US PRESIDENT Donald Trump’s Gaza redevelopment plan involves getting all of the Palestinians to go somewhere else with Jordan and Egypt being suggested.
The only problem is that they don’t want more refugees sent to them and have said so although the response was “If they don’t agree, I would conceivably withhold aid.”
This idea of withdrawing aid is simply a threat and another example of bullying and without doubt illegal.
How long will the people of America allow themselves be seen as irrational bullies? Hopefully not the remaining, almost four years.
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The (plastic) straw that broke the camel’s back
President Trump posted, “I will be signing an Executive Order next week ending the ridiculous Biden push for Paper Straws, which don’t work. BACK TO PLASTIC!” and so ends another environmental protection step.
The plastic straws might be an option if they were multi use but that’s not the reality and they usually ended up in the bins and eventually in the tips.
Plastic takes a long time to breakdown whereas paper “dissolves in your mouth!” according to the President.
The climate is changing, the environment is being damaged, and yet a single scrawl from that Sharpie pen only makes it worse.
Let’s take a straw poll as to whether this will be a positive for the environment. Actually, there’s no need as the answer is obvious.
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Sinking into the soil?
You can judge people by what they say.
Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth said while hosting Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles, “It enhances our ability in the subterranean space…” in relation to new submarines.
Subterranean submarines wouldn’t be very mobile as the soil they would be under would be restrictive. Hopefully Australia actually has bought the “sub-marine” submarines.
It’s going to be a long and interesting four years of the Trump Presidency.
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53, and counting
The latest press conference with Presidents Trump and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu produced a few surprises, several horrific and almost all certainly illegal.
Donald Trump has announced the best solution to the problems of the Gaza Strip will be to “take over” the region and the Palestinian people will be moved away. The displacement of people on the basis of race as happened with Australia and the aboriginal people and the First Peoples of America being sent to settlements is that they lose their connection to land, their culture, their health and basically their heart.
The suggestion of sending in the military to achieve this is a war act or at least an invasion but Trump stated l, “We’ll do what’s necessary.”
His reason for this includes “they live like they’re living in hell. Gaza is not a place for people to be living.” It is a place of hell at the moment, a “demolition site” but by that logic a lot of people from Los Angeles are going to be deported too, maybe to Canada or Mexico.
Netanyahu’s optimistic view is that the Gaza Strip will be a “riviera.” And yet at initial view it doesn’t look the same, nor I think will it ever.
It is also a warning to other countries as the count could increase swiftly from the original 50 states with 51-Canada, then 52-Greenland and maybe 53-Gaza and even 54-Ukraine. It’s not a funny joke when it could become true.
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Pay up, or else!
Yet another disturbing statement from President Trump, “We’re looking to do a deal with Ukraine, where they’re going to secure what we’re giving them with their rare earths and other things.”
At the simplist level this is the equivalent of a police officer saying we will investigate your robbery if you give us a free coffee every day for a year. That is blackmail.
The other worry is that this implies that all aid, about $300 billion, is to be repaid. Aid is usually given without an expectation of repayment but not in the Trump financial world. Given the amount of damage that has been done to the country, they are not going to be able to repay it, so what happens instead?
How can anyone, or country, place these demands on a war-torn country, unless they are bullies?/PN
