04 June 21
We Took a Beating in May
It’s always complicated in the wake of a really bad fundraising drive. You have great donors to thank for coming through, but at the same time it’s important not to lose sight of the implications of a major funding downturn.
Great donors, large and small, did come through for RSN. They make possible everything we do, and we do not forget that.
For the month May, we served nearly half a million readers, but managed only 445 donations. In April, 612 people donated. While that may not seem like a huge difference, it represents a nearly one-third decline in overall funding for the organization in a 30-day period. That’s huge.
This is June, we are going to need your participation at the level you can afford. With that RSN is strong, always.
Fundraising starts on Friday.
With early urgency.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
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04 June 21
It's Live on the HomePage Now:
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Charles Pierce | In Arizona, They're Trying to Make 2+2 Equal Another President
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "This is a planning session for whatever might come next. There is a straight line from the seizure of the U.S. Capitol to the fairgrounds arena."
et’s check in on the ongoing extended farce playing out at the Arizona state fairgrounds as a coalition of angry shut-ins and crooked human abacuses continue to try to find a way to make 2+2 equal another president. Now, this is interesting. Apparently, they’re selling tours to out-of-town MAGAs grown bored with asking their aldermen about the baby-eating ritual before last year’s pancake breakfast. From the AP (via WHYY):
Three Pennsylvania lawmakers will be in Arizona Wednesday to check out the state Senate GOP’s partisan audit of the 2020 election. They’re the latest Republicans to make a pilgrimage to Phoenix, Ground Zero in the “stop the steal” movement’s push to find support for the far-fetched conspiracy theories suggesting the election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.
Political pilgrimages are nothing new to Arizona…But now, the draw is the Arizona State Fairgrounds, site of a former basketball arena where a Trump supporter who has promoted election conspiracies is overseeing a hand recount of 2.1 million ballots from Maricopa County. The latest visitors are Pennsylvania Sens. Doug Mastriano and Cris Dush, and Rep. Rob Kauffman. They’ll meet with Arizona legislators at the Capitol before touring the site and getting a briefing from the auditors, according to a terse statement from the audit team Tuesday. None responded to interview requests on Tuesday.
This, of course, is more proof that the campaign to demolish public confidence in our elections is a national effort. I guarantee you this drop-by from the three clowns from Pennsylvania is not an exercise in thrill-seeking. The livestream from inside the arena makes CSPAN’s congressional programming look like Blazing Saddles. This is a gathering of the likeminded and, very obviously, a planning session for whatever might come next. There is a straight line from the seizure of the U.S. Capitol to the fairgrounds arena. To take only one example, according to WHYY in Philadelphia, Doug Mastriano, one of the Pennsylvania ratfcking tourists visiting Phoenix, spent $3,000 of his campaign money to charter buses for folks to go to Washington for the January 6 insurrection.
Mastriano (R-Franklin), rumored to be a future GOP gubernatorial candidate, has faced calls to resign for attending the rally. A review of the state senator’s campaign finance records shows that his committee paid $3,354 to Wolf’s Bus Lines in three installments for “bus reservations” about six days before Trump’s “Save America” rally. The same week the payments were made, Mastriano posted an event on Facebook offering bus rides to D.C. on Jan. 6 — charging attendees $25 dollars for an adult and $10 for children.
Other people have stopped by as well. Professional election observers, they were. They walked boldly right into the wind tunnel of crazy. From the Washington Post:
In one instance, a software update caused so many errors that the company handling the recount abandoned the update and went back to the old software. In other instances, prohibited items including cellphones and pens with black or blue ink were allowed onto the counting floor.
And in an incident last week, audit spokesman and former state Republican Party chairman Randy Pullen told an observer that the pink T-shirt he was required to wear while watching the proceedings made him “look like a transgender.”
Katie Hobbs, the Democratic secretary of state, is now posting the security infractions on her official website. She’s also now running for governor. I wish her all the luck in the world, and she’s going to need every speck of it. If she finishes ahead on election night, they’ll be recounting ballots until half-past the Mars landing.
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Members of the Sackler family who own Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, moved a step closer to winning immunity from opioid lawsuits. (photo: Erik McGregor/Getty)
The Sackler Family Empire Is Poised to Win Immunity From Future Opioid Lawsuits
Brian Mann, NPR
Mann writes: "After more than a year of high-stakes negotiations with billions of dollars on the line, a bankruptcy plan for Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, cleared a major hurdle late Wednesday."
Federal Judge Robert Drain in White Plains, N.Y., moved the controversial deal forward despite objections from dozens of state attorneys general, setting the stage for a final vote by the company's creditors expected this summer.
The drugmaker filed for Chapter 11 protection in 2019 facing an avalanche of lawsuits tied to its aggressive opioid sales practices.
Public health experts and many government officials say the introduction of OxyContin fueled the nation's deadly opioid epidemic.
This development brings members of the Sackler family, some of whom own Purdue Pharma and served on the company's board of directors, a step closer to winning immunity from future opioid lawsuits.
According to legal documents filed as part of the case, that immunity would extend to dozens of family members, more than 160 financial trusts, and at least 170 companies, consultants and other entities associated with the Sacklers.
"The Sacklers are paying $4.275 billion, and they very much plan and expect to be done with this chapter," said Marshall Huebner, an attorney representing Purdue Pharma, during a hearing last week.
One of the firms that would secure protection from future opioid lawsuits under the deal is Luther Strange & Associates, founded by former U.S. Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.), who helped Purdue Pharma pitch the bankruptcy plan to Republican state attorneys general.
While Purdue Pharma has twice pleaded guilty to federal crimes relating to its opioid marketing schemes, no member of the Sackler family has faced criminal charges.
Appearing before a congressional panel last December, members of the Sackler family said they had done nothing wrong. "The family and the board acted legally and ethically," testified David Sackler, who served on Purdue Pharma's board for six years.
In addition to contributing money from their personal fortunes, the Sacklers have agreed to give up control of Purdue Pharma. They will, however, retain ownership of other companies, admit no wrongdoing and will remain one of the wealthiest families in America.
Two dozen states still oppose the bankruptcy deal that has been negotiated largely behind closed doors. They argue it would improperly strip them of authority to sue members of the family for alleged wrongdoing.
"I don't believe ... at this point the plan is confirmable," said Andrew Troop, an attorney representing a coalition of "nonconsenting" states, during a hearing last week.
But Drain said this stage of the bankruptcy process wasn't focused on final approval of the plan.
Instead, the court evaluated whether Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers had provided enough information and transparency to allow creditors to make an informed decision on the deal's financial merits.
Despite a significant veil of secrecy surrounding the proceedings — which included an expansive investigation of the Sacklers that will likely never be made public — Drain signaled the so-called "disclosure statement" was adequate.
Attorneys representing Purdue Pharma and other parties in the bankruptcy process said negotiations continue.
"We are mediating as we speak with the nonconsenting states," Huebner said on Wednesday. "We continue to be open and listen as hard as we can to all other remaining objectors between now and confirmation."
A vote and final approval expected by August
In the coming weeks, more than 600,000 individuals, companies and governments with claims against Purdue Pharma will vote on the package, described by attorneys involved in the process as one of the most complicated and controversial bankruptcies ever.
A final confirmation hearing is scheduled for Aug. 9. Drain has indicated he believes this plan offers the best chance at financial relief for those harmed by Purdue Pharma's OxyContin business.
Supporters of the bankruptcy deal say the alternative would be a chaotic scrum of risky and expensive litigation. "Billions would be spent on legal fees," Huebner said last week. "It would be years until claimants might get a recovery."
The reorganization plan also includes a detailed formula that would be used to distribute hundreds of millions of dollars each year in aid to communities and individuals harmed by opioids.
A growing number of government officials have signaled they expect to vote in favor of the deal.
But critics, including more than 20 mostly Democratic state attorneys general, say the Sacklers are improperly piggybacking on their company's bankruptcy without actually filing for bankruptcy themselves.
"The bankruptcy system should not be allowed to shield non-bankrupt billionaires," said Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey in an interview with NPR last month.
Some legal scholars have also questioned whether bankruptcy court is the proper venue for a case that involves an addiction crisis that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.
"[T]he most socially important chapter 11 case in history will be determined through a process that does not comport with basic notions of due process," wrote Adam Levitin, who teaches law at Georgetown University, in an article published last month in the Texas Law Review.
In a legal brief filed with the bankruptcy court on Tuesday, Jonathan Lipson, a legal scholar at Temple University who also represents a client with a claim against Purdue Pharma, noted this case is complicated by allegations leveled against the Sacklers by the Justice Department last October. He argues those allegations raise the question of whether some Sacklers could be held responsible for crimes Purdue admitted to.
"These cases have been overshadowed by a single, critical question: who is responsible for [Purdue Pharma's] confessed crimes and the harm they caused?" Lipson wrote in his motion.
Lipson requested an independent examiner be appointed to review whether the Chapter 11 process has been handled appropriately.
Again, the Sacklers have denied any wrongdoing and have never been charged with crimes. As part of their settlement with the DOJ, members of the Sackler family paid $225 million while denying the allegations.
Sackler family pushes back against "false allegations"
During last week's hearing an attorney representing members of the Raymond Sackler branch of the family said they have created a website designed to offer a rebuttal to critics of the Sacklers.
"Raymond Sackler family members have consistently expressed their regret that OxyContin, which continues to help patients suffering from chronic pain, unexpectedly became part of the opioid crisis," the family said in a statement.
In civil lawsuits already filed against the Sacklers, government officials allege some family members had direct knowledge of the highly addictive nature of OxyContin but continued to push Purdue Pharma's sales team to maximize profits.
The DOJ settlement with the Sacklers also included the allegation some family members engaged in "fraudulent" transfers of wealth and approved a marketing plan that focused on pushing OxyContin sales to "extreme, high-volume prescribers."
According to the Justice Department statement, that program led "health care providers to prescribe opioids for uses that were unsafe, ineffective, and medically unnecessary, and that often led to abuse and diversion."
The Sacklers maintain they did nothing wrong and acted ethically. If this bankruptcy plan is approved and upheld on appeal, it's unlikely the allegations will ever be tested in court.
More than 400 civil cases already filed against members of the Sackler family claiming alleged wrongdoing would be halted.
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The intersection know as George Floyd Square last week on the anniversary of Mr. Floyd's death. The spot in South Minneapolis where he was killed became a memorial. (photo: Caroline Yang/The New York Times)
Activists Push Back Against Attempt to Reopen George Floyd Square
Gino Spocchia, The Independent
Spocchia writes: "The barriers to the George Floyd memorial in Minneapolis, Minnesota, are being removed to apparently make way for traffic for the first time in a year."
Police not involved in reopening of street to traffic
he barriers to the George Floyd memorial in Minneapolis, Minnesota, are being removed to apparently make way for traffic for the first time in a year.
Workers for the city of Minneapolis started removing barriers at the intersection of 38th and Chicago at about 4.30am on Thursday morning, according to reports.
It was there on 25 May 2020 that Mr Floyd was murdered by then-Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin, who kneeled on the Black man’s neck for more than nine minutes. Chauvin awaits sentencing after being convicted of murder.
The Minneapolis police department was not involved in the removal of the barriers. The intersection became famous for its memorial of Mr Floyd — known informally as “George Floyd Square” — and was among a number of streets and public squares renamed in his memory.
A spokesperson for the city of Minneapolis told KSTVP on Thursday that the removal of the barriers was an effort by the community group, Agape, who have provided security for the area.
Officials are said to be working with the Floyd family on a permanent solution to the memorial.
Items including flowers and artworks will be replanted and removed as part of the changes, with the effort beginning on Thursday, KSTVP reported.
A metal fist at the centre of the memorial is thought to be the centre of a roundabout. Flowers are being replanted around it.
The mayor of Minneapolis was allegedly not informed by the city’s public works department of the plans in advance.
Councillors were thought to be against approving the removal of the barriers from the intersection of the memorial, when asked by reporters from KSTVP last week.
In a statement, Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, city council vice president Andrea Jenkins and city councillor Alondra Cano said they were “collectively committed to establishing a permanent memorial at the intersection, preserving the artwork, and making the area an enduring space for racial healing.”
“Alongside city leadership, we have met on a regular basis with community members to discuss both the short-term path toward reconnecting this area and the long-term plan for the neighbourhood with sustained investments to help restore and heal the community.”
A press conference is planned for later on Thursday.
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Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. (photo: Getty)
Feds Cancel DeVos-Backed Accreditor After Investigation Finds Apparently Fake College
Chris Quintana, USA TODAY
Quintana writes: "The U.S. Department of Education is canceling its recognition of an accrediting agency that signed off on a South Dakota college that didn't seem to have students or professors."
The agency, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, had approved Reagan National University in Sioux Falls. But a USA TODAY Network investigation last year found no evidence of students or faculty at the college.
ACICS "leaves me no reasonable option but to terminate its recognition, effective immediately," wrote Deputy Undersecretary for Education Jordan Matsudaira in a notice posted Wednesday to the department's website. The accreditor showed "significant and systemic noncompliance," he said.
The Education Department doesn't individually accredit colleges. Instead, it relies on third-party agencies known as accreditors to vet schools. Colleges that are approved can access taxpayer money in the form of grants and student loans.
The department's decision Wednesday aligns with President Joe Biden's plan to hold for-profit colleges under close scrutiny.
ACICS' loss of accreditation means the roughly 60 colleges the agency had approved will have 18 months to find a new accreditor if they want to keep accessing federal money. ACICS' members are mostly for-profit colleges and rely heavily on federal money to keep afloat.
The accreditor on Wednesday evening indicated it plans to appeal the department's decision to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.
"All that we ask is that a decision regarding our continued recognition be driven by the improvements we have made and our effectiveness as an accreditor today," wrote Michelle Edwards, president of ACICS, in a statement on the group's website. "Not by policy priorities and outside pressure from political activists."
The agency has a history of approving questionable colleges with devastating consequences. It accredited ITT Tech, Corinthian Colleges and Brightwood College, massive for-profit universities whose sudden closures in the past decade left thousands of students without degrees and undermined the value of the education of those who did graduate. Those closures led President Barack Obama’s Education Department to strip ACICS’ powers in 2016.
The schools the agency had approved scrambled to find new accreditors, said Michael Itzkowitz, a senior fellow at the center-left think tank Third Way. The best of those colleges were able to find a new agency, he said.
"Many of the ACICS schools that remain are those that applied to other accreditors, but were ultimately rejected," Itzkowitz said. "If history repeats itself, it's likely they'll be rejected again, as the agency – and presumably a lot of the schools it continues to oversee – have been shown to be out of compliance since the initial termination five years earlier."
After a federal court decision, President Donald Trump's administration and then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos reinstated the accrediting agency in 2018. By that point, it had lost dozens of colleges and their membership fees. It needed new members, and fast.
The decision in 2017 to approve Reagan National University as a viable college called into question ACICS’ ability to hold colleges accountable for the education they’re supposed to provide.
A February 2020 investigation by USA TODAY and the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls found no evidence Reagan National was teaching students. Several important links on the college's website were broken. Its administrators seldom answered phone calls, or they hung up immediately when a reporter identified himself. Its offices were empty, both when journalists visited and when an investigator for ACICS dropped by the campus for a spot check.
"Accreditors are entrusted with assuring institutional quality and acting as gatekeepers to federal student aid. This oversight helps ensure that institutions deliver on the promises made to students and safeguard federal resources," the Department of Education said in a statement. Department staff, the statement said, found ACICS failed to monitor its colleges and had "inadequate administrative capability."
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Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Joe Biden during a discussion with Republican senators on a coronavirus relief package. (photo: Tom Brenner/Reuters)
Democrats Fear Health Care 2009 Déjà Vu as Biden-GOP Infrastructure Talks Drag On
Sahil Kapur, NBC News
Kapur writes: "Democrats have seen this movie before. A Democratic president engages in protracted negotiations with Republicans over his top legislative priority. The GOP wants more time. The president gives it to them, holding on to hope he can ink a historic bipartisan deal."
Veterans of the legislative fight over the Affordable Care Act say Republicans are just trying to run out the clock.
emocrats have seen this movie before.
A Democratic president engages in protracted negotiations with Republicans over his top legislative priority. The GOP wants more time. The president gives it to them, holding on to hope he can ink a historic bipartisan deal.
Democratic veterans of the 2009 fight over the Affordable Care Act say it's déjà vu watching President Joe Biden hold another meeting Wednesday with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, the GOP’s point person on infrastructure. And in their experience, it doesn't end well.
Democratic operatives insist that Republicans, led then and now by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, are stringing Biden along as they did then-President Barack Obama.
Jim Messina, Obama’s deputy chief of staff from 2009 to 2011, is urging Biden not to “make that mistake again,” saying that stretching out talks could blow back on Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections.
“When you look back on my ACA days, it should’ve been apparent to us at the time. We waited too long,” Messina said.
The White House is working to allay the fears within their party of a repeat of 2009 with infrastructure.
“Literally every time we have a conversation about bipartisanship, there's someone in the White House saying they've all learned the lessons of the ACA,” said a senior House progressive aide, who requested anonymity to describe internal deliberations.
'Running out the clock'
The White House called Wednesday's meeting “constructive and frank” and said the two sides agreed to reconnect on Friday. The most recent offers found the two sides to be roughly $1.4 trillion apart and unable to agree on a definition of “infrastructure.” Biden continues to bank on the popularity of his proposals to persuade Republicans.
The 2009 health care effort also began as broadly popular, but as negotiations continued for months, the politics changed and the bill suffered a near-death experience when Democrats lost a Senate seat. By the time Obama signed it in March 2010, the public had turned against it and every Republican in Congress voted against it. The GOP made the law into a rallying cry it in the midterm election, picking up 63 House seats.
Messina said he sees parallels between those talks and Biden’s infrastructure push.
“The biggest thing is that they keep asking for more time. And they’re just running the clock,” he said of Republicans. “If you’re McConnell he’s going to talk for as long as we want to talk, because he’s just trying to be an obstructionist.”
Messina argues Democrats should at least begin the process of bypassing Republicans as talks continue — like they did on the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 bill.
Abandoning bipartisan efforts would require the support of all 50 Democratic senators. And Messina's warning about 2009 on repeat is more targeted at the centrists in his party who have called for GOP outreach, most notably Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
“Just like Obama in 2009, Biden is playing a tough hand,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a former top adviser to Obama. “Biden can't move forward on a partisan vote until Manchin is OK with it, just as Obama was stymied by (former Democratic Sen.) Max Baucus' insistence on moving a bipartisan bill through the committee.”
“It's painful because time is a nonrenewable resource,” Pfeiffer said, adding that “there are no easy outs until Manchin and Sinema see the world as it is.”
Democrats are trying to convince the holdouts that McConnell isn't serious about talks by pointing to his recent remarks that “100 percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration.” McConnell later qualified the comment and said his opposition depends on what the administration is proposing.
Pfeiffer believes the bipartisan talks are a fool's errand.
“The idea of 10 Republicans voting for something significant is farcical,” he said.
'A purely political calculation'
McConnell has called for continuing the negotiations.
Last week, Republican negotiators made a counteroffer that included $257 billion in new spending, a far cry from the $1.7 trillion Biden requested. The offer was designed by six Republicans, including two McConnell deputies.
But hours later in an appearance on CNBC, the Kentucky Republican said that it wasn't the final offer, and that “we’re going to keep talking.”
The top GOP negotiator has been more optimistic.
“Sen. Capito reiterated to the president her desire to work together to reach an infrastructure agreement that can pass Congress in a bipartisan way. She also stressed the progress that the Senate has already made,” Kelley Moore, a spokeswoman for Capito, said. “Sen. Capito is encouraged that negotiations have continued.”
Getting 60 Senate votes to advance any agreement would probably require McConnell's sign-off.
Ben Nelson, a former Democratic senator from Nebraska and a moderate who was a key player in the 2009 ACA debate, said Biden should not trust McConnell to negotiate a deal.
“It’ll be a purely political calculation on his part,” Nelson, who is now working as a lawyer, said in an interview. “I don’t expect McConnell to be there in the end.”
“What will dictate that,” Nelson said of McConnell’s calculus, “is less good public policy but mostly what’s the best move in a partisan way to thwart the president’s efforts to get infrastructure legislation passed.”
Nelson said Democrats could peel away 10 Republican senators to break a filibuster on a modest infrastructure package, as long as they can agree on a price tag to craft a bill around. But, he said, that would probably need to be done without McConnell.
Charlie Ellsworth, who worked on health care as Nelson's legislative aide in 2009, said McConnell and his party are taking a “very similar” approach to the infrastructure debate, by “dropping bread crumbs along the way to keep Democrats' attention and try to run out the clock.”
“Every day that we're participating in these so-called negotiations is a day we're not legislating and getting a bill done to help working families and solve climate change,” he said,
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The 49-year-old tech millionaire Naftali Bennett may become Israel's next prime minister. (photo: Getty)
The Diehard Right-Wing Multimillionaire Replacing Israel's Netanyahu
Noga Tarnopolsky, The Daily Beast
Tarnopolsky writes: "The scandal-plagued era of Israel's longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is finally coming to an end - and the man poised to replace him is known for outrageous controversies of his own."
With Bibi’s reign as Israel’s prime minister nearing its end, all eyes are on the controversial far-right tech tycoon set to take his place.
he scandal-plagued era of Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is finally coming to an end—and the man poised to replace him is known for outrageous controversies of his own.
On Wednesday, Israeli Opposition Leader Yair Lapid announced the formation of a coalition government that will catapult 49-year-old tech millionaire Naftali Bennett into the prime ministership. Lapid, a centrist, made an extraordinary sacrifice to establish what he calls “a government of unity and of healing” after a dozen years of Netanyahu rule. He has agreed to serve as foreign minister in a government which will be led by Bennett, a nationalist right-winger, for its first two years.
The Haifa-born-and-bred Bennett is the son of San Franciscans who emigrated to Israel after the 1967 war. He became a multimillionaire in 2005, following the $145 million sale of Cyota, an anti-fraud software firm he had co-founded. Eight years later, Bennett renounced his American citizenship after his election to Israel’s parliament.
Alongside Netanyahu, Bennett introduced into Israel’s political sphere the crudely anti-Arab language that helped fuel the 11-day quasi-war that gripped the Holy Land last month, killing hundreds of Palestinian and a dozen Israelis in the most lethal bout of violence the country had seen since 2014.
If a single moment defines Naftali Bennett—whose first step into the political arena was to serve as Netanyahu’s chief of staff—it took place in 2018, with the passage of Israel’s notorious Nation-State Law, widely considered the most overtly racist law ever passed by the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.
In July 2018, then Minister of Education Bennett voted for the legislation, which grants Jews “an exclusive right to national self-determination,” relegating non-Jews to an undefined lesser status, and sparking outrage for enshrining what has been viewed as an apartheid system.
Defending the legislation, Bennett had said that “keeping Israel as the Jewish nation-state does not threaten the future of the Jewish people; it safeguards it. Protecting Jewish traditions, just as they safeguarded our people through two millenniums of exile, is the only way to be sure that Israel can continue to be a strong and vibrant democracy in a very difficult region.”
Yet within a week, a chastened, regretful Bennett admitted it had been a mistake. Conversations with fellow army veterans, he said, convinced him that the government had inadvertently demeaned the Druze, a non-Muslim Arab minority in Israel, renowned for their loyalty to the state.
“We, the Israeli government, have a responsibility to find a way to mend the rift,” he said at the time, without proposing any legislative remedy.
This incident encapsulated the Naftali Bennett Israelis know. For some, he is a fickle politician, an anti-Arab ultra-nationalist, and a pro-annexation extremist unafraid of ruffling feathers abroad. For others, he’s a rational man who doesn’t mind copping to his own mistakes in public.
Further confusing his image, Bennett is a former leader of the West Bank settlement movement who lives in Ra’anana, a prosperous, placid city well within Israel’s internationally recognized borders. He’s also a religiously observant Jew married to a secular woman.
This perplexing combination has made Bennett, who entered the political fray ten years ago, difficult for the Israeli public to grasp. Is he the easy-going suburban husband of a pastry chef, or the growling extremist purported to have boasted, “I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life, and there’s no problem with that”?
It is unclear whether Bennett, a veteran of the Israeli army’s most elite unit, ever uttered that statement that sealed his international reputation as a man even more extremist than the pro-annexation, anti-Arab Netanyahu. The line was first reported in the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, which published the leaked quote without attribution.
Although his comments on killing “lots of Arabs” have never been corroborated, there is no shortage of undisputedly outrageous Bennett quotes. In 2013, Bennett took to Facebook to post that “Terrorists should be killed, not released. All my life I fought towards fulfilling the two parts of this sentence.”
When he was elected to the Knesset that same year, one of his campaign posters read: “There are certain things that most of us understand will never happen: ‘The Sopranos’ are not coming back for another season . . . and there will never be a peace plan with the Palestinians.”
As Minister of Education, Bennett tried to ban members of Breaking the Silence, a group of military veterans who oppose Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, from speaking to high school students. He also pushed for the removal of the novel Borderlife, by Israeli author Dorit Rabinyan, which tells the story of a romance between a Jewish woman and a Muslim man, from a list of recommended reading.
Bennett was slammed in 2018 for defending then-president Donald Trump after the Tree of Life synagogue massacre, in which 11 Jews were shot and killed in the worst act of antisemitic violence in American history.
The tech millionaire had joined Trump on a visit to the Pittsburgh temple, where congregants refused to meet with the president they considered to have triggered a spike in antisemitic incidents in the U.S. While protesters brandished signs reading “President Hate is not welcome in our state,” Bennett responded with a lengthy defense of Trump that began with: “Using the horrific antisemitic massacre to attack President Trump is unfair and wrong.”
Trump, Bennett tweeted in a lengthy thread, “has our backs. He has delivered on every promise.”
Later, in New York, Bennett seemed to cast doubt on an Anti-Defamation League report which claimed that the number of antisemitic incidents in the United States rose 57 percent in the first year of Trump’s presidency. “I’m not sure at all there is a surge in antisemitism in America,” he said. “I’m not sure those are the facts.”
Yet it was a very different, somber Naftali Bennett who addressed Israelis on Sunday, when he promised to lead the nation to unity. Netanyahu, he said in his first definitive break from his former mentor, was “leading Israel to his personal Massada,” an allusion to an ancient sect of Jewish zealots who committed mass suicide.
“The madness,” he said, “can be stopped.”
Yohanan Plesner, who heads Jerusalem’s non-partisan Israel Democracy Institute, and has known Bennett since they served together as soldiers more than 30 years ago, describes him as “ a pragmatist” who “also has had moments in his career that drove very much to the right.”
“He basically circumvented Netanyahu from the right. From this respect, his public persona is complex,” Plesner told The Daily Beast.
The end of the Netanyahu era, though anticipated, will be an earthquake for Israeli and regional politics, where the prime minister—who has decried the opposition’s efforts to replace him as a left-wing coup—has been a dominant force for almost three decades, even while standing trial on large-scale corruption and bribery charges.
In the past two years, no Israeli party won sufficient parliamentary seats to form a ruling coalition in four successive elections. In March, Netanyahu, whose Likud party resulted in the largest faction, was the first leader offered a chance to establish a coalition but failed to muster a majority. But now, with the backing of such unlikely partners as the Islamic Movement of Israel and the left-wing Meretz party—the political stalemate is coming to an end, and the opposition is coming out on top.
Taking a long view, Plesner said, “I wouldn’t be too bothered about [Bennett’s] past interviews or past pronouncements.”
“There is no doubt Bennett has to grow into the position,” he told The Daily Beast. “We are not in a Biden situation, someone who has been in Washington in every possible position for 50 years and knows exactly how to handle the levers of power.” But Bennett, he explained, is a fast learner who “has a chance to define and position his public persona from the position of the number one leader of the Jewish state.”
Lapid and Bennett have up to a week to present the signed coalition agreements to Israel’s parliament, where a majority of members will vote to install the new government.
“If Bennett becomes Prime Minister someday,” The New Yorker’s David Remnick wrote in 2013, “and his ambition is as plump and glaring as a harvest moon—he intends to annex most of the West Bank and let Arab cities like Ramallah, Nablus, and Jenin be ‘self-governing’ but ‘under Israeli security.’”
“I will do everything in my power to make sure they never get a state,” he confidently told Remnick of the Palestinians.
Eight years can make quite a difference.
In his Sunday speech, Bennett promised a government “not of ‘I’, but of ‘we.’”
“No one will be asked to give up their ideology, but everyone will have to postpone the realization of some of their dreams,” he said. “We will focus on what can be done instead of arguing over what is impossible.”
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Smoke rises from a fire onboard the MV X-Press Pearl cargo ship as it sinks while being towed out to deeper water off the Colombo port, in Sri Lanka, on June 2, 2021. (photo: Sri Lanka Air Force)
A Cargo Ship Burns Off Sri Lanka, Covering Beaches in Plastic Debris
Alan Taylor, The Atlantic
Taylor writes: "Two weeks ago, a fire erupted on a cargo ship named the MV X-Press Pearl, which was carrying tons of chemicals and plastic pellets, while it was anchored near Colombo, Sri Lanka."
wo weeks ago, a fire erupted on a cargo ship named the MV X-Press Pearl, which was carrying tons of chemicals and plastic pellets, while it was anchored near Colombo, Sri Lanka. Efforts to douse the fire were unsuccessful, and the damaged ship began spilling its cargo. Tons of plastic pellets, also known as nurdles, spilled from their containers and began washing ashore on nearby beaches. The pellets, used as raw material to manufacture other plastic products, can absorb harmful chemicals and can be mistaken for food by marine animals. The fire on the ship recently died down, but efforts to tow it to deeper water failed, and it appears to be slowly sinking. Local authorities and fishermen are now concerned about the possibility of an oil spill, as the sinking ship was carrying several hundred tons of fuel oil.
Smoke rises from a fire onboard the MV X-Press Pearl cargo ship as it sinks while being towed out to deeper water off the Colombo port, in Sri Lanka, on June 2, 2021.
Sri Lankan Navy members work to remove debris washed ashore from the damaged container ship MV X-Press Pearl, on a beach in Colombo on May 27, 2021.
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