Latest news with #mistaking
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Andrew Cuomo faces attacks from all sides as New York City Democrats hold a raucous mayoral debate
A casual viewer could be forgiven for mistaking Democrats' first New York City mayoral debate for the roast of Andrew Cuomo. All eight of his primary opponents took turns throwing verbal daggers Wednesday evening at Cuomo, who arrived on the debate stage at 30 Rockefeller Plaza with multiple suitcases of baggage to go with his status as the polling frontrunner. Cuomo, the former governor, has consistently led polls of the nine-candidate field, leveraging his name recognition as a longtime public official in New York and the scion of a storied political family. He resigned as governor in 2021 amid multiple sexual misconduct allegations and an investigation into the claims, but he is now attempting a comeback in New York City, where Democratic Mayor Eric Adams is running for re-election as an independent. Cuomo's front-runner status in the Democratic primary made him a constant target Wednesday night at the debate hosted by NBC New York, WNJU Telemundo and Politico. When Cuomo sidestepped a question about a 2021 report from the state attorney general accusing him of undercounting nursing home deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic, his opponents laughed in his face and jeered him. When Cuomo cited 'the state of the Democratic Party' when he was asked to name his biggest regret in his political career, Adrienne Adams, speaker of the New York City Council, pounced. 'No regrets when it comes to cutting child care?' Adams asked. 'No regrets when it comes to slow-walking PPE and vaccinations in the season of Covid to Black and brown communities? Really, no regrets?' And when Cuomo was asked about allegations of sexual harassment and responded by attacking his opponents for calling for the defunding of police, former state Assemblyman Michael Blake turned to the cameras to speak directly to the women of New York. 'Every woman watching tonight: He was just given a chance to actually address the clear claims that were stated and ignored it,' Blake said. Cuomo would later repeat his denial of the allegations, which mushroomed into an investigation led by state Attorney General Letitia James; it found that Cuomo had harassed 11 women and subjected some of them to unwanted touching and groping. Each candidate took a different tack attacking Cuomo, 67. His most viable opponent, according to recent polls, is state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, democratic socialist, who cast Cuomo as having been bought and paid for by billionaires. 'The difference between myself and Andrew Cuomo is that my campaign is not funded by the very billionaires who put Donald Trump in D.C.,' said Mamdani, 33. After Cuomo dodged difficult questions about his controversies, Mamdani said he is 'allergic to any accountability or acknowledgment of a mistake.' Cuomo did not hang back, instead trying to give as good as he was getting when he was attacked. And Mamdani, the youngest candidate onstage, also received his own slew of barbs. After he confidently proclaimed, 'I am Donald Trump's worst nightmare,' Cuomo replied, 'Donald Trump would go through Mr. Mamdani like a hot knife through butter.' 'He's been in government 27 minutes. He passed three bills. That's all he's done,' Cuomo said, contrasting his own experience with that of his opponent, who is less than half of his age. State Sen. Jessica Ramos got a jab in Mamdani when she was asked about her biggest regret. 'I regret not running for mayor in 2021,' she said. 'I had been in the Senate for two years. I'd already passed over a dozen bills. I thought I needed more experience, but turns out, you just need to make good videos,' she said, poking fun at Mamdani's social media strategy, which has propelled his candidacy. Issues, including the city's housing crisis and public safety, took a back seat to bickering, with debate moderators struggling to control the nine candidates' speaking over one another and jousting for airtime ahead of the June 24 primary. In addition to Cuomo and Mamdani, who has burst onto the New York City political scene on a progressive platform, candidates jockeyed for position in the city's unpredictable ranked-choice voting system, which allows voters to choose multiple candidates and rank them on their ballots. The stage also included the current and former city comptrollers, Brad Lander and Scott Springer; state Sens. Ramos and Zellnor Myrie; and former hedge fund executive Whitney Tilson. While candidates outlined their proposals on major issues facing the city, like housing and public safety, quarrels overshadowed the substance. The city's most recent Housing and Vacancy Survey, conducted last year, found that the vacancy rate for apartments in the city dropped to 1.4%, the lowest rate since 1968. When it comes to units that cost less than $2,400 per month, the vacancy rate is below 1%. While Mamdani, Blake and Ramos have vowed to freeze the rent of rent-stabilized apartments, which are home to nearly 1 million New Yorkers, Tilson, the businessman on the stage, came at the issue from a different angle. "I think we need to drop rents by 20% by unleashing the private sector to build a lot more housing," he said. Despite recent encouraging crime data from the city, which showed a record low 264 shootings citywide from January to May, the issue was a point of contention. Candidates presented their plans to combat crime in the subway system, which has become a front-of-mind concern for New Yorkers after a series of high-profile and gruesome acts of violence, including a woman's death after she was set on fire last year. Myrie called for 150 police-clinician teams to patrol subway cars and platforms at all hours of the day. Cuomo made a promise about his first month in office, should he become mayor. "In my first 30 days, I will take every homeless person off the trains and the subway stations and get them the help they need," he said. Blake called for 1,000 mental health professionals on the subways and streets, increasing bandwidth for police officers to handle other issues. "The police will indicate they were not trained on addressing mental health," said Blake, who served in the Obama administration. This article was originally published on
The Guardian
13-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
What does China really think about Trump? They know about humiliation and won't take it from him
Last week, Mao Ning, head of China's foreign ministry information department, posted a blurry black-and-white clip of a moment in history. In 1953, Chairman Mao made a defiant speech of resistance to what he called US aggression in Korea. Kim Il-sung, the North Korean leader and founder of the Kim dynasty, now in its third generation, had invaded US-backed South Korea. When Kim's attempt to unite Korea by force appeared to be failing, China threw nearly 3 million 'volunteers' into the war and succeeded in fighting to the stalemate that has prevailed ever since. There was no mistaking the symbolism of the image. As Donald Trump bragged to his acolytes in Washington that foreign leaders were queuing up and 'kissing my ass', Beijing was announcing a 'fight to the end'. Trump may be about to discover that it is unwise to insult Beijing. The harder he plays it, the harder Beijing will play it back. This determination to fight to the end is both rooted in China's recent history and in concern for its future. Since the Chinese Communist party turned its guns on protesting students in Tiananmen in 1989, its propaganda has drummed the idea of a 'century of humiliation' into generations of Chinese citizens. The term is shorthand for the period between the first Opium war (1839-1842) and 1949, when the Communist party won China's civil war. It was a period in which western imperial powers forced the ailing Qing dynasty to make concessions on trade and extraterritorial rights, followed by the collapse of the imperial dynasty and the invasion of China by Japan. Since 1989, the 'century of humiliation' has been central to the CCP's message of aggrieved nationalism, and the promise to its citizens that the party would make China so rich and powerful that it would never again be bullied by foreign powers. That promise has substantially been delivered. Globalisation, access to markets and foreign investment triggered three decades of double-digit growth that transformed China from a poverty-stricken rural society to an urbanised industrial power, even if the benefits of growth remain unevenly distributed. No longer the low-wage, low-added-value world factory of the 1990s, today's China commands a lead across a range of advanced technologies and supply chains, including those essential for the energy transition, mid-range technology and defence. China's challenge now is to negotiate the more difficult waters of continuing growth. The economy is sputtering, the property sector collapse has left provincial governments mired in debt and short of revenue, and the industrial sector is producing far more than the domestic market can consume, despite a decade-long government effort to encourage more spending at home. Industrial overproduction leads to ferocious cycles of competitive price cutting and growing resistance to what China's trade partners increasingly see as dumping of cut-price goods in international markets. In China, successive shocks to the economy have made citizens anxious about the country's there is another useful thread in China's propaganda that is coming to the aid of its beleaguered leadership: the long-running contest with the US for global power and influence, and the proposition that the US aims to contain China and sabotage its rise. There is no shortage of evidence to support the thesis: a decade of mounting, bipartisan hostility in Washington; a succession of defence and security reviews that cite China as America's principal strategic threat; restrictions on sales to China of advanced semiconductors to slow its technological advance,; and now Donald Trump's trade the trade war may be bad news for Xi Jinping, but ideologically and politically it is a gift. In 1989, the student protesters in Tiananmen erected a statue they called the Goddess of Democracy. It was a replica of the Statue of Liberty, and their message to the Chinese leadership could not have been clearer. Today, young Chinese people are flooding digital platforms with satirical TikTok videos of an obese Trump in a dress dancing with Elon Musk, or struggling to assemble goods on a production line. In recent years, iPhones and Teslas became status symbols for the increasingly well-heeled Chinese middle class. Today, driving a BYD electric car and carrying a Xiaomi mobile phone are as much symbols of national pride in China's technological advance as the troupe of dancing robots that entertained viewers in January's New Year TV spectacular, or news of China's latest space shot. And if times are hard for China's laid-off workers or job-hunting graduates, Xi can blame Trump and rally the nation to resist this latest round of US aggression. Hardship created by a government that mishandles the economy is a political problem. Hardship generated by a hostile external power can easily become an asset. During Trump's first presidency, tariffs and export restrictions spurred China to greater self-reliance and domestic innovation. This latest round will reveal the depth of mutual dependency and how much reciprocal pain each side can inflict on the other. China's leadership did not choose the fight, but it now believes that there are considerable gains to be made in this deadly contest for global influence. Isabel Hilton is a London-based writer and broadcaster who has reported extensively from China and Hong Kong
Middle East Eye
17-02-2025
- Middle East Eye
Two Israelis shot in Miami by man who thought he was targeting Palestinians
A man who was reportedly hunting Palestinians was arrested over the weekend after shooting two Israelis in Miami Beach, mistaking them for Palestinians. Mordechai Brafman, 27, was detained on Saturday night and faces two counts of attempted second-degree murder. Surveillance footage showed Brafman's truck making a U-turn, stopping directly in front of a vehicle, exiting his truck and shooting at two people inside the vehicle. He shot at the vehicle 17 times with a semi-automatic handgun, the arrest report stated. One of the victims was wounded in the shoulder, while the other suffered a graze wound on the forearm. Brafman, described by Israeli outlet Ynet as a "Florida Jew", was arrested shortly after the shooting. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters According to the arrest report, Brafman told police in an interview: "While I was driving my truck, I saw two Palestinians and shot and killed both." Neither of the victims were killed, and the police said they were visitors from Israel. Citing a local Instagram account that posts about Jewish life, the Miami Herald reported that the victims were an Israeli father and son. Police confirmed that the victims had no prior connection to Brafman. 'Hate crime charges' The Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) called for federal hate crime charges to be brought following the shooting. "We urge state and federal law enforcement authorities to bring hate crime charges in this case based on the alleged perpetrator's statements to police that reportedly indicate an anti-Palestinian motive," Cair's Florida communications director Wilfredo Amr Ruiz said. 'It is the alleged shooter's reportedly bias-motivated actions, not the ethnicity of the victims, that should be the determining factor for charges in this disturbing case' - Wilfredo Amr Ruiz, CAIR "It is the alleged shooter's reportedly bias-motivated actions, not the actual ethnicity of the victims, that should be the determining factor for charges in this disturbing case." There has been a marked spike in Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian attacks in the United States since war broke out in Gaza 16 months ago. In October 2023, a six-year-old Palestinian-American was fatally stabbed 26 times and his mother seriously wounded in Illinois, in an attack officials say was linked to the Israel-Palestine war and because they identified as Muslim. Wadea al-Fayoume, a six-year-old boy, was stabbed 26 times and had a 12-inch serrated military knife with a seven-inch blade lodged in his body. Two months later, three Palestinian-American college students were speaking Arabic and wearing keffiyehs, a scarf synonymous with Palestinian solidarity, and were en route to dinner when they were shot by a gunman in Burlington, Vermont. One of them is now paralysed from the chest down and may not be able to walk again.
