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@ISIDEWITHQuestionsForeign policy2yrs ago

Should the government support peace talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran?

In April 2023 Saudi Arabia and Iran’s foreign ministers met in Beijing to discuss reopening their diplomatic missions in their respective countries, to encourage visits of official and private delegations, and to facilitate visas for Iranian and Saudi citizens. They also agreed to discuss resuming flights between the 2 countries. This was the first formal diplomatic meeting between the 2 countries since China brokered a deal to restore relations between the top regional powers in March 2023. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said that Beijing is ready to support both side…  

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 @ISIDEWITHDiscuss this answer...2yrs2Y

Yes, we should always promote diplomatic peace talks during foreign conflicts

 @ISIDEWITHDiscuss this answer...2yrs2Y

No

 @ISIDEWITHDiscuss this answer...2yrs2Y

Yes

 @9D4G35Kfrom Georgia  answered…1yr1Y

Yes, but Arab and Iranian blood should not be spilled for Jewish interest.

 @ISIDEWITHDiscuss this answer...2yrs2Y

No, we should not get involved in foreign conflicts

 @ISIDEWITHDiscuss this answer...2yrs2Y

No, only if it is an immediate threat to our safety

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 @ISIDEWITH submitted…1mo1MO

Biden will issue a pardon of his son Hunter Biden

President Joe Biden has decided to issue a pardon for his son Hunter and is expected to announce it Sunday night, according to a senior White House official with direct knowledge of the decision.The decision marks a reversal for the president, who has repeatedly said he would not use his executive authority to pardon his son or commute his sentence. The pardon comes ahead of Hunter Biden’s Dec. 12 sentencing for his conviction on federal gun charges. Hunter Biden also is set to be sentenced in a separate criminal case on Dec. 16, after pleading guilty in September on federal tax evasion charges.The pardon is expected to cover both Hunter Biden’s gun charges conviction and guilty plea.The senior White House official said Biden decided over this weekend to grant his son a pardon and began to inform his senior aides on Sunday. Using his pardon power to assure Hunter Biden does not spend time in jail comes as the 82-year-old president is near the end of his term in the White House and has no future election to face. In recent months Biden has said he would not pardon his son or commute his sentence.“I will not pardon him,” the president said of his son in June after a jury found him guilty on three federal gun charges.President Biden has discussed issuing a pardon for his son with some of his closest aides since at least Hunter Biden’s conviction in June, two people with direct knowledge of the discussions about the matter said. They said a decision was made at the time for the president to publicly say he would not pardon his son even though doing so remained on the table.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters earlier this month that the president’s position has not changed.

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 @ISIDEWITH submitted…3wks3W

Defense Bill Blocks Transgender Care To Minors

The Senate on Wednesday gave final approval to a defense policy bill directing $895 billion toward the Pentagon and other military activities, moving over the objections of some Democrats who opposed a provision added late in the negotiations that would deny coverage for transgender health procedures for minors.The 85-to-14 vote, coming a week after a divided House passed the same measure, cleared the bill for President Biden’s signature.Most Republicans and many Democrats supported the measure, which provides a 14.5 percent pay raise to junior enlisted service members and a 4.5 percent pay raise for all other service members. It also expands access to meal assistance, housing and child care programs that benefit those in uniform.But several Democrats withheld their backing in protest of a provision preventing TRICARE, the military’s health care plan for service members, from covering “medical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria that could result in sterilization” for children under 18.The language, which would affect the gender-transitioning children of service members, was recently added to the measure at the insistence of Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, who refused to bring a defense bill to the House floor without it, according to aides familiar with the negotiations.Twenty-one Democrats, led by Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, proposed an amendment to strip the provision from the bill, but the matter was never brought to a vote. Several of them took to the floor on Tuesday to lodge their objections.“It’s flat-out wrong to put this provision in this bill and take away a service member’s freedom to make that decision for their families,” Ms. Baldwin said, estimating that the provision could negatively affect as many as 6,000 to 7,000 military families.

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 @ISIDEWITH submitted…2hrs2H

American Hostage Families Back Tulsi Gabbard For DNI Post

The parents of former ISIS and al Qaeda hostages, and a former al Qaeda hostage, are backing President Donald Trump’s selection of Tulsi Gabbard to be his next Director of National Intelligence (DNI), writing in a letter first obtained by the Washington Reporter that “American hostage families know that Tulsi Gabbard has always been on our side.”The letter’s signatories are Carl and Marsha Mueller, the parents of Kayla Mueller, an aid worker who was taken hostage by ISIS and who was murdered by terrorists almost ten years ago, and Theo Padnos and his parents, Nancy Curtis and Michael Padnos. Theo was held hostage by al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate for almost two years.The group, which knows all too well the barbarism of ISIS and al Qaeda, wants the Senate to quickly confirm Gabbard. “Given the threat that has lately surfaced in New Orleans, we feel that the sooner the senate confirms Tulsi Gabbard the better, as the nation needs leadership that will keep Americans safe,” they wrote.The letter from the Mueller and Pados families is a boon to Gabbard, who has rolled out major backing — including a recent open letter of support signed by over 1,100 veterans. Gabbard, herself an Iraq War veteran who has spent over two decades in the Army and Army Reserves, has also been rolling out support from the senators she will need to confirm her.Gabbard’s time in the Middle East, the Mullers and Padnoses believe, “has given her an understanding of this phenomenon which other policy makers simply do not have. She has been compassionate towards terrorism’s victims. She has been a fierce advocate for bringing its practitioners to justice.”

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Active 1hr ago

 @ISIDEWITH submitted…2hrs2H

Biden bans new offshore oil drilling along most of US coastline

President Joe Biden announced a ban on new offshore oil and gas drilling along most of the US coastline on Monday in a move designed to bolster his environmental and climate legacy as he prepares to leave office.The order will protect 625mn acres of ocean on the US east coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific coasts of Washington, Oregon and California, as well as portions of the Northern Bering Sea in Alaska, the White House said on Monday.“My decision reflects what the coastal communities, business and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs,” Biden said.The executive action will not prevent oil and gas companies obtaining leases in the central and western parts of the Gulf of Mexico, areas that produce almost 15 per cent of the nation’s oil supplies. Nevertheless, the move is expected to complicate the policy agenda of incoming president Donald Trump, who has vowed to “drill, baby, drill” and boost US oil production, even though it is already at a record level.The Trump transition team said it was a disgraceful decision designed to exact “political revenge on the American people” and the incoming president said he would immediately “unban” Biden’s prohibition on new offshore drilling.“I have the right to unban it immediately . . . we can’t let that happen to our country. It’s our greatest, it’s really our greatest economic asset,” Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt in an interview on Monday.Biden’s action will probably be challenged by the oil industry in court and face pushback from Republicans in Congress. But overturning the order could prove challenging and may require an act of Congress, according to legal experts.Biden is using his authority under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, to protect the areas from drilling — the same mechanism which former president Barack Obama used previously to ban offshore drilling in some Arctic and Atlantic waters in 2016.In 2019, a federal judge ruled that an executive order by former president Donald Trump that lifted an Obama-era ban on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean was unlawful.

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