Source: Fox News
“A $95 billion package with aid to both Ukraine and Israel passed the Senate on Tuesday night after the House’s various adjustments were approved in the lower chamber over the weekend. By a vote of 79 to 18, the Senate sent the package to President Biden’s desk, and he is expected to sign off on the additional foreign aid. It notably passed with more votes than the previous Senate-passed version had garnered in February. The package ultimately included aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, alongside measures requiring TikTok to divest from Chinese-owned ByteDance and to allow $5 billion in Russian assets held in U.S. banks to be transferred to Ukraine.” (04/23/24)
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/senate-approves-95b-aid-ukraine-israel-biden
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp
“[P]olitical establishments are ‘conservative.’ They tend to hold on to old ways of doing things, refusing to make more than minor tweaks to the system, until and unless they’re forced to make real changes. Historically, those changes have been first proposed by ‘third party’ political candidates, after which growing public support has eventually forced ‘major party’ adoption.” (04/23/24)
https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/18531
Source: Libertarian Institute
“White House Prepping Massive Weapons Package for Ukraine.” (04/23/24)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/kyle/coi-581-white-house-prepping-massive-weapons-package-for-ukraine/
Source: CNBC
“The Philippines’ Securities and Exchange Commission has ordered Google and Apple to remove cryptocurrency exchange Binance from their app stores. In a press release out Tuesday, the regulator said it had sent letters to Google and Apple requesting [sic] the removal of applications controlled by Binance from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, respectively. SEC Chairperson Emilio Aquino said the Philippine public’s continued access to Binance sites and apps ‘poses a threat to the security of the funds of investing Filipinos.’ The agency accused Binance of offering unregistered securities to Filipinos and operating as an unregistered broker, adding that this violates the country’s securities laws.” (04/23/24)
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/23/philippines-orders-google-apple-to-remove-binance-from-app-stores.html
Source: Antiwar.com
by Ted Galen Carpenter
“An especially hot news item in 2024 has been the surge of drug-related violence in Ecuador. Until recent years, Ecuador was hailed as an island of relative stability in the swirling violence of the illegal drug trade in the Western hemisphere. The situation there contrasted with the level of chaos and violence in neighboring countries such as Peru and Colombia, as well as the central arena of drug trafficking in Mexico and Central America. American retirees found the country to be an especially appealing destination. That presumption of stability was always somewhat exaggerated. … drug warriors in the United States and other countries cling to hard-line strategies and refuse to face an inconvenient economic truth. Governments are not able to dictate whether people use mind-altering substances. ” (04/23/24)
https://original.antiwar.com/ted_galen_carpenter/2024/04/22/yet-another-drug-war-failure/
Source: Reuters
“The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday unveiled a rule extending mandatory overtime pay to an estimated 4 million salaried workers, going even further than an Obama-era rule that was struck down in court. The U.S. Department of Labor rule will require employers to pay overtime premiums to workers who earn a salary of less than $1,128 per week, or about $58,600 per year, when they work more than 40 hours in a week. The current salary threshold of about $35,500 per year was set by the Trump administration in a 2020 rule that worker advocates and many Democrats have said did not go far enough. The rule does not affect overtime requirements for workers who are paid hourly.” (04/23/24)
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-rule-grants-overtime-pay-4-million-us-workers-2024-04-23/
Source: Center for a Stateless Society
by Logan Marie Glitterbomb
“‘Tax the rich’ is an all too common refrain on the left which, thanks to left unity, has even been echoed by many self-proclaimed anarchists. ‘Taxation is theft’ on the other hand is a slogan many anarchists are hesitant to repeat due to its association with right-libertarians despite it being far more consistent with anarchist ideals. When taxation is the main funding source for the military police state with only crumbs going towards an extremely inadequate welfare plantation system, why would anarchists want any more funding to go towards that no matter who’s fronting the bill?” (04/23/24)
https://c4ss.org/content/59578
Source: Common Dreams
“The United Nations'[s] human rights chief on Tuesday called for an international investigation into mass graves discovered at two Gaza hospitals that Israeli forces recently assailed and destroyed, further imperiling the enclave’s barely functioning healthcare system. Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement that he was ‘horrified’ by the discovery of mass graves at the Nasser and al-Shifa medical complexes, which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reduced to ruins. More than 300 bodies were reportedly discovered in the mass grave near the Nasser facility in Khan Younis, Gaza, and eyewitnesses said Israeli soldiers executed civilians during their two-week-long raid of al-Shifa last month.” (04/23/24)
https://www.commondreams.org/news/un-rights-chief-mass-graves
Source: Washington Post
by Catherine Rampell
“On many dimensions, our ability to attract global talent to our shores is a blessing. But this being an election year, and demagogues being demagogues, right-wing pundits and political operatives have worked to darken these bright statistics. Fox News refers to Bidenomics as a ‘migrant job fair.’ The Republican-aligned Heritage Foundation alleges that ‘Americans have been completely left behind in this economy,’ citing as evidence that fact I just mentioned: that all the net new job growth is accounted for by immigrants. But the labor market is not zero-sum, and native-born workers happen to be doing extraordinarily well, too. … There just aren’t enough of us, in total, to fill all the jobs that employers are creating as boomers retire.” (04/23/24)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/23/immigration-jobs-economy/
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“The underbelly of New York City’s tabloid media industry was laid bare in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday. A famous publisher outlined a secret plan he had with Donald Trump and his personal lawyer Michael Cohen, calling it an ‘agreement among friends.’ Prosecutors questioned former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker for nearly three hours. He testified that the three worked to suppress negative stories about the candidate during his 2016 campaign. ‘This could be a very big story, so I believe that it should be removed from the market,’ Mr Pecker said he would advise the former president about killing certain articles. Mr Pecker’s testimony could prove critical for prosecutors as they seek to prove that Mr Trump tried to influence the election by quelling a story of an alleged affair. Mr Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records.” (04/23/24)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68880206
