Our Friday News Analysis | What the World Reads Now!

People shop at a grocery store in New York City on March 21, 2024. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

By Jeffrey A. Tucker
The Epoch Times
29 May 2024

Things have gotten strange in the land of shopping. I came across a pack of butter for $8. I was shocked, but then I used my device to check other sources, only to find out it was a reasonable price.

The same happened with some maple syrup. The $20 price tag shocked me, and I thought, “What a ripoff,” until I realized it was being sold at a discount, given the volume.

Not long ago, most shoppers knew whether something was a bargain or too expensive. That intuition developed over decades of relatively stable prices. We assumed it would last forever. Now, it’s gone. We are at a loss when shopping now, not knowing how to compare prices, especially with prices rising in real-time, even as we are out and about.

We are still determining what is too much, a bargain, or how long the prices will last. How do we know if we are making a big mistake by delaying a purchase? What if it goes up another 20 percent next week? It could happen. It could even be worse.

There are strange Weimar vibes in the air. Ridiculous government statistics say the dollar has lost only 20 cents in four years. That makes no sense if you look at pretty much anything you buy. Fast-food burgers have tripled in that time while having shrunk in size.

How much value has the dollar lost in four years? It’s anyone’s guess. Despite what the government claims, 20 cents is too little. It’s closer to 30 cents but might be 50 or more. Whatever it is, it is terrible, and sticker shock worsens by the day.

My friends are now talking about bulk-buying meat from local farmers and ranchers under special buyer-club arrangements not typically advertised on the internet for fear of the insane regulators. You have to know the right person, like a speak-easy beef service. The idea is to snag half a cow or pig and put it in your locking freezer in your garage.

My grandfather had one of these, and so did my father, and we did this very thing growing up. Night after night, Mom would find meat for the next day’s thawing and cooking. I thought it was a bit weird, but it was what we did.

As I entered adulthood, I entered a world of unparalleled prosperity. The economy grew and grew, and the digital age came along, and it seemed like the age of abundance would last forever. I looked back at those freezers as symbols of a poorer time when you couldn’t depend on your local store.

Through the 1990s and following, I believed that a new age had been born. Our market loves us and will always be there for us, providing us with endless quality food at low prices that will consume an ever smaller portion of the household budget—the age of plenty. There was no more need for the ridiculous habits of the past, such as stockpiling meat in deep, hulking freezers in the garage.

And yet here we are. Everyone I know is looking into this. People in apartments are buying smaller models for their smaller spaces and porches. Everyone has become a prepper, particularly as it pertains to meat. We no longer trust that the stores will be there for us. Regardless, prices are rising so fast that it is better to buy at the store and buy in vast bulk to stay ahead.

Yes, it is that bad. But actually, it’s even worse. My parents never considered having a generator in case of brownouts or blackouts. Those can ruin everything because the meat thaws, and you have to hold a neighborhood cookout so as not to let your meat go to waste. That was never much of a threat, or perhaps it happened once in a generation.

These days, most people assume that long periods without power are in the future. We know this because those in power force us into ever-intensifying grid use in ways the system can’t sustain. They will get us all in electric vehicles (EVs) and then shut down the system so that we have electricity rationing.

In that case, a generator and a supply of petrol are essential to fuel it. This is all getting quite alarming, like a slow crawl back to nature. Time was when gardening was a luxury, an indulgence for those interested. Now, people are figuring out ways to raise their food and how to do this in small spaces.

What’s next, foraging? I wrote about that two years ago, but I was being facetious. Now, it seems completely real.

Sure, much of life seems quasi-normal, with people out and about, traveling here and there, going to restaurants, and sharing drinks. But the whole thing is starting to feel like the last days before the apocalypse. The shock of the menu prices is painful, and the bills flowing from one source to another are mounting even as the ability to roll debt from one month to the next is becoming genuinely punishing.

How much longer can people live in practical denial of what’s happening? Perhaps a few months? Maybe years? It’s hard to say. The habits of half a century of seeming prosperity are hard to break, and no one wants to admit the truth that fundamental living standards are plunging fast.

The reliable surveys on real income are released once per year by the Census Bureau, not the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They have so far shown two years of devastating declines. The next one is due in the fall. It will be calamitous but nowhere near the truth. It makes a massive difference if the needed inflation adjustment isn’t 4 or 5 percent but 10 or 15 percent. It’s truly the most bizarre thing. We flatter ourselves that we live in times of knowledge and expertise under a system ruled by science. But what happens when the science is fake, the media lies, the government covers it up, and the academics who know the truth are too fearful of their jobs to state what they know?

That’s essentially where we are.

Public trust, however, is dissipating, if only partially gone. You can’t believe the talking heads when they keep saying that inflation is cooling when you know for sure that it seems to be heating up. Not a day goes by when we are not astonished at what is happening. And it’s not a private enterprise trying to take advantage. No, they are merely trying to survive even as labor costs rise and inputs go through the roof.

It’s even stranger than that. Even as inflation is sweeping through consumer and producer goods and making housing utterly unaffordable for everyone except the affluent and institutional investors, high-rise offices in urban centers were sold in foreclosure for tiny fractions of their value only a few years ago. The demographics are dramatically changing as people leave the cities when possible, move closer to food sources, and prepare for something terrible everyone knows is coming.

Every severe inflation in history has been characterized by a cosmetic increase in wealth coupled with underlying decay. Even the financial companies that seem to be doing well with rising financials face underlying stresses in costs and ever-shrinking profitability in real terms. People dealing with tangible goods and services face something even worse.

Yes, we all want to have hope. We want the politicians to be correct so that they can turn the system around. But it often seems like the system needs to be closer. The decadent waste in public institutions—government, academia, and all state-allied industries—is so vast that fixing it will require far more than a few pieces of patch-it-up legislation.

There’s something in the air, a strange feeling of seething public anger, declining living standards, loss of trust, and an overwhelming bitterness toward the betrayal we’ve all experienced at the hands of all the experts who once earned but then squandered our trust.

What else can we do but shop for freezers, take generator management tutorials, and hang out with friends who have friends with farms and ranches? That suddenly seems like the best hope for the future. Of course, some white knight could come along and smash the Deep State, but it’s better to play it safe and assume that this won’t happen.

Jeffrey A. Tucker is the founder and president of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and ten books in five languages, most recently “Liberty or Lockdown.” He is also the editor of “The Best of Ludwig von Mises.” He writes a daily column on economics for The Epoch Times and speaks widely on economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.

What is the Side of the Story that is Not Yet Decisive? Edited by Abraham A. van Kempen.

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN | HOW WE’VE LOST OUR MOORINGS AS A SOCIETY

By Thomas L. Friedman

Opinion Columnist
New York Times
28 May 2024

The conventional wisdom is that Donald Trump’s trial over his alleged efforts to buy the silence of a porn star on the eve of the 2016 election is the least important of the cases against him. Politically, that may be true. But more than any other case, this one reveals a trend ailing America today: how much we’ve lost our moorings as a society.

How so? The environment offers a good answer. Almost 30 years ago, I visited the Atlantic Forest in Brazil with a team from Conservation International, and its members taught me about all the fantastic functions that mangroves — those thickets of trees that often live underwater along tropical coastlines — perform in nature. Mangroves filter toxins and pollutants through their extensive roots. They provide buffers against giant waves set off by hurricanes and tsunamis, create nurseries for young fish to mature because their cabled roots keep out large predators safely, and help hold the shoreline in place.

One of the saddest things that has happened to America in my lifetime is how much we’ve lost so many of our mangroves. They are endangered everywhere today — but not just in nature.

Our society has also lost many social, normative, and political mangroves that used to filter toxic behaviors, buffer political extremism, nurture healthy communities and trusted institutions for young people to grow up in, and hold our society together.

Read more

AMERICANS SKIPPING MEALS TO COPE WITH RISING COSTS – POLL

A new survey has found that half of US homeowners and renters are struggling to afford their housing payments.

A "for rent" sign is posted last July in Miami, Florida. © Getty Images / Joe Raedle

Edited by Abraham A. van Kempen
30 May 2024

A new poll has revealed that half of Americans are struggling to afford their rising housing costs, and the financial squeeze is so severe for many that over one in five skip meals to get by.

The survey, commissioned by Seattle-based real estate brokerage Redfin and released on Friday, showed that 50% of US homeowners and renters had difficulties making housing payments.

Many respondents said they had to make sacrifices to cope with inflationary pressures. For instance, 22% reported that they had skipped meals, 21% sold some of their belongings, and 37% either worked extra hours or took on additional jobs.

               “Housing has become so financially burdensome in America that some families can no longer afford other essentials, including food and medical care, and have been forced to make major sacrifices, work overtime and ask others for money so they can cover their monthly costs,” said Redfin’s economic research chief, Chen Zhao.

Home prices and rents have risen sharply in many US cities, and mortgage rates remain elevated after reaching a 23-year high last October. Redfin said the typical US household income is about $30,000 a year lower than the level needed to afford a median-priced home.

Nearly 35% of poll respondents said they were taking fewer vacations, or none, to keep up with their housing payments. About 18% borrowed money from friends and family or dipped into their retirement savings. For 16%, the cash crunch was so brutal that they had to delay or forgo needed medical care.

In June 2022, the US inflation rate rose to the highest level in more than 40 years, prompting the Federal Reserve to boost interest rates to tame prices. Inflation has slowed since then, but price growth rose to 3.2% from a year earlier in February, higher than economists expected. The increase dimmed hopes that the US central bank will soon begin lowering interest rates.

Many young Americans have had to give up their apartments and move back in with their parents. A Harris/Bloomberg poll last September found that 45% of 18- to 29-year-olds live at home with their parents or other relatives, the highest level since the 1940s. Most of those had moved back home within the past two years.

ROBERT BRIDGE | WHY SAN FRANCISCO IS DYING AND WHAT IT HAS TO DO WITH GEORGE SOROS

Residents are fleeing the Democratic-controlled city, many heading for Republican lands.

FILE PHOTO: A homeless man sleeps on the sidewalk near the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge © JUSTIN SULLIVAN / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / GETTY IMAGES VIA AFP

Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of 'Midnight in the American Empire,' How Corporations and Their Political Servants are Destroying the American Dream.

Once the calling card of America’s most populous state, San Francisco today is showing the bruises of political mismanagement as residents flee for the emergency exits. Can anything save the famed city of seven hills?

In 1879, the American poet Ina Coolbrith attempted to capture the beauty and grandeur of the fabled US coastal city, which continues to serve as host for thousands of artists, writers, and progressive thinkers, with her poem ‘To San Francisco.’

Fair on your hills, my City,

Fair as the Queen of old,
Supreme in her seven-hilled splendor
You, from your Gate of Gold,
Facing the Orient sunburst,
Swathed in the sunset gleams,
Throned in ultimate glory,
City of mists and dreams!

Coolbrith would most likely be appalled by what has become of her beloved city today: intractable poverty, homelessness, drug abuse, and shuttered storefronts are just some of the problems now plaguing California’s once exquisite cultural gem.

A friend of mine, Mark, who works in San Francisco’s tech industry, described the situation he encounters on his daily bicycle commute.

               “In the past, I’d be able to make the ride into the city in about 20 minutes, but I’m constantly forced to change my route due to the sidewalks being taken over by makeshift shelters and drug addicts,” he said.

His answer surprised me when I asked if he changed his route out of fear.

               “To be honest, the druggies are so out of their minds that they only present a danger to themselves. I avoid the areas where they congregate because passing through these zombie wastelands is just too depressing.”

But there is more to San Fran’s current woes than just tent cities playing host to assorted fentanyl abusers and homeless people, two social ailments in the US that now seem to occur concomitantly. Many long-term locals are forced to give up their beloved city due to high rental costs, runaway inflation, a downturn in the tech industry, big box stores, and small retailers driven out of town by roaming mobs that act with impunity. It is getting so bad that San Francisco may go broke, considering that almost a third of its lucrative commercial property is empty.

The situation should give local leaders tremendous pause, not least California Governor Gavin Newsom. Even the Biden administration is slowly unfurling the white flag of defeat over the trashed landscape. Earlier this month, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) advised its hundreds of federal employees in San Francisco to work from home “for the foreseeable future” due to rampant crime and safety concerns.

               “In light of the conditions at the Federal Building, we recommend that employees maximize telework for the foreseeable future,” the memo warned.

What is doubly embarrassing for the Democratic Party, which essentially controls San Francisco and the majority of prime California voting estates, is that the office complex in question, until recently, was known as the ‘Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building.’ Inside the hollowed-out shell of this 18-story ‘green-building’ disaster is the office of former Speaker Pelosi, manned by five dutiful employees, who said they would hold down the fort and not shift to remote work, in what we can be sure was a personal decision on their part.

“SoMa [‘South of Market,’ where the federal building is located] is one of those places in the city where I have a hard time getting my employees to go to for jobs because they just don’t feel safe going there,” Frank Ma, who works as a security advisor for the city, told the California Globe. “They can park their car in a secure lot, and they still worry it might get broken into.”

While San Francisco’s liberal residents were once willing to blame the surge in crime on overzealous (white) police carrying out too many arrests, the situation is no longer so simple, especially as the evidence of rampant criminal activity is quickly captured by CCTV cameras and citizens armed with smartphones.

So, who’s to blame for San Francisco’s ongoing plight? One needn’t dabble in conspiracy theories to suggest that George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist and financier who has a soft spot in his 93-year-old heart for progressive politicians who promise to go easy on criminals, played a part.

Last year, The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund (LELDF) released a shocking report showing 75 Soros-backed "social justice" prosecutors overseeing half of America’s 50 most populous cities. To put that figure another way, about 1 in 5 Americans are represented by a prosecutor who either received direct financial contributions from Soros or through his vast empire of philanthropic organizations, many of which are exceedingly hard to trace.

The uproar over the findings was enough to start a grassroots movement to recall these Soros-funded district attorneys, which led to a recall campaign against former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin. His replacement was Brooke Jenkins, whose one-year stint in office has seen a closer alignment between the DA’s office and the local police force, which has resulted in a crackdown on drug dealers and other criminals.

“It is not progressive to allow our residents to die out on our streets,” Jenkins said as she expressed her candid views on the Democratic Party’s reputation for leniency against the criminal-minded. “It does not further reform or the reform movement to allow repeat offenders to offend without continuous consequence.”

Despite the much-needed change of the guard, this has not translated into a dramatic difference in crime stats, nor the ghost-town appearance that California’s fourth-largest city has recently acquired. And it seems that the average resident is tired of waiting, as San Francisco ranks among the urban centers witnessing unprecedented declines. From 2020 to 2021, its population dropped to its lowest level since 2010, negating a decade’s worth of population growth in one fell swoop. Many Democratic-controlled cities and states have witnessed a similar decline, notably New York, Washington DC, and Boston.

More problematic, however, at least for the political prospects of the Democrats, is where the average disaffected San Franciscan is escaping. If you guessed a Republican Country, you are right. Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties, where the Republican governor and wannabe Trump terminator Ron DeSantis holds court, saw an enormous surge in the number of S.F. out-migrants, increasing by 120% and 107%, respectively, from the yearly averages over the previous five years.

Commenting on that statistic, my friend, a diehard liberal, could only respond with black humor:

               “The only thing that can save our city now is another earthquake,” referencing the 1906 disaster that left 80% of the city in smoldering ruins.

Hopefully, the situation won’t reach that point before the great city of San Francisco can see the results of the new legal arrangement taking root. This California gem deserves a second chance.

PUTIN WARNS THE WEST ABOUT THE CONSEQUENCES OF LONG-RANGE STRIKES ON RUSSIA

The president has warned that Ukraine won’t be able to make such attacks without direct external assistance.

Russian President Vladimir Putin answers questions from Russian media after a state visit to Uzbekistan on 28 May 2024. © Sputnik / Mikhail Metzel

HomeRussia & FSU

28 May 2024

Kyiv’s Western backers need to understand that long-range strikes on Russian territory using weaponry they have supplied would represent a conflict escalation and lead to “serious consequences,” Russian President Vladimir Putin outlined on Tuesday.

Speaking to reporters at the end of a two-day visit to Uzbekistan, Putin addressed recent Ukrainian demands for NATO to permit the use of its weapons to attack deep inside Russia as well as comments by the US-led bloc’s head, Jens Stoltenberg, appearing to endorse the tactic.

               “To be honest, I don’t know what the NATO secretary-general is saying,” Putin told reporters, adding that Stoltenberg “did not have any dementia” when he worked constructively with Russia as the prime minister of Norway (2005-2013).

This constant escalation can lead to severe consequences. If these serious consequences occur in Europe, how will the US behave, considering our parity in strategic weapons? Hard to say. Do they want global conflict?

Putin explained that long-range precision strikes require space reconnaissance assets – which Kyiv does not have, but the US does – and that this targeting is already done by “highly qualified specialists” from the West, without Ukrainian participation.

“So, these representatives of NATO countries, especially in Europe, especially in small countries, must be aware of what they are playing with,” the Russian president said, noting that many of these countries have “a small territory and a very dense population.”

Putin told reporters that their colleagues in the West are ignoring Ukrainian attacks on Belgorod and other Russian regions along the border and only focusing on the Russian advance on Kharkiv.

               “What caused this? They did, with their own hands. Well, then, they will reap what they have sown. The same thing can happen if long-range precision weapons are used,” the Russian president added.

Asked if Russia was refusing to negotiate with Ukraine, Putin told reporters that such claims by the West were baffling.

“We don’t refuse!” he said. “I’ve said it a thousand times. It’s like they don’t have ears!”

Putin explained that the Ukrainian side initialed an agreement with Russia in March 2022, then publicly reneged and refused to negotiate further. He described Kyiv’s current “peace conference” effort in Switzerland as an attempt to get some international buy-in for its entirely unrealistic “peace platform,” which isn’t working out.

STRICT SEPARATION IS NOT THE ANSWER FOR PALESTINE AND ISRAEL

As the bombs continue to fall and the propaganda war rages, it is hard to imagine any way out of the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy. But that could reflect our failure to imagine two states whose purpose is to bring the two people closer, not to create two apartheid states where there is now one.

Amir Levy/Getty Images

By Yanis Varoufakis

Project Syndicate, a George Soros Publication
29 May 2024

ATHENS – Recognizing a Palestinian state is the moral thing to do and the only way to achieve a just peace in the Middle East. To convince the next Israeli government that Palestinians must have full political rights, a fresh wave of countries extending formal recognition – as Spain, Ireland, and Norway have just done – is necessary.

But, to prevent this wave from petering out in a puddle of performative symbolism, supporters must emphasize that the Palestinian state can be neither a mirror image of Israel nor a means of strictly separating Jews from Palestinians.

Set aside the sad fact that no Israeli government in sight is willing to discuss a just peace and that Palestinians have no democratically legitimized leadership to represent them. Let us imagine that such a dialogue was about to commence. What principles must it embody to inspire confidence in a just outcome for all – irrespective of ethnicity, religion, and language – from the (Jordan) river to the (Mediterranean) sea?

The reason why Greater Israel has always been incompatible with justice is that Israel denies its Palestinian citizens – 20% of the total – full equality to maintain itself as an exclusionary Jewish (not just Israeli) state. Simply establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel would do nothing to address this.

And what would happen to the Jews who have settled (illegally) in the West Bank and East Jerusalem if Palestine were established as an exclusionary Palestinian Arab state? One idea being considered is a population swap, reminiscent of the tragic exchange of ethnic Greeks and Turks after the 1919-22 war.

Have we lost our minds? A century after that act of ethnic cleansing, descendants of those exchanged people are still mourning their lost homeland. Do we want to promote a similar catastrophe, another mass uprooting, in the name of peace and justice?

Just imagine a Palestinian state emulating the Israeli policy of building closed roads to connect non-contiguous communities (for example, a closed highway linking the West Bank and Gaza) or exclusively Palestinian roads connecting Palestinian communities in Israel with the new Palestinian state. The closed roads that Israel has built to connect Jewish communities function as walls that inevitably fence in Palestinians. Undoubtedly, the solution cannot be to create new closed roads that connect Palestinians and fence in Jews.

What about the idea that Israeli settlers could choose to remain as dual citizens under a Palestinian state, while Israel’s Palestinian citizens would also acquire dual citizenship? This makes good sense, but how could Jews in Palestine and Palestinians in Israel be confident that they will not be treated as an underclass? How, for example, could each state’s security forces be prevented from treating the minority as a problem to be contained or eliminated in the future? In short, how do we avoid replacing one apartheid state with two such states sitting side by side?

Many Palestinians, moved by their long subjugation, will be tempted to demand that every Jewish settler be expelled from the Palestinian state. Others, for whom statehood is the top priority, may be happy with a two-apartheid-state solution. But are such goals worth fighting for? Can they generate the global support Palestinians need to achieve a just peace?

Suppose Palestinians’ goal was an exclusionary Palestinian state. In that case, I doubt that South Africa, whose lawyers – reared on the humanist principles of Nelson Mandela – so eloquently prosecuted Israel at The Hague, would be on board. The vision inspiring pro-Palestinian student protests in the United States, Norway, Spain, Ireland, and many other European countries is one of equal rights, not of a symmetrical right to impose apartheid.

The principle of separating Jews from Palestinians is incompatible with human rights because it implies mass transfer or being treated as an underclass. Both sides, therefore, must abandon the demand for an exclusionary state (Jewish or Palestinian-Arab).

This does not mean that Jewish life must be diminished in any way or that Palestinians must renounce their aspirations for statehood. What it does mean is that the goal must be porous Israeli and Palestinian states that guarantee self-determination for both peoples. Confederal institutions would need to safeguard equal rights to work well. Last but certainly not least, such an arrangement would require full dual citizenship. This solution would ensure the human rights that the Global South (ably represented today by South African lawyers) demands and that the Global North pretends to revere.

How do we get there? There may be truth in the familiar Irish quip – “I wouldn’t start from here” – but I think the answer has already been provided by the Jews, Muslims, and others campaigning simultaneously against anti-Semitism and genocide. Israelis and Palestinians must mutually acknowledge (perhaps via a South African-like Truth and Reconciliation Commission) three types of pain: the pain Europe inflicted on Jews for centuries, the pain Israel has been inflicting on Palestinians for eight decades, and the pain Palestinians and Jews have been trading in the poisonous shadow of war and resistance.

As the bombs continue to fall and the propaganda war rages, it is hard to imagine any way out of the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy. However, that could reflect our failure to imagine two states that aim to bring the two people closer, not to ensure their strict separation.

Yanis Varoufakis, a former finance minister of Greece, is leader of the MERA25 party and Professor of Economics at the University of Athens.

SEYMOUR HERSH | SNOW, FOLLOWED BY BOYS ON SLEDS

On presidential delusions, exaggerations, and lies

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery in observance of Memorial Day. / Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images.

By Seymour Hersh

Substack.com
30 May 2024

I’ve written millions of words for newspapers and magazines and eleven books, and I’ve learned to love the simplicity and directness of the written word.

I often tell the probably apocryphal anecdote about the young wannabe reporter in the 1920s at one of the many daily newspapers that flourished then in New York City. Most reporters started in those days as copyboys just out of high school. After a few months on the job, they would beg to be allowed to write for the paper. One editor finally gave in and assigned a very persistent eighteen-year-old to do the short weather summary that was a staple at the top of the front page. He wrote: “Snow, followed by little boys on sleds.” In telling me, the teenager went on to become a famed columnist.

We’ve had modern presidents who used words to distort the truth about foreign wars: Lyndon Johnson was the master of such lies as he kept on bombing during the Vietnam War; Richard Nixon instead lied about his personal and political corruption until he was forced to resign his office. I wrote last week about President Joe Biden’s tortuous use of words in his March 7 State of the Union address in which he said [Editor: beguiled the American people with]:

               “Putin of Russia is on the march, invading Ukraine and sowing chaos throughout Europe and beyond. If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you, he will not. . . . But now assistance to Ukraine is being blocked by those who want us to walk away from our leadership in the world.”

As the president spoke, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in the fifth month of an intensive air and ground war in Gaza that he initially assured his people would be a quick war to rid Gaza of its Hamas. (One usually well-informed Israeli told me then that he believed the main fighting would be over by the end of January.) Biden’s support for the war will damage his prospects for re-election. Gaza is no longer habitable, and tens of thousands of dead Gazans and many more wounded, starving, and ridden by illness from lack of housing and sanitary living conditions are seen, fairly or not, as Biden’s victims by many Americans.

The Democratic Party leaders have been reduced to praying for rain after initially anticipating Donald Trump's conviction in one of his many criminal court cases before the election this November. The hope now, primarily if Trump is found guilty of state charges in New York, seems to be that the fear of another Trump presidency will yield a robust turnout for an aging and diminished 81-year-old president who is faring poorly in polls. The party leaders might as well be hoping for snow, followed by little boys on sleds.

In recent days, all of this has had me returning to Biden’s State of the Union address, which is another example of dystopian language unmatched by subsequent actions. The issue was a series of drone and missile attacks beginning in October by Houthis in Yemen on international shipping passing through the Red Sea. The Houthis, who fought a brutal civil war to gain dominance in the south of Yemen, stated that their attacks were in support of Hamas in Gaza and would continue until there was a ceasefire there.

In late December, Biden, then on vacation in the Caribbean, ordered an all-out attack on the Houthi missile sites throughout the area. The Eisenhower, an American aircraft carrier, was sent to the region to coordinate a US and UK air-and-sea response that soon proved incapable of finding and destroying the hidden missile sites in Yemen. The continuing attacks—one British container ship has been sunk so far—led most shipping companies to avoid the Red Sea and the Suez Canal and instead reroute their boats to go around the Cape of Good Hope off South Africa. The new route took eight to ten more days and much more fuel. It has led to a series of hikes in shipping costs that continue today.

By March, when Biden delivered his speech, very few cargo ships were choosing to cross the Red Sea. At the time, the president and his aides expressed little interest in urging the Israeli government to seek a ceasefire and prisoner exchanges despite the growing domestic concern about the state of the hostages and the international rage at the ongoing slaughter in Gaza.

There was a concern shared by Biden and Democrats and Republicans in Congress, however, about Iran, known to be an ally of the Houthis and assumed to be a continuing source of missiles and other weapons for the war against Western shipping in the Red Sea. The Eisenhower and its support vessels were still stationed in the area. There was no known evidence then or now directly linking the Iranian leadership to the Houthi decision to attack Western shipping in the Red Sea.

In his speech, Biden said: “Creating stability in the Middle East also means containing the threat posed by Iran. That’s why I built a coalition of more than a dozen countries to defend international shipping and freedom of navigation in the Red Sea. I’ve ordered strikes to degrade the Houthi capability and defend US Forces in the region. As Commander in Chief, I will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and military personnel.”

This month, with no ceasefire in Gaza and most American and other international shipping going a long way to the Far East, the Houthis struck a Greek-owned vessel in the Red Sea. No injuries were on board, but the ship reportedly took on water and was in danger of sinking.

I asked James Krane, a Rice University energy studies fellow who has written extensively about the Houthis, why the world does not see the Houthi attacks as a crisis linked in some direct way to Iran as Biden does. Was Biden’s concern tied to a possible gas price rise this summer due to the inevitable rise in the cost of shipping oil?

“I do find it odd that the Houthi attacks aren’t getting all that much attention,” he responded in an email. “But I suppose they are not having that much effect on oil prices and only causing delays in shipping rather than reducing it, and the competing news is probably keeping a lid on it. Biden and company would be much more focused on the Houthis if they saw a threat to summer gasoline prices. And yes, I agree that the easiest way out of this crisis is via a ceasefire in Gaza. The Houthis would lose international sympathy if they didn’t stand down immediately. They’d probably give it a rest.”

I asked a knowledgeable American intelligence official the same question, and he said the Houthis have upgraded their weapons of choice against cargo ships that pass through the Red Sea. “The Houthis now fire ballistic missiles at those vessels,” he said, instead of the “more vulnerable” rockets and drones that were initially used. To combat that upgrade, the US Navy has begun to rely on AWACS, a far more advanced missile and rocket tracking system, to monitor the air space and provide real-time surveillance of Houthi launch sites.

“All in all,” he said of the American Navy’s skillful handling of the Houthi attacks, “nothing special here. Just another day at the office in La La Land.”

BUILDING THE BRIDGE! | A WAY TO GET TO KNOW THE OTHER AND ONE ANOTHER

Making a Difference – The Means, Methods, and Mechanism for Many to Move Mountains

Photo Credit: Abraham A. van Kempen, our home away from home on the Dead Sea

By Abraham A. van Kempen

Senior Editor
Updated 19 January 2024

Those who commit to 'healing our broken humanity' build intercultural bridges to learn to know and understand one another and others. Readers who thumb through the Building the Bridge (BTB) pages are not mindless sheep following other mindless sheep. They THINK. They want to be at the forefront of making a difference. They're in search of the bigger picture to expand their horizons. They don't need BTB or anyone else to confirm their biases.

Making a Difference – The Means, Methods, and Mechanism for Many to Move Mountains

Accurate knowledge promotes understanding, dispels prejudice, and awakens the desire to learn more. Words have an extraordinary power to bring people together, divide them, forge bonds of friendship, or provoke hostility. Modern technology offers unprecedented possibilities for good, fostering harmony and reconciliation. Yet its misuse can do untold harm, leading to misunderstanding, prejudice, and conflict.

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The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of the Building the Bridge Foundation