Rafah Strike
Plus: Piña coladas, doing business in Hong Kong, edibles at the LNC, and more...
Tent city strike: On Sunday night, the Israeli military struck a displaced persons camp in Rafah, in Gaza, which started a fire that led to more deaths and injuries. They took out two Hamas-affiliated targets but many civilians as well. The Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza claims the Israel Defense Forces killed 45 and injured 200, while Israeli authorities said instead that "several civilians in the area were harmed." Doctors Without Borders reported that it treated 180 injured people, meaning the true numbers might be more consistent with what Gaza's health ministry is claiming.
Later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged that the strike killed more than they'd intended. "Despite our utmost efforts not to harm innocent civilians, last night, there was a tragic mistake," he said. "We are investigating the incident and will obtain a conclusion because this is our policy."
This comes on the heels of the International Court of Justice—one of the six organs of the United Nations, which has no real enforcement mechanism—ruling Friday that Israel must stop its offensive in Rafah.
"There is no power in the world that will push us to commit a public suicide, because that's what this is, to stop our war against Hamas," David Mencer, a spokesman for the Israeli government, told the BBC. From Israel's perspective, the hostages taken by Hamas terrorists on October 7 have not yet all been returned; exerting military pressure on Hamas and trying to wipe out the terrorists responsible for the massacre is a huge priority—but international support for Israel's campaign in Gaza is dwindling.
Chase Oliver wins the L.P. presidential nomination: This past weekend, while the rest of us were drinking mai tais on the beach and barbecuing for our friends, those concerned with the Libertarian Party's inner workings were forced to hang out in a hotel in Washington D.C. for the party's convention.
After the seventh round of ballots, and receiving 60.6 percent of the vote in the final round after struggling to top 50, Chase Oliver won the presidential nomination. "I will continue to bring a hopeful and positive message of liberty to both those who consider themselves libertarian and those who don't know they are libertarian yet," Oliver said in his victory speech. He narrowly beat Michael Rectenwald, the Mises Caucus contingent's preferred candidate (who conspicuously ate an edible before delivering his speech on Saturday night), in the sixth round.
I was frankly glad to avoid the circus. But for those like me who are playing Tuesday morning catch-up: former President Donald Trump gave his speech, which was the primetime slot on Saturday night and involved hours of line-waiting to get through security. He mocked libertarians for generally getting only 3 percent of the vote (we wish!) and told libertarians to vote for him. He said he'd commute the sentence of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht—something he chose not to do when he had the chance the first time around but claims he'll actually do this time, pinky promise—and put a libertarian in his cabinet if elected president.
Scenes from New York: If you can name the dive bar we were at for much of Memorial Day Weekend, you get extra points. They don't make 'em like this anymore, truth be told. (And you better believe most of the bars in Rockaway were civil disobedience-rs during COVID-19 times; this peninsula has no rules.)
Vacation-mode Matt Welch dropped by, as did Nancy Rommelmann. Behold!
QUICK HITS
- All the ways of doing business in Hong Kong have gotten harder, following Beijing's crackdown.
- Noah Smith offers "a theory of how totalitarianism might naturally triumph" in a Noahpinion blog post. "The basic idea is that when information is costly, liberal democracy wins because it gathers more and better information than closed societies, but when information is cheap, negative-sum information tournaments sap an increasingly large portion of a liberal society's resources."
- Has work gotten lonelier?
- "Abortion is a gift. It's the easiest thing to go into another state to talk about," a 2020 Biden campaign pollster, Celinda Lake, tells Politico. "If you came into another state and talked about your miracle economic policies or energy development, these voters might not be interested."
- "Boeing Co. and NASA are prepared to move forward with the inaugural crewed launch of the company's space taxi on June 1 without fixing a small helium leak that was discovered during an earlier launch attempt," reports Bloomberg. "Representatives from NASA and Boeing told reporters on Friday that after conducting enough analysis, they are comfortable flying the spacecraft, the CST-100 Starliner, with the helium leak and simply monitoring it throughout the mission to the International Space Station."
- Wild:
The governing Mises Caucus faction of the Libertarian Party spent two years gearing up for a presidential race in which their preferred candidate could not handle a high-profile post-Trump-speech rebuttal slot because he was too high after eating a gummy. https://t.co/m2nFxXPANP
— Matt Welch (@MattWelch) May 26, 2024
