakthrough in disease affecting one in nine women

Sydney researchers have made a world-first leap forward that could change the treatment of endometriosis and improve the health of women living with the painful and debilitating disease. Researchers from Sydney's Royal Hospital for Women have grown tissue from every known type of endometriosis, observing changes and comparing how they respond to treatments.

It means researchers will be able to vary treatments from different types of endometriosis, determining whether a woman will need fertility treatments.

6. Latvia just elected the first openly gay head of state in Europe

The country’s parliament elected Edgars Rinkēvičs to be its next president, Reuters reported prime minister Krišjānis Kariņš saying.

Rinkēvičs publicly came out as gay in November 2014, posting on Twitter: “I proudly announce I am gay… Good luck all of you.” In a second tweet at the time, he spoke about improving the legal status of same-sex relationships, saying Latvia needed to create a legal framework for all kinds of partnerships.

7. France bans short haul flights

The introduction of France’s short-haul flight ban has renewed calls for Europe to cut down on journeys that could be made by train. Last week France officially introduced its ban on short-haul flights.

The final version of the law means that journeys which can be taken in under 2.5 hours by train can’t be taken by plane. There also needs to be enough trains throughout the day that travellers can spend at least eight hours at their destination.

----

That's it for this week :)

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[phoenixyfriend]

Can you explain the Iran-Israel situation please?

Alright, let's get to it. Please note that I'm writing this on mobile during my lunch break, so I can't include reference/source links as much as I'd like. Thankfully, most of what I'm going to be telling you should be easily located by searching for an article on one of the following: APNews, Reuters, BBC Global News Podcast, Democracy Now!, NPR, or The New York Times. Long-term background is probably best found in videos by the YouTube channels Real Life Lore or tldr global news, or on Wikipedia if you prefer text.

The short version: Israel attacked Iran's consulate in Syria to get at some of the military commanders that were there, which is legally equivalent to attacking Iran itself. Iran responded by sending about 300 bombs at Israel, most of which were shot down in transit. Given that they still called it a success, even though it seems only one person was even hurt, my understanding is that it's very likely that they only intended the rockets to be a show of force, rather than an actual escalation, because Iran can't afford a war right now.

To support my blogging so I can move out of my parents’ house, I do have a ko-fi. Alternately, you can donate to one of the charities I list in this post OR this post.

The long version:

Okay, let's start with some background on Israel, then Iran. This is... a lot, so if you already know the broad strokes skip down to 2023.

Israel was established following WWII by the English and French, following borders the two countries had secretly drawn up decades earlier in the Sykes-Picot agreement. The intent was to give the Jewish people a place to go... or, depending on who you ask, a place to send them. Their ancestral homeland was viewed as the best choice, sort of like a deportation millennia after a diaspora. Given that WWII had just ended by the time Sykes-Picot was actually put into effect, 'getting out of Europe' was something a lot of Jews were given to agree with.

The Arab world was not happy, as that land had belonged to the Ottomans for centuries, and had long since 'naturalized' to being Arab. I'm not going to pretend to know the nuances to when people do or do not consider Palestine to have been its own nation; it was an Ottoman state until WWI, at which point it came under British control for just under three decades, and that period is known as the British Mandate of Palestine; it ended after WWII, with the creation of Israel. Palestine's land and people have sort of just been punted around from one colonizer to another for centuries.

Iran is the current form of what was once Persia. They were an empire for a very long time, and were a unitary monarchy up until the early 20th century; in 1925, Iran elected a Prime Minister who was then declared the monarch. The following several decades had Iran's monarchy slowly weakened, and occasionally beset by foreign interventions, including a covert coup by the US and UK in 1953. The country also became more corrupt throughout the 1970s due to economic policy failing to control inflation in the face of rising oil prices.

In 1979, there was a revolution that overthrew the monarchy and the elected government, replacing the system with a theocracy and declaring Iran to be an Islamic Republic, with the head of state being a religious authority, rather than an elected one. This was not popular with... most countries. 1980 saw the closure of all universities (reopened in 1983 with government-approved curriculums), as well as the taking of over fifty American hostages from the US Embassy in Iran. You may have heard about that in the context of Ronald Reagan encouraging Iran to keep the hostages until the end of Carter's term in order to force the election.

So, the West didn't like having an Islamic state because it claims to like democracy, and also because the Islamic state was explicitly anti-American and this has some Bad Effects on oil prices. The Soviets didn't like having an Islamic State because a theocracy goes directly against a lot of communist values (or at least the values they claim to have), and weakened any influence their supposedly secular union could have on Iran and the wider middle east. The other countries in the Arab world, many of them still monarchies, didn't like the Islamic republic because if the revolution spread, then it was possible their monarchies would be overthrown as well.

(Except Oman, which is not worried, but that's the exception, not the rule.)

This is not a baseless worry, because Iran has stated that this is its goal for the Arab world. Overthrow the monarchies, overthrow the elected governments, Islamic Rule for everyone. That is the purpose of its proxies, like Hezbollah (Lebanon), the Houthis (Yemen), and Hamas (Palestine), along with less well-known groups like the Salafi Jihadists in Mali, who are formally under the umbrella of al-Quaeda, which Iran denies having any relation to but is suspected of funding. In areas where these proxy groups have gained power, they are liable to enact hard Shari'a law such as has happened in Northern Mali and other parts of the Sahel region.

While other conflicts have occurred in these countries, I think the above is most relevant.

Israel has repeatedly attacked, or been attacked by, other nations in the middle east, as they are viewed as having taken over land that is not theirs, and as being a puppet of the US government. The biggest conflicts have been 1947-1948, 1968/1973, and 2014.

And then, of course, 2023.

Now, Iran, more than any other nation in the Middle East, hates Israel. They have for a very long time, viewing them as an affront to the goal of spreading Islam across the whole of the middle east, and as being a front and a staging ground for the United States and other Western powers. Two common refrains in the slogans of Iran and its proxies are "Death to America" and "Death to Israel."

Due to Iran's military power and virulence towards Israel, the United States has been funneling money to Israel for decades. It has more generally been to defend itself against the Arab world at large, but it has narrowed over the decades to being about Iran and its proxies as relations have normalized with other nations like Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Cue October 7th, 2023. Hamas invades Israeli towns, kills some people, and takes others as hostage. Israel retaliates, and the conflict ramps up into what is by now tens of thousands of dead, some half of which are children.

In this time, Hamas's allies are, by definition, Iran and the other proxy forces. Hezbollah, being in Lebanon, share a border with Israel's north. They have been trading rocket fire across the border in waves for most of the past six months. The Houthis, down in Yemen, claim to be attacking the passing cargo ships in order to support Palestine. Given that the attacks often seem indiscriminate, and that the Houthi's control over their portion of Yemen is waning in the face of their poor governance, this is... debatable. It's their official reason, but given that "let's attack passing ships, claiming that we only attack Israeli or American ships and that it is to support Palestine" is rallying support domestically for their regime, it does seem to be more of a political move to garner support at home than about supporting Palestine.

Iran, however, has not attacked Israel. They've spoken out about it, yes, but they haven't done anything because nobody wants a regional war. Nobody can afford it right now. Iran is dealing with a domestic crisis due to oil subsidies bleeding the states' coffers dry, and the aging Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of Iran, refusing to pick a successor. They are looking at both an economic crisis and succession crisis, and a regional war would fuck up both situations further. Iran funds most of its proxies, and they can't do that, and fight a war on top of it, while their economy is in its current state. Pure self preservation says they don't want a war, especially with the ongoing unrest that's been going on for... well, basically since the revolution, but especially since the death of Mahsa Amini.

Meanwhile, in Israel, Netanyahu has been looking at corruption charges and legal issues since before the Hamas attack. It's generally agreed that if Israel were to hold new elections right now, he would lose and be replaced, and also immediately taken to court. Netanyahu wants to stay in power, and as long as the war on Hamas lasts, he is unlikely to get voted out. A change in leadership in the middle of a war is rarely a good idea for any country, and he's banking on that.

However, the war on Hamas rests on the shoulders of American money and supplies. Without that military support, Israel cannot fight this war, and America... is losing patience.

Officially, America and most of the western world have been telling Israel to not fucking escalate for the majority of the war.

There have been implied threats, more or less since Schumer's big speech about how Israel needs a new election, of American legislators putting conditions on any future aid. There have even been rumblings of aid being retracted entirely if Israel follows through on invading Raffah.

So...

American aid to Israel has, for a very long time, been given in the name of defending Israel against Iran and its proxies.

Israel has been fighting this war against Hamas for six months, killing what is by now innumerable civilians, on the power of US military aid.

Netanyahu benefits from the continued war due to domestic troubles.

Iran does not want a regional war, or really any big war, due to its own domestic troubles.

The US is, in theory, losing patience with Israel and threatening to pull the plug on unconditional support. It's very "we gave you this to fight Iran. Stop attacking civilians. If you keep attacking civilians, then you're going to have to rely on what we already gave you to fight off Iran so that you won't keep wasting it on civilians."

Israel... attacks Iran, prompting a response, and is now talking about escalating with Iran.

I am not explicitly saying that it looks to me like Israel, which is already fighting a war on two physical fronts and even more political/economic ones, has picked a fight with Iran so that America feels less like it is able to withdraw support.

I just... am finding it hard to understand why Israel, which is in fact fighting both Hamas and Hezbollah, would attack the Iranian consulate in Syria otherwise. They can't actually afford to fight this war, escalating to a full regional conflict, on a third front.

Not without pressuring American into keeping the faucet of military funding open at full blast.

To support my blogging so I can move out of my parents’ house, I do have a ko-fi. Alternately, you can donate to one of the charities I list in this post OR this post.

[djuvlipen]

But as surrogate mothering is normalized, it is crucial to highlight the classist and racist premises on which it is founded and its destructive consequences for the children thus produced and for women. A worrisome one is the presence of a number of “suspended children,” who, having been denied, for various reasons, legal certification in the countries where the “intended” parents reside, or having been born with disabilities, are rejected by both the surrogate mother and the commissioning couple. A Reuters investigative report has also found that through the internet adoptive parents, at least in the US, can dispose of children adopted abroad, without any difficulty, through a practice called “private rehoming” that is totally unregulated. Even more worrisome is the evidence that some surrogate children are channeled to the organs market, for once the transaction has taken place no institutional oversight checks what happens to the children marketed this way, who in most cases are taken to other regions, thousands of miles away from the place of their birth. ... While defenders portray it as a humanitarian gesture, a gift of life enabling couples who cannot have children to experience the joys of parenting, the fact is that it is women from the poorest regions of the world who generally take on this task, and surrogacy would not exist except for the monetary compensations it fetches. Quite properly, then, in “Surrogates and Outcast Mothers: Racism and Reproductive Politics in the Nineties” (1993), Angela Davis has argued that surrogacy is continuous with the breeding practices that were enforced on the American slave plantations, with poor women in both cases being destined to forfeit their children, once born, for the profit of the rich.

-- Silvia Federici, "Surrogate Motherhood: A Gift of Life or Maternity Denied?" in Beyond the Periphery of the Skin