Day One of Trump 47—So Much to Correct; Military Reform Must by High on the List

posted by Bill Wenger at Townhall 

It is increasingly likely that Donald Trump will be No. 47. Likely also that Republicans will have slight but critical margins in votes in Congress.

There is so much to do to quickly right the ship of state and put America back on the Constitutional and logical track to security, prosperity, and justice. In the first 24 hours of the Trump administration, the border will be closed by the exercise of constitutionally mandated executive orders, and fossil fuel production will be liberated, initiating the reversal of the waterfall of the massive deterioration of our economy and the inbred, recessive, destructive, redundant, inefficient and enormously expensive Washington, D.C. administration significantly reduced in numbers employees and unnecessary functions. 

Much more reform must be stated immediately, not the least of which is the total overhaul of our Department of Defense (DoD) from the top down to enable our military to be a viable global deterrent protecting our republic and our citizens again.

I must acknowledge that I have spent considerable time collaborating and discussing much of the following with TH's Senior Columnist, my good friend and battle buddy of 30+ years, COL(Retired) Kurt Schlichter.

Here is what must be done to immediately reform and revitalize our military to include all reserve and National Guard forces:

    1.     Appoint a well-vetted and qualified Secretary of Defense (SecDef). Senator Tom Cotton immediately comes to mind, but other equally qualified candidates exist.


    2.    Fire and reappoint all secretaries of the military branches, including the Chief of Naval Operations.


    3.    Fire and reappoint all senior non-commissioned officers of the services. 


    4.    Two advisory boards of five members for the SecDef will be created and exist as long as the mission of reform requires. 


    1.    A senior general officer, retired, board headed by Gen. Jack Keane will advise the SecDef on personnel to be appointed and promoted to senior leadership positions. To advise on the integration of the three elements of power, Diplomatic, Economic, and Military, and general reform of the military services to focus on and to be capable of the essential, primary mission of warfighting.


    2.    A second advisory board of five retired senior non-commissioned and petty officers will be created to advise on a realistic and expedited plan to train our military forces to be capable of mission accomplishment. This will include a train-the-trainer program to facilitate, throughout the non-commissioned officer corps, the ability and skills to properly train and supervise our service members in the execution of their missions as well as equipment and facilities to include living quarters, military hospitals, and other facilities maintenance to a high standard. 


    3.    Both boards, in concert, will, within 90 days, provide a uniform plan and associated training to reform the personnel evaluation system to uniformly ensure that all promotions and assignments are based on the past performance, education, ethics, and merit of all personnel.


    5.    Call the most senior flag officers and their civilian aids to a meeting to lay down the law to include, but not necessarily limited to the following, for which you have one week to create the orders necessary:


    1.    Return your force focus and ethos to warfighting only. All else supports this mission.


    2.    Create a plan to reduce redundant administration, software, procurement, military base facilities, and housing administration across the DoD.


    3.    Draft a fact-based, realistic worldview National Security Strategy in conjunction with the State Department. This will include the top three essential priorities for maintaining the defense of our republic and world piece in concert with our allies.


    4.    Eliminate any further military teaching of doctrine involving Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, but with logical and realistic compliance with civil rights and equality.


    5.    Create and provide a 90-day implementation schedule of training for all services to teach officers and enlisted to lead from the front for mission accomplishment, personnel training, individually and collectively, maintenance of all equipment and facilities with priority to warfighting equipment.


    6.    Ethics, regulations, and mission-critical requirements will be strictly enforced, with no exceptions. Any violations of these regulations by anyone in the chain of command will be summarily and fully investigated and resolved within a thirty-day window of discovery to resolution. All violators found guilty will be reduced in rank and immediately removed from the service. Those eligible for retirement may or may not have their retirement eliminated depending on the findings of the military disciplinary action—failure is not an option, particularly in matters of warfighting. 


    6.    Physical weight, training standards, and tests will be uniform throughout the services. Service members will be afforded 90 days to comply. Service members will be given two opportunities to test satisfactorily the physical requirements with a 30-day window to correct any deficiencies. No variations or adjustments will be made for age or sex. 


    7.    Overseas deployments of all services will be reviewed within 60 days: The mission, purpose and logic of each overseas commitment of U.S. service members will be reviewed for logic of the defense and diplomatic necessity, the reason for their security mission to continue, the ability to support each mission for security of the forces and military dependents, the interoperability and support of the host country government and military, and the cost and practicality of logistical support as well as the practicality and plan for surge capability when needed.


    8.    DoD service members and civilians compliance:  Even the inimitable Donald Rumsfeld, SecDef twice, could not wrangle the DoD into logical efficiency and compliance with his vision. This will not happen under the DoD reforms by Trump 47. Any service member or DoD civilian found to overtly or covertly resist the mandated essential changes and reforms will be counseled once. The second such violation will result in immediate dismissal and subject to withdrawal of any pension benefits depending on the severity of the offense. The inclusive element in this process will be the subsequent entire elimination of the civil service unions instituted by John F. Kennedy in 1962. This elimination of these unions will further facilitate the 30% to 50% reduction in the size and cost of the grossly bloated and inefficient Washington bureaucracy. This is the subject of another essential OpEd for which space here does not permit elaboration. 

The measures outlined above are the minimum immediate steps to initiate essential reform of our failed and failing military. The nearly simultaneous benefit of these and other critical reforms of DoD will result in a significant increase in the improvement of recruiting and retention of the increasingly small (23% of 17 to 24-year-olds) segment of our population who are eligible, capable, and desirous of serving in our military. 

Similar immediate draconian measures must be taken beginning Day One of Trump 47’s administration to reform our current and failing federal bureaucracy to serve, protect, and defend the citizens of our republic.

X22, And we Know, and more- Oct 20

 

Israel’s Old War Theory

posted by Anthony Matoria at American Thinker 

Israel’s determination in its current conflicts with Hamas and Hezb’allah is vexing to Western political classes.  Whereas Israel asserts that it is attending to its immediate security and long-term survival, Western diplomats and heads of government have their own focus, perceiving that they are engaged in a sophisticated and nuanced Great Game campaign.

One way to think about Israel’s present conflicts — certainly not the exclusive way but a reasonable one, is to consider it as a war between Israel and Iran, with battles in Gaza and Lebanon.  Such consideration suggests two interrelated concepts that hint at the possibilities and perils of the present crisis.

The first such consideration is the Decisive Battle.  Throughout history, many wars ended as the result of a single engagement.  The Battle of Aegospotami ended the Peloponnesian War, the Battle of Zama ended the Second Punic War, the Battle of Tsushima ended the Russo-Japanese War, the battle of Waterloo ended the Napoleonic Wars, etc.  The pre–World War II Japanese war strategy was called Kantai Kessen, which means “decisive naval battle.”

There are some characteristics of decisive battle doctrine that may be useful in analyzing the position in which Israel presently finds itself.  In this regard, the experiences of Republican and Imperial Rome provide useful examples.

During the Second Punic War, the Romans suffered a devastating defeat at Cannae.  That battle, however momentous, was not decisive.  It did not end the war; the decisive Roman victory at Zama did.  Likewise, the Romans, in contending with Cimbric invasions of Roman territory, lost the battles of Noreia and Aurausio, but these were not decisive.  The Roman victory at Vercellae was.  It seems almost trivially obvious in retrospect that one of the things that enabled the expansion and success of ancient Rome was its tendency to avoid decisive defeats, while keenly attentive to opportunities for decisive victories. 

Another important point is that the Battle of Zama, although it ended the Second Punic War, did not prevent the third.  It did, however, establish a peace that lasted 52 years.

Not all wars end with decisive battles.  Belligerents may adopt strategies of attrition or driving an opponent to economic exhaustion.  Negotiated peace appears to be quite common throughout history, even in the absence of a decisive victory for one side or the other.  Whether or not a country pursues a strategy of decisive battle depends on other factors.  In the case of Israel, these may include the erratic support and unreliability of its supposed allies.

The Decisive Battle doctrine appears archaic in modern world politics.  The prevailing view seems to be that wars should not be won, and if it should happen that victory occurs, the modern preference is that the victory be abandoned, often in the most irrational and humiliating way possible.  The underlying reason for this seemingly bizarre situation is, arguably, that globalist ideology as expressed by so-called elites is not to want a hegemon, or even the appearance of one, in areas of the world that are important to world commerce and contain significant resources, particularly hydrocarbons.  They prefer low-level, persistent conflicts among surrogates, because the interests that animate the ideologies are not necessarily national or humanitarian interests, and the process of advancing those interests is not good-faith diplomacy.  Decisive battles are not favored because victory is not.

These circumstances are not novel.  The British, for example, sent a fleet to the Sea of Marmara to dissuade the ascendant Russians from sacking Constantinople during the Russo-Turkish war of 1877.  The intention was to maintain the balance of powers of Eastern Europe, with the arguable result of assisting the ascension of a unified Germany with its subsequent consequences.  Unintended consequences do not respect good intentions or insular interests.  This becomes particularly relevant when, as now, international elites appear to be singularly unimpressive.

What appears to drive present international policy is maintenance of a balance of resentments.  It seems that a narrow, obscure, and parasitic collection of globalist interests prefers policies implemented by perfidy, back-stabbing, alliances of convenience, and pandering to preferred constituencies. 

Maintaining a manageable tension in the Middle East is not the only consideration in international political thinking.  There are also considerations of domestic American politics.  Israel can obviously perceive that over-reliance on American support is liable to provoke an almost existential anxiety every four years, wondering which caricature of the Jewish State will predominate in a given American election cycle.

Israel knows that Iran cannot achieve its professed objectives without the use of proxies and surrogates.  Decisive battles are such because they destroy the ability of an opponent to maintain hostilities, without regard for that opponent’s underlying animus or motivation.  Decisive battles are not symmetrical.  Whether or not a battle is decisive often depends on which side wins.  Had the Romans lost at Zama, the war likely would have continued.  This fact makes the risk/benefit analysis favor decisive battles when victory would be decisive but defeat would not.  Because decisive defeats destroy a combatant’s ability to fight, if Israel were to sustain such a defeat, it would cease to exist.

Given these contingencies, one can see how Israel might perceive that emasculating Iran’s proxies might give it some version of a decisive victory, even if doing so might annoy fickle and inconsistent Western policy-makers.  Israel may believe that negotiation and submitting to diplomatic imperiousness is unlikely to bring a closure to at least this stage of the conflict.  It may be unwilling to endure sporadic atrocities on its soil and citizens to maintain the fiction that international elites care equally about everyone.  It may have decided that the more propitious course is to force a decisive battle, even if the results, like Rome’s victory at Zama, last only a few dozen years.  Perhaps that is why they have undertaken to eradicate the leadership of Iran’s proxies.  It might also explain why they have chosen to do so against the protests of an increasingly feckless international community.

Democrats Are Miserable People (And They Deserve To Be)

posted by Derek Hunter at Townhall 

There is nothing more miserable than a group of liberal Democrats not getting their way. No matter how horrible and insufferable they are when they’re in power, out of it, or not getting their way in, it takes everything up to 11. Usually, that makes watching them a lot of fun. Not because I enjoy watching human suffering but because they’re not really suffering at all; they’re just unable to force people to conform to their will, which makes them crazy. Well, OK, that and the fact that I do enjoy watching liberals suffer, but only because they’re absolutely miserable people.

They deserve it, as does anyone lusting for power so they can impose their will on others against their will. I couldn’t care less if some feckless masochist wants to be dominated by a zeta-male with low T. Try to force it on me, and I’ll feel a hate crime coming on.

Yet, this is the reason the left exists – to judge everyone as unacceptable and force conformity. That’s what makes all those “rebels” in music and movies pimping for Democrats so funny, as the underlying reality of their entire message is obedience. It’s a bit like a prostitute claiming to be a prude – no one is buying it…because so many bought it.

That it works on anyone is a testament to just how horrible the education system has gotten. That people would line up to conform is also a testament to just how weak some people are. 

The left thrives in conformity. What used to be, “celebrated diversity!” is now “CELEBRATE DIVERSITY…OR ELSE!” A significant change. 

Joy, no matter how earnestly Kamala Harris tried to claim she was full of it, nothing about her demonstrated that to people (well, she is, but she’s not full of joy). A scold with a smile is still a scold.

That was way back when things were going well for Kamala Harris. Now that things aren’t, she, her coked-out Muppet running mate, and the entirety of the left-wing industrial complex are slowing getting desperate. And desperate people do even dumber things than they do naturally. 

Donald Trump went to the Al Smith Dinner in New York City last week – a tradition for presidential candidates for decades. Kamala Harris did not because of “scheduling conflicts.” Considering the dinner is an annual tradition, and the date is set a year in advance, it literally sneaks up on no one. You only have a conflict if you want one, especially when you have a plane at your command and the ability to take priority over literally every other aircraft in the sky.

Harris was afraid, as she is simply insufferable on her own. She can’t be funny, she can only laugh. So she sent in a video.

With the entirety of Hollywood at her disposal, the best Kamala’s brain trust could come up with was a second-rate Saturday Night Live character from the mid-90s. She dug up a long-forgotten character because the show hasn’t produced a memorable one in 10 years. 

The skit was as bad as you’d imagine, with the character saying the lines that were supposed to be jokes while Harris looked on uncomfortably. Were she not such a horrible person I might have felt badly for her.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump was funny. It’s a roast, and he roasted people. Chuck Schumer, Tim Walz, Bill DeBlasio, all the rich and powerful people in the room, himself included, and Kamala, of course.  

The miserable left media was apoplectic at Trump’s jokes. OK, they weren’t made that the jokes – they likely didn’t get them, as humorless people usually don’t get jokes, but they were upset by the concept and comparison. Kamala wasn’t funny and Trump was, which makes him more likeable than she is. So they tried to attack.

Headlines declared Trump was mean…at a roast. Even Al Sharpton, one of the biggest frauds in the history of our species, tried to lecture about how inappropriate Trump’s jokes were, calling it “ridiculous. It was offensive and it was way off the mark.” The “reverend” literally caused a riot that led to people’s deaths and he’s the moral compass of the left? 

Well, when you have no morals it makes prefect sense that someone like him would be your compass.

Democrats tried to sell people on the idea that they were the party of joy, that their candidate was the personification of it. Then we watched for a couple of weeks as it all fell apart. Reality has a way of creeping in no matter how hard to try to push it out. 

The public is now seeing these people for the miserable piles of post-digested food particles they are. With only 2 weeks left before Election Day, expect the panic to set in even deeper as Harris insists she wants to be “President for all Americans” while refusing to speak to half, and doing it with all the joy of a funeral. Let’s hope it ends up being theirs. 

CCP Is Impersonating Americans to Influence 2024 Elections

 China is deploying thousands of fake social media profiles to influence the outcome of the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

Harlan Report appeared to be a start-up news program like many others. Its bio on TikTok promised to make American media great again.  “No opinions, just facts,” it said.   Like so many insurgent media profiles, the videos posted by Harlan seemed genuinely aimed at exposing government corruption and pushing back against an otherwise left-wing-dominated mediascape.   That much was clear when a video Harlan shared went viral, earning more than 1.5 million views. It claimed to show President Joe Biden making a sexual remark at the annual NATO Summit in Washington.   But something was off.   The transcript used in the video was wrong, and Biden never said what was claimed.   There were also other red flags.   The owner of the Harlan Report account originally claimed to be a U.S. military veteran who had lost faith in Biden. Soon after, they claimed to be a 29-year-old Trump supporter in New York. Months later, they claimed to be a 31-year-old Republican social media influencer from Florida.   Then, the account’s handle was later changed to “Harlan_RNC,” insinuating an official link to the Republican Party.   But Harlan was neither a legitimate news source nor run by an American citizen.   According to the findings of a report released last month by Graphika, a social network analysis company, Harlan Report was one of thousands of accounts linked to the world’s largest online influence operation.   That operation, dubbed “Spamouflage,” is a state-backed campaign from communist China with links to Chinese law enforcement. Unlike the Harlan Report, most of Spamouflage’s efforts are not focused on targeting American conservatives but on amplifying existing criticisms toward American society and government at large.   There are other accounts that create similar content, but tailored for Democrats, and others that aim to anger and polarize independents, further disenfranchising them from the political process altogether.   Some have impersonated American anti-war activists, sharing memes calling former President Donald Trump a “fraud” and showing him in an orange prison uniform. Others question the legitimacy of Biden’s presidency.   What makes the Harlan Report persona unique is its success in finding a following and its pioneering role in targeting a niche audience the same way any advertiser would.

The TikTok app is displayed on a phone. Harlan Report is a user on TikTok. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Now, security leaders are concerned that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will learn from its successes and continue to deploy Harlan-type social media profiles tailored to impersonate American citizens and exploit Americans’ likes and dislikes at a granular level. It is an issue that the Congressional Select Committee on Strategic Competition with the CCP is aware of and is now pressuring social media companies to take more seriously.   “It’s no surprise the CCP is now using fraudulent social media accounts to target our upcoming elections,” committee chair Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) said in a statement shared with The Epoch Times.   “We encourage social media companies to expose the CCP’s propaganda campaign and take action against CCP bots that are trying to deceive Americans.”   China’s Targeting Tactics   Foreign attempts to influence U.S. elections are nothing new, but their increasing stridency and varying levels of success are.   China, Iran, and Russia are all currently engaged in influence operations aiming to interfere in the 2024 elections, according to a report published in August by cybersecurity company Recorded Future.   That report found that Chinese state-backed actors are “amplifying content highlighting polarizing domestic issues”—including issues related to Black Lives Matter, school campus protests, and U.S. foreign policy toward Israel and Ukraine—to sow discord between Americans.   Moreover, Iranian-backed actors have targeted Trump’s reelection campaign, attempting to gain access to its inner circle.   Russian-backed influence operations, meanwhile, have attempted to discredit the Democratic presidential ticket by spreading fabricated stories and images about Vice President Kamala Harris.   The report found that Chinese influence operations, including Spamouflage, have historically failed to generate traction among American audiences but are now seeing sporadic breakthrough success with viral content.   Those breakthroughs, in large part, are due to the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) and deepfakes, which the operators behind Spamouflage use to play on the likes and dislikes of a target audience.   John Mills, who previously served as the director of cybersecurity policy at the U.S. Defense Department, told The Epoch Times that the CCP is using AI to sort and interpret user data to better exploit users’ fears and desires.   “People don’t understand the immense power of big data, big data analytics, and the AI component that China has mastered and is using on an unbelievable scale,” Mills said.

A specialist creates a demonstration video using artificial intelligence to make digital replicas of people who have died, on his laptop in Jiangyin, Jiangsu Province, China. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

“They [the CCP] are delivering a data stream tailored and customized to that individual, knowing their likes, their dislikes, their trigger points.”   An unclassified memo on election security published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in July found that the Chinese regime “is seeking to expand its ability to collect and monitor data on U.S. social media platforms, probably to better understand—and eventually manipulate—public opinion.”   Mills said that such data would help the CCP to dial in information about social media users’ positive and negative interactions, with which the regime could then create better-tailored and better-concealed influence operations.   Those operations could then attempt to trigger mass distrust or hysteria over real or faked events, which Mills referred to as “tailored mass psychosis.”   “This is psychological operations 101: knowing your target audience, knowing their trigger points, and that’s what they’re doing with Spamouflage on a breathtaking, unbelievable scale and creating these fake accounts,” Mills said.   Last year, Meta, which first characterized Spamouflage as the world’s largest online influence operation, said China created 4,800 fake social media accounts posing as Americans.   In most of those cases, the accounts did not start by spreading fake content. Instead, they reshared posts created by real politicians and news outlets from both liberal and conservative sources to build followings and amplify divisive content.   As those followings grew, the profiles changed, both in who they claimed to be and in the type of content they delivered.   Mills said the technique used to identify and exploit Americans was essentially a new iteration of the same type of profiling that big tech corporations have used for years to track consumer preferences.   “When I’m looking for a trailer hitch [online], that commercial for a trailer hitch follows me wherever I go,” he said... “Now, China has taken what our big tech was doing, but they’re doing it on a much grander scale, with a much more sinister agenda, and without any semblance of bumper cushions or guardrails.” Conflicting Ideas About China’s Goals Thus far, the U.S. government has provided no definitive answer as to what China hopes to gain from its mass influence operation. Moreover, the various government bureaus have appeared to contradict themselves on the question of whether the CCP seeks a specific outcome. The Department of Homeland Security’s 2025 Homeland Threat Assessment, published Oct. 2, anticipated that foreign use of “subversive tactics in an effort to stroke discord and undermine confidence in U.S. domestic institutions” would increase. Recently, officials from the ODNI have delivered statements to the press to assert that Russian cyber actors are attempting to elect Trump and undermine Harris. Yet the ODNI’s most recent election security fact sheet claims that China “probably does not plan to influence the outcome” of the U.S. election. Mills thinks differently and believes that the CCP is “trying to influence the election” to ensure the election of a candidate who would be less effective at countering its quest for global hegemony. “What is the Chinese agenda? I think, as opposed to the Russians, who just want to create hate and discontent writ large ... it is election interference,” he said. One of the ODNI’s reports last year revealed that the CCP was more willing to interfere in U.S. elections now than in previous cycles precisely because it did not believe the Biden administration would retaliate. The report said that CCP officials gave operatives more freedom to interfere in U.S. elections because the regime “believed that Beijing was under less scrutiny ... and because they did not expect the current administration to retaliate as severely as they feared in 2020.” . A U.S. intelligence report last year revealed that the CCP is more willing to interfere in U.S. elections now than in previous cycles. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images ‘No Such Thing as Guardrails’ Just as interpretations of China’s motives have remained murky, so have the various government agencies responsible for defending Americans from such operations, which have largely failed to provide any official guidance for how everyday Americans should identify and respond to such content. In April this year, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) senior adviser Cait Conley said that the agency was ready to help stave off the threat of foreign influence operations, particularly in the 2024 election cycle. “The elections process is the golden thread of American democracy, which is why our foreign adversaries deliberately target our elections infrastructure with their influence operations,” Conley said in a statement. “CISA is committed to doing its part to ensure these officials—and the American public—don’t have to fight this battle alone.” When asked what Americans can do to identify and counter foreign influence operations, CISA declined to comment and instead referred The Epoch Times to the ODNI. The ODNI did not return multiple requests for comment on the matter. When asked what actions the State Department was taking to address foreign influence in U.S. elections, a department spokesperson said that it was “focused on the information environment overseas.” The Epoch Times has also requested comment from the Department of Homeland Security. Graphika, whose report does not offer any suggestions on identifying or countering the content examined, declined to comment. Recorded Future also did not return a request for comment. In a report published in September, however, the company suggested that the response to deepfakes should be left to the entities concerned about reputational damage, whom it encouraged to cooperate with “fact-checkers, social media platforms, and media outlets.” That’s a real problem, given the increasing reach of foreign influence campaigns, which, according to the Recorded Future report, frequently aim to mislead the public and engage in electioneering. Similarly, according to research cited in the same report, most people cannot detect deepfakes and would benefit from guidance on the topic. Indeed, according to research published in the Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice, most people are simply unable to identify deepfake videos of people with whom they are unfamiliar, and nearly 30 percent of people are unable to distinguish deepfakes of people they are familiar with.   Moreover, even if a person has identified a deepfake video for what it is, they may still be influenced by it, particularly if it promotes an extreme belief or action. Research published in the academic journal Computers in Human Behavior found that  “false information can have an effect on people’s political beliefs, even after retraction.” “Even when people are aware that certain information may not be true, it still impacts their beliefs and actions,” the report reads. “In other words, even implausible disinformation can influence political beliefs, partially beyond the awareness of recipients.” The prevalence of deepfakes in foreign influence operations could, therefore, engender a long-term dislike or distrust among American voters for candidates, even after those Americans find out the information was not real. When asked what advice he would give Americans, Mills said: “You should be very, very suspect of anything you see online. “There’s no such thing as guardrails with what China is up to.”

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

Welcome to 

The 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓 

Here’s a place to share cartoons, jokes, music, art, nature, 

man-made wonders, and whatever else you can think of. 

No politics or divisive posts on this thread. 

This feature will appear every day at 1pm mountain time. 

 

Israel to Take Legal Action Against Macron Over Naval Trade Show Ban

Sunday, 20 October 2024 10:29 AM EDT

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on Sunday he had ordered his ministry to start legal proceedings against French President Emmanuel Macron after Paris banned Israeli firms from participating in an upcoming military naval trade show.

The decision to bar Israeli firms is the latest incident in a row fueled by the Macron government's unease over Israel's conduct in the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

Euronaval, organizer of the Nov. 4-7 event in Paris, said in a statement last week that the French government had informed it that Israeli delegations were not allowed to exhibit stands or show equipment, but could attend the trade show. The decision affected seven firms, it said.

"I have instructed the Foreign Ministry to take legal and diplomatic action against French President ... decision to prevent Israeli companies from showcasing their products at the @SalonEuronaval exhibition in Paris next month," Katz said in a statement on social platform X. 

"The boycott of Israeli companies for the second time, or the imposition of unacceptable conditions, are undemocratic measures that are not acceptable between friendly nations. I urge President Macron to cancel them entirely."  

https://www.newsmax.com/world/globaltalk/israel/2024/10/20/id/1184758/