Tag: joe biden

Aid organisations slam $320m US pier in Gaza which fell apart

Aid organisations have criticised a US-built temporary pier in Gaza used to transport aid into the besieged enclave, after satellite images revealed it breaking apart.

The imagery showed the sea damaging the pier on Tuesday, with sections needing rebuilding and repairing.

The pier, which is made up of a narrow causeway and an area used to place supplies transported by ship, cost $320 million and went into use on 17 May.

US Department of Defense spokesperson Sabrina Singh spokesperson told reporters it will now have to be moved to Ashdod in Israel, where repairs will take at least a week to be completed.

According to CNN, the pier, known as the Joint Logistics Over the Shore (JLOTS), can only operate in good conditions.

Michael Selby-Green, a media spokesperson for Islamic Relief told The New Arab that his group and other aid organisations have repeatedly warned that the pier could not be a substitute for getting aid through land crossings that already exist.

“The damage sustained by the floating pier two weeks after it began operating exposes the structure for the distraction that it is,” he said.

He clarified that even at full capacity, the pier only delivers a small fraction of aid that could be brought in by trucks.

“It’s taken two-and-a-half months to build the pier and deliver the claimed 1,000 metric tonnes of aid, which is a drop in the ocean compared to what’s needed in Gaza. Every day that passes pushes more families closer to starvation and puts more lives at risk,” he added.

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Biden secretly gave Ukraine permission to strike inside Russia with US weapons

The Biden administration has quietly given Ukraine permission to strike inside Russia — solely near the area of Kharkiv — using U.S.-provided weapons, three U.S. officials and two other people familiar with the move said Thursday, a major reversal that will help Ukraine to better defend its second-largest city.

“The president recently directed his team to ensure that Ukraine is able to use U.S. weapons for counter-fire purposes in Kharkiv so Ukraine can hit back at Russian forces hitting them or preparing to hit them,” one of the U.S. officials said, adding that the policy of not allowing long-range strikes inside Russia “has not changed.”

Ukraine asked the U.S. to make this policy change only after Russia’s offensive on Kharkiv began this month, the official added. All the people were granted anonymity to discuss internal decisions that haven’t been announced.

In the last few days, the U.S. made the decision to allow Ukraine “flexibility” to defend itself from attacks on the border near Kharkiv, the second U.S. official said.

In effect, Ukraine can now use American-provided weapons, such as rockets and rocket launchers, to shoot down launched Russian missiles heading toward Kharkiv, at troops massing just over the Russian border near the city, or Russian bombers launching bombs toward Ukrainian territory. But the official said Ukraine cannot use those weapons to hit civilian infrastructure or launch long-range missiles, such as the Army Tactical Missile System, to hit military targets deep inside Russia.

It’s a stunning shift the administration initially said would escalate the war by more directly involving the U.S. in the fight. But worsening conditions for Ukraine on the battlefield –– namely Russia’s advances and improved position in Kharkiv –– led the president to change his mind.

The National Security Council did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Biden wants U.S. government to scan all images on your phone to comply with new AI rules

To supposedly stop people from exchanging non-consensual artificial intelligence (AI) images of a sexual nature, President Biden wants to probe everyone’s smartphones as part of a sweeping surveillance effort.

A press release from the White House explains the Biden regime’s desire for the tech and financial industries to take charge in stopping the creation and spread of abusive sexual imagery created by AI robots.

According to Biden’s handlers, “mobile operating system developers could enable technical protections to better protect content stored on digital devices and to prevent image sharing without consent.”

The plan is to have mobile operating systems such as Android and iOS automatically scan and analyze people’s private photos to determine which ones are sexual or non-consensual. Users would not have the ability to keep any of their images private from government spooks.

It might sound like a good thing until you recognize the privacy implications of such an arrangement. Do we the people really want to allow the government direct access to our photos?

Beyond the search and analysis framework, the Biden regime also wants mobile app stores like Apple’s App Store and Google Play to “commit to instituting requirements for app developers to prevent the creation of non-consensual images.”

(Related: AI is just one component among many of the dystopian present.)

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Biden Finally Acknowledges His Marijuana Pardons Did Not Expunge Records After Repeatedly Claiming They Did

President Joe Biden, who has previously falsely stated on several occasions that his marijuana pardons also expunged people’s records, has now acknowledged the limitations of his action—stating that for clemency recipients, “their records should be expunged as well, I might add.”

At a campaign event in Philadelphia on Wednesday, where Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris made their pitch to Black voters ahead of the November election, the president said, “I’m keeping my promises that no one should be in jail merely for using or possessing marijuana.”

“I pardoned thousands of people incarcerated for the mere possession of marijuana—thousands. A promise made and a promise kept,” he said. “And their records should be expunged as well, I might add.”

Biden has repeatedly touted the mass cannabis pardons he granted, signaling the campaign’s understanding of the popularity of marijuana reform. But in the past, he’s falsely suggested that the pardons did expunge records—making the claim during his State of the Union address this year, for example—when that’s not the case.

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Judge Who Put Transgender Child Rapist in Women’s Prison Nominated to U.S. District Court by Joe Biden

A judge who put a transgender child rapist in a women’s prison has been nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by Joe Biden.

Judge Sarah Netburn has served as a magistrate judge for 12 years.

The judge gained notoriety after moving William McClain, who now goes by “July Justine Shelby,” to a women’s prison against the recommendation of the Bureau of Prisons.

McClain served over two decades in prison for raping a 17-year-old girl and molesting a 9-year-old boy. He was arrested again in 2017 for distributing child pornography involving a young girl and an infant.

The Washington Times reports:

Under a Biden administration policy implemented in 2022, transgender women can be moved to a women’s facility on a case-by-case basis, based on “whether a placement would ensure the inmate’s health and safety, and whether the placement would present management or security problems.”

The policy directs that a transgender individual’s “own views with respect to his/her own safety must be given serious consideration.”

The prisoner claimed to be endangered in New York’s Otisville Correctional Institution, a federal medium-security men’s prison.

The Bureau of Prisons repeatedly denied the prisoner’s request to be transferred to a women’s prison, citing risks it would traumatize prisoners and possibly threaten their safety.

The judge, against all reasonable advice, decided to move the sexual predator to the Federal Medical Center, Carswell, which is a female prison in Texas.

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Biden’s Tariffs Are Another Nail in the Dollar’s Coffin

President Biden recently raised taxes on American consumers and businesses and may have hastened the end of the dollar’s world reserve currency status. President Biden did this by increasing tariffs on Chinese imports.

Specifically, President Biden raised tariffs on products including Chinese-produced steel and aluminum and many components imported from China for use in manufacturing electric vehicle batteries. Tariffs on Chinese-made semiconductors are rising from 25 to 50 percent while tariffs on Chinese-made electronic vehicles are rising from 25 percent to an astounding 100 percent.

Of course, the costs of these tariffs will be borne by Americans wishing to purchase electric cars and American electric car manufacturers that use material imported from China. These new tariffs thus undercut Biden’s goal of getting more Americans to drive electric cars.

The tariffs on Chinese goods give China even greater Inventive to challenge the dollar’s world reserve currency status. The same week Biden imposed these tariffs, China President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced they were strengthening their alliance in order to better challenge US military and economic hegemony. This is a reaction to US foreign policy of the post-Cold War era which has reversed the Richard Nixon-Henry Kissinger strategy of pursuing good relations with China.

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NEVER FORGET: Not a Single Election Expert Has Been Able to Explain the “Drop and Roll” Phenomenon that Flipped the 2020 Election Late at Night to Joe Biden

It’s been nearly four years since Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election after several days of locked rooms, late-night ballot deliveries, and triple-counting ballots.

On November 18, 2020, The Gateway Pundit first posted the impossible numbers that swung the election to Old Joe.

Mysterious late-night ballot drops in every battleground state swung the election to Joe Biden. And subsequent ballot drops in perfect ratios of ballots to Trump and Biden solidified the results.

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Biden’s Bold Move to Combat AI Abuse Stirs Surveillance and Censorship Fears

The Biden administration is pushing for sweeping measures to combat the proliferation of nonconsensual sexual AI-generated images, including controversial proposals that could lead to extensive on-device surveillance and control of the types of images generated. In a White House press release, President Joe Biden’s administration outlined demands for the tech industry and financial institutions to curb the creation and distribution of abusive sexual images made with artificial intelligence (AI).

A key focus of these measures is the use of on-device technology to prevent the sharing of nonconsensual sexual images. The administration stated that “mobile operating system developers could enable technical protections to better protect content stored on digital devices and to prevent image sharing without consent.”

This proposal implies that mobile operating systems would need to scan and analyze images directly on users’ devices to determine if they are sexual or non-consensual. The implications of such surveillance raise significant privacy concerns, as it involves monitoring and analyzing private content stored on personal devices.

Additionally, the administration is calling on mobile app stores to “commit to instituting requirements for app developers to prevent the creation of non-consensual images.” This broad mandate would require a wide range of apps, including image editing and drawing apps, to scan and monitor user activities on devices, analyze what art they’re creating and block the creation of certain kinds of content. Once this technology of on-device monitoring becomes normalized, this level of scrutiny could extend beyond the initial intent, potentially leading to censorship of other types of content that the administration finds objectionable.

The administration’s call to action extends to various sectors, including AI developers, payment processors, financial institutions, cloud computing providers, search engines, and mobile app store gatekeepers like Apple and Google. By encouraging cooperation from these entities, the White House hopes to curb the creation, spread, and monetization of nonconsensual AI images.

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The ‘Rules-Based Order’ Is the Enemy of International Law

Paul Poast is far too charitable to Biden in his assessment of the administration’s response to the ICC prosecutor’s application this week:

For someone so astute in the ways of realpolitik as Biden, his response is particularly surprising. When the staunchest supporter of a rules-based order is openly hypocritical about the application of that order’s rules, it gives up the game. Even if one gives no weight to respecting norms and the law for their own sake, Biden’s knee-jerk reaction to the ICC’s ruling against Netanyahu, someone who Biden himself has disparaged, undermines his administration’s broader strategic objectives. International law can be a tool of the strong as much as protection of the weak, and Biden just mishandled that tool.

Biden’s response earlier this week was outrageous, but I didn’t think anyone would find it surprising. The president has made a habit of letting Israel off the hook and running interference for their government, and he stayed true to form with his denunciation of the application for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant. The administration likes to talk about defending the “rules-based order,” and that order has always been a two-tiered system that privileges some states and penalizes others. Biden isn’t going to hold a U.S. client accountable for its violations of international law, and he will lash out at anyone that tries to do so.

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Biden’s $320M Gaza Pier Has Detached & Drifted Onto Israeli Beach

A section of the $320 million floating pier built and erected off Gaza’s coast has broken off and floated onto an Israeli beach. The Saturday mishap is the latest setback for the US humanitarian aid project, after three US troops were reported injured aboard the pier two days prior, including one critically.

The Times of Isreal’s military correspondent Emanuel Fabian has reported that “An American vessel used to unload humanitarian aid from ships into the Gaza Strip via a floating pier disconnected from a small boat tugging it this morning due to stormy seas, leading it to get stuck on the coast of Ashdod, eyewitnesses say.”

The recovery operation has not gone well either, as “Another ship was then sent to try and extract the stuck vessel, but also got beached,” Fabian writes.

And yet a second US Army vessel also got stuck in shallow waters while trying to rescue the pier section. Overnight US ships had been moving two pieces of the floating pier to the Port of Ashdod in southern Israel when the now beached section detached and drifted away. American troops can be seen in footage standing helplessly on the beach.

An official US Central Command (CENTCOM) statement says the following:

This morning four U.S. Army vessels supporting the maritime humanitarian aid mission in Gaza were affected by heavy sea states. The vessels broke free from their moorings and two vessels are now anchored on the beach near the pier.

The third and fourth vessels are beached on the coast of Israel near Ashkelon. Efforts to recover the vessels are under way with assistance from the Israeli Navy.

The pier operation was already last week off to a rough start — and was paused for two days — after desperate Palestinians mobbed and ransacked the first trucks transporting aid unloaded from the pier before they could reach a distribution warehouse managed by the World Food Programme.   

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