Netanyahu: "do you condemn Hamas?"
Meloni: "do you celebrate Mussolini?"
Netanyahu: "ye... Wait what. Why would I do that, even if I was a nazi, I'd still have higher standards than to celebrate that useless loser"
Meloni:
Netanyahu: "do you condemn Hamas?"
Ant Financial packaged up and securitized the consumer loans that it gave out and sold the loan-backed securities to investors while taking a slice of the loan payments. In this way, Ant Financial transferred all loan default risks to investors while keeping a slice of the repayment stream. This meant that the incentive for Ant Financial was to create as much loans (risks) as it can since it did not bear any of the downside risks.One good example, and I still do know if it was good or not, was the government taking action against Jack Ma Ant Financial. I would assume a lot of small timers, who had no access credit, who now had access to credit, no longer had access to credit.
Now we can say something that type of lending could cause externalities, or be a threat to the banking system, or being unregulated could be an unfair playing field, but that sounds more like excuses.
To this day, no one can prove conclusively in any way that the restrictions on Ant Financial were good or not.
Who was the state trying to protect in the case of Ant Financial? I don't know.
Pakistan ex-PM Imran Khan sentenced to 10 years jail in state secrets case
Islamabad, Pakistan – A Pakistan court has sentenced former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his close aide, former Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, to 10 years in jail in a case related to the leaking of state secrets.
The special court set up in a prison in Rawalpindi on Tuesday announced the sentence in the so-called cypher case, which pertains to a diplomatic cable that Khan claims proves his allegation that his removal from power in 2022 was a conspiracy.
The court established under the Official Secrets Act found Khan guilty of misusing the confidential cable sent by a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States.
Khan has repeatedly denied the charge, saying the document contained evidence that his removal as prime minister was a plot hatched by his political opponents and the powerful military, with help from the US administration. Washington and the Pakistani army reject the accusation.
Khan was Pakistan’s premier from August 2018 to April 2022 when he lost a vote of confidence in the parliament. He has been in jail since August last year, facing trial in multiple cases.
Trial held in ‘unlawful manner’
The sentencing against the country’s main opposition leader comes about a week before the general elections, scheduled on February 8.
Syed Zulfiqar Bukhari, a spokesperson for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, told Al Jazeera the PTI will challenge the court’s decision.
“This was pretty much a writing on the wall,” he said, adding that the trial was held in an “unlawful manner”.
“Our lawyers were not allowed to represent Imran Khan. They were not even allowed to cross-examine the witnesses. What was unfolding in the court was merely a charade and a sham,” Bukhari said.
It is Khan’s second conviction in less than a year. In August, he was sentenced to three years in a corruption case, which barred him from contesting the national elections.
The vote follows a massive crackdown against the PTI, which saw dozens of its leaders quitting the party and thousands of its members and supporters jailed.
Recently, the party also lost its election symbol – a cricket bat – and had been forced to field its candidates as independents.
But Bukhari said the verdict against Khan and Qureshi will only work in favour of the beleaguered party.
“With the sentence coming at a time when elections are less than 10 days away, it will only motivate our supporters and help them come out in droves. It looks like the authorities want to suppress the PTI and its voter base, but their acts will only drive us to vote in bigger numbers,” he told Al Jazeera.
Political analyst Benazir Shah said it was “clear from the very onset of the court proceedings [against Khan] that the state had little interest in fairly investigating the case, regardless of its serious nature”.
“The state was instead using it as just another means to block Khan from coming to power post the elections,” she told Al Jazeera, adding that it was “deeply troubling” that the trial was “shrouded in secrecy, preventing journalists from covering the proceedings despite court orders of an open trial”.
Lawyer Abdul Moiz Jaferii said the sentencing required there should be a “deliberate and wilful” leaking of state secrets in collusion with an enemy, with the understanding that it would be detrimental to the state.
“I can’t wait to see how the trial court squares this circle. And who the enemy is with which Khan and Qureshi wanted to collude with,” he told Al Jazeera.
Thanks for your post, it was well articulated, and that I appreciate.
State invention to me, in the West, has been totally abused, and it is just to rig the game, to put it mildly.
There is one point, in your post, that was not brought up.
And that is the reason why I am still against state intervention for the most part.
No one really knows anything about the future. No one knows what side effects of a policy would do.
We can talk about these externalities, but that has already been done ages ago. That is straight out of the textbook.
In the real world, state intervention seems brutal.
One good example, and I still do know if it was good or not, was the government taking action against Jack Ma Ant Financial. I would assume a lot of small timers, who had no access credit, who now had access to credit, no longer had access to credit.
Now we can say something that type of lending could cause externalities, or be a threat to the banking system, or being unregulated could be an unfair playing field, but that sounds more like excuses.
To this day, no one can prove conclusively in any way that the restrictions on Ant Financial were good or not.
Who was the state trying to protect in the case of Ant Financial? I don't know.
We heard theoretical answers in the past, but the world is real, a textbook answer does not cut it IMHO.
So, state intervention too many times just seems like heavy handiness of the state for no reason at all, other than being a nanny. To protect ourselves, from ourselves.
That is what I really do not like.
This idea of externalities, and Liberal ideology, has turbo charged the nanny state.
That is a real danger to China I feel.
You just do not want to go down that road. You just don't.
I always felt that the Evergrande guy was a slimey ass guy who's trying to weasel his way out of this mess he caused.Evergrande issued massive amounts of cash dividends to its shareholders when it was already heavily indebted but still had access to credit. The vast majority of Evergrande shares are owned by the founder and his relatives. Since shareholders are not liable when a company goes bankrupt, Evergrande basically scammed creditors by borrowing money and giving it to the founder and his relatives while leaving the liability for the debt with the company.
"Chyna bad and Chyna evil becuz Chyna imprisoned me for spying on Chyna on Chynise soil!!!"
"All of my duties were conducted in full compliance with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the directives covering Canadian foreign service officers and embassy staff," Kovrig wrote.
Biden says he has decided how to respond to Jordan attack
US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that he has decided how to respond to a deadly drone attack on US forces in Jordan. Biden said that he would not seek a “wider war in the Middle East.”
Asked by a reporter whether he had settled on a response to the attack, Biden replied “yes,” without revealing any further details. His answer adds little to an official White House statement put out immediately after the attack, which said that the US “will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner of our choosing.”
Three US Army soldiers were killed and dozens more injured when an unmanned drone struck an
American outpost in northeast Jordan near the Syrian border in the early hours of Sunday morning.
After more than 150 such strikes on US forces across Iraq and Syria in recent months, the attack marked the first time that American troops in the Middle East were confirmed killed by enemy fire since the Israel Hamas war began in October.