Israel’s Brinkmanship | The American Dream Is Alive In China | The Godfather Don Sackler

“Happiness depends upon ourselves.”

“Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.”

“Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.”

– Aristotle

The Fallout From Last Week’s Fallout In Israel: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has managed to hold his tottering coalition government together, but it’s been tense. After nearly two days of violent retaliation was unleashed following last week’s botched Israeli intelligence gathering operation into Gaza, Netanyahu accepted a cease-fire, which then prompted accusations that he had capitulated to Hamas. In apparent protest over the cease-fire, his hawkish defense minister Avigdor Liberman suddenly resigned. Liberman’s resignation was followed by an ultimatum from ultranationalist education minister Naftali Bennett to be made defense minister or he would leave the coalition and take his eight-member Knesset faction with him, thereby causing the government to collapse.

That plunged Netanyahu’s coalition into the biggest crisis it has faced to date. Despite having another year to serve, should his government coalition collapse, elections would be called sooner. But Netanyahu called Bennett’s bluff. After a weekend of speculation that an election was on the way, Netanyahu gave a short address to the nation Sunday night in time for broadcast on the evening news. He announced he would keep the defense portfolio for himself, dared Bennett and other coalition partners to bring down his government in the face of ongoing security concerns, and predicted if his right-wing government goes, a left-leaning one could succeed it. Bennett apparently thought better of his threat, and on Monday retracted his demand to become defense minister, saying he would stay on as education minister to help in the “great mission of making Israel win again.” Opposition parties still plan to file a motion of no confidence in the government on Wednesday, so it’s unclear if Netanyahu’s government will survive the next few days, yet alone another year.

The UK Wants Peace In The Middle East: A UN security council resolution put forth by the UK calls for an immediate truce in the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah and guarantees of safe delivery of food and medicine. It calls for a large injection of foreign currency into the country’s economy through the central bank to support the collapsing Yemeni rial, and for salaries of civil servants, teachers and health workers to be paid within one month. The resolution also calls on the warring parties to cooperate with UN-brokered peace talks scheduled to begin later this month. Saudi Arabia, which is leading airstrikes against Houthi rebels, opposes the resolution. It is unknown whether a vote will happen this week, or what the US response will be. (Guardian)

Viral Marketing Makes The Art World Sick: A Dutch novelist, who wrote a book about the heist of invaluable paintings from a Dutch museum seven years ago, received an anonymous letter recently with directions to where one of the paintings was buried. The art world thought the paintings were lost forever when four Romanians were arrested in 2014 and one of them said she had burned the paintings after not being able to find a buyer. The perpetrator later retracted that statement, but specialists from Romania’s natural history museum said ashes from her stove contained traces of at least three of the oil paintings. Sunday night the novelist appeared on Dutch public radio to say the tip was a hoax. Two Dutch artists had created the fake Picasso as a publicity stunt to promote their new project “True Copy,” a meditation on the work of notorious Dutch forger Geert Jan Jansen, who made millions selling fake paintings. (WaPo)

The Caravan Is Grinding Before The Big Boss Fight: Several hundred demonstrators shouting “Mexico First” protested the presence in Tijuana of migrants, mostly from Honduras, who have come hoping to ask for asylum in the US. A number of the asylum-seekers said they can’t return home after receiving threats from street gangs, like MS-13 and the 18th Street gang, and government figures in their countries. The Trump administration has introduced new rules limiting asylum in order to block them from entering the US. Tijuana’s mayor Juan Manuel Gastélum appeared wearing a Trump-style hat which said “Make Tijuana Great Again”, and said in an interview: “I would dare say that not all of them are migrants,” suggesting some members of the caravan were criminal infiltrators. “Sure, there are some good people in the caravan, but many are very bad for the city.” The murder rate in Tijuana has spiked during Gastélum’s tenure, and a poll in March gave him just 4 percent approval from residents. (NPR)

Additional Read: “Migrant Caravan Is Just Yards From U.S. Border, but Long Wait Lies Ahead” (NYT)

The Tree Doesn’t Fall Far From The Apple: In Saudi Arabia’s absolute monarchy only 82-year-old King Salman has the authority to oust his son and de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, from power. Ignoring a global chorus of accusers claiming MbS directed the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, on Monday the King stood beside his son and made only general statements on official Saudi policy in his annual address to the Shura Council, the kingdom’s advisory assembly. (NYT)

– “European travel ban imposed on 18 Saudis over Khashoggi killing: Ban covering 26-nation Schengen zone was coordinated with France and UK, Germany says” (Guardian)

– “Thousands flee as Guatemala’s Fuego volcano erupts: Almost 4,000 people have been evacuated from the slopes of the Fuego volcano in Guatemala.” (BBC)

China Digs Holes For Their White Picket Fence Posts: China is on a roll. It’s undergoing an economic expansion that is unprecedented in modern history. In fact, the American Dream is alive and well—in China. In one generation 800 million Chinese have risen out of poverty, defined by the World Bank as living at or below $1.90 per day. There is still a large gap between rich and poor—nearly 500 million people, about 40 percent of the population, live on less than $5.50 a day—but by some measures Chinese society has about the same level of inequality as the US. And despite China’s population being poorer overall than America’s, public opinion surveys say Chinese are more hopeful, more optimistic, than either Americans or Europeans.

In China’s middle class, expectations are rising along with that optimism, or perhaps because of it. Sons are now out-earning their fathers. A close companion to all that optimism and increased earning potential is life expectancy. Chinese males born in 2013 are now expected to live more than seven years longer than those born in 1990, while females are expected to live nearly 10 years longer. Bottom line: China used to make up much of the world’s poor; now it makes up much of the world’s middle class. Considering how the government has used social engineering to restrict where people live and how many children couples have, its progress is even more remarkable.

Additional read: “From rugby to painting, China using global stage to diminish Taiwan” (Reuters)

Did you know that when you’re buying everyday items like soap, detergent, and shampoo that you’re paying an arbitrary markup due to the brand’s name and the store’s cut? We call these two factors: the middlemen. And those middlemen seriously don’t need to exist. Public Goods sells healthy, premium products for what they actually cost us to make. No middlemen, no retail markups, all you have to do is sign up for their membership plan and you can start saving an average of 70% a year on everyday items. The best part is you can try Public Goods for free for 30 days to see if you like it!

Godfather Don Sackler, Making a Drug They Can’t Refuse: Members of the multibillionaire philanthropic Sackler family own Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma, the maker of the prescription painkiller Oxycontin, a drug at the center of the opioid epidemic killing almost 200 people a day in the US. Suffolk county on Long Island, New York, recently sued several family members personally over the overdose deaths and painkiller addictionblighting local communities. And prosecutors in Connecticut and New York are considering criminal fraud and racketeering charges against leading family members over the way OxyContin has allegedly been dangerously overprescribed and deceptively marketed to doctors and the public over the years. “This is essentially a crime family … drug dealers in nice suits and dresses,” said the lead attorney in a huge civil action taking place in a federal court in Cleveland, Ohio, against opioid manufacturers and distributors. (Guardian)

Additional Read:”Florida Sues Walgreens, CVS For Alleged Role In Opioid Crisis” (NPR)

– “Jim Acosta: White House backs down in fight over CNN reporter’s pass:Trump administration had earlier sent Acosta a letter saying credentials would be pulled when 14-day order is over” (Guardian)

– “Disney Is Spending More on Theme Parks Than It Did on Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm Combined” It might be a small world but it’s a big and profitable Disney. (NYT)

– “Willem Dafoe: ‘With success come certain things that corrupt you‘” He learned a lot from his time as the Green Goblin. (The Guardian)

– “How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking the Planet: With wildfires, heat waves, and rising sea levels, large tracts of the earth are at risk of becoming uninhabitable. But the fossil-fuel industry continues its assault on the facts.” (New Yorker)

– “There’s a Stress Gap Between Men and Women. Here’s Why It’s Important.: Between domestic duties and emotional labor, research shows, women are more stressed than men are — but it doesn’t have to be that way. Here’s what the data says, and how to take care of yourself.” (NYT)

– “Why 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’” You mean 2016 wasn’t the worst year ever? (Science Mag)

– “Why Britain Needs Its Own Mueller” (NY Review Of Books)

– “The Whitey Bulger Murder Mystery: Two Assailants and a Prison Full of Suspects” (NYT)

– “How He Got Caught: For Larry Nassar, the beginning of the end comes in the summer of 2016, thanks to three things: a tough police detective, a dedicated team of journalists in Indiana, and a homeschooling mom from Kentucky.” (NPR)

– “How China Walled Off the Internet: Today, China has the world’s only internet companies that can match America’s in ambition and reach.” The only thing perhaps scarier than tech companies that inadvertently wreck democracy and governments are tech companies that work for the government. (NYT)

Please consider making a donation to Daily Pnut, an independently operated and bootstrapped publication. Many thanks to everyone who already supports us!