In February, Moody's downgraded Israel's rating to A2. The upcoming change reflects not only the geopolitical escalation but also Moody's lack of confidence in the Israeli government's ability to manage fiscal consolidation and reduce debt.

Credit rating agency Moody's is set to release an updated rating on Friday which is expected to downgrade Israel's credit rating to A3, equivalent to an A- rating by other agencies.

The announcement came as Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas hit out at Washington in his address to the UN General Assembly in New York, accusing it of providing Israel with the "deadly weapons that it used to kill thousands of innocent civilians, children and women".

"The package includes $3.5 billion for essential wartime procurement ... and $5.2 billion designated for air defence systems, including the Iron Dome, David's Sling and an advanced laser system," the ministry said in a statement.

Some $3.5 billion had already been received "for critical acquisitions", it said.

Argentina’s poverty rate jumped from almost 42% to 53% during the first six months of Javier Milei’ s presidency, the statistics agency reported Thursday, a steep rise reflecting the pain of the country’s most intense austerity program in recent memory.

The government’s finding that Argentina’s half-year poverty rate in 2024 had surged to its highest level since 2003, when the country was reeling from a catastrophic foreign debt default and currency devaluation, marks a setback for the far-right economist. So far, foreign investors and the International Monetary Fund — to which Argentina owes $43 billion — have cheered his controversial fiscal shock therapy that has succeeded in pulling down the country’s monthly inflation from 25.5% last December to 4.2% in recent months.

Argentina’s inflation, now running at more than 230% annually, is among the worst in the world.

Unlike previous populist governments that kept consumer spending high at the cost of a massive budget deficit, Milei dismantled price controls, cut subsidies on energy and transport and devalued the peso by 54% in December after taking office.

The austerity measures and deregulation have marked a brutal contraction in spending power and dragged the economy deep into recession.

A thinning safety net

Of the millions who can’t clear Argentina’s official poverty level of about $950 a month in local currency for a family of four, even more have tumbled into destitution. Thursday’s poverty report showed that Argentina’s extreme poverty rate had shot up to 18.1% during Milei’s first six months as president from 11.9% in the last half of 2023.

A jobs crisis

The runaway inflation — shocking even for Argentines who lived through years of annual inflation averaging above 50% — has forced middle-class Argentines to cut back on spending and drain their savings.

The economy has contracted 3% so far this year. Government surveys reveal that both Argentina’s vast informal jobs market and formal workforce have hemorrhaged hundreds of thousands of jobs since Milei took office.

That has put more of Argentina’s once-robust middle class in danger of sliding into poverty.

Sky-high bills

For decades low-paid Argentines have navigated their upside-down economy by padding their meager incomes with government cash transfers and generous subsidies that reduced the cost of utilities, food and transport.

But utilities bills jumped over 200% for many after Milei scrapped the subsidies to trim the deficit.

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Last Friday, Israel attacked a meeting of Hezbollah leaders in the southern Beirut neighborhood of al-Qaem. It was an assassination operation following the detonation, days before, of thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies that had been packed with explosives.

In al-Qaem, the Israeli military boasted of a “precise strike” in the “heart of Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut.” The language conjured images of a brazen operation against a well-protected military compound, a Pentagon of its kind, a wholly valiant endeavor.

In reality, this was a massive strike that completely leveled a residential building, one that killed Hezbollah leaders just as much as it did countless families inside. Many of those families remain under the rubble, with others still missing.

Almost every time news emerges from south Beirut, the Western news media parrots the language of the Israeli military, as if “Hezbollah stronghold” is part of the neighborhood’s name.

Defenders of this kind of language may point to the usage of “strongholds” to describe bases of support for the Democratic Party or U.K.’s Labour, but these are usages in a Western context, a use nobody is confused by. In Lebanon, the connotations are obvious. And they directly serve Israeli interests.

A Taiwanese pager company was identified last week in connection to Israel's terrorist attack on Lebanon, in which booby-trapped pagers were detonated, killing at least 32 people and injuring thousands more.

Israeli-Taiwanese relations warmed considerably after Israel launched its genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza last October. Taiwan rushed to condemn the Palestinian operation of 7 October and donated more than half a million dollars to fund services to Israeli soldiers and their families.

The subsequent genocide did not alter Taiwan's stance, as expressed by its foreign minister, Joseph Wu, in a March meeting with Israeli academics in Taipei: "We condemn the Hamas terrorist attack and stand in solidarity with Israel. Our position hasn't changed."

The Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs supported the visit. After Iran's 13 April retaliation against Israel for the latter's attacks on its consulate in Damascus, Taiwan quickly moved to condemn Iran. Two days later, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen met with a delegation of Israeli Knesset members led by Boaz Toporovsky, the head of the Israel-Taiwan interparliamentary friendship group, and expressed her country's solidarity with Israel.

Even though Taiwan was a close friend of all conservative anti-communist Arab regimes, especially Saudi Arabia and Jordan, in 1975, Israel secretly transferred US missile technology to Taiwan and began to sell it Israeli missiles to the tune of half a billion dollars. Indeed, the Israeli defence ministry established a permanent station in Taipei to facilitate military cooperation. Weapons cooperation and sales included artillery guns, mortars, missile boats, rifles, and submachine guns.

Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda and Al Jazeera’s AJ+ have won an Emmy in the Outstanding Hard News Feature Story category for their documentary, It’s Bisan From Gaza – and I’m Still Alive.

Owda has been at the forefront of reporting from Gaza since Israel launched its assault on the territory last October, bringing the stories of Palestinians to a global audience amidst 11 months of war and devastation.

The award came a month after Creative Community for Peace, a pro-Israel nonprofit organisation, issued a letter criticising the nomination of the 25-year-old’s short film documenting the initial days of Israeli bombardment and its devastating impact on everyday people in the Gaza Strip.

https://archive.ph/u3lpa

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/20725066

Jake Johnson
Sep 25, 2024

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/20688472

[gift article - expires in 30 days]

[Clear evidence that another stage of the Israeli genocide is underway.]

By Erika Solomon, Lauren Leatherby, and Aric Toler
Sept. 25, 2024, 5:04 a.m. ET
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https://archive.ph/6tsZF