July 25 2024
Netanyahu; Biden address; Harris-Trump; homemade fentanyl; Israel war
1 Israeli leader Bibi Netanyahu addresses joint session of Congress, some Dems, Harris did not attend
2 Biden delivers Oval Office address stating it’s time to “past the torch”
3 OPINION Ignore the hype, Harris-Trump is not fundamentally different than Biden-Trump
4 Reuters buys enough fentanyl precursors online from China to make 3 million pills
5 Israel risks a wider war with Hezbollah
7/25/1978 World’s first “test tube” baby born
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1 Israeli leader Bibi Netanyahu addresses joint session of Congress, some Dems, Harris did not attend
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Wednesday turned an address to Congress into a forceful defense of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. He cast it as a battle for survival of the Jewish state while making almost no mention of the tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians killed in its drive to destroy Hamas. The address laid bare deep divisions in Washington over the nine-month war, whose toll on civilians has outraged many Democrats and drawn international condemnation. Dozens of Democrats did not show up, with some openly boycotting the speech. Vice President Kamala Harris, the party’s presumptive presidential nominee who was campaigning in the Midwest, declined to preside in her capacity as president of the Senate alongside Speaker Mike Johnson, a break with tradition. Outside the Capitol, pepper spray filled the air as police officers tried to push back thousands of protesters who had gathered to jeer Mr. Netanyahu. Demonstrators held signs calling him a war criminal, burned an effigy of him and an American flag and vandalized statues with anti-Israel slogans including “Hamas is coming.” In a speech in which he condemned critics of the war as dupes aligning themselves with the world’s most dangerous actors or apologists for terrorists, Mr. Netanyahu portrayed the conflict as a proxy fight with Iran that must be won at all costs to protect both Israel and the United States.“When we fight Iran, we are fighting the most radical and murderous enemy of the United States,” he said. “We’re not only protecting ourselves; we’re protecting you,” he added, emphasizing the alliance that has existed since Israel’s creation. He said nothing about the tensions in the relationship that have flared as Israel has used American weapons in attacks that have led, by the count of Gazan authorities, to 39,000 deaths.
Article Source: NYT
2 Biden delivers Oval Office address stating it’s time to “past the torch”
President Biden laid out why he decided to “pass the torch” to Vice President Kamala Harris and what he hopes to accomplish in his final months in office as he addressed the nation from the Oval Office Wednesday evening, his first formal remarks since his dramatic announcement Sunday that he would end his re-election campaign. The defense of democracy, which is at stake, is more important than any title,” Biden said, casting his decision to leave the race as self-sacrifice to protect the country. Biden added: “I have decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation. That is the best way to unite our nation.” Biden spoke for just over 10 minutes, reading his address from a teleprompter. The president, who just recovered from a Covid-19 infection, didn’t cough as he spoke but his voice remained hoarse.
Article Source: WSJ
3 OPINION Ignore the hype, Harris-Trump is not fundamentally different than Biden-Trump
…we are swamped by a tsunami of favorable Harris coverage in legacy and other center-left media. Where once her retail political skills were disparaged, we are told that she is now (or always has been) a consummately effective, charismatic retail politician. Polls of course will be scrutinized for signs that the race is shifting in the Democrats’ favor and even small changes will be interpreted as signs that Trump is on the run. But in truth it will take a few weeks for the race to settle out and one should be cautious about interpreting initial results. That said, what we have seen so far does not suggest a fundamentally altered race. Trump was ahead and is still ahead. Democrats still badly trail among working-class voters and have compressed margins among nonwhite and young voters relative to 2020. Of course, that may change in coming weeks but that is what we see now. Looking at the running poll averages, we have the following for Trump-Harris matchups: RCP has Trump over Harris by 1.7 points (2.8 points with the full ballot including Kennedy/West/Stein). New York Times has Trump over Harris by 2 points and DDHQ/The Hill has Trump by 2 points. Pretty consistent
Article Source: The Liberal Patriot, Roy Texeria
4 Reuters buys enough fentanyl precursors online from China to make 3 million pills
At the tap of a buyer’s smartphone, Chinese chemical sellers will air-ship fentanyl ingredients door-to-door to North America. Reuters purchased enough to make 3 million pills. Such deals are astonishingly easy – and reveal how drug traffickers are eluding efforts to halt the deadly trade behind the fentanyl crisis.
A CARDBOARD BOX half the size of a loaf of bread bore a shipping label declaring its contents: “Adapter.” It was delivered in October to a Reuters reporter in Mexico City. There was no adapter inside that package. Instead, sealed in a metallic Mylar bag was a plastic jar containing a kilogram of 1-boc-4-piperidone, a pale powder that’s a core ingredient of fentanyl. It was enough to produce 750,000 tablets of the deadly drug. A Reuters reporter had ordered the chemical six weeks earlier from a seller in China. The sales assistant, “Jenny,” used a photo of a Chinese actress as her screen avatar. The price was $440, payable in Bitcoin, delivery by air freight included.
The core precursors Reuters bought would have yielded enough fentanyl powder to make at least 3 million tablets, with a potential street value of $3 million – a conservative estimate based on prices cited by U.S. law enforcement agencies in published reports over the past six months. The total cost of the chemicals and equipment Reuters purchased, paid mainly in Bitcoin: $3,607.18.
Article Source: Reuters
5 Israel risks a wider war with Hezbollah
More than nine months into its war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Israel now appears closer than ever to a second, even larger war with Hezbollah on its northern border. In June, the Israel Defense Forces announced that plans for a full-scale attack in southern Lebanon had been approved. And in mid-July, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that the Iranian-backed Shiite group was prepared to broaden its rocket attacks to a wider range of Israeli towns. Although the possibility has received relatively little scrutiny in the international media, a full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah would have consequences that dwarf the current Gaza conflict. A major Israeli air and ground assault against Hezbollah, the most heavily armed group in the Middle East, would likely cause turmoil across the entire region, and could prove particularly destabilizing as the United States enters a crucial stage of its presidential election season. It is also far from clear that such a war could be ended quickly, or that there is a clear path to a decisive victory. The implications for Israel itself could be stark. Although Israeli air defense systems have been extremely successful thus far against missile attacks from Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen, a total war with Hezbollah would be a whole different ballgame. According to Israeli intelligence estimates, Hezbollah’s weapons stockpile is more than seven times as large as Hamas’s and includes far more lethal weapons. Along with hundreds of attack drones, it includes some 130,000–150,000 rockets and missiles, including hundreds of ballistic missiles that could reach targets in Tel Aviv and even further south—indeed, every point in the country. Moreover, as previous wars attest, Lebanon is a treacherous battlefield. Israel’s last war with Hezbollah, in the summer of 2006, was inconclusive, and despite killing several hundred of the group’s fighters, it left the group’s military power largely intact. Hezbollah is also far better armed than it was then. Israel’s home-front command estimates that if a full-scale conflict broke out now, Hezbollah would launch some 3,000 rockets and missiles every day of the war, threatening to overwhelm Israel’s missile defenses. Israel would have to concentrate on defending crucial infrastructure and military bases, tell the civilian population to stay in bomb shelters, and hope for the best. It would be a challenge that far exceeds anything that Israeli leaders have faced before.
Article Source: Foreign Affairs
7/25/1978 World’s first “test tube” baby born
Sources
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/24/us/politics/netanyahu-congress.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
2. https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/joe-biden-oval-office-address-2024-election-35a08085?st=rp4mffv1mvgkb5f&reflink=article_copyURL_share
3. https://open.substack.com/pub/theliberalpatriot/p/forget-the-hype-its-still-a-working?r=d9vo5&utm_medium=ios
4. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/drugs-fentanyl-supplychain/
5. https://reader.foreignaffairs.com/2024/07/23/israels-next-war/content.html
Thanks for reading!
