Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
“Stefanik is a onetime moderate Republican who has transformed herself into a pro-Trump loyalist. She stood up for Trump relentlessly when he faced impeachment.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/11/un-officials-charm-stefanik-trump-00188868
Trump appointing war hawks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJL6VUOZFTY
“China has published baselines for a contested shoal in the South China Sea it had seized from the Philippines, a move that’s likely to increase tensions over overlapping territorial claims.
The Foreign Ministry on Sunday posted online geographic coordinates for the baselines around Scarborough Shoal. A nation’s territorial waters and exclusive economic zone are typically defined as the distance from the baselines.
Both China and the Philippines claim Scarborough Shoal and other outcroppings in the South China Sea. China seized the shoal, which lies west of the main Philippine island of Luzon, in 2012 and has since restricted access to Filipino fishermen there. A 2016 ruling by an international arbitration court found that most Chinese claims in the South China Sea were invalid but Beijing refuses to abide by it.
Ships from China and the Philippines have collided several times as part of increased confrontations, and the Chinese coast guard has blasted Philippine vessels with water cannons.
China’s move came two days after Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed two laws demarcating the government’s claims in the disputed waters.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-delimits-contested-south-china-105051495.html
“The resulting pier mission did not go well.
It involved 1,000 U.S. troops, delivered only a fraction of the promised aid at a cost of nearly $230 million, and was from the start beset by bad luck and miscalculations, including fire, bad weather and dangers on shore from the fighting between Israel and Hamas.”
…
“The U.S. military aimed to ramp up to as many as 150 trucks a day of aid coming off the pier.
But because the pier was only operational for a total of 20 days, the military says it moved a total of only 19.4 million pounds of aid into Gaza. That would be about 480 trucks of aid delivered in total from the pier, based on estimates by the World Food Programme from earlier this year of weight carried by a truck.
The United Nations says about 500 truckloads of aid are needed daily to address the needs of Palestinians in Gaza.
Just days after the first shipments of aid rolled off the pier in Gaza, crowds overwhelmed trucks and took some of it.
Israel’s killings of seven World Central Kitchen workers in April and its use of an area near the pier as it staged a hostage rescue recovery mission in June also dented the confidence of aid organizations, on whom the U.S. was relying to carry the supplies from the shore and distribute to residents.
A senior U.S. defense official acknowledged that aid delivery “proved to be perhaps more challenging than the planners anticipated.”
One former official said Kurilla had raised distribution as a concern early on.
“General Kurilla was also very clear about that: ‘I can do my piece of this, and I can do distribution if you task me to do it,'” the former official said.
“But that was explicitly scoped out of what the task was. And so we were reliant on these international organizations.”
Current and former U.S. officials told Reuters that the United Nations and aid organizations themselves were always cool to the pier.
At a closed-door meeting of U.S. officials and aid organizations in Cyprus in March, Sigrid Kaag, the U.N. humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, offered tacit support for Biden’s pier project.
But Kaag stressed the UN preference was for “land, land, land,” according to two people familiar with the discussions.
The United Nations declined to comment on the meeting. It referred to a briefing on Monday where a spokesperson for the organization said that the U.N. appreciated every way of getting aid into Gaza, including the pier, but more access through land routes is needed.
The underlying concern for aid organizations was that Biden, under pressure from fellow Democrats over Israel’s killing of civilians in Gaza, was pushing a solution that would at best be a temporary fix and at worst would take pressure off Netanyahu’s government to open up land routes into Gaza.
Dave Harden, a former USAID mission director to the West Bank and Gaza, described the pier project as “humanitarian theater.”
“It did relieve the pressure, unfortunately, on having the (land border) crossings work more effectively.””
https://www.reuters.com/world/how-bidens-gaza-pier-project-unraveled-2024-07-25/
“Qatar agreed in recent weeks to kick Hamas out of its country following a request from the US to do so, capping off months of failed attempts to try to get the militant group – whose top leaders reside in the Qatari capital of Doha – to accept a ceasefire and hostage release deal in the Israel-Hamas war, US and Qatari sources told CNN.
With efforts to pause the war – which has been a top priority for President Joe Biden – firmly stalled, US officials informed their Qatari counterparts about two weeks ago that they must stop giving Hamas refuge in their capital; Qatar agreed and gave Hamas notice about a week ago, sources said.
“Hamas is a terrorist group that has killed Americans and continues to hold Americans hostage,” a senior administration official told CNN. “After rejecting repeated proposals to release hostages, its leaders should no longer be welcome in the capitals of any American partner.”
Throughout the course of the war and negotiations to bring the hostages home, US officials have asked Qatar to use the threat of expulsion as leverage in their talks with Hamas. The final impetus for Qatar agreeing to kick Hamas out came recently after the death of American-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin and Hamas’ rejection of yet another ceasefire proposal.
Qatar has been a major player in efforts over the past year to try to secure a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, in no small part because senior members of the militant group are based in Doha. Major negotiations have taken place in the Qatari capital for that reason.
Exactly when Hamas operatives would be exiled out of Qatar – and where they would go – are unclear.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/qatar-agrees-kick-hamas-doha-232635018.html
“Figures close to the Trump campaign like Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk have openly endorsed the view that Crimea is rightfully Russian.
Trump overturned decades of US policy and international consensus by recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which he has described as a snap decision made after a quick history lesson from his ambassador to Israel and his son-in-law Jared Kushner. He did the same for Morocco’s claims over the disputed region of Western Sahara, in return for Morocco recognizing Israel. (In fairness, the Biden administration hasn’t reversed either of these moves — once the taboo is broken, it’s hard to reestablish.)”
https://www.vox.com/world-politics/380060/trump-world-risks-war
“During his first term, from 2017 to 2021, Trump withdrew the US from multiple international agreements, including the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), often called the Iran deal. That agreement, negotiated in 2015 under President Barack Obama, essentially eased US sanctions on Iran in exchange for curtailing its nuclear program and allowing greater international oversight of it.
“The Iran deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into,” Trump said when the agreement was terminated in 2018. Since then, Iran has built up its stockpile of enriched uranium and increased its missile supply, reportedly bringing the program much closer to developing nuclear capabilities — despite the Trump administration’s promise that Iran would never have them.
Trump also pulled the US out of the Paris climate agreement, which commits all signatories to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Other diplomatic casualties of the Trump administration include the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), a Cold War-era pact between the US and Russia limiting the development of short- and intermediate-range nuclear weapons; the Open Skies Treaty, which allows signatories to conduct military reconnaissance flyovers; and two international migration agreements.
Trump also repeatedly critiqued NATO during his first term. He argued the other countries in the military alliance weren’t spending enough on defense (and they did begin to spend more), questioned whether the organization was still necessary, and in 2020 withdrew almost 10,000 troops stationed in Germany, a decision Vice President Kamala Harris’s foreign policy adviser Philip Gordon said seemed “designed to send a message about the limit of what Americans are prepared to spend to defend foreign borders and, more broadly, uphold world order.””
https://www.vox.com/2024-elections/382679/trump-foreign-policy-america-first-tariffs-nato-alliance
“Two days before the election, the Wall Street Journal reported that Western security services believed two incendiary devices seized on board planes in Europe over the summer were a test run for a Russian operation to start fires on US-bound planes. The devices detonated without injuries at logistics hubs in Germany and the UK, but the head of Poland’s intelligence agency said, “I’m not sure the political leaders of Russia are aware of the consequences if one of these packages exploded, causing a mass casualty event.” The Russian government has denied involvement.”
…
“Russian leaders reacted with open jubilation to Trump’s victory in 2016 but were largely disappointed with his administration, which, for all his kind words for Putin, also saw a raft of new sanctions against Moscow and the sale of anti-tank weapons to Ukraine.
Moscow is being much more cautious this time around. In a statement Wednesday responding to Trump’s victory, the Russian foreign ministry credited him with countering the “globalist” course of America’s current administration. It also added, “We have no illusions about the president-elect, who is well known in Russia … the US ruling political elite adheres to anti-Russia principles and the policy of ‘containing Moscow.’ This line does not depend on changes in America’s domestic political barometer.”
One of the risks of engaging in gray zone tactics is that you can’t always be sure how your opponent will react, and it’s difficult to know when a red line is finally crossed. Trump, for one, has prided himself on his unpredictability. Like everyone else after what happened on Tuesday, Putin is likely waiting to see what comes next.”
https://www.vox.com/world-politics/383330/russia-georgia-bomb-threats-gray-zone
Russia is producing a lot of guns, but has a shortage of butter!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5Ocq31MlWI
“When asked why Harris has not distinguished herself by opposing these measures, Lincicome notes that supporting tariffs is just part of the “conventional wisdom in Washington today” even if polls may not completely support this assertion. “The view among the political experts is that elections are won or lost in a few places with a few votes,” and those critical “voters like tariffs.”
Given the IMF’s projections, bipartisan support for tariffs could lead to increased costs and slower economic growth for Americans regardless of who wins in November. ”
…
“former President Donald Trump floated a specific 60 percent tariff on Chinese goods alongside a 10 percent across-the-board tariff, which he recently increased to 20 percent. “It’s just what he thinks galvanized an audience,” Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics and Stiefel Trade Policy Center at the Cato Institute, tells Reason. “Let’s face it, none of this has any rigorous econometric modeling behind it, so it could be as simple as he thinks 20 percent sounds better.”
“Taking the candidates at their word, you would have to say that Trump’s tariffs would be orders of magnitude worse than what Kamala Harris might do, or say she will do,” Lincicome adds.”
https://reason.com/2024/10/29/increase-in-tariffs-would-trigger-global-economic-decline-study-finds/