Too funny, I have been jokingly saying this for years, that one solution for the Mideast quagmire is to relocate Israel to the USA. Preferably Florida, as Jews seem to love that hot weather state. Never thought a politician would actually promote the idea. It sounds simplistic but think about it, Israelis do not belong to that part of the world, and they are not welcomed there. Give them Florida and problem solved. Voila!
UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has backed Naz Shah, a British member of parliament who was suspended from the party in 2016 for making anti-Israeli comments on social media.
Corbyn appointed Shah, a mother-of-three former disability rights advocate and mental health charity chief, as shadow equalities minister on Wednesday.
The decision prompted reactions from pro-Israeli groups, who have called for an urgent meeting with the MP.
In early July 2014, Israel waged a devastating war on the Gaza Strip. The 50-day offensive claimed the lives of nearly 2,200 Palestinians, including 577 children.
Before becoming an MP in May 2015, Shah shared a graphic showing the outline of the occupied territories superimposed onto a US map with the comment “problem solved.”
Her caption for the image read: “Solution for Israel-Palestine Conflict – Relocate Israel into United States.”
She posted yet another comment with the hashtag #IsraelApartheid, saying: “Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”
The Bradford West MP stirred more outrage when she called on supporters of Palestinians to vote in an online poll on the Israeli military’s crimes against the people of Palestine.
While Shah has been forced to apologize for the posts, she has rejected accusations that she is anti-Semitic.
Shah returned to the headlines last November after joining several Labour MPs including Corbyn at a meeting in Parliament, which was organized by the Muslim Engagement and Development group, Mend. The organization is accused by British media of previously hosting “extremist Islamist speakers.”
She was also among Labour MPs attending a meeting in February this year, where some of the key speakers denounced “false charges of anti-Semitism” and a “purge” of Labour supporters who had been suspended on these grounds.
Corbyn and Labour have long been accused of what their critics call a lack of action to address anti-Semitism within the party’s ranks.
Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London, was suspended from the party after bringing up the issue of Israeli war crimes and stating that Adolf Hitler was a supporter of Zionism.
In the space of 10 days, the world has witnessed not one, but two global records being set.
On June 28, Quriyat, just south of Muscat, on the coast of Oman, recorded a 24-hour minimum temperature of 42.6C. Although not officially confirmed by the World Meteorological organisation, it is the highest such temperature ever recorded on a weather thermometer.
On Thursday, Ouargla, a city of 190,000 people in the Algerian Sahara Desert, reported a maximum temperature of 51.3C. It is likely that this is the highest reliable temperature ever recorded not just in Algeria, but in the entire continent of Africa.
It should be noted that the setting of new maximum temperature records, no matter how many or how widespread, does not outrightly prove climate change theories.
But, the extraordinary cluster of weather records set over the last few weeks, provides yet more evidence, supporting the overwhelming scientific consensus, that our world is warming at an accelerating rate, due to anthropogenic climate change.
The current crop of records extends well beyond the sub-tropical deserts of North Africa and the Middle East.
As far away as Sydney, Australia, in the depths of the Antipodean winter, the city recorded 25C on both Thursday and Friday, making it the warmest consecutive two-day period in July in 159 years of instrument records.
The Caucuses are also seeing record-breaking temperatures.
Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, hit 42C in a week-long period with temperatures of at least 40C. This was the warmest July day on record and the joint all-time record.
Just two days later, in neighbouring Georgia, Tbilisi had a maximum of 40.5C – also a July record.
Western Europe has witnessed record-low rainfall and record high temperatures since May. The heat has also generated the greatest intensity of thunderstorms across the continent in the last 20 years.
To give one specific record set recently, Motherwell, Scotland, reached 33.2C on June 28, setting a new national record.
Over to North America, where the heatwave in Eastern Canada has now abated, but not before temperatures in Montreal peaked at 36.6C on Monday, the highest temperature ever recorded there. The heat was so severe that at least 50 people were reported to have died; mainly elderly people living without access to air conditioning.
The heat in western parts of the US continues to encourage wildfires, with more than 60 burning in total. Many of the fires are in Colorado where Denver has broken its July temperature record, as well as California. Temperatures of up to 48C have been reported across the state, with the thermometer at the University of California at Los Angeles recording 43.9C, its highest reading since records began in 1933.
Globally, 2018 is likely to be one of the five warmest years since instrumental records began in 1880, and towards the end of this year could be heading towards another El Nino. Aside from all the changes that this brings to global weather patterns, it is associated with a general increase in global temperatures.
When this natural phenomenon is added to the ever-increasing emissions from fossil fuel use that humanity is ejecting into the atmosphere, it will not bode well for the next few summers.
The United States’ demands regarding reforming the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) have failed to be met, and as such Washington is reportedly ready to pull out over what it calls anti-Israel bias and the inclusion of alleged rights abusers.
Diplomats told Reuters that it’s merely a matter of time before the US exits the council, which will convene Monday for a three week convention that will last until July 6. One US source who spoke anonymously said that an announcement looks “imminent.”
Another US official in Geneva, where the UNHRC will meet June 18, said, “we are still moving ahead with our engagement for the coming session.”
US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley has cast shade on the council since taking the job, while both the US State Department and US President Donald Trump himself found issue with it in 2017.
On June 6, 2017, Haley went to Geneva to give the council a series of ultimatums. At the meeting, she said, “It’s hard to accept that this council has never considered a resolution on Venezuela, and yet it adopted five biased resolutions in March against a single country: Israel. It is essential that this council address its chronic anti-Israel bias if it is to have any credibility.”
Later in the day, she expanded on her grievances against the council at a speech she gave to the Graduate Institute of Geneva, noting that the UNHRC had, by then, passed “more than 70 resolutions targeting Israel” since its inception in 2006, but “just seven on Iran.” The UNHRC has passed more resolutions against Israel than the rest of the world’s countries combined, according to the Geneva-based UN Watch.
“This relentless, pathological campaign against a country that actually has a strong human rights record makes a mockery not of Israel, but of the council itself.”
She also called on the body to do two things: “Act to keep the worst human rights abusers from obtaining seats on the council,” and remove permanent Agenda Item 7, which requires that the council address the “human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories,” regularly when it meets.
Trump later echoed those demands in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on September 19, 2017, calling the inclusion of governments with “egregious human rights records” in the UNHRC a “massive source of embarrassment to the United Nations.” He also singled out North Korea and Iran for their hostility to Israel.
After the UNHRC, a body of 47 nations, adopted five resolutions condemning Israel on March 23, 2018, Haley warned “our patience is not limited,” reminding the body that “The United States continues to evaluate our membership in the Human Rights Council.”
Those resolutions called on governments to stop selling weapons to Israel; for Palestinian self-rule according to Israel and the Palestinian territories’ pre-1967 borders; for Israel to remove itself from the Golan Heights, which it has illegally occupied since the 1967 Six Day War; and for an end to Israeli settlements and human rights abuses against Palestinians.
Haley called the council “foolish and unworthy of its name” for treating Israel “worse than North Korea, Iran and Syria.”
The US ambassador hasn’t only struggled with the Human Rights Council, but also with the UN General Assembly and Security Council. On Wednesday, she failed to prevent the assembly from condemning Israel’s use of deadly force against Palestinians demonstrating in the Great Return March after having vetoed a similar resolution in June. She fired back against the vote, saying that for some, “attacking Israel is their favorite political sport.”
More than 120 Palestinians have been killed and more than 13,000 injured, many by live ammunition, since the start of the protest on March 30, Sputnik News reported. Haley previously told the UN Security Council that Israel acted with “restraint” in the protests. One Israeli soldier was “slightly wounded” in the protests, according to an IDF spokesperson.
The US has boycotted the UNHRC before, as former President George W Bush and his Ambassador to the UN John Bolton — now Trump’s national security adviser — opposed it from its outset in 2006. The Bush administration refused to run in its first election and also declined to participate the following year.
The main points of opposition then were the “focus on Israeli human rights violations while failing to address human rights abuses in other parts of the world,” according to the US Congressional Research Service’s 2009 “Issues for Congress” report on the UNHRC.
However, former President Barack Obama began to work with the council after his election in 2008, believing it was better to work on human rights issues within the council than from the outside, according to a similar report from 2017.
Justice would be served if this family would have its wealth confiscated in order to pay compensation for all the victims they created. Instead, these scumbags are glorified in the ‘idiocracy’ states of the US. Tarring and feathering the entire bunch comes to mind.
A landmark lawsuit is the first in the country to name the actual owners of Purdue Pharma who makes the deadly drug OxyContin for their role in the opioid epidemic.
Members of the Sackler family, who’ve made billions pushing their deadly OxyContin drug on the masses are arguably responsible for more deaths than any Mexican drug cartel. Instead of being hunted down at their plush mansions by DEA agents, they are rubbing elbows with members of Congress. Now, however, for the first time, the family is being targeted by a landmark lawsuit for the damages they knowingly caused with their products.
On Tuesday, the state of Massachusetts filed a lawsuit against the multi-billionaire Sackler family over the role their drug OxyContin has played in sparking one of the worst addiction and overdose epidemics in history. The lawsuit accuses the company, Purdue Pharma, and its heirs of spinning a “web of illegal deceit” which fueled the deadly crisis in which America currently finds itself.
What sets this lawsuit apart from the numerous other lawsuits targeting opioid manufacturers — including several against Purdue — is that it has taken the landmark step of personally naming the company’s executives.
According to Maura Healy, Massachusetts state attorney general, the suit names 16 current and former executives and board members, including the chief executive, Craig Landau, and eight members across three generations of the Sackler family that wholly owns Purdue.
“Purdue Pharma and its executives built a multi-billion-dollar business based on deception and addiction. We’re suing,” Healey tweeted Tuesday.
As the Guardian reports, the lawsuit alleges Purdue deceived patients and doctors about the risks of opioids, pushed prescribers to keep patients on the drugs longer and aggressively targeted vulnerable populations, such as the elderly and veterans.
“Their strategy was simple: the more drugs they sold, the more money they made, and the more people died,” Healey said on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Purdue issued a statement in response to the lawsuit in which they denied all allegations.
“We share the attorney general’s concern about the opioid crisis. We are disappointed, however, that in the midst of good faith negotiations with many states, the Commonwealth has decided to pursue a costly and protracted litigation process,” the company said in a statement. “We will continue to work collaboratively with the states toward bringing meaningful solutions.”
According to reports, in just the last decade, in the state of Massachusetts alone, the company sold 70 million doses of prescription opioids, bringing in more than half a billion in revenue.
“It was Purdue’s executives who led and directed this illegal business model, leading to addiction and deception to enrich a few while leaving a path of devastation and destruction in its wake,” Healey said.
According to Healey, more than 670 Massachusetts residents have died solely from the result of ingesting the Sackler family’s drugs.
Purdue, along with several other companies who knowingly pushed opioids on people who did not need them, is facing more than 300 lawsuits from city and county authorities across the country. However, this is the first one which goes after the individuals who became exceedingly wealthy from the sale of this drug.
According to the Guardian, the Sacklers being sued are: Theresa and Beverly, the widows of the brothers Mortimer and Raymond Sackler who built the company into the narcotics giant it is today; Ilene, Kathe and Mortimer David Alfons Sackler, three of Mortimer’s children; Jonathan and Richard Sackler, Raymond’s two sons; and David Sackler, Raymond’s grandson. These family members and a number of their siblings and children are collectively worth an estimated $13bn, according to Forbes, with the vast bulk of the fortune generated from sales of OxyContin. Feuding family members have mostly declined to talk about the opioids crisis and avoid discussing their links to it.
One of the primary missions of Purdue Pharma was to identify the doctors across America prescribing the most pain medication and strategically marketed the drug directly to them as a safe alternative to other pain medications.
“The Times’ investigation, published in July, disclosed that for more than a decade, an internal security team at Purdue monitored doctors and pharmacies it suspected of colluding with dealers and addicts. In the case of the L.A. ring, criminals set up a phony clinic near MacArthur Park in 2008 and worked with corrupt physicians and pharmacies to obtain pills over 18 months.
A Purdue sales manager dispatched to investigate the high volume of prescriptions at the clinic found a rundown building thronged with rough men and urged supervisors to alert the Drug Enforcement Administration, saying she was “very certain this is an organized drug ring.”
Despite her pleas and additional evidence suggesting that pills were pouring into the hands of criminals, company officials did not go to authorities until years later when the drug ring was out of business and its leaders under indictment. By then, 1.1 million pills had spilled into the illicit pipeline.”
These disturbing revelations came after a prior investigation that found Purdue maintained a secret Purdue database of 1,800 suspect doctors, but only about 10 percent of them were reported to law enforcement.
As doctors began to readily hand out this new drug, these high dose pills became a scourge across main street America. Drug users increasingly turned to OxyContin for the powerful high and euphoric effects, comparable to heroin, but which can reportedly last for over eight hours.
Instead of investigating the company for their overt and dangerous tactics, the government and establishment welcomed them into their ranks. Even after dozens of lawsuits exposing this corruption, in an entirely irresponsible and hypocritical move, the FDA approved a measure to give OxyContin to children.
The fact that some people are freely allowed to market potentially deadly drugs, while others are thrown in a cage for the same activity, seems to highlight that not all people are equal in the eyes of the state or the law. Hopefully, this landmark lawsuit will expose this insidious paradigm.
I have a problem with this chart as it places Russia ahead of the USA in terms of least peaceful countries. How many countries has Russia attacked, or destabilized through subversion, within the last 20 years compared to the USA?
Global Peace Index
The Most And Least Peaceful Countries Worldwide
The latest edition of the Global Peace Index has found that the world is less peaceful today than at any time in the past decade. Published by the Institute for Economics and Peace, a non-profit think tank, the research revealed that 92 countries saw their score decline while 71 recorded improvement. Unresolved tensions, conflicts and crises have fueled global violence while a rise in political terror and reduced commitments to UN peacekeeping are also impacting global peace.
The index measures peace across a five-point scale through three filters. These are safety and security in society, ongoing domestic or international conflict as well as the degree of militarization in different countries. This year Iceland topped the ranking, a position it’s held since 2008. New Zealand comes second while Austria rounds off the top three. Unsurprisingly, Syria is at the bottom of the index, followed by Afghanistan and South Sudan. The United States only comes 121st out of the 163 countries in the ranking and it’s score stands at its worst level since 2012.
With his reckless support for Kinder Morgan and other oil pipelines, Trudeau has willingly compromised his own commitments to address climate change and pursue reconciliation with Canada’s Indigenous peoples. Now he’s willing to risk billions of public tax dollars as well.
Recently Trudeau’s Finance Minister, Bill Morneau, announced that Canada was willing to write a blank cheque from Canadian citizens to Texas-based oil pipeline company Kinder Morgan to indemnify the company against political risks to the Trans Mountain project. Over the past month, he’s been negotiating behind closed doors to work out some sort of deal to save the project. Canada has repeatedly promised to phase out fossil fuel subsidies and next month is hosting this year’s G7 Summit, where world leaders have already promised to end handouts for oil, gas, and coal. A move to indemnify Trans Mountain from risk would represent a massive new fossil fuel subsidy, breaking the Trudeau government’s commitments.
Amid serious questions about the financial viability of the Trans Mountain project and Kinder Morgan’s inability to finance its more-than-$7.4-billion price tag, few analysts expect Kinder Morgan to actually proceed. In April, the company vowed to walk away if political risks to the project were not eliminated by May 31st, but since then obstacles and opposition have only grown. Canada’s offer to indemnify Kinder Morgan’s risk doesn’t appear to be sufficient to save the project, and no other companies have stepped forward.
That likely leaves only one, crazy option on the table.
Are Canadians about to find themselves shelling out billions of tax dollars to a Texas-based company to buy an unbuildable, financially doomed pipeline? We’re likely to find out before tomorrow, when Finance Minister Bill Morneau plans to speak in downtown Calgary.
Outside Canada’s oil-soaked political bubble, this all sounds completely absurd. It’s baffling to watch a seemingly progressive, stable, wealthy country like Canada twist itself into pretzels, risk billions in public money, and edge towards a constitutional crisis all for the benefit of a handful of private oil interests. With a diversified, service-based economy and a highly educated workforce, Canada has much more to offer than dirty fossil fuels. But oil money buys an awful lot of influence.
Canada’s oil industry is a cornered, wounded animal. Unprecedented opposition to new export routes that would feed tar sands expansion – including Keystone XL, Line 3, and Kinder Morgan, all of which are being heavily resisted by Indigenous peoples and millions more – has blocked all the exits. Investment in new growth has dried up. A coming global energy transition is an existential threat.
As we all know, wounded animals can be dangerous. The oil industry is calling in all of its political favours, and its outsized influence on Canada’s government could lead to crazy things. We’re about find out just how far Prime Minister Trudeau is willing to go to indemnify Big Oil.
Our thanks to Oil Change International for this incisive report
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone
