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‘The World Must Not Stay Silent!’: Fresh Israeli Bombings Amid Humanitarian Hellscape in Gaza

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Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

Gazans, including children, walk past rubble and leaked sewage at Bureij camp after Israeli attacks in Deir al Balah, Gaza on June 20, 2024.
 (Photo by Hassan Jedi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

As the IDF stepped up attacks in Gaza City, one resident said, “We are being starved… with no hope that this war is ever ending.”

Residents of Gaza City’s Shujayea neighborhood found themselves on Thursday among the main targets of new Israeli military operations, with thousands of people fleeing as they were “hunted by tanks and planes,” as one Palestinian man told Reuters—even as Israel claimed the “intense” phase of the war was over.

Al Jazeera reported that the Israel Defense Forces targeted five residential homes in the Shujayea and Sabra neighborhoods in the early morning hours of Thursday, killing at least five people in the former area and three in the latter.

Evacuation orders from the IDF came about 30 minutes after the shelling began in Shujayea, according to Al Jazeera, with families rushing to move west after receiving text messages and leaflets from the military. The IDF published a map showing that certain blocks of the residential neighborhood were now part of a combat zone where tanks were moving in.

“We were suddenly and intensively bombarded by Israel,” one man fleeing the area on foot told Al Jazeera. “We came out and we don’t know where to go.”

Artillery attacks were also reported in the Zeitoun, Hawa, and Sheikh Ijlin neighborhoods of Gaza City. Shujayea was a key target of the IDF in the first weeks of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza last October.

As Israel claims to be drawing down its attacks while rejecting a permanent cease-fire agreement, “the world must not stay silent” about the ongoing assault on Gaza, said researcher and academic Nour Naim.

The Gaza Health Ministry reported Thursday that the people who were killed in Gaza City overnight were among 47 Palestinians killed across the enclave in the past 24 hours. Fifty-two people were reported wounded in the same time period—the latest of dozens each day who are taken to hospitals where doctors struggle to treat people with severely limited supplies due to continued humanitarian aid delays and blockades.

“There are moments when anesthesia is not available, but in order to save the lives of citizens, we resort to amputation, and this causes severe pain for the wounded,” a surgeon at al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, told AFP. “Every day, there are attacks that result in amputations of legs or arms for children, adults, and women.”

Six people were killed overnight in an Israeli attack in Jabalia, northern Gaza, and an attack on a family home killed one person in the northern town of Beit Lahiya.

In southern Gaza, women and children were among those killed in an attack on a school where displaced people have been staying, and Israeli ground forces “systematically demolished residential buildings in the west of the city” of Rafah, Al Jazeera reported.

As the IDF has stepped up attacks in Gaza City and continued its bombardment of other areas across the enclave, doctors, humanitarian workers, and civilians described the realities of daily life in Gaza, where aid blockades and the disruption of sanitation services and water treatment have all contributed to “grim living conditions” and heightened health risks.

Joanne Perry, a doctor working with Doctors Without Borders (MSF), described to the Associated Press living conditions that have caused concern that a cholera outbreak could soon take hold.

“The crowded conditions, the lack of water, the heat, the poor sanitation—these are the preconditions of cholera,” Perry told the AP.

Israeli attacks since October have destroyed Gaza’s wastewater treatment plants, water desalination plants, sewage pumping facilities, and wells, and have killed government workers who have tried to repair the infrastructure, leading Palestinians to rely on contaminated and “salty” water.

“We found worms in the water. I had been drinking from it,” 21-year-old Adel Dalloul told the AP. “It was salty, polluted, and full of germs… I had gastrointestinal problems and diarrhea, and my stomach hurts until this moment.”

The World Health Organization has reported 485,000 cases of diarrhea—the third-leading cause of death in young children worldwide—since October, and has warned of at least one outbreak of Hepatitis A, which is spread through the consumption of water and food contaminated with fecal matter.

A mother of six in Khan Younis told Reuters that her family is relying on a charity kitchen’s daily visits to their U.N.-run shelter, as 12 million pounds of food aid and other supplies have been held up since June 9, according to U.S. officials.

“If the charity kitchen did not come here for one day, we would wonder about what we will eat that day,” Umm Feisal Abu Nqera told Reuters. “We are living the worst days of our lives in terms of famine and deprivation… Today, your son looks at you and you bleed from within, because you cannot provide him with his most basic rights and the simplest needs for his life.”

A girl died of malnutrition on Thursday at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, bringing the official death toll from malnutrition and dehydration among children to 31.
“We are being starved in Gaza City,” 25-year-old Mohammad Jamal toldReuters as the renewed Israeli offensive took hold, “with no hope that this war is ever ending.”

Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.

Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
Continue Reading‘The World Must Not Stay Silent!’: Fresh Israeli Bombings Amid Humanitarian Hellscape in Gaza

Striking doctors threaten more summer walkouts if Labour echoes Tory ‘lies’ on NHS

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/striking-doctors-threaten-more-walkouts-over-starmers-nhs-lies

Junior doctors on the picket line outside St Thomas’ Hospital, London, during their continuing dispute over pay, June 27, 2024

SIR KEIR STARMER was warned today against repeating Rishi Sunak’s mistakes as 25,000 junior doctors began a five-day pay walkout across England, threatening further strike action this summer.

The British Medical Association (BMA) members hit out at the Labour leader’s “lies” over NHS funding as they staged their 11th walkout since March last year, including at the Friarage Hospital close to the Prime Minister’s constituency in North Yorkshire.

Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting has said he would not grant the BMA’s demands for real-terms pay restoration in one go as it would mean any “trade union worth their salt” would ask for the same the following year.

But with the dispute now in its 20th month, BMA junior doctors committee co-chairman Rob Laurenson said: “Keir Starmer would do well not to repeat the mistakes of Rishi Sunak, and to empower his health secretary to negotiate in good faith.”

He welcomed Mr Streeting describing pay negotiations as a “journey, not an event,” saying the union was happy to negotiate a multi-year deal.

But he added: “The truth of the matter is a doctor starts with £15 an hour and we are asking for doctors to be paid about £21 an hour — that is affordable.

“The government has spent £3 billion on strikes and pay restoration costs £1.3 billion — again if an incoming government under Keir Starmer wants to continue lying then it looks like strikes will have to continue as well.”

His committee co-chairman Dr Vivek Trivedi warned that as the current strike mandate ends on September 19, “if talks do not move in a timely manner, then of course our members would expect us to call for strike action.”

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/striking-doctors-threaten-more-walkouts-over-starmers-nhs-lies

Continue ReadingStriking doctors threaten more summer walkouts if Labour echoes Tory ‘lies’ on NHS

Labour HQ blocked by climate campaigners

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labour-hq-blocked-climate-campaigners

Photo: Stop Polluting Politics

LABOUR headquarters was blockaded by green campaigners today in protest at the party’s ties to major polluters.

Fifty activists from Stop Polluting Politics blocked both entrances to the office in London, arguing that funding from polluting corporations is to blame for Labour’s abandonment of its green investment promises.

Protesters chanted: “Labour, come off it, put people over profit” and carried banners reading: “Labour: Party of the People Polluters.”

Labour has received £41,600 from donors that are linked to pollution, including £9,600 from aviation giant Airbus and £12,000 from biomass corporation Drax since 2019.

Drax owns the largest single source of carbon emissions, a wood-burning power station, in Britain.

And Labour has stuck with Graham Stringer as a parliamentary candidate in Manchester despite his record as a climate change denier associated with the Global Warming Policy Foundation, with which shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves also has links.

Sam Smith, a spokesman for the group, said: “Allowing polluters to sponsor major political parties is as destructive as having tobacco companies fund research on smoking and public health.

…

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labour-hq-blocked-climate-campaigners

Continue ReadingLabour HQ blocked by climate campaigners

Tories Spend Tens of Thousands on Ads Spreading Bogus Driving Tax Claims

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Original article by Adam Barnett republished from DeSmog.

A screenshot of a Conservative advert on Meta during the 2024 general election campaign. Credit: Conservatives / Meta

The party has pumped out hundreds of adverts falsely stating that Labour would introduce a “national ULEZ”, and pay per mile charges.

The Conservative Party has reached millions of people with digital adverts that falsely claim Labour would impose new taxes on drivers. 

In recent days the Tories have launched hundreds of new online adverts falsely claiming that Labour would introduce a nationwide ultra-low emission zone (ULEZ) that would charge people for using highly-polluting vehicles. 

Labour’s London Mayor Sadiq Khan introduced and recently extended the capital’s ULEZ, which only applies to around 10 percent of vehicles, but the party has no plans to roll out the scheme to the rest of the country. 

New analysis by advertising experts ACT Climate Labs, shared with DeSmog, finds the Tories have spent tens of thousands of pounds since the start of the general election campaign on digital adverts, which have appeared on the likes of Google, Facebook and Instagram, attacking climate and anti-pollution policies.

“Unfortunately, the Conservative leadership has increasingly used environmental and climate policies as collateral damage lately, in an attempt to secure more support for the party,” Sean Buchan, intelligence lead at ACT Climate Labs, told DeSmog. 

“Clearly, it is not working – in fact, poll after poll shows us that Conservative voters, along with the vast majority of Brits, want climate action. 

“However, the ripple effects of these adverts may last well beyond 4 July. The climate movement needs to ensure the public is seeing pro-climate messaging that truly speaks to them, through creative and local campaigns, and where possible with multi-channel advertising of its own.”

One Tory advert on Meta (Facebook and Instagram) read: “This is not a test. Keir Starmer will force pay per mile driving, costing you £THOUSANDS [sic] a year.” 

This false claim – Labour doesn’t intend to introduce pay per mile charges – was seen between 150,000 and 175,000 times, costing between £1,000 and £1,500. 

During the London mayoral election in May, the Conservatives claimed that Labour would introduce pay per mile road charges in the city, despite Khan having publicly ruled out the policy. A Tory leaflet featuring the claim was reported by Labour to the Crown Prosecution Service, with the party saying it may have broken election law. 

While serving as chancellor, now Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reportedly said he was “very interested” in introducing a national pay per mile scheme.

“Voters are badly served by any party which repeatedly spreads misinformation or disinformation online,” said former Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake, director of the campaign group Unlock Democracy. “If parties cannot commit to accurate advertising on a voluntary basis, bringing political ads under advertising rules may provide the only solution.”

ULEZ Blitz

Another Meta advert from the Conservatives, costing between £400 and £499 and gaining upwards of 50,000 impressions, claimed “Keir Starmer will force a local ULEZ near you”.

The party is now pumping out hundreds of similar adverts spreading this claim, each tailored to a local constituency, estimated to be costing up to £65,000. “With his supermajority, Keir Starmer could steamroll through plans to introduce a ULEZ near you,” the adverts state.

The Tory campaign has been warning voters against handing Labour a large majority, despite the size of a government’s majority making little difference to its ability to pass legislation. 

“The Tory strategy of the last few weeks has been to focus on their core supporters, as well as those who might vote Reform, so these ads are another thing designed for them,” Sam Jeffers, executive director of the advertising monitoring platform Who Targets Me, told DeSmog. 

The Tories have also paid for a Google advert attacking Labour’s decarbonisation plans, which has been viewed more than five million time, costing between £25,000 and £30,000. The advert features an “explainer” video on how much a Labour government would allegedly cost households, with decarbonising the electricity grid the first cost named.

Labour plans to decarbonise the electricity grid by 2030, while the Conservatives have pledged that 95 percent of the UK’s electricity will be generated by low-carbon sources by 2030, achieving full decarbonisation by 2035.

Political parties have spent huge sums on digital adverts during the campaign so far. As of 25 June, the Tories and Labour combined had spent over £3 million on Meta adverts that had gained an estimated 400 million impressions. 

“Advertising blasts like this – especially when micro-targeted – can have a significant influence on people’s thoughts and behaviours,” said Buchan.

“In an increasingly fragmented media environment, digital advertising can be a fantastic way to target hard-to-reach people with your message. In an election where honesty is at a premium, it’s very concerning to see so much money – up to £70,000 on the adverts we’ve counted – spent on such spurious claims.”

Original article by Adam Barnett republished from DeSmog.

Continue ReadingTories Spend Tens of Thousands on Ads Spreading Bogus Driving Tax Claims

JULIAN ASSANGE: FREEDOM THIS TIME, NO THANKS TO THE MEDIA

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https://www.declassifieduk.org/julian-assange-freedom-this-time-no-thanks-to-the-media/

Assange arrives in Australia. (Photo: AAP / Alamy)

It was the media, led by the Guardian, that kept Assange behind bars. Their villainy will soon be erased because they write the script about what’s going on in the world.

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Everything Assange had warned the US wanted to do to him was proved correct over the next five years, as he languished in Belmarsh entirely cut off from the outside world. 

No one in our political or media class appeared to notice, or could afford to admit, that events were playing out exactly as the founder of Wikileaks had for so many years predicted they would – and for which he was, at the time, so roundly ridiculed.

Nor was that same political-media class prepared to factor in other vital context showing that the US was not trying to enforce some kind of legal process, but that the extradition case against Assange was entirely about wreaking vengeance – and making an example of the Wikileaks founder to deter others from following him in shedding light on US state crimes.

That included revelations that, true to form, the CIA, which was exposed as a rogue foreign intelligence agency in 250,000 embassy cables published by Wikileaks in 2010, had variously plotted to assassinate him or kidnap him off the streets of London. 

Other evidence came to light that the CIA had been carrying out extensive spying operations on the embassy, recording Assange’s every move, including his meetings with his doctors and lawyers. 

That fact alone should have seen the US case thrown out by the British courts. But the UK judiciary was looking over its shoulder, towards Washington, far more than it was abiding by its own statute books.

Media no watchdog

Western governments, politicians, the judiciary, and the media all failed Assange. Or rather, they did what they are actually there to do: keep the rabble – that is, you and me – from knowing what they are really up to. 

Their job is to build narratives suggesting that they know best, that we must trust them, that their crimes, such as those they are supporting right now in Gaza, are actually not what they look like, but are, in fact, efforts in very difficult circumstances to uphold the moral order, to protect civilisation. 

For this reason, there is a special need to identify the critical role played by the media in keeping Assange locked up for so long.

The truth is, with a properly adversarial media playing the role it declares for itself, as a watchdog on power, Assange could never have been disappeared for so long. He would have been freed years ago. It was the media that kept him behind bars. 

The establishment media acted as a willing tool in the demonising narrative the US and British governments carefully crafted against Assange.

Even now, as he is reunited with his family, the BBC and others are peddling the same long-discredited lies. 

Those include the constantly repeated claim by journalists that he faced “rape charges” in Sweden that were supposedly dropped. Here is the BBC making this error once again in its reporting this week. 

In fact, Assange never faced more than a “preliminary investigation”, one the Swedish prosecutors repeatedly dropped for lack of evidence. The investigation, we now know, was revived and sustained for so long not because of Sweden but chiefly because the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service, then led by Sir Keir Starmer (now the leader of the Labour party), insisted on it dragging on. 

Starmer made repeated trips to Washington during this period, when the US was trying to find a pretext to lock Assange away for political crimes, not sexual ones. But as happened so often in the Assange case, all the records of those meetings were destroyed by the British authorities. 

…

https://www.declassifieduk.org/julian-assange-freedom-this-time-no-thanks-to-the-media/

Julian Assange speaks at London's Ecuadorian Embassy
Julian Assange speaks at London’s Ecuadorian Embassy
Continue ReadingJULIAN ASSANGE: FREEDOM THIS TIME, NO THANKS TO THE MEDIA