Firefighters work at the scene of an Israeli airstrike on the Haziz power station in southern Sanaa, Yemen, December 19, 2024
ISRAELI bombers pounded Yemen’s capital Sana’a and its port Hodeida today, killing at least nine as they sought to break the Houthi forces, which have launched attacks in solidarity with Palestine.
The bombing raids followed a Houthi missile strike against Israel. The military said it targeted infrastructure in Hodeida, another port Salif, and the Ras Isa oil terminal, then took out energy infrastructure in Sana’a.
Targeting civilian energy infrastructure is a war crime.
“After Hamas, Hezbollah and the Assad regime in Syria, the Houthis are almost the last remaining arm of Iran’s axis of evil,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared.
“Whoever raises a hand against the state of Israel, his hand will be cut off,” Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz added. “Whoever harms us will be harmed sevenfold.”
Alan Milburn speaks at the first national conference of the Social Enterprise Coalition, January 25, 2005
Behind a facade of flimsy restrictions, the man who was Tony Blair’s privatisation champion is back in an advisory role, despite the fact he already works for firms that will profit from the selling off of the NHS, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
HEALTH Secretary Wes Streeting says he put Alan Milburn, who was health secretary under Tony Blair, onto the board of the Department of Health “to help government fix health and care.”
But Milburn can’t talk about anything relating “to nutrition, diet, and food, including any work related to the department’s sponsorship of the Food Standards Agency” on that board because he has a part-time job working for Mars Inc.
Appointing someone who works for the firm making Mars Bars to the Department of Health board in the middle of an obesity crisis shows how Streeting values corporate interests above public services.
Milburn was health secretary under Blair from 1999 to 2003. He oversaw the wide-scale privatisation of the NHS. He continued the Margaret Thatcher and John Major governments’ plans to privatise NHS “support services” like cleaning, catering and building management, with the disastrous PFI scheme expanding on his watch.
Milburn also broke new ground by privatising “clinical” services by buying in private operations or giving NHS money to set up privately run clinics. Milburn then cashed in his experience by leaving government and taking on lucrative corporate jobs.
Milburn and his family get around £1-2 million a year from his “advisory” firm, AM Strategy, where all the funds for his “advisory” jobs are collected. Streeting clearly admires both Milburn’s record of privatisation when he was a minister and his highly paid post post-ministerial corporate work.
The Department of Health says Milburn will give up his job as an adviser to Mars Inc at the end of this year, so next year, he will be able to forget all about working for Mars Bars and start discussing obesity.
A tanker pumping out excess sewage from the Lightlands Lane sewage pumping station in Cookham, Berskhire which flooded after heavy rainfall, January 10, 2024
WATER COMPANY fat cats are being rewarded for decades of criminal behaviour, a Labour MP said today after the industry regulator announced an average £86 bill hike from April.
Clive Lewis said billpayers are paying for crooks as he called for water firms to be nationalised and Ofwat abolished.
The MP for Norwich South said: “Ofwat is making us pay for decades of criminal behaviour by water companies.
“The regulator turned a blind eye to years of these companies’ widespread illegal sewage dumping.
“Privatisation is a failed experiment. We deserve a public ownership model prioritising people and the environment over profit.”
Ofwat said that the steep rise is part of bill increases in England and Wales over the next five years that will pay for supply upgrades and to reduce sewage discharges.
This is despite water companies doubling their profits since 2019.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen during a press conference in Brussels, Belgium on December 18, 2024 [AB Konseyi/Pool/Anadolu Agency]
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen marked the first anniversary of the Hamas cross-border incursion by saying: “On October 7, 2023, the world awoke to horrifying images of unspeakable savagery, scenes that will remain etched in our minds forever. On this tragic anniversary, I want to honour the memories of the victims. The European Union stands with all the innocent people whose lives have been shattered to the core since that fateful day.”
Since the EU supports Israel’s security narrative, and von der Leyen in particular has been unequivocally blatant in her support of apartheid Israel and its genocide (one now former MEP labelled her “Frau Genocide”), her statement, of course, does not include Palestinian victims of Israel’s brutality over the past 76 years.
The money follows von der Leyen’s rhetoric.
Since 7 October and the start of Israel’s genocide, the settler-colonial entity has been awarded over €238 million under the Horizon programme, with €640,000 going to Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI). Between 2014 and 2020, Israeli research institutions, many of them with links to the Israeli military, received €1.28 billion in funding from Horizon.
In June this year, the EU Research and Innovation Commissioner Iliana Ivanova determined that “Termination [of such deals] solely on the basis of nationality would be improper and would amount to discrimination prohibited under the Association Agreement.”
Ivanova’s statement was the reply to a letter sent by Flemish universities seeking guidance on how to proceed in research projects involving Israeli institutions, noting that Article 14 of the Horizon Europe grant agreement stipulates, among other ethical considerations, ensuring the rights of minorities, which clearly Israel does not. The letter does not mention genocide, it merely references “the recent binding rulings of the International Court of Justice on the situation in Gaza and the military actions of the Israeli Government.” Nevertheless, the EU was swift to distort a very basic concern regarding ethical considerations into alleged discrimination against Israel on the basis of nationality.
While Israel continues to benefit from the Horizon programme, the EU announced earlier this week that it will be investing €28.3m to stabilise the Palestinian economy across Gaza, Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank. However, it has already been estimated that removing the 42 million tonnes of debris from Gaza alone will cost $700m.
The actual rebuilding of Gaza will require over $80 billion.
Citing the defunct two-state paradigm, EU Representative Alexandre Stutzman commented, “Economic progress and political resolution go hand in hand, and today’s investment is a testament to our belief that fostering stability and growth is an essential part of this vision.”
What vision, exactly? EU funding has not produced a Palestinian state, and the Palestinian Authority has grown considerably weaker, not only because of financial deficit, but because Ramallah thrives, as Israel does, on subjugating the Palestinian people. The two-state hypothesis will not be implemented because there was never any intention for it to be implemented; colonialism does not set aside any space for the emergence of a state. Israel’s genocide in Gaza confirms this, and so does the increasing incitement for the same practices to be executed in the occupied West Bank. Have EU officials yet to hear about Israeli settler leaders’ incitement, despite calls for genocide being reported on Israeli media?
Can the EU explain what €28.3m can achieve in terms of reviving the Palestinian economy, when clearing Gaza of the debris left by Israel is just the first step in establishing the foundations for a semblance of normalcy in a colonial setting? And can the EU note what an absurdly impossible scenario I have just described — a semblance of normalcy in a colonial setting — for lack of a better explanation of what it might allow Gaza to become?
Genocide is so profitable for the EU that it can allocate €28.3m for illusions, and that is without taking into account the entire farce and cost of purported Palestinian state-building. All of this just so that Israel can arrive at a point where genocide has become a security precaution and the slightest ethical concern about its killing and wounding at least 160,000 Palestinian women, children and men is condemned as “improper… discrimination” based on nationality.
