The Full Belmonte, 12/7/2023
“Israel has accused the U.N. of being slow to respond to and condemn allegations of sexual violence against women on Oct. 7 by Hamas fighters. Israel says it collected more than 1,500 eyewitness accounts of rape or evidence of sexual violence from Hamas attacks. Hamas denies its fighters were involved in sexual violence.
An Israeli police officer and rescue workers shared testimonywith the U.N. on Monday. U.N. Women, the branch that focuses on women's issues, said it was deeply shocked by the accounts and though U.N. procedures can appear slow-moving, it has been closely following reports, NPR's Michele Kelemen says.” [NPR]
Foreign aid
“A partisan clash between Senate Republicans and Democrats over border policy continues to threaten the effort to send desperately needed aid to Israel and Ukraine. Republicans blocked foreign aid from advancing Wednesday evening in protest over the package's lack of changes to US border and immigration policy. The procedural vote on the Senate floor was 49 to 51, falling short of the 60-vote threshold needed to proceed. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday represented a ‘sad night’ after the failed vote, but emphasized that Democrats ‘remain committed to working very hard to find a solution to this impasse.’” [CNN]
Candidates during a Republican presidential primary debate hosted by NewsNation in Tuscaloosa, Ala. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
POLITICS
GOP presidential hopefuls target Nikki Haley more than Trump, and other key moments from the debate
“With the Iowa caucuses rapidly approaching, four Republican presidential candidates were given several opportunities Wednesday to criticize former President Donald Trump, who was absent from the debate again. But they mostly targeted each other, with former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley taking the brunt of the attacks. Read more.
Key moments:
Responses to Trump: As has been the pattern, Trump was ignored during much of the debate. There was one exception in the second hour, when moderators asked onetime New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie about the former President. Christie tore into Trump, drawing boos from the University of Alabama crowd. He also challenged Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to answer directly if he believed Trump was fit to be president again. By the end, moderators asked candidates which previous president inspired them. No one named Trump.
Haley under attack: The focus on Haley reflected how other candidates perceive her as a threat to their chances of taking on Trump directly. DeSantis accused Haley of backing down from media criticism and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy suggested she was too close to corporate interests as she gets new attention from donors. He touted his own willingness to pick high-profile fights with his critics and went after Haley just moments into the debate, highlighting the rivalry between the two.
Bizarro primary gets more bizarre: For the past seven months, the political world has watched several Republican politicians insist they will become the next president while Trump leaves them in the dust. It’s been hard to escape that upside-down feeling as, every month, there’s another debate that Trump skips and the trajectory of the race feels relatively unchanged.” [AP News]
Vegas shooter who killed 3 was a professor who recently applied for a job at UNLV, AP source says
“Terrified students and professors cowered in classrooms and dorms as a gunman roamed the floors of a University of Nevada, Las Vegas building, killing three people and critically wounding a fourth before dying in a shootout with police. The gunman in Wednesday’s shooting was a professor who had unsuccessfully sought a job at the school, a law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the investigation told The Associated Press. Read more.
Recent developments:
The attacker previously worked at East Carolina University in North Carolina, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to release the information publicly.
The attack was the worst shooting in the city since October 2017, when a gunman killed 60 people and wounded over 400 from a room at Mandalay Bay casino on the Las Vegas Strip only a couple miles from the UNLV campus.
Lessons learned from that shooting — the deadliest in modern U.S. history — helped authorities to work ‘seamlessly’ in reacting to the UNLV attack, Sheriff Kevin McMahill said at a news conference.” [AP News]
Former House speaker Kevin McCarthy is retiring from Congress.
“Why? He wants to ‘serve America in new ways,’ he said yesterday. The California Republican was ousted as speaker in October after a revolt by hard-right members.
What now? He’ll leave office at the end of the month. But a special election to fill his seat may not happen until summer, narrowing the House Republican majority until then.
In the Senate: Republicans yesterday blocked a vote to advance a national security bill that includes billions of dollars in Ukraine aid.
Read this story at Washington Post
Six pro-Trump electors were charged in Nevada yesterday.
“What they’re accused of: Claiming to be presidential electors in 2020 and submitting certificates to Congress falsely stating that Trump won the election in Nevada.
Zooming out: Nevada is the third state after Georgia and Michiganto indict pro-Trump electors. Wisconsin electors withdrew their false claims in a settlement yesterday.
In other Trump news: The former president has been criticized this week for saying he would be a ‘dictator’ only on ‘Day 1’ of a second term.
Read this story at Washington Post
WORLD NEWS
Who are the Houthis and why hasn’t the US retaliated for their attacks on ships in the Middle East?
“Iranian-backed Houthis have sharply escalated their attacks against ships as they sail toward the narrow Bab el-Mandeb Strait. U.S. Navy ships have shot down an array of drones headed their way and believed to have been launched by the militant group from Yemen. But so far, the U.S. has avoided military retaliation — a marked difference from its multiple strikes against Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria. Read more.
Why this matters:
The Houthis have sporadically targeted ships in the region over time, but the attacks have increased since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas and spiked after an explosion Oct. 17 at a hospital in Gaza killed and injured many. Houthi leaders have insisted Israel is their target.
No one has been reported hurt in the Houthi incidents, although the commercial ships suffered some damage. U.S. officials argue that the Houthis haven’t technically targeted U.S. vessels or forces — a subtlety that Navy ship captains watching the incoming drones may question.
While the U.S. has carried out airstrikes on Iranian-back militias in Iraq and Syria that have targeted American troops in 77 different attacks since Oct. 17, the military has not yet retaliated against the Houthis. The reluctance reflects political sensitivities and stems largely from broader Biden administration concerns about upending a shaky truce in Yemen and triggering a wider conflict in the region.” [AP News]
Israel
“The Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza will open today for dozens of foreign nationals and dual citizens to exit the war-torn strip, according to Egyptian authorities. More than 60 US citizens are among the dozens of foreign nationals set to leave, alongside nationals of Romania, the United Kingdom, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Rafah is the only border crossing in Gaza not controlled by Israel and the last remaining outlet for supplies. It has been a vital lifeline for aid to enter the enclave and for people to escape the fighting since Israel's war with Hamas began in October.” [CNN]
Myanmar’s junta may be on the verge of ‘collapse’
A fighter of the Ta'ang National Liberation Army stands guard in the town of Namhkam in northern Shan state Nov. 9. (Mai Nyi/AFP/Getty Images)
“For close to three years, Myanmar’s junta has held down the fort. It interrupted the country’s fledgling, imperfect exercise in democracy with its Feb. 1, 2021, coup that threw out a civilian-led government and saw the detention of myriad elected leaders, including Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. It withstood the popular pro-democracy uprising that followed, gunning down nonviolent protesters and jailing activists, artists and other dissidents. It shrugged off international censure and opprobrium, long-accustomed to operating on the world stage as a pariah. And it settled in for a multi-front civil war against an array of rebel outfits, from ragtag revolutionaries to the entrenched and well-equipped ethnic armies that have operated for decades in the country’s restive highlands.
For a time, the junta seemed to be keeping threats to its primacy at bay. It adopted brutal tactics, including the indiscriminate bombing of villages full of civilians, that helped contribute to nearly 2 million people being displaced. But it seems the generals are now reeling in the face of an organized offensive by a coalition of rebel factions that’s inspired fresh campaigns by other groups, all of whom sense the tide of battle turning.
On Oct. 27, an alliance of three ethnic armed organizations, dubbed the ‘Three Brotherhood Alliance,’ launched a surprise campaign that overwhelmed the junta’s forces across a swathe of Myanmar’s northern borderlands. ‘In the span of 10 days, the Three Brotherhood Alliance said it had captured more than 100 military outposts and seized control over several major highways and border crossings, which is expected to hurt the junta financially,’ my colleague Rebecca Tan reported a month ago. ‘Photos and videos posted on social media show rebel soldiers marching triumphantly through townships and posing in front of weapons reportedly taken from military battalions.’
The junta’s opponents, within and outside the country, see a crucial opportunity. ‘The morale of the military junta and the soldiers is at its lowest in history because they are losing their rationale [for governing],’ Zin Mar Aung, shadow foreign minister of the opposition National Unity Government, told Nikkei Asia this week. ‘We are receiving many defectors and most of the military camps are ready to surrender.’ She added that ‘the military is getting ready to dissolve by itself’ and could be ‘ready to collapse.’
That’s a bold claim, especially given the military’s long history of clinging to power in Myanmar. But the pressures are clearly mounting on junta leader Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, who on Monday urged the ethnic armed organizations to ‘stop being foolish’ and resolve their differences with the central government ‘politically’ — an overture dressed up in tough rhetoric that analysts suggest reveals the regime’s growing weakness. It’s losing ground, troops and military materiel by the day.
‘The Tatmadaw appears overstretched,’ Rahman Yaacob of Australia’s Lowy Institute think tank wrote this week. ‘Besides engaging the rebels, the junta has to contend with anti-junta forces in areas under its control, demonstrated by the reported assassination of one of the junta’s cronies in Yangon.’
Tan, my colleague, recently reported from the front lines among the Karen National Union, one of Myanmar’s most powerful ethnic armies. She pointed to how these militias, once peripheral both geographically and politically in Myanmar’s fractious scene, now find themselves as key drivers of the resistance to the junta. Some are even drilling and arming dissidents from the majority ethnic Bamar population.
‘This combination of newer, pro-democracy insurgents and older, battle-hardened rebels has not occurred on this scale before in Myanmar and it has posed a potent challenge to the military,’ Tan wrote. ‘In the heavily contested regions of Sagaing and Magway, analysts said, the most successful insurgents have been trained by ethnic rebel groups.’
Experts are urging the Biden administration and other international actors to reckon with what may come. Analysts forecast a potential thinning out of the military’s ranks, a retreat from its positions outside a major urban centers, a drying up of its funds and even the possibility of an internal putsch that sidelines the current junta leadership.
‘It’s time for outsiders to recognize that the Myanmar military is losing strength fast, and an internal collapse—or further major breakthroughs by the opposition forces—could lead to a situation in which the military disintegrates, as has happened in many other countries,’ Joshua Kurlantzick of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote.
‘But such a collapse, if not handled properly by both Burmese leaders in the exiled National Unity Government (NUG) and the leading, powerful ethnic militias, could also lead the country to disintegrate into a series of groups, lacking a common enemy, who could easily turn their guns on each other, creating total bloody chaos and completely gutting the remainder of the Myanmar state,’ he added.
To avoid that outcome, advised The Washington Post’s editorial board, ‘the United States should promote and prepare the National Unity Government, starting serious talks with representatives now. Officials with the group say they want a future Myanmar to be democratic and federal, recognizing the ethnic groups and guaranteeing minority rights. They need to be held to those commitments when crafting a new constitution, since they have the only way to stabilize Myanmar.’
On the ground, the NUG’s reach may be limited, or at least circumscribed by the imperatives of the alphabet soup of armed factions operating in across Myanmar’s ethnic-minority borderlands. The Three Brotherhood Alliance is a case in point — comprising a bloc of armies that haven’t necessarily allied with the NUG and have long consolidated their own fiefdoms, some built on criminal operations. The alliance probably embarked on its offensive with the tacit blessing of China, which has a complicated relationship with Myanmar’s junta but also considerable influence over the ethnic militias in northern Myanmar.
Beijing most recently wanted to see action against gangs conducting cyberscams against Chinese citizens from dens that sit across the border in Myanmar. The Three Brotherhood Alliance said squashing these syndicates was one of the goals of its offensive.
China ‘wields tremendous influence over key opposition actors in Myanmar, and could choose to continue complicating the efforts to achieve a more unified front against the regime,’ noted a recent policy brief from the International Institute for Strategic Studies.” [Washington Post]
An mpox surge in Congo is worrying health experts.
“What is mpox? The virus, renamed from monkeypox, causes painful lesions. Last year, a global outbreak spread among gay men largely through sexual activity.
The latest: Scientists identified sexual transmission of a type of mpox that is linked to more fatalities. It has raised concerns of another global outbreak with more deaths.”
Read this story at Washington Post
Scientists found a better way to grind coffee.
“How? Adding a spritz of water to beans before grinding reduces static in the grounds, a new paper said. That means fewer clumps and less mess clinging to the grinder.
And that’s not all: The method also leads to a more consistent, stronger-tasting shot of espresso. As one scientist said: ‘You get more coffee out of your coffee.’
Read this story at Washington Post
Taylor Swift was named Time magazine’s person of the year yesterday.
Why? It caps a phenomenal year for the singer-songwriter. She dominated the music charts, the movie industry and the live concert scene — adding billions to the U.S. economy.
Her competition: Time picked Swift over a shortlist of candidatesincluding Barbie, Britain’s King Charles III and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Read this story at Washington Post
Jim McIsaac/Getty Images
Juan Soto is a Yankee
“The trade finally went through. Late last night, after days of hammering out details — and plenty of public reports on the progress — the San Diego Padres traded superstar outfielder Juan Soto to the New York Yankees. The deal ends a strange chapter of Soto’s career and makes New York’s lineup arguably the scariest in baseball.
Two things:
The Yankees, despite having power bats throughout the lineup already, were a putrid offensive team last year.Soto instantly changes that. He is as close to a perfect hitter as we have in baseball today, a mix of power and instinct that makes him lethal. If he’s not thwacking an extra-base hit, he’s walking. The Yankees need that.
New York gave up some decently promising young pitchers and a veteran catcher, but nothing of extreme value. For as much as the Yankees needed this trade, San Diego needed to jettison Soto’s salary (and possible upcoming free-agent contract). This gives the Padres flexibility.
We’ll have plenty more coverage on the mega-deal in the coming days. For now, the Yankees bask in this transformative coup.
Also, breaking even later last night: Eduardo Rodriguez and the Diamondbacks agreed on a four-year, $80 million deal.” [The Athletic]
How a Jags employee stole $22 million
“There is credit card fraud, and then there is what former Jaguars employee Amit Patel allegedly did with a virtual company credit card. According to a report from The Athletic’s Katie Strang and Kalyn Kahler, Patel is accused of purchasing the following:
A condo in Ponte Vedra, Florida
Multiple vehicles
A $95,000 watch
Lavish trips, including private jets, expensive meals, etc.
Cryptocurrency and NFTs
And more. This was done over a four-year period, from 2019 to 2023, when the Jaguars terminated Patel’s employment. Just a wild story. Read the full report here.” [The Athletic]
$300 million?
“Jayson Stark reports that Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the 25-year-old Japanese hurler yet to throw an MLB pitch, could command a 10-year, $300 million contract in free agency, which would be the second-biggest contract ever given to a pitcher (behind Gerrit Cole's $324 million). This is for a mostly unknown quantity, despite his gaudy NPB stats and clear talent. Many are nonetheless interested, including the Mets, who flew owner Steve Cohen to Japan last week to meet with Yamamoto, league sources told our Will Sammon. The top two free agents available on our Big Board: Shohei Ohtani and Yamamoto.” [The Athletic]