‘Thought of the Day’ is a feature of BBC Radio 4 news at early in the morning. It usually features some religious nutter spouting some very simplistic religious rubbish. It’s a sermon and sermons are usually fantastic babbliing by mad people. The trouble is – of course – that the presentation is within their particular religious framework often with no regard for logic or reason. It used to drive me mad – I’d be thinking “You’re so biased and short-sighted, can’t you see <WHATEVER>?”. I’ve just heard “Prayer for the Day” for the first time ever because I’m up so early, need to remember to change channel in future.
So here I am giving my own thoughts of the day. While I realise that I am regarded very highly be some of my valued audience, you are so welcome to disagree. I want you to disagree. Make notes. He’s wrong on this, this and this. That’s not how it works because … <YOUR REASONING>. Don’t just disagree, know exactly why and what you disagree with, be able to argue what points you disagree with me.
It’s a real shame that you can’t comment on this blog – that’s because comments are censored probably by UK’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper with the full knowledge and agreement of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. That’s a topic for another Thoughts of the Day, let’s just say that it doesn’t really conform with human rights laws, does it? No doubt that there’s some justification for it … OK let’s leave it for now and discuss it soon on some laterer Thoughts of the Day. I’ve also not forgotten that I’m supposed to write a piece on carbon capture and storage but I have been and am still quite ill.
Back to the point, let’s have some thoughts of the day, more thoughts of the day I suppose.
Firstly, you don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes do you? United States providing a missile interception capability to Israel, drones and rockets getting through …
Trying to find an appropriate nickname for Kamala Harris who fully supports Israel’s genocide.
Secondly, I think that we should regard public statements by US and UK on Israel to be intended to deceive and mislead. Their actions prove that they’re talking total BS in public. USUK militaries are participating as much as the IDF FFS.
Thirdly, I think that WW3 is on the cards. I was expecting it a few weeks ago actually and it’s getting on a bit really re: the presidential election. People get scared and tend to vote with what they’ve got if there’s a war on. Russia and North Korea [ed and China] will be on Iran’s side. Russia has got some of it’s fleet there already. I know from keeping up with the news that Russia has got some F.O. serious new missiles the capabilities of which have yet to be demonstrated.
There’s a protest on 2 November. I’ve got a bus ticket and some walking boots on the way.
Pro-Palestine protest outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 2024. | Fatih Aktas/Anadolu via Getty Images
A year on and no end in sight to genocide – thanks to US support for Israel, which will continue beyond election
A year on from the outset of Israel’s war on Gaza, Israeli forces have killed more than 42,000 Palestinians – and this is just the confirmed death toll. A recent study by the Lancet medical journal projected that the death toll could exceed 186,000 when counting indirect deaths – from starvation and diseases due to the Israeli blockade on humanitarian aid, food, water and medicines.
To take stock of where we’re at and whether this nightmare is likely to end any time soon, openDemocracy spoke to Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a foreign policy analyst based in New York and US Policy Fellow at Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network.
openDemocracy: It’s been a year since this latest iteration of Israel’s war on Gaza commenced. Is the end in sight? What’s Israel’s end game?
Tariq: Unfortunately, I don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel here. There is no end in sight to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. And that’s mainly because Israel hasn’t faced an ounce of accountability or pressure to de-escalate from the international community (the US and other western benefactors) to end this.
I’ve tended to be doubtful when people insist that Israel doesn’t have a plan in Gaza and is just destroying and killing for the sake of it. Israel does have a plan and it has been acting on it. It truly sees this moment in history, as well as the blank check from the US, as a golden strategic opportunity to take leaps towards its ultimate goal of ‘maximum land with minimum Palestinians’ and wider regional domination through brute force.
Israel’s end game in Gaza is erasure, and for the last 12 months, they’ve been laying the foundation for a new reality in Gaza for us all to see. In addition to “thinning out the population,” as Netanyahu said, through genocide, collective punishment, and ethnic cleansing, Israel has been effectively chopping up the Strip into smaller, more controllable enclaves that will come to represent the new “facts on the ground.”
openDemocracy: Has anything about the conflict surprised you?
Tariq: I think one of the most surprising aspects about both the genocide in Gaza and now Israel’s escalation across the region is that it has gone on uninterrupted and without international intervention for so long, despite the fact that just about every massacre has been broadcast for the world to see on social media.
As someone who is part of a generation that grew up being taught that the phrase “never again” really meant something, this is what I have found most jarring. Of course, Gaza is not the first time the international “rules-based” order has been exposed as a crutch for Western hegemony. From Vietnam to Iraq, the West’s selective application of international law has long been exposed for what it is. But Gaza is the first postwar genocide both entirely perpetrated by a Western ally and funded, facilitated, and justified by the West itself, not to mention the first to be so thoroughly recorded for the world to see.
openDemocracy: Now with recent escalations including Iran, do you think realistically we’re on the verge of all-out war in the region?
Tariq: I think we are already seeing an all-out regional war by every definition of the term. Israeli fighter jets are bombing Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran. This is not to mention the strikes the US, UK, and other Israeli benefactors have carried out on Israel’s behalf.
It boils down to this: Israel will continue to escalate across the region in hopes of achieving its extremist, expansionist goals as long as the US taxpayer continues to foot the bill and US assets and personnel are off the coast of Haifa to come to Israel’s defence if need be.
openDemocracy: It seems that the Biden administration actually gave Israel the green light to mount large-scale attacks on Lebanon. Has the US ever really been interested in stabilising the region? Does the US want an all-out war?
Tariq: The Biden Administration has either explicitly or implicitly (through uninterrupted weapons transfers and diplomatic shielding) given Israel the green light for a year of genocide and regional escalation.
I believe it is clear that the US ultimately shares the same strategic objectives as Israel, which range from silencing Palestinians once and for all to destroying groups like Hezbollah to causing significant damage to Iran. These are all outcomes that the US would celebrate (just take the public statement the US made following Israel’s assassination of Hassan Nasrallah as one example).
Does the Biden Administration wish Israel could go about some of their operations differently? Perhaps. But at the end of the day, the costs of Israel’s unparalleled violence, the mass death of Arabs and the destruction of their lands, is a price the US is willing to accept. If the US didn’t want an all-out war, they would stop giving Israel all the weapons and diplomatic space to keep escalating at will. Because while every US administration has been pro-Israel, other US presidents have stood up to Israel when they felt US interests were at risk.
openDemocracy: Do you think things will change after the US elections on November 5?
Tariq: Nothing will fundamentally change, regardless of who wins the elections on November 5. For Palestinians, the genocide will continue because neither candidate has exhibited any indication that they intend to hold Israel accountable for war crimes and genocide or use any of the ample leverage that the US has to influence Israel’s conduct.
In fact, it’s the opposite. Donald Trump insists he would let Israel “finish the job” in Gaza, while Kamala Harris promises that she will continue the Biden Administration’s policy of giving Israel “everything it needs” and continues to make it clear that she intends to be a carbon copy of the Biden Administration. The truth is, both Harris and Trump spell continued disaster for both Palestinians and the wider region, and there is no “lesser evil” here.
The truth is, the Biden administration’s resume on Israel-Palestine, even long before October 7, has in many ways mirrored that of Trump’s.
If Biden wanted to make good on his commitment to a “two-state solution,” he would have at least started by reversing the norm shattering pro-Israel policies of his predecessor. The Biden Administration has actually given Israel more military and diplomatic assistance than any previous administration.
The only substantial difference between Trump and Biden has been their rhetoric. But one could argue that Biden’s lofty, yet empty words actually does more harm than good by distracting us from the fact that he has given Israel everything it needed to get away with genocide right in front of our eyes. If Harris wins in November, it will be more of the same, and you don’t need to take my word for it, she has made it abundantly clear herself.
A man documents the damaged buildings at the site of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburb, Lebanon, October 1, 2024
ISRAEL’S invasion of Lebanon looked close to having ignited all-out war in the Middle East last night as Iran launched multiple missiles at Israeli targets in response.
It was unclear how Israel or the US, which has stationed huge forces in the region to back Israel up as it continues its Gaza genocide, would react as the Morning Star went to press.
The Israeli military followed up its violation of Lebanese territory by warning residents of nearly two dozen border communities to evacuate, hours after announcing the start of “limited” ground operations against the Hezbollah resistance movement.
…
British peace activists condemned Israel’s invasion and its attempts to portray it as a “limited” operation.
Independent MP Jeremy Corbyn told the Morning Star: “Israel’s decision to send troops into Lebanon, a sovereign nation, is no ‘limited ground operation,’ it is an invasion.”
Mr Corbyn also blasted British policy in the Middle East, saying: “Our government’s hypocrisy is on full display. Its failure to defend international law and stand up to Israel is a moral disgrace.”
Pro-Palestinian protesters take part in a Palestine Solidarity Campaign demonstration as they march to the Labour Party conference venue on September 21, 2024 in Liverpool, England. [Ian Forsyth/Getty Images]
It’s difficult to comprehend the horrors of what’s happening in Gaza, Lebanon and beyond in the Middle East. The heartbreaking scenes of dirt-encrusted toddlers screaming as they’re pulled from the rubble of what was once their homes; the small children carrying plastic bags containing the remains of their slain siblings; the white-bandaged bodies of whole families laid out next to hospitals in their hundreds; the shaking youngsters trying to hide as Israeli soldiers fire indiscriminately at anything that moves. Surely, feeling a deep, painful empathy for the victims of such savagery, especially the children, is part of what gives us our humanity.
This isn’t the same for everyone, of course. Not for the perpetrators, who use their cutting-edge western-manufactured machines of death to extinguish these innocent lives. Nor, in most cases, for politicians here in Britain. For Prime Minister Keir Starmer, these scenes are even the set up for a joke.
During the new prime minister’s triumphant speech at this week’s Labour Party conference, a heckler dared to challenge the Dear Leader on his lack of empathy for Israel’s victims. After Starmer said that, “Every child, every person, deserves to be respected for the contribution they make,” Labour member Daniel Riley, 18, shouted in response: “Does that include the children of Gaza?”
“This guy’s obviously got a pass from the 2019 conference,” quipped the smug Starmer, in a reference to years when Labour was led by pro-Palestinian Jeremy Corbyn. The more sycophantic element of Starmer’s congregation, stronger than ever thanks to Sir Keir’s purges of the left, lapped up the jibe.
It’s become a cliché to respond to such things with variations of “imagine the response if Corbyn had said something like that about Israeli children,” but sometimes you can’t help but be stunned at the double standards. Corbyn would never have said such a thing, but if he had it would have been frontpage news; irrefutable proof of his alleged anti-Semitism.
But they weren’t Israeli children. They were Arabs. And in mainstream western discourse, they don’t count. They don’t suffer. They don’t have dreams. They’re abstract numbers, if that.
They’re just Arabs, unworthy of our empathy.
To really hammer home the hypocrisy, the words “genocide” and “apartheid” had already been banned from the Labour conference. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign was forced to remove both words from the title of its fringe meeting. Some activists responded by painting the words “genocide conference” on the windows of the venue.
In many ways, the Labour government, elected in July after 14 years in the wilderness, is an improvement on their Conservative predecessors regarding Palestine. But that’s a pretty low bar. Starmer may have banned his MPs from attending the huge protests against the war on Gaza, which often numbered hundreds of thousands of people, but he didn’t go as far as former home secretary Suella Braverman, who branded them “hate marches”.
Pro-Palestinian protesters campaign near Downing Street in London, UK, on Wednesday, July 24, 2024. [Betty Laura Zapata/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
And despite Labour’s top team repeating the mantra that “Israel has the right to defend itself” like a broken record whenever the issue comes up, it has at least (and belatedly) called for a ceasefire and the establishment of a Palestinian state (however problematic that demand in itself is).
The Labour government has also drawn the ire of Israel for dropping its opposition to the International Criminal Court’s bid for an arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu. A further schism was seen when the UK resumed its £21 million funding to the Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA. Again, it was a low bar.
Much has also been made of the new government’s decision to block arms sales to Israel (although this is limited to a pitiful eight per cent of exports). Unsurprisingly, the Palestine solidarity movement says it’s not enough. And so do the British public: in May, 55 per cent of the British public wanted arms sales to Israel to be suspended until the war against the Palestinians in Gaza ends.
Even less surprisingly, it was met with fury from Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu said that it was “sending a horrible message” to Hamas. Starmer responded to Netanyahu’s comment during an interview on LBC Radio over the conference period. “No, he’s not right about that,” he tried to reassure the audience. “We had to comply with international law and our domestic law in relation to that. I’ve always been clear, I support Israel’s right to self-defence, I’ve been robust about that… I’ve taken blows in relation to that – there’s no doubting that support – but it’s got to be done in accordance with international law.”
In other words, “I’m really sorry, and I’m not saying you’re committing war crimes, it’s just that it would be a bad look for a former lawyer to end up in The Hague.”
Foreign Secretary David Lammy was also questioned on LBC during the conference about why the other 92 per cent of arms sales to Israel had not been banned, including the export of parts for F-35 fighter jets, which Israel has used, among other things, to bomb heavily-populated refugee camps in Gaza. Lammy said that a full embargo would limit Israel’s ability to fight the Houthis in Yemen “and other proxies”.
“I think that would be a mistake,” he added. “It would lead to a wider war and an escalation that we here in the UK are committed to stopping, so I’m afraid I disagree with that position.”
In Lammy’s eyes, war is peace.
By coincidence, two of the arms companies currently selling their merchandise to Israel for use in Gaza were also at the conference. According to Private Eye magazine, BAE Systems, which makes parts for the F-35, hosted a high-profile meeting with defence secretary John Healey. A separate event, featuring armed forces minister Luke Pollard, was sponsored by US arms firm Northrop Grumman. Northrop Grumman makes parts for the F-35, the F-16 and the Apache helicopter. All are being used to massacre civilians in Israel’s war in Gaza and the wider region.
To ensure compliance with the Zionist narrative, Israeli politicians came to the conference themselves. Among them was opposition leader Yair Golan, who has said that Palestinians should “starve to death” until the hostages are released. He was granted audiences with several ministers, including Lammy, and attended a meeting hosted by Labour Friends of Israel.
Nevertheless, the conference did at least spark some hope for the Palestine cause, albeit inadvertently. During its opening weekend, 15,000 protesters gathered in Liverpool to send a message to Labour over its appalling support for the occupation state.
And that’s where the hope is. The Labour government won’t stand up to Israel’s devastating behaviour without pressure. If what we’ve seen already isn’t enough to make them change this attitude, I’m not sure what would. If Israel invaded London, Keir Starmer would probably still be trying to sell them the weapons to do it with.
Labour has pretty much always backed wars that align with the needs of the British and now US empires, from the First World War to Vietnam. It wants to preserve the British state, its crown and its interests, albeit in a way that slightly improves life for its working-class base. It’s currently in the interests of the British ruling class to cling to the coattails of the United States. The US, in turn, needs Israel as its outpost in the Middle East. This is all hardwired into Establishment politics.
Politicians who deviate from such norms, such as Corbyn, are vilified. That’s not how we do grown-up politics in this country, don’t you know?
Starmer is no radical. He’s not really much at all.
His main use was to seize back control of the Labour party from the left and return it to the hands of the Establishment. He did this by standing on a left-wing manifesto during his leadership election only to abandon it, ally himself with the right of the party and purge the left once he assumed the leadership.
His domestic agenda is hampered severely by his unwillingness to tax the rich to repair the devastation left by the Conservatives. Instead, he is removing winter fuel allowances from pensioners and maintaining benefit restrictions on anyone with more than two children. These, he keeps saying, are “tough choices”, even though they are the easiest choices for him, as he is so scared of upsetting the rich and powerful.
He’s desperate to be seen as an effective manager for the British state, which means maintaining the easy ride enjoyed by the wealthy and aligning himself with US-led geopolitical interests. Moreover, the British Establishment that Starmer works for is fully behind the US and its Middle Eastern proxy, Israel.
Just as a middle manager at a fast food company would enthusiastically and unquestioningly promote its unhealthy products, despite their harmful effects on consumers, Starmer is hardwired to enthusiastically and unquestioningly execute the will of the people with real power over Britain. That’s not the electorate.
Tales of children suffering in Gaza are as irrelevant to him as children suffering under his benefit restrictions in Britain. Elderly people freezing in makeshift shelters in Lebanon are as irrelevant to him as elderly people freezing in Britain because they can’t afford to pay their energy bills.
And all the while, Starmer enjoys the patronage of the powerful. His bewilderment at a recent outcry over major donations of cash, designer clothes and tickets to football matches and concerts to him and his top team reveals his belief that he should be reaping the rewards of his subservience as much as any effective manager.
The Labour party conference showed us a government that will continue to stand firmly behind Israel, no matter what the state does or the wider horrors it looks set to unleash. Mild reprimands aside, Labour under Starmer will not abandon the apartheid state without huge pressure.
That’s why real opposition to Israel’s crimes remains in the hands of those outside parliament who take to the streets, occupy their universities and speak up loudly in defence of Palestinians. The Labour leadership’s limited concessions to Palestinian rights would not have been made without that pressure from below. It’s only when actions like these begin to challenge Starmer’s tentative grip on power that he will be forced to offer any sort of meaningful opposition to Israel’s barbarism.
Zionist Keir Starmer 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.UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspeding 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide.
An injured Palestinian baby is treated in al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital after an Israeli attack on Bureij refugee camp in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on August 7, 2024. (Photo: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“We are here to deliver a policy that saves and improves lives,” Uncommitted National Movement co-founder Abbas Alawieh said in opening remarks at a press conference on the sidelines of the DNC.
As humanitarians opposed to the U.S. government’s support for Israel’s assault on Gaza continued to protest during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Tuesday, American doctors who recently volunteered in the besieged enclave implored the party’s presidential nominee Kamala Harris—based on the carnage and heartache they have witnessed—to embrace an arms embargo on Israel and an immediate cease-fire.
during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the Uncommitted National Movement held a Tuesday press conference at which American doctors who volunteered in Gaza implored Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, to embrace an arms embargo on Israel and an immediate cease-fire.
“We are here to deliver a policy that saves and improves lives,” Uncommitted National Movement co-founder Abbas Alawieh said in opening remarks at Tuesday’s press conference. “We are here because we want to win a better world.”
Alawieh slammed the “hypocritical action” of Biden administration officials who, while “saying they want a cease-fire,” continue “to send more and more weapons” to far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “murderous government,” which “is using those weapons to kill civilians” and is “preventing any hope for all captives, Israeli and Palestinian, to be reunited with their families.”
Such support, Alawieh added, is also “preventing any hope of a departure from the horrors that we are seeing our siblings in Gaza experience with more than 16,000 children… being killed using U.S. weapons.”
DNC Press Conference: Uncommitted delegates discuss why they are urging Vice President Harris to unite our party, which has been divided by Biden’s horrific Gaza policies, and stop sending American bombs to Netanyahu’s far-right Israeli government. https://t.co/mVtbjUfliz
— Uncommitted National Movement 🌺 (@uncommittedmvmt) August 19, 2024
“The Uncommitted National Movement mobilized Democratic voters—more than 740,000 nationally—specifically around the idea that our candidate, regardless of who they may be, needs an updated approach to their Gaza policy,” Alawieh continued. “Specifically, our stance is that our government should embrace an arms embargo. Stop sending weapons that are being used to kill civilians.”
“Vice President Harris is engaging with us on this issue,” Alawieh added. “Her team is engaging with us on this issue. We do view that as a positive step in the right direction. We want to be very clear that what we need to see urgently is for the bombs to stop. Stop sending bombs if you want us to believe that you want a cease-fire.”
There are 30 Uncommitted delegates attending the DNC after being elected in Democratic primaries in states like Minnesota, where the movement received 18.9% of the vote, and the key swing state of Wisconsin, where it won 13.3%. As polling reveals that Democratic and Independent voters in crucial swing states would be more likely to vote for Harris if she backs an arms embargo on Israel, her campaign has made some moves to accommodate Uncommitted voices, including providing space at the DNC.
Dr. Tammy Abughnaim, a Chicago-based emergency physician, said she asked Palestinians what she should tell people in the United States about Gaza, where she saw the aftermath of “massacre after massacre” and “suffering on an entirely unprecedented scale.”
“Tell the world what you saw,” she said they told her. “We cannot afford another day of this.”
On Monday, the DNC held its first-ever panel on Palestinian rights, which featured testimony from some of those who spoke at Tuesday’s press conference, including Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, an American pediatric intensive care physician who volunteered for two weeks at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
The Democratic National Convention held its first-ever panel on Palestinian rights Monday, including harrowing testimony from Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, who volunteered at a hospital in Gaza earlier this year. "We have witnessed civilian massacre after civilian massacre," she said. pic.twitter.com/BZd05zzLVH
On Tuesday, Haj-Hassan said that the American doctors who worked in Gaza “cannot unsee what we witnessed, it gives us nightmares.”
“I can personally testify that I have never seen anything so horrific, so egregious, so inhumane,” she stated. “We decided to come here and bear moral witness with the unfortunate recognition that the only way to protect civilian life is through putting pressure on the U.S. government to stop militarily supporting Israel in its campaign.”
Haj-Hassan continued:
For the past 10 months, we have witnessed civilian casualty after civilian massacre after civilian massacre. The bread massacre. The Nuseirat massacre. The multiple school massacres, where internally displaced people, who have been forcibly transferred, a war crime in and of itself… finally sought shelter only to be massacred. Entire families exterminated. Humanitarian workers and healthcare workers and journalists killed in record numbers. Children with their extremities amputated traumatically in record numbers…
Over 17,000 children have lost one or both parents in Gaza since October. We have treated children who are the only surviving members of their entire family who were killed in the same bombing. I have personally held the hands of children taking their last final gasps with no family alive… unable to comfort them during their final agonizing breaths… This phenomenon of children having their entire families killed and arriving to the emergency department is so frequent it actually has an acronym… wounded child, no surviving family, given the acronym WCNSF.
Children who are fortunate enough to survive their injuries are discharged into a Russian roulette of a hundred different ways that they could be killed… another bombing, starvation, dehydration, disease. Now we have alarming reports of an outbreak of polio. Polio is something that we were able to eradicate on the majority of this planet decades ago.
“And yet we continue to fund this,” Haj-Hassan added. “History is watching us. The world is watching us. I cannot make sense of this. I suspect you cannot too. And I hope that the Democratic Party recognizes the irony and the hypocrisy of what we continue to fund and chooses to finally stand by the values of human rights and justice that we claim to stand by.”
Harris has expressed sympathy for Palestinians suffering what she called a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza. However, like Biden, she’s also proclaimed her “unwavering” support for Israel. When asked earlier this month if Harris would support a suspension in weapons transfers, one of her national security advisers said that “she will always ensure Israel is able to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups” and “does not support an arms embargo on Israel.”
Human rights advocates fear that if elected to a second term, former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, would be even more supportive of Israel’s obliteration of Gaza than the Biden-Harris administration.
According to Palestinian and international officials, at least 40,173 Palestinians have been killed—most of them women and children—and nearly 93,000 others have been wounded during Israel’s 319-day assault and siege on Gaza. Gaza officials say that at least 10,000 other Palestinians are missing, believed to be dead and buried under the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out homes and other buildings.
Almost the entire Gaza population of 2.3 million has been forcibly displaced. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans are starving; dozens have died from malnutrition, dehydration, and lack of medicines and healthcare amid a crippling Israeli siege that has been cited as evidence during Israel’s genocide trial at the International Court of Justice. The blockade has also exacerbated the spread of contagious diseases including measles, hepatitis, and polio.
