International

Joe Biden kickstarts 2024 bid with speech targeting Trump

Published

12 months ago

January 5, 2024

President Joe Biden and Donald Trump

Joe Biden kickstarts 2024 bid with speech targeting Trump

President Joe Biden will seek to fire up his 2024 campaign Friday with a major speech warning that democracy is at risk from Donald Trump, three years after the deadly January 6 US Capitol attack.

Either trailing or neck and neck with Trump in recent polls, the 81-year-old Democrat will frame his likely Republican rival as a threat to the nation in an address near the historic US independence war site of Valley Forge in Pennsylvania.

A looming winter storm forced the speech to be brought forward a day from Saturday, the third anniversary of the Capitol assault by a pro-Trump mob trying to overturn Biden’s 2020 election win.

The effort to boost Biden’s campaign by painting him as a defender of democracy will continue Monday when the president visits a South Carolina church where a white supremacist shot dead nine Black parishioners in 2015.

Campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said Biden’s election pitch four years ago that he was leading a “battle for the soul of America” was more relevant than ever.

“The threat Donald Trump posed in 2020 to American democracy has only grown more dire in the years since,” she said in a statement.

Trump was impeached but acquitted over the January 6 riots, while the 77-year-old now faces a criminal trial on charges of trying to subvert the 2020 election.

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The US states of Colorado and Maine have barred him from standing in presidential primaries on the grounds that he had engaged in “insurrection” over the Capitol events. Trump has challenged both rulings.

But January 6 has become increasingly polarized in US politics — a quarter of Americans believe that the FBI instigated the attack, a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll showed this week.

The venues for Biden’s first speeches of 2024 are deliberately symbolic — the first, at a school near Valley Forge, where George Washington, the first US president, regrouped American forces fighting their British colonial rulers during the bitter winter of 1777-8.

“We chose Valley Forge as George Washington united the colonies there,” said principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks.

“Then he became president and set the precedent for the peaceful transition of power — something that Donald Trump and Republicans refused to do.”

The push at the start of 2024 comes after criticism from some Democrats that the Biden campaign has got off to a slow start.

Biden has failed to convince voters that the economy is improving despite favorable numbers, with Americans saying they are still suffering from high food and housing costs.

Migration across the Mexican border remains a major headache, while there is division in his party over his support for Israel’s war on Hamas, and Congress is blocking his bid for more funds for Ukraine.

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Biden’s refusal to mention Trump’s multiple criminal cases, to avoid the appearance of influencing the judiciary, has also deprived him of one of his most potent weapons.

But perhaps Biden’s biggest vulnerability is his age: as America’s oldest-ever president, he has suffered a series of trips and verbal slips.

Biden lags behind Trump in some polls, and also has the worst approval rating of any modern president at this stage in his term of office.

“If the election were held tomorrow, President Biden would lose,” William Galston, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told AFP.

Yet the Pennsylvania and South Carolina speeches show the Biden campaign will now portray the race as a straight choice between him and the twice-impeached former president.

The campaign is already treating Trump as the presumptive challenger despite the fact that the battle for the Republican nomination doesn’t even get underway until the Iowa caucuses on January 15.

Democrats are also targeting Trump on issues such as abortion access and health care.

Biden’s first TV ad of the year warns of an “extremist” threat to democracy, featuring images of the Capitol attack set to dramatic music.

“It was a sight that was horrific,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Thursday.

“The president is going to continue to speak about this and continue to be very vocal about this.”

Joe Biden kickstarts 2024 bid with speech targeting Trump

AFP

International

Syria not threat to world, rebel leader al-Sharaa tells BBC

Published

3 days ago

December 19, 2024

Trends Admin

Ahmed al-Sharaa

Syria not threat to world, rebel leader al-Sharaa tells BBC

The de facto leader of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has said the country is exhausted by war and is not a threat to its neighbours or to the West.

In an interview with the BBC in Damascus, he called for sanctions on Syria to be lifted.

“Now, after all that has happened, sanctions must be lifted because they were targeted at the old regime. The victim and the oppressor should not be treated in the same way,” he said.

Sharaa led the lightning offensive that toppled Bashar al-Assad’s regime less than two weeks ago. He is the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the dominant group in the rebel alliance, and was previously known by his nom de guerre of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani.

He said HTS should be de-listed as a terrorist organisation. It is designated as one by the UN, US, EU and UK, among many others, as it started as a splinter group of al-Qaeda, which it broke away from in 2016.

Sharaa said HTS was not a terrorist group.

They did not target civilians or civilian areas, he said. In fact, they considered themselves to be victim of the crimes of the Assad regime.

He denied that he wanted to turn Syria into a version of Afghanistan.

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Sharaa said the countries were very different, with different traditions. Afghanistan was a tribal society. In Syria, he said, there was a different mindset.

He said he believed in education for women.

“We’ve had universities in Idlib for more than eight years,” Sharaa said, referring to Syria’s north-western province that has been held by rebels since 2011.

“I think the percentage of women in universities is more than 60%.”

And when asked whether the consumption of alcohol would be allowed, Sharaa said: “There are many things I just don’t have the right to talk about because they are legal issues.”

He added that there would be a “Syrian committee of legal experts to write a constitution. They will decide. And any ruler or president will have to follow the law”.

Sharaa was relaxed throughout the interview, wearing civilian clothes, and tried to offer reassurance to all those who believe his group has not broken with its extremist past.

Many Syrians do not believe him.

The actions of Syria’s new rulers in the next few months will indicate the kind of country they want Syria to be – and the way they want to rule it.

Syria not threat to world, rebel leader al-Sharaa tells BBC

BBC

International

Israel hits ports, energy sites in Yemen after missile intercepted

Published

3 days ago

December 19, 2024

Trends Admin

Israel hits ports, energy sites in Yemen after missile intercepted

JERUSALEM: Israel said Thursday it struck ports and energy infrastructure it alleges are used by Houthi militants, after intercepting a missile fired by the group.

Israel’s military said it “conducted precise strikes on Houthi military targets in Yemen — including ports and energy infrastructure in Sanaa, which the Houthis have been using in ways that effectively contributed to their military actions.”

The announcement came shortly after Israel said it had intercepted a missile fired from Yemen.

Al-Masira, a media channel belonging to the Houthis, said a series of “aggressive raids” were launched in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa and the port city of Hodeidah.

It reported raids that “targeted two central power plants” in Yemen’s capital Sanaa, while in Hodeidah it said “the enemy launched four aggressive raids targeting the port… and two raids targeting” an oil facility.

The strikes were the second time this week that Israel’s military has intercepted a missile from Yemen.

On Monday, the Houthis claimed a missile launch they said was aimed at “a military target of the Israeli enemy in the occupied area of Yaffa” — a reference to Israel’s Tel Aviv area.

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Also Monday, an Israeli navy missile boat intercepted a drone in the Mediterranean after it was launched from Yemen, the military said.

The Houthi militants have said they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians and pledged Monday to continue operations “until the aggression on Gaza stops and the siege is lifted.”

On December 9, a drone claimed by Houthis exploded on the top floor of a residential building in the central Israel city of Yavne, causing no casualties.

In July, a Houthi drone attack in Tel Aviv killed an Israeli civilian, prompting retaliatory strikes on the Yemeni port of Hodeidah.

The Houthis have also regularly targeted shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, leading to retaliatory strikes on Houthi targets by United States and sometimes British forces.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said the group had become a “global threat,” pointing to Iran’s support for the militants.

“We will continue to act against anyone, anyone in the Middle East, that threatens the state of Israel,” he said.

Israel hits ports, energy sites in Yemen after missile intercepted

International

Gaza mediators intensify ceasefire efforts, Israeli strikes kill 20 people

Published

3 days ago

December 19, 2024

Trends Admin

A Palestinian boy looks as others inspect the damage at a tent camp sheltering displaced people, following an Israeli strike, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Al-Mawasi area, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, December 18, 2024. (Reuters)

Gaza mediators intensify ceasefire efforts, Israeli strikes kill 20 people

CAIRO: The United States, joined by Arab mediators, sought on Wednesday to conclude an agreement between Israel and Hamas to halt the 14-month-old war in the Gaza Strip where medics said Israeli strikes killed at least 20 Palestinians overnight.

A Palestinian official close to the negotiations said on Wednesday that mediators had narrowed gaps on most of the agreement’s clauses. He said Israel had introduced conditions which Hamas rejected but would not elaborate.

On Tuesday, sources close to the talks in Cairo, the Egyptian capital, said an agreement could be signed in coming days on a ceasefire and a release of hostages held in Gaza in return for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Medics said an Israeli airstrike killed at least 10 people in a house in the northern town of Beit Lahiya while six were killed in separate airstrikes in Gaza City, Nuseirat camp in central areas, and Rafah near the border with Egypt.

In Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip, medics said four people were killed in an airstrike on a house. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military spokesman.

Israeli forces have operated in the towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya as well as the nearby Jabalia camp since October, in a campaign the military said aimed to prevent Hamas militants from regrouping.

Palestinians accuse Israel of carrying out acts of “ethnic cleansing” to depopulate the northern edge of the enclave to create a buffer zone. Israel denies it.

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Hamas does not disclose its casualties, and the Palestinian health ministry does not distinguish in its daily death toll between combatants and non-combatants.

On Wednesday, the Israeli military said it struck a number of Hamas militants planning an imminent attack against Israeli forces operating in Jabalia.

Later on Wednesday, Muhammad Saleh, director of Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia, said Israeli shelling in the vicinity damaged the facility, wounding seven medics and one patient inside the hospital.

The Israeli military had no immediate comment.

In the Central Gaza camp of Bureij, Palestinian families began leaving some districts after the army posted new evacuation orders on X and in written and audio messages to mobile phones of some of the population there, citing new firing of rockets by Palestinian militants from the area.

CEASEFIRE GAINS MOMENTUM

The US administration, joined by mediators from Egypt and Qatar, has made intensive efforts in recent days to advance the talks before President Joe Biden leaves office next month.

In Jerusalem, Israeli President Isaac Herzog met Adam Boehler, US President-elect Donald Trump’s designated envoy for hostage affairs. Trump has threatened that “all hell is going to break out” if Hamas does not release its hostages by Jan. 20, the day Trump returns to the White House.

CIA Director William Burns was due in Doha on Wednesday for talks with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani on bridging remaining gaps between Israel and Hamas, other knowledgeable sources said. The CIA declined to comment.

Israeli negotiators were in Doha on Monday looking to bridge gaps between Israel and Hamas on a deal Biden outlined in May.

There have been repeated rounds of talks over the past year, all of which have failed, with Israel insisting on retaining a military presence in Gaza and Hamas refusing to release hostages until the troops pulled out.

The war in Gaza, triggered by a Hamas-led attack on communities in southern Israel that killed some 1,200 people and saw more than 250 abducted as hostages, has sent shockwaves across the Middle East and left Israel isolated internationally.

Israel’s campaign has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, displaced most of the 2.3 million population and reduced much of the coastal enclave to ruins.

Gaza mediators intensify ceasefire efforts, Israeli strikes kill 20 people

ARAB NEWS