The International Criminal Court (ICC)'s prosecutor seeks arrest warrants for
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his defence chief and three Hamas leaders over alleged war crimes. Judges at
the top United Nations (UN) court ordered Israel to immediately halt its military assault on Rafah. U.N. also said
that Israel is violating children’s rights; however, adding Israel to this “list of shame," still cannot bring back tens of thousands of children who were killed by Israel.
Many countries have requested the Israeli government to stop indiscriminate killing of Palestinians after Israel’s bombardment and offensive in Gaza since the Oct. 7 attack. Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
said that “what is happening in the Gaza Strip and to the Palestinian people hasn’t been seen in any other moment
in history. Actually, it did when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.”. Lula has previously said Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza; Brazil and Spain have supported South Africa’s case
accusing Israel of genocide at the U.N.’s International Court of Justice. Colombia
and Turkey have cut ties with Israel. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country imposed a trade ban on Israel and suspended all imports and exports to Israel because it could no longer “stand by and watch” the violence in Gaza.
Bolivia severed all diplomatic ties with Israel, and Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Jordan, Bahrain, Honduras, Turkey, Chad, South Africa, and Belize had withdrawn all their diplomats in Tel Aviv, and recalled their ambassadors to Israel over their
disappointment by the refusal of the Israeli government to respect international law and the United Nations resolutions with impunity. Israel has violated 28 resolutions of the United Nations Security Council (which are legally binding
on member-nations U.N.). Before the Oct 7, 2023, attack, 30 United Nations member states do not maintain diplomatic relations with Israel.
The Biden administration said that it is “reasonable to assess” that Israeli forces used
US weapons in Gaza in ways that are “inconsistent” with international humanitarian law. Biden administration officials have for months
called on Israel to stop killing civilians and allow more aid into Gaza. There is an increasing friction between
Israel and the United States; the U.S. President, Biden, called Israel’s military operations in Gaza
“over the top" and said the suffering of innocent people has “got to stop.” There were
“missteps” by the Biden administration and expressed regret that the administration may have left a
“a very damaging impression” early in the war.
A dictatorship is a type of government in which a single person or party
possesses absolute power, the ruler has used various violent rules and policies to complete control the country, and suppress the rights of the people. These include suspension of
elections and civil liberties; proclamation of a state of emergency;
rule by decree; repression of political opponents; not abiding by the
rule of law procedures, and cult of personality.
A wide variety of these rulers have come to power in different kinds of regimes, such as military juntas (e.g.; Thailand,
Myanmar), one-party states
(e.g.; China, North Korea),
dominant-party states, and civilian governments under a personal rule. Known as a dictator,
a ruler often has a team of to make up the government of the dictatorship, and these officials have implemented the policies. Over time, dictators have been known to use tactics that violate human rights. For example, under the
Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, government policy was enforced by extrajudicial killings,
secret police and the notorious Gulag system of concentration camps; all caused at least 1,054,000 deaths.
Pol Pot became dictator of Cambodia in 1975; during his four-year dictatorship, an estimated 1.7 million people (out of a population of 7 million)
died due to his policies. As of today, there are 50 dictators in the world, including 1 in Europe, 3 in Americas, 7 in Eurasia, 8 in Asia-Pacific, 12 in the Middle East and North Africa, and 19 in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The Mekong River and its tributaries snake across six countries, from China down into mainland Southeast Asia. Known as the “mother of waters” in Laos and Thailand,
the Mekong flows from the Chinese-controlled Tibetan Plateau to the South China Sea, through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. China is building around 370 dams along the Mekong's 2,700-mile course from China through the heart of Southeast Asia for its ambitious hydropower
plants capturing the energy of falling water to generate electricity and energy reserves and renewable energy sources for China. These dams across the Mekong basin are part of what China calls its Belt and Road Initiative, a vast network of projects that seeks to cement
Beijing's influence across Asia and beyond. Each development — dams, ports and railways, among others — gives China another long-term foothold in a nation's economy and trade. Environmental groups warn that by turning a free-flowing river into a
series of reservoirs the upstream Lao and Cambodia dams controlled by China and Chinese hydropower dams could wipe out the Mekong's two largest freshwater
species: the giant catfish and the giant pangasius.
Farmers in the river basin, Asia's rice bowl, produce enough rice to feed 300
million people per year. The basin also boasts the world's largest inland fishery, accounting for an estimated 25 percent of the global freshwater catch. China's maintenance work on its Jinghong Dam resulted in the release of torrents of water. The resulting floods in Thailand
and Laos destroyed crops and disrupted fish, damaging local people's livelihoods. With water flows shifting as new dams start their turbines, fishers, farmers and local ecosystems are
suffering. Experts worry that the river's last days "as a healthy ecosystem" are gone, an entirely manmade crisis caused by excessively Chinese-built cascading dams.
The Mekong River and its biodiversity-rich tributaries — the lifeline for more than 60 million people in Southeast Asia — dropped to their lowest levels, a section of the river has changed from muddy brown to sky blue, fish supplies are scarce, rice cannot be planted on dried-up banks
starved of nutrients. Entire ecosystems are being collapsing because of China's ill-planned water management schemes and hydropower dams in the river basin.
As of 2013, Russia possessed an estimated 8,500 total nuclear warheads of which 1,800 were strategically operational, and the United States
had an estimated total 7,700 nuclear warheads of which 1,950 were strategically operational. At the peak of the arsenal in 1988, Russia possessed around 45,000 nuclear weapons in its stockpile, roughly 13,000 more than
the United States arsenal, the second largest in the world, which peaked in 1966.
The Manhattan Project (1942-1946) led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada,
was a research and development project that made the first atomic bombs during World War II. Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer
was the scientific director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory that designed the actual bombs. As a result, the first nuclear device ever detonated was an implosion-type bomb at the Trinity test,
conducted at New Mexico's Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range on 16 July 1945, and the production of "Little Boy", a gun-type weapon, and "Fat Man",
an implosion-type weapon. On 6 August 1945, the "Little Boy" was detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, on 9 August,
the "Fat Man" was exploded over the Japanese city of Nagasaki. These two bombings resulted in the deaths of approximately 200,000 people including acute injuries sustained from the explosions. On August 15, 1945
Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan to the Allies.
A nuclear weapon is an powerfully explosive device that possess enormous destructive power derived from nuclear reactions, either fission
or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission ("atomic") bomb test released
the same amount of energy as approximately 20,000 tons of TNT. The first thermonuclear ("hydrogen") bomb test released the same amount of energy as approximately 10,000,000 tons of TNT.
As of September 2013, the United States has officially recognized 32 Broken Arrow incidents, which refer to accidental events that involve nuclear weapons, warheads or components, but do not create the risk of nuclear war. Some of these events include:
The European Union - often known as the EU - is an economic and political partnership involving 28 European countries;
the EU has its own currency, the euro, which is used by 19 of the member countries; on June 23, 2016 the United Kingdomhas voted to leave the EU.
An international tribunal in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines in a maritime dispute July 12, 2016, concluding China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to the bulk of the South China Sea.
The Tribunal’s award is highly favorable to the Philippines, ruling that China’s nine-dash line claim and accompanying claims to historic rights have no validity under international law; that no feature in the Spratly Islands, including Taiwan-occupied Itu Aba (or Taiping Island),
is an island under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS); and that the behavior of Chinese ships physically obstructing Philippine vessels is unlawful.
The ruling doesn't just affect China and the Philippines, but other countries, such as Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia, that have competing claims with the nation over large areas of the sea.
China claims some 90 percent of the South China Sea, and the country is developing islands and reefs for military, as well as civilian purposes in a threat to stability.
On July 12, 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague will rule on a case brought by the Philippines against China over its territorial claims and actions across the disputed waters and vital global trade route. U.S. warns China against provocations once court rules on sea claims.
"If (Wisconsin Governor) Scott Walker thinks that it's appropriate to compare working people speaking up for their rights to brutal terrorists, then he is even less qualified to be president than I thought. Maybe he should go back to punting," -
DNC spokesman Mo Elleithee responded to Scott Walker who compared liberal protestors to terrorists.
“To compare the hundreds of thousands of teachers, students, grandmothers, veterans, correctional officers, nurses and all the workers who came out to peacefully protest and stand together for their rights as Americans to ISIS terrorists is disgusting and unacceptable,” Wisconsin AFL-CIO President Phil Neuenfeldt responded to
(Wisconsin Governor) Scott Walker who says he can take on ISIS because he took on Labor Unions
"We in Congress stand by Israel. In Congress, we speak with one voice on the subject of Israel." -- Rep. Nancy Pelosi.
"There is nothing more painful to me at this stage of my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery - then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved. "(The Rev. Jesse Jackson, speaking at the PUSH convention in 1993.)
"When I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."
(Juan Williams, on Bill O'Reilly's show, Fox News, 10/16/2010 - National Public Radio(NPR) fired Juan Williams for expressing his feeling, and said that he should have kept his feeling about
Muslims between himself and "his psychiatrist or his publicist".)
Anybody can become angry--that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way--that is not
within everybody's power and is not easy." (Aristotle)
"I have no enemies, and no hatred. I firmly believe that China's political progress will never stop, and I'm full of optimistic expectations of freedom coming to China in the future. Because no force can block the human desire for freedom, China will eventually become a country of the rule of law, in which human
rights are supreme." (Liu Xiaobo's "final statement", written two days before he was sentenced to 11 years last December (2009) for "inciting subversion". - He was
awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.)
"And we need to recognize that the only way that America can lose the war on terror is if we defeat ourselves." (President
George Bush's Speech at the U.S. Air Force Academy Graduation, 5/28/2008).
"I tried to walk a line between acting lawfully and testifying falsely, but I now realize that I did not fully accomplish that goal." (Bill Clinton, 1998).
"The only thing they (the English) have ever done for European agriculture is mad cow disease." (French President Jacques Chirac)
"France is doing everything it can, but the problem is that it is impossible to stop Bush from pursuing his logic of war to the end." (French President Jacques Chirac).
"Many African leaders refuse to send their troops on peace keeping missions abroad because they probably need their armies to intimidate their own populations. "(Kofi Annan)
"There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires." (Nelson Mandela)
"I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight,
and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together." (Martin Luther King's Speech "I Have a Dream" - Address at March on Washington, August 28, 1963. Washington, DC.)
"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." (Ronald Reagan, 1982).
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies." (Julius
Henry/Groucho Marx).
"Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains." (Winston Churchill)
"The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evil. (Albert Einstein, 1949)
Abraham Lincoln - The 16th U.S. President successfully led the country through its greatest internal crisis, the American Civil
War, preserving the Union, ending slavery, and rededicating the nation to nationalism, equal rights, liberty, and democracy.
Bill Clinton - The 42nd U.S. President is remembered for more than just his presidential skills. Clinton presided over the continuation of an economic expansion that would later
become the longest period of peace-time economic expansion in American history. He left office with the highest end-of-office approval rating of any U.S. president since World War II.
Fidel Castro - Cuban leader and Communism supporter held power longer than any national leader other than Queen Elizabeth. His
personal control over a Communist revolution made him perhaps the most important leader in Latin America since its 19th century wars of independence.
Jacques Chirac - The second-longest serving President of France (1995 to 2007), is nicknamed 'Le Worm' by the British Sun newspaper and mocked remorselessly for his opinions and alleged corruptness.
He is remembered as the president who successfully made well-known policies, including lower tax rates, the removal of price controls, strong punishment for crime and terrorism, and business privatization in France.
Kofi Annan - A Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 2006. Annan and the United Nations were the co-recipients of the
2001 Nobel Peace Prize for his founding the Global AIDS and Health Fund to support developing countries in their struggle to care for their people.
Tony Blair - The United Kingdom Labour Party's longest-serving Prime Minister (5/1997 - 6/2007) will be remembered as the PM who strongly supported United States foreign policy, notably by participating in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Blair raised taxes, introduced significant constitutional reforms, promoted new rights for gay people, and signed treaties integrating Britain more closely with the EU.
Margaret Thatcher - The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990. She is remembered as the PM with political philosophy and economic policies
emphasized deregulation, particularly of the financial sector, flexible labor markets, and the selling off and closing down of state owned companies and withdrawing subsidy to others.
Nelson Mandela - A famous global figure and African leader who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist and served 27 years in prison. He has received more than 250 awards over four decades, including the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize.
