The Media Loves “The Experts,” Until it’s Time to Count Gaza’s Dead.
Public debate around Gaza fixates on a death toll that is probably half the size of the real number.
Lex Syd, 22 Aug, 25, https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-media-loves-the-experts-until-its-time-to-count-gazas-dead
Far from being inflated by sneaky Hamas propagandists, the commonly cited death toll of the war in Gaza is an extreme undercount.
Virtually every news article about the Israel-Hamas war cites the death toll provided by the strip’s Ministry of Health. Currently at 60,900 (and climbing by the day), the MOH toll is widely accepted as an accurate minimum. Still, journalists and political figures aligned with Israel often call it into question in a range of ways, from attaching the label “Hamas-controlled” to the Ministry itself to outright denying its accuracy. In 2023, even former President Joe Biden invoked this idea, saying that he had “no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.”
Because the Ministry’s death toll has attracted this undeserved controversy, the standard reporting line is to explain why the MOH figures are considered reliable. For example, the Washington Post recently published a detailed accounting of the names, and in some cases the photos, of roughly 18,500 children who are counted among the dead overall.
But in defending and insisting on the MOH figures, media outlets have defended the bare minimum, and the result is a public debate that revolves around an understated count. Hence why New York Times columnist Bret Stephens can write an opinion piece arguing that 60,000 dead is tragic, but small relative to what Israel could do. Those terms of debate are accepted even by his harshest critics.
But the figure everyone knows is not an undercount of a few thousand or even ten thousand. The real toll could well be twice as high. That is according to a growing body of research that is conspicuously absent in news coverage of Gaza—despite the eagerness of newsrooms to emphasize expert opinion on other divisive topics, like COVID-19 policy or climate change.
The standard figure largely counts only those whose bodies reached health workers and those who were killed violently. But in reality, the institutions that count the dead are heavily degraded, thousands remain under rubble, and deaths due to malnutrition or easily preventable diseases are rarely included in MOH totals, if at all.
How Many Gazans Have Died, According to Experts
A reasonable, conservative estimate of the death toll in Gaza is about 100,000. And the figure may well tally to 200,000, if not now, then by the war’s end.
One recent study conducted by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and published in the Lancet estimates there were 64,260 “traumatic injury deaths” by the end of June 2024—at the time, the Ministry of Health’s figure was just under 38,000. In other words, the real number was likely 41 percent higher than the official one. That same 41 percent undercount, if applied to today’s figure of 60,900, would amount to roughly 102,900 deaths. Again, this is only counting those who were killed directly by Israeli bombs or bullets, not those who have starved to death or succumbed to disease.
Another recent study estimated around 84,000 deaths by January 2025. It has yet to pass peer review, but was conducted by reputable researchers from the University of London, Princeton, and Stanford, among other institutions. In January the MOH’s toll was roughly 45,900—so the estimate these scholars reached was nearly twice the standard figure (1.83 times as high, to be specific). If that ratio is applied to today’s toll, the result is over 111,400. This study’s estimate included just a few thousand non-violent, or indirect, deaths, but coauthors noted non-violent deaths may well have increased since the study concluded.
These recent studies are the best outside approximations of Gaza’s death toll made to date, and they have led both The Economist and Haaretz—hardly bastions of Hamas propaganda—to run articles centered on a potential six-figure death toll.
But these recent studies are only the latest in a line of reports and expert commentaries dating back to the war’s opening months—some of which estimate far more excess deaths.
Estimating Starvation Deaths, Before the Last Few Weeks
One letter to the Biden administration, signed by 99 American healthcare workers who volunteered in Gaza, estimated a death toll of 118,900 by the time the letter was sent in October 2024. Brown University’s Costs of War Project believes the figure credible and has cited it in its own report.
As detailed in the letter’s appendix, this includes a conservative count of over 62,000 deaths from starvation, alongside the more than 41,000 killed directly by that time, an additional 10,000 buried under rubble and therefore uncounted, and a few thousand more from those with chronic medical conditions who were cut off from their treatments.
The physicians’ letter essentially calculated the numbers that would be expected from repeated warnings issued by global famine monitors, namely the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC. Higher classifications of food insecurity are tied to an expected number of deaths as a percentage of the population, so the physicians—who personally witnessed starvation in Gaza—did the math for the various IPC warnings for parts of Gaza throughout the war.
Estimating mass starvation deaths is inherently imprecise. Outright starvation is usually not the main killer in famines—typically diseases deliver the final blow in bodies severely weakened by malnutrition. (This is also why young children make up a disproportionate number of famine deaths.) And even if a death is recorded, its official cause may not be hunger.
Starvation in Gaza is in the spotlight now, partly because hundreds of Palestinians have been shot and killed trying to get aid and partly because it is now reaching an unavoidable level—perhaps best evidenced by the MOH’s July 22 update that 15 died of hunger in a single day. But this is only the latest outbreak of hunger in Gaza, and the MOH’s reporting of hunger-related deaths has been inconsistent (with the Ministry sometimes not reporting such deaths).
Since October 2023, Gaza or parts of Gaza have reached near-famine conditions multiple times. Even absent a formal declaration, thousands can perish. It is even possible for a declared famine to see fewer deaths than an area that failed to meet the famine criteria. For example, about 85,000 children in Yemen were estimated to have died of malnutrition from 2015 to 2018 due to the country’s civil war and the U.S.-Saudi blockade, absent any official famine declaration.
It is for this reason that leading famine expert Alex de Waal wrote earlier this year that the “controversy over whether or not Gaza has crossed the red line into ‘famine’ is a distraction.” In November 2024, De Waal suggested that even absent a famine declaration, Gaza could see deaths at the scale of a famine—a toll of 100,000 being his example.
Reports of extreme hunger emerged as early as December 2023. As one woman told CNN at the time, her family’s children were “screaming all day from hunger.” By January 2024, a UN official was warning that hundreds of thousands of Gazans were “actually in famine.” In February 2024, the Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha reported that his family members in Gaza had turned to eating “a mixture of rabbit, donkey, and pigeon feed” out of desperation.
Starvation was also reported by dozens of independent healthcare workers who volunteered to work in Gaza and were interviewed by the New York Times a year into the war. Of 65 healthcare workers, 63 said they observed severe malnutrition, and 25 had witnessed babies die of starvation, dehydration, or infections.
“I worked in a neonatal I.C.U. Several infants died every day due to lack of medical supplies and appropriate nutrition,” a Texas pediatrician told the Times.
Atomic Bill and the Payment Due
Karl Grossman, CounterPunch, August 21, 2025
Can a play influence public perception of our shared atomic history enough to shift the conversation away from a presumed nuclear “renaissance” and into a more critical, life-protective examination of what this technology is and could do to us all?
Playwright and podcaster Libbe HaLevy believes it can. She spent 13 years researching and writing that play—Atomic Bill and the Payment Due—which will have its premiere staged reading on September 9th as a featured presentation of the 50th anniversary celebration of the establishment of the Peace Resource Center at Wilmington College in Ohio.
For 14 years, HaLevy has hosted the podcast Nuclear Hotseat, aired on 20 Pacifica affiliate radio stations throughout the United States and, as its website (NuclearHotseat.com) says, has been tuned into and downloaded by audiences in over 124 countries around the world.
It was while working on a 2012 episode focusing on the Trinity atomic bomb test in New Mexico that she became aware of journalistic irregularities around that event that piqued her interest.
The play is “a true story about media manipulation at the dawn of the Atomic Age and the New York Times reporter who sold his soul to get the story.”
That reporter is William Laurence, a Pulitzer Prize-winning science reporter at the Times. In 1945, General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project, arranged with Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger, and Edwin James, its managing editor, to have Laurence secretly inserted into the Manhattan Project. He was the only journalist embedded in the crash program to build the first atomic bombs– a position he relished.
Before World War II broke out and the splitting of the atom first occurred, Laurence wrote in the Times about how atomic energy could for mankind “return the Earth to the Eden he had lost.” He witnessed the Trinity test in New Mexico in July 1945, and wrote the Manhattan Project press release that was distributed afterwards, which claimed only that an ammunition dump exploded and no one was hurt. He had arranged a seat on the Enola Gay for its dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, but missed getting on—a bitter disappointment. But he did fly on an airplane that followed the B-29 that dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. When the war ended, he wrote articles in the Times glorifying the Manhattan Project and for many years promoted nuclear energy in his stories— ignoring the lethal impacts of radioactivity.
HaLevy sensed a play lurking in the story……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/08/21/atomic-bill-and-the-payment-due/
What I Saw in Ukraine: 2015-2022 – Diary of an International Observer
May 22, 2025, by Benoit Paré (Author) https://www.amazon.com/What-Saw-Ukraine-2015-2022-International/dp/295986011X
Ukraine 2015-2022.
A unique account of its kind, precise, sensitive, and personal, seen from the inside of an international mission at the heart of the Donbass war.
The reality on the ground, from the front lines.
New revelations, notably concerning civilian casualties, human rights violations, conflict-related trials, and the manipulation of facts.
And then, how the US-sponsored Ukrainian ultra-nationalist project provoked Moscow’s reaction.
This book is primarily intended for those who prioritize facts over partisanship and who want to understand how the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II came about.
Ukraine 2015-2022.
A unique account of its kind, precise, sensitive, and personal, seen from the inside of an international mission at the heart of the Donbass war.
The reality on the ground, from the front lines.
New revelations, notably concerning civilian casualties, human rights violations, conflict-related trials, and the manipulation of facts.
And then, how the US-sponsored Ukrainian ultranationalist project provoked Moscow’s reaction.
This book is primarily intended for those who prioritize facts over partisanship and who want to understand how the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II came about.
Setting the record straight on the background to events in Ukraine.
First, both the provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk in the Donbass region voted for independence from Ukraine in 2014 in resistance to a U.S.-backed coup that overthrew the elected president Viktor Yanukovych in February of that year. The independence vote came just eight days after neo-Nazis burned dozens of ethnic Russians alive in Odessa. To crush their bid for independence, the new U.S.-installed Ukrainian government then launched an “anti-terrorist” war against the provinces, with the assistance of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which had taken part in the coup. It is a war that is still going on eight years later, a war that Russia has just entered.
During these eight years, the Ukrainian Armed Forces and Azov have used artillery, snipers and assassination teams to systematically butcher more than 5,000 people (another 8,000 were wounded) — mostly civilians — in the Donetsk Peoples Republic, according to the leader of the DPR, who provided these figures in a press conference recently. In the Luhansk People’s Republic, an additional 2,000 civilians were killed and 3,365 injured. The total number of people killed and wounded in Donbass since 2014 is more than 18,000.
This has received at most superficial coverage by The New York Times; it has not been covered by Western corporate media because it does not fit the official Washington narrative
Ukraine & Nukes After a New York Times reporter grossly distorted what Putin and Zelensky have said and done about nuclear weapons, Steven Starr corrects the record and deplores Western media, in general, for misinforming and leading the entire world in a dangerous direction. https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/03/ukraine-nukes/ By Steven Starr,
The New York Times recently published an article by David Sanger entitled “Putin spins a conspiracy theory that Ukraine is on a path to produce nuclear weapons.” Unfortunately, it is Sanger who puts so much spin in his reporting that he leaves his readers with a grossly distorted version of the what the presidents of Russia and Ukraine have said and done.
Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky’s recent statements at the Munich conference centered around the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which welcomed Ukraine’s accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in conjunction with Ukraine’s decision to return to Russia the nuclear weapons left on its territory by the Soviet Union.
In other words, the Budapest Memorandum was expressly about Ukraine giving up its nukes and not becoming a nuclear weapon state in the future. Zelensky’s speech at Munich made it clear that Ukraine was moving to repudiate the Budapest Memorandum; Zelensky essentially stated that Ukraine must be made a member of NATO, otherwise it would acquire nuclear weapons.
This is what Zelensky said, with emphasis added:
“I want to believe that the North Atlantic Treaty and Article 5 will be more effective than the Budapest Memorandum.
Ukraine has received security guarantees for abandoning the world’s third nuclear capability [i.e. Ukraine relinquished the Soviet nuclear weapons that had been placed in Ukraine during the Cold War]. We don’t have that weapon. … Therefore, we have something. The right to demand a shift from a policy of appeasement to ensuring security and peace guarantees.
Since 2014, Ukraine has tried three times to convene consultations with the guarantor states of the Budapest Memorandum. Three times without success. . . I am initiating consultations in the framework of the Budapest Memorandum. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was commissioned to convene them. If they do not happen again or their results do not guarantee security for our country, Ukraine will have every right to believe that the Budapest Memorandum is not working and all the package decisions of 1994 are in doubt. . .
I am initiating consultations in the framework of the Budapest Memorandum. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was commissioned to convene them. If they do not happen again or their results do not guarantee security for our country, Ukraine will have every right to believe that the Budapest Memorandum is not working and all the package decisions of 1994 are in doubt.”
Sanger’s Times article implies that it was a “conspiracy theory” that Zelensky was calling for Ukraine to acquire nuclear weapons. Sanger was not ignorant of the meaning of the Budapest Memorandum, rather he chose to deliberately ignore it and misrepresented the facts.
President Vladimir Putin, along with the majority of Russians, could not ignore such a threat for a number of historical reasons that The New York Times and ideologues such as Sanger have also chosen to ignore. It is important to list some of those facts, since most Americans are unaware of them, as they have not been reported in the Western mainstream media. Leaving parts of the story out turns Putin into just a madman bent on conquest without any reason to intervene.
First, both the provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk in the Donbass region voted for independence from Ukraine in 2014 in resistance to a U.S.-backed coup that overthrew the elected president Viktor Yanukovych in February of that year. The independence vote came just eight days after neo-Nazis burned dozens of ethnic Russians alive in Odessa. To crush their bid for independence, the new U.S.-installed Ukrainian government then launched an “anti-terrorist” war against the provinces, with the assistance of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which had taken part in the coup. It is a war that is still going on eight years later, a war that Russia has just entered.
During these eight years, the Ukrainian Armed Forces and Azov have used artillery, snipers and assassination teams to systematically butcher more than 5,000 people (another 8,000 were wounded) — mostly civilians — in the Donetsk Peoples Republic, according to the leader of the DPR, who provided these figures in a press conference recently. In the Luhansk People’s Republic, an additional 2,000 civilians were killed and 3,365 injured. The total number of people killed and wounded in Donbass since 2014 is more than 18,000.
This has received at most superficial coverage by The New York Times; it has not been covered by Western corporate media because it does not fit the official Washington narrative that Ukraine is pursuing an “anti-terrorist operation” in its unrelenting attacks on the people of Donbass. For eight years the war instead has been portrayed as a Russian “invasion,” well before Russia’s current intervention.
Likewise, The New York Times, in its overall coverage, chose not to report that the Ukrainian forces had deployed half of its army, about 125,000 troops, to its border with Donbass by the beginning of 2022.
In other words, acquiring tactical nuclear weapons will be much easier for Ukraine than for some other states I am not going to mention here, which are conducting such research, especially if Kiev receives foreign technological support. We c
The importance of neo-Nazi Right Sektor politicians in the Ukraine government and neo-Nazi militias (such as the Azov Battalion) to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, also goes unreported in the mainstream corporate media. The Azov battalion flies Nazi flags; they have been trained by teams of U.S. military advisers and praised on Facebook these days. In 2014, Azov was incorporated in the Ukrainian National Guard under the direction of the Interior Ministry.
The Nazis killed something on the order of 27 million Soviets/Russians during World War II (the U.S. lost 404,000). Russia has not forgotten and is extremely sensitive to any threats and violence coming from neo-Nazis. Americans generally do not understand what this means to Russians as the United States has never been invaded.
So, when the leader of Ukraine essentially threatens to obtain nuclear weapons, this is most certainly considered to be an existential threat to Russia. That is why Putin focused on this during his speech preceding the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Sanger and The New York Times must discount a Ukrainian nuclear threat; they can get away with doing so because they have systematically omitted news pertaining to this for many years.
Sanger makes a very misleading statement when he writes, “Today Ukraine does not even have the basic infrastructure to produce nuclear fuel.”
Ukraine is not interested in making nuclear fuel — which Ukraine already purchases from the U.S. Ukraine has plenty of plutonium, which is commonly used to make nuclear weapons today; eight years ago Ukraine held more than 50 tons of plutonium in its spent fuel assemblies stored at its many nuclear power plants (probably considerably more today, as the reactors have continued to run and produce spent fuel). Once plutonium is reprocessed/separated from spent nuclear fuel, it becomes weapons usable. Putin noted that Ukraine already has missiles that could carry nuclear warheads, and they certainly have scientists capable of developing reprocessing facilities and building nuclear weapons.
In his Feb. 21 televised address, Putin said Ukraine still has the infrastructure leftover from Soviet days to build a bomb. He said:
“As we know, it has already been stated today that Ukraine intends to create its own nuclear weapons, and this is not just bragging.
Ukraine has the nuclear technologies created back in the Soviet times and delivery vehicles for such weapons, including aircraft, as well as the Soviet-designed Tochka-U precision tactical missiles with a range of over 100 kilometers.
But they can do more; it is only a matter of time. They have had the groundwork for this since the Soviet era.
If Ukraine acquires weapons of mass destruction, the situation in the world and in Europe will drastically change, especially for us, for Russia. We cannot but react to this real danger, all the more so since let me repeat, Ukraine’s Western patrons may help it acquire these weapons to create yet another threat to our country.”
NATO-US Refuse Binding Nuclear Treaties
In his Times piece, Sanger states, “American officials have said repeatedly that they have no plans to place nuclear weapons in Ukraine.”
But the U.S. and NATO have refused to sign legally binding treaties with Russia to this effect. In reality, the U.S. has been making Ukraine a de facto member of NATO, while training and supplying its military forces and conducting joint exercises on Ukrainian territory. Why wouldn’t the U.S. place nuclear weapons in Ukraine — they have already done so at military bases within the borders of five other European members of NATO. This in fact violates the spirit of the NPT, another issue that Sanger avoids when he notes that Russia has demanded that the U.S. remove nuclear weapons from the European NATO-member states.
For years the U.S. proclaimed that the Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) facilities it was placing in Romania and Poland, on the Russian border, were to protect against an “Iranian threat,” even though Iran had no nuclear weapons or missiles that could reach the U.S. But the dual-use Mark 41 launching systems used in the Aegis Ashore BMD facilities can be used to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles, and will be fitted with SM-6 missiles that, if armed with nuclear warheads, could hit Moscow in five-to-six minutes. Putin explicitly warned journalists about this danger in 2016; Russia included the removal of the U.S. BMD facilities in Romania and Poland in its draft treaties presented to the U.S. and NATO last December.
I wonder if Sanger has ever considered what the U.S. response would be if Russia placed missile launching facilities on the Canadian or Mexican border? Would the U.S. consider that a threat, would it demand that Russia remove them or else the U.S. would use military means to do so?
30 Years Ago
Sanger states that today Russia takes a “starkly different from the tone Moscow was taking 30 years ago, when Russian nuclear scientists were being voluntarily retrained to use their skills for peaceful purposes.”
Russians would reply that 30 years ago NATO had not moved to Russian borders and was not flooding Ukraine with hundreds of tons of weapons and the U.S. had not yet overthrown the government in Kiev to install an anti-Russian regime.
While the Times is still considered the U.S. “paper of record,” during the last few decades it has devolved into the primary mouthpiece for the official narratives coming from Washington.
There is a real danger to the nation when a free press is replaced with corporate media that stifles and censors dissent. Rather than a free press, we now have a Ministry of Propaganda that acts as an echo chamber for the latest diktats from the White House. The systematic creation of false narratives by corporate media, designed to serve the purposes of the federal government, have so misinformed the American public about world events that we find the nation ready to go to war with Russia.
This is suicidal course for not only the U.S. and the EU, but for civilization as a whole, because this would likely end in a nuclear war that will destroy all nations and peoples.
Steven Starr is the former director of the University of Missouri’s Clinical Laboratory Science Program, and former board member of Physicians for Social Responsibility. His articles have been published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Federation of American Scientists and the Strategic Arms Reduction website of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. He maintains the Nuclear Famine website.
Cowardly Israeli Murder of 5 Journalists, including Anas al-Sharif, Smearing them as Hamas
Note that firing a rocket at a tent known to be inhabited by unarmed civilian journalists is an act of cowardice and is the sort of thing for which German and Japanese officers were tried at Nuremberg.
Informed Comment, Juan Cole, 08/11/2025, https://www.juancole.com/2025/08/cowardly-journalists-including.html
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Israeli state by now has a long and sanguinary history of murdering writers and journalists in cold blood. In 1972, Israeli commandos murdered novelist, painter and short story writer Ghassan Kanafani in Beirut with a car bomb — the weapon of choice for terrorists ever since — killing his niece Lamis as well. Kanafani’s crime was to be an effective voice of the 1948 Palestinian Nakba or catastrophic expulsion from their homeland by the militant Zionist settler-colonialists and then by the newly formed Israeli army. Anyone who hasn’t read his Men in the Sun has a hole in their knowledge of the issue.
On May 11, 2022, an Israeli sniper was ordered to murder American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. The powerful Israeli propaganda machine (which is not different than that of Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump, and the effectiveness of which is plummeting) initially asserted that Palestinians had killed her. Then it “might” have been an Israeli sniper. Then it was an Israeli sniper but it was an unfortunate accident. If that was the case, why did Israeli authorities disrupt even her funeral (she was a Greek Catholic)? Her crime was to report on the Israeli slow colonization of the Palestinian West Bank for 17 years for Al Jazeera. As a careful journalist, she became a trusted narrator of what was being done to the occupied Palestinians. She was eliminated, rubbed out, whacked, by the Israeli army, deliberately and calculatedly, which lied about the hit job.
Now on Sunday comes the news that the Israeli army assassinated five journalists, one of them lead Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif, 28, who had become known as the “voice of Gaza,” watched by millions throughout the world. The Israeli military fired a rocket at the tent he and four other journalists were sheltering in near the al-Shifa’ Hospital in Gaza City.
They join 178 journalists killed by the Israeli military in Gaza. Most of these killings appear to have been deliberate.
Russia appears to have killed 18 journalists in the field since February 2022. It has killed other journalists, but they were fighting in the Ukrainian military as soldiers and so weren’t killed qua journalists. The Ukraine War is pretty vicious and Putin’s minions are ruthless. But they’ve only rubbed out 18 practicing journalists, versus 178 for Israel. This is not to mention that Ukraine has a population of 37 million, while Gaza’s at least used to be 2.2 million. So killing 178 journalists in Gaza would be like killing nearly 3,000 journalists in Ukraine.
Note that firing a rocket at a tent known to be inhabited by unarmed civilian journalists is an act of cowardice and is the sort of thing for which German and Japanese officers were tried at Nuremberg.
The Israeli propaganda charges against al-Sharif, that he was an active-duty Hamas commando in charge of firing rockets at Israel, would be laughable if they weren’t so sinister in a Kim Jong Un sort of way. We saw al-Sharif all day every day huddling in Gaza, undernourished, staring into the camera and reporting. Is he Superman, to sneak off and fire a rocket between screen appearances and intensive news gathering?
Al-Sharif had prerecorded a statement for this eventuality, which was released on Sunday: By Anas Al-Sharif / X August 11, 2025, https://scheerpost.com/2025/08/11/anas-al-sharifs-final-message/
Slaying and Censoring the Journalists: The Murder of Anas al-Sharif
12 August 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, Australian Independent Media
“Assassination,” wrote George Bernard Shaw in The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet, “is the extreme form of censorship.” Such extremism visited Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif and his colleagues in Gaza City late on August 10. Resting in a tent located outside the main gate of Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, he was killed alongside Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh, camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa, and freelance reporter Mohammed al-Khaldi.
Palestinian journalist Wadi Abu al-Saud recalls the drone attack taking place at 11.22pm. Having entered the tent opposite, he had raised his phone to make a call when an explosion occurred. “A piece of shrapnel hit my phone. I looked back and saw people burning in flames. I tried to extinguish them. Anas and the others had died instantly from the airstrike.” In two subsequent videos, al-Saud vows to “return to my life as a citizen. The truth has died and the coverage has ended.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The murder of al-Sharif and his colleagues by Israeli forces constituted the effective wiping out of Al Jazeera’s team, one of the few able to offer consistent, unsmothered coverage about the IDF’s remorseless campaign in Gaza. Since the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas, Israel has prohibited foreign reporters from entering Gaza except under strict invigilation by the Israeli military. Those accompanied by the IDF have been at the mercy of Israeli selectiveness as to where to go and barred from speaking to Palestinians. ………………………………………………. https://theaimn.net/slaying-and-censoring-the-journalists-the-murder-of-anas-al-sharif/
YouTube bans prominent Zelensky critic
Former TV host Diana Panchenko had more than 2 million subscribers when her account was deleted.
9 Aug 25, https://www.rt.com/russia/622688-youtube-ban-zelensky-critic/
YouTube has removed the 2-million-subscriber account of exiled Ukrainian Journalist of the Year Diana Panchenko, a fierce critic of Vladimir Zelensky.
In 2023, Kiev imposed personal sanctions on the former TV presenter and started criminal proceedings against her for her alleged anti-Ukrainian reporting.
Panchenko has long criticized Zelensky for rampant corruption in Ukraine, as well as his clampdown on freedom of speech. She has also condemned Kiev’s military actions in Donbass since 2014, and later accused the former actor of dragging the nation into a “forever war.”
“Diana Panchenko @Panchenko_X is one of the most famous women in Ukraine, former Journalist of the Year and opponent of the grossly corrupt Zelensky regime,” Irish journalist Chay Bowes wrote on X on Friday.
“YouTube just banned her and erased her account. She had 2 million followers,” he wrote. “The most dangerous weapon is Truth.”
Panchenko’s YouTube account is deleted as of the time of writing, but an archived snapshot shows that at least 2.09 million people subscribed to her channel as of last month.
Youtube, which is owned by Google, has extensively cracked down on and banned Russian media channels, as well as large pro-Moscow private accounts since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict.
Panchenko has also routinely criticized Kiev’s crackdown on alternative narratives in Ukraine.
Soon after the escalation of the conflict in 2022, Zelensky shut down multiple television channels associated with his political opposition and consolidated some of the country’s largest networks into a single 24/7 broadcast called the United News TV Telemarathon.
When the Press Becomes the Enemy: The Erosion of Media Independence in Trump’s America
6 August 2025 Michael Taylor, https://theaimn.net/when-the-press-becomes-the-enemy-the-erosion-of-media-independence-in-trumps-america/
A free and independent press is one of democracy’s last lines of defense. It’s where power is questioned, facts are verified, and the public gains its understanding of the world. But under President Trump’s leadership – particularly in his second term – the media has been steadily undermined, attacked, and manipulated into submission.
From the earliest days of his political rise, Trump branded the press “the enemy of the people.” At the time, it sounded like theatre – one of his many outrageous slogans designed to rile up the crowd. But over time, it became policy. Journalists were banned from briefings. Reporters were publicly harassed at rallies. Entire news organisations were delegitimised as “fake news” unless they offered praise. What started as rhetoric turned into a campaign of disinformation and intimidation.
This erosion of media independence has happened in two key ways: by silencing critical voices, and by co-opting sympathetic ones.
Independent journalists now work under constant threat. Legal pressure, license challenges, defamation suits, and even surveillance have become tools to muzzle dissent. Whistleblowers are prosecuted, not protected. Major networks once known for tough questions now pull their punches – or are simply locked out.
At the same time, pro-Trump media outlets have risen in influence, often indistinguishable from state-run propaganda. Whether it’s Fox News personalities given cabinet positions, or social media influencers granted White House access in exchange for loyalty, the lines between journalism and political theatre have blurred.
These outlets don’t challenge power – they amplify it. They repeat Trump’s talking points uncritically, flood the zone with outrage and distraction, and vilify any journalist who dares to question the narrative. The result is an information landscape where truth becomes tribal, and lies travel faster than facts.
Why does this matter? Because a democracy without a free press cannot stay democratic for long. When citizens no longer trust what they see or hear – when news becomes just another weapon of the powerful – then accountability dies, and corruption thrives.
Some journalists continue to fight. They fact-check, investigate, and shine light where it’s needed most. But their space is shrinking, and their safety increasingly uncertain. In many ways, the press has not just been pushed to the sidelines – it’s been made part of the battlefield.
History teaches us that authoritarian regimes always start by silencing the press. What’s unfolding in America is no exception. We may still have newspapers, networks, and headlines – but when truth itself is up for debate, freedom is already slipping through our fingers.
Media Largely Ignored Gaza Famine When There Was Time to Avert Mass Starvation
Julie Hollar, Fair, July 29, 2025
- “Child Dies of Malnutrition as Starvation in Gaza Grows” (CNN, 7/21/25)
- “More Than 100 Aid Groups Warn of Starvation in Gaza as Israeli Strikes Kill 29, Officials Say” (AP, 7/23/25)
- “No Formula, No Food: Mothers and Babies Starve Together in Gaza” (NBC, 7/25/25)
- “Five-Month-Old Baby Dies in Mother’s Arms in Gaza, a New Victim of Escalating Starvation Crisis” (CNN, 7/26/25)
- “Gaza’s Children Are Looking Through Trash to Avoid Starving” (New York, 7/28/25)
This media coverage is urgent and necessary—and criminally late.
Devastatingly late to care
Since the October 7 attacks, Israel has severely restricted humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, using starvation of civilians as a tool of war, a war crime for which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Yoav Gallant have been charged by the International Criminal Court. Gallant proclaimed a “complete siege” of Gaza on October 9, 2023: “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.”
Aid groups warned of famine conditions in parts of Gaza as early as December 2023. By April 2024, USAID administrator Samantha Power (CNN, 4/11/24) found it “likely that parts of Gaza, and particularly northern Gaza, are already experiencing famine.”………………………………………………………………………………
July 29, 2025
Media Largely Ignored Gaza Famine When There Was Time to Avert Mass Starvation
Even as media report more regularly on starvation in Gaza, coverage still tends to obscure responsibility—as with this CNN headline (7/26/25) blaming the baby’s death on the “starvation crisis” rather than on the US-backed Israeli government.
The headlines are increasingly dire.
- “Child Dies of Malnutrition as Starvation in Gaza Grows” (CNN, 7/21/25)
- “More Than 100 Aid Groups Warn of Starvation in Gaza as Israeli Strikes Kill 29, Officials Say” (AP, 7/23/25)
- “No Formula, No Food: Mothers and Babies Starve Together in Gaza” (NBC, 7/25/25)
- “Five-Month-Old Baby Dies in Mother’s Arms in Gaza, a New Victim of Escalating Starvation Crisis” (CNN, 7/26/25)
- “Gaza’s Children Are Looking Through Trash to Avoid Starving” (New York, 7/28/25)
This media coverage is urgent and necessary—and criminally late.
Devastatingly late to care
An informative Wall Street Journal chart (7/27/25) shows the complete cutoff of food into Gaza at the beginning of 2025—a genocidal policy decision by Israel that was not accompanied by increased coverage in US media of famine in the Strip.
Since the October 7 attacks, Israel has severely restricted humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, using starvation of civilians as a tool of war, a war crime for which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Yoav Gallant have been charged by the International Criminal Court. Gallant proclaimed a “complete siege” of Gaza on October 9, 2023: “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.”
Aid groups warned of famine conditions in parts of Gaza as early as December 2023. By April 2024, USAID administrator Samantha Power (CNN, 4/11/24) found it “likely that parts of Gaza, and particularly northern Gaza, are already experiencing famine.”
A modest increase in food aid was allowed into the Strip during a ceasefire in early 2025. But on March 2, 2025, Netanyahu announced a complete blockade on the occupied territory. Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir declared that there was “no reason for a gram of food or aid to enter Gaza.”
After more than two months of a total blockade, Israel on May 19 began allowing in a trickle of aid through US/Israeli “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF) centers (FAIR.org, 6/6/25)—while targeting with snipers those who came for it—but it is not anywhere near enough, and the population in Gaza is now on the brink of mass death, experts warn. According to UNICEF (7/27/25):
The entire population of over 2 million people in Gaza is severely food insecure. One out of every three people has not eaten for days, and 80% of all reported deaths by starvation are children.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 147 Gazans have died from malnutrition since the start of Israel’s post–October 7 assault. Most have been in the past few weeks.
Mainstream politicians are finally starting to speak out—even Donald Trump has acknowledged “real starvation” in Gaza—but as critical observers have pointed out, it is devastatingly late to begin to profess concern. Jack Mirkinson’s Discourse Blog (7/28/25) quoted Refugees International president Jeremy Konyndyk:
I fear that starvation in Gaza has now passed the tipping point and we are going to see mass-scale starvation mortality…. Once a famine gathers momentum, the effort required to contain it increases exponentially. It would now take an overwhelmingly large aid operation to reverse the coming wave of mortality, and it would take months.
And there are long-term, permanent health consequences to famine, even when lives are saved (NPR, 7/29/25). Mirkinson lambasted leaders like Cory Booker and Hillary Clinton for failing to speak up before now: “It is too late for them to wash the blood from their hands.”
Major US media, likewise, bear a share of responsibility for the hunger-related deaths in Gaza. The conditions of famine have been out in the open for well over a year, and yet it was considered barely newsworthy in US news media.
A MediaCloud search of online US news reports mentioning “Gaza” and either “famine” or “starvation” shows that since Netanyahu’s March 2 announcement of a total blockade—which could only mean rapidly increasing famine conditions—there was a brief blip of media attention, and then even less news coverage than usual for the rest of March and April. Media attention rose modestly in May, at a time when the world body that classifies famines announced in May that one in five people in Gaza were “likely to face starvation between May 11 and September 30″—in other words, that flooding Gaza with aid was of the highest urgency.
But as aid continued to be held up, and Gazans were shot by Israeli snipers when attempting to retrieve the little offered them, that coverage eventually dwindled, until the current spike that began on July 21.
FAIR (e.g., 3/22/24, 4/25/25, 5/16/25, 5/16/25) has repeatedly criticized US media for coverage that largely absolves Israel of responsibility for its policy of forced starvation—what Human Rights Watch (5/15/25) called “a tool of extermination”—implemented with the backing of the US government.
The current headlines reveal that the coverage still largely diverts attention from Israeli (let alone US) responsibility, but it’s a positive development that major US news media are beginning to devote serious coverage to the issue. Imagine how different this all could have looked had they given it the attention it has warranted, and the accountability it has demanded, when alarms were first raised. https://fair.org/home/media-largely-ignored-gaza-famine-when-there-was-time-to-avert-mass-starvation/
Plastics, Profits and Power: How petrochemical companies are derailing the Global Plastics Treaty
A report released today by Greenpeace UK reveals how the Global Plastics
Treaty is under threat from some of the world’s largest petrochemical
companies who have been systematically lobbying against cuts to plastic
production while generating massive profits from their growing plastics
business.
The report reveals that since the treaty talks began in November
2022, seven companies alone have produced enough plastic to fill 6.3
million rubbish trucks – equivalent to five and a half trucks every
minute.
The report – ‘Plastics, Profits and Power: How petrochemical
companies are derailing the Global Plastics Treaty’, draws on data
obtained from industry sources. It finds that that since the start of the
treaty process, Dow, ExxonMobil, BASF, Chevron Phillips, Shell, SABIC and
INEOS, have ramped up their plastic production capacity by 1.4 million
tonnes and sent a combined total of 70 lobbyists to negotiations, where
they have also been represented by powerful industry front groups.
Greenpeace 29th July 2025,
https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/resources/plastics-profits-power-report/
Physicists unleashed the power of the atom — but to what end?
From laboratory quirks to Earth-shattering weapons, a chain of discoveries reached a devastating conclusion.
Book Review, By Ann Finkbeiner
Destroyer of Worlds: The Deep History of the Nuclear Age Frank Close Basic (2025)
First, let’s clear up some potential confusion: in Destroyer of Worlds: The Deep History of the Nuclear Age, ‘deep’ in the subtitle means, not the minutiae of historic events, but ‘scientific’. Physicist Frank Close’s latest book discusses the physics and chemistry behind nuclear weapons — that is, the understanding of the atom and the energy it holds. The story begins with the discovery of electric currents that couldn’t be blocked by solid materials and ends with the technological ability to blow cities off the map.
Nature 28th July 2025, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02350-y
As Gaza starves, journalists sell their cameras for food.
At night, we sit together to see who among us journalists is still able to write, and who might collapse tomorrow from sheer exhaustion.
Shaimaa Eid in Gaza, 26 July 2025, https://www.declassifieduk.org/in-gaza-famine-journalists-sell-their-cameras-for-food/
I write these lines as my strength is fading – not just from the demands of journalism, but from the emptiness in my stomach that now clings to my fragile body.
At times, I sleep having shared a single piece of bread with what remains of my family, surviving hunger together.
Every night feels like the one before: the same bedding, the same groans, the same worry: will we find something to eat tomorrow? Will any of us survive this famine?
In Gaza, hunger is no longer just a humanitarian plea – it has become a harsh reality lived by journalists in every detail.
We, who once reported on the suffering of others, have become part of that suffering ourselves.
We write while suppressing our own pain and hunger, struggling to keep the words from collapsing before they reach the world – to show just how deep our oppression runs.
Before the war, I used to move easily between locations and press offices. Now, I walk for kilometres on foot due to the fuel shortage and lack of transportation.
At times, I sit on the curb, exhausted – lowering my head to catch my breath – then push myself to keep walking, because I know I must finish the report to earn the payment that will buy us food for the next day.
The journalistic work that once provided me with a stable income has come to a halt – institutions were destroyed, offices were evacuated, and infrastructure was targeted.
All that remains is freelance work: chasing a story, a photo, a quote, a report, and sending it to the few outlets that still pay us just enough to stay alive.
The cameras and equipment we once saw as extensions of our very souls have now become burdens we sell to secure food for our parents and children.
One of my fellow journalists offered his entire archive – twenty years’ worth of photos documenting life in Gaza – in exchange for a single bag of flour.
It wasn’t a passing decision, but a moment of heartbreak and survival. How could he hold on to images of the past while his children went to sleep without food?
Another sold his camera. Yet another parted with his microphone, the one he used to move between shelters and bombed-out homes.
Carrying our own fragility
A few days ago, a group of us journalists were working in one of Gaza’s hospitals, trying to secure an internet connection for our coverage.
Suddenly, my colleague – who reports on the famine for an international TV channel – collapsed to the ground. It wasn’t due to shelling or an explosion, but from hunger.
Her frail body couldn’t endure two days without food; her empty stomach could no longer withstand the heat and fear.
We carried her in silence and took her to join the dozens of Gaza residents crowding the hospital, all suffering from severe exhaustion and malnutrition.
As we lifted her, it felt as though we were carrying our own fragility – those of us who report on hunger while living through it ourselves.
In the field, the camera is no longer just a tool for documentation; it has become a means of survival.
Those who carry it are considered fortunate, as they can “trade” it for a sack of flour or a can of milk for their children – if available.
We no longer ask for payment in exchange for a photo, but for food. We no longer negotiate contracts, but for the dignity that remains within us – until further notice.
The black markets have become our only destination. Prices are astronomical. A kilo of flour costs what we used to earn in a full day’s work.
A loaf of bread is nine dollars, and if you want to feed five family members at home, you have to think with an economic mindset rather than a humanitarian one.
We meticulously plan the number of loaves, weigh the meals, ration the bites, and try to convince our children that “this is all that is available.”
Every photo trembles
Every day in Gaza feels like a round in an open death arena.
We are not only facing the Israeli killing machine but also battling hunger – a silent enemy that makes no distinction between child, journalist, or elderly.
We have lost control over our lives, our food, and the details of our daily existence. Some of us have even lost the words.
We no longer write with the same spirit, nor do we capture images with the same eye. Every photo trembles, and every word emerges tired, hungry, and afraid.
At night, we sit together as journalists, reviewing and sharing our stories – not as we used to, to improve our work, but to see who among us is still able to write, and who might collapse tomorrow from sheer exhaustion.
One colleague told me, “We are not just covering the massacres; we are living them.” Another said, “What we send to the world is the echo of our weary bodies.”
Before, producing an article like this would take me just one day. Now, with my focus fading and hunger draining my mind, I struggle to gather my thoughts and words, doing my utmost to write in a way that honors what I want to say.
There is no longer a difference between the journalist documenting the event and the civilian being bombed. Both are hungry, fearful, and hunted, without a home.
What is even more painful is that the world does not see this. It sees the images we send, but not the person who took them. It does not see how they were captured.
Despite all this, we continue. Not because we are strong, but because we have no choice but to carry on.
We are the children of this land, the voice of its people, and the mirrors reflecting both its death and its life.
We carry not only the camera, the microphone, and the pen, but also the weight of the cause, the cries of mothers, the hunger of children, and the dream of survival.
Shaimaa Eid is a Palestinian journalist in Gaza. She specialises in human-interest and news reporting, with a focus on amplifying local voices and documenting life under occupation. Shaimaa is a contributor to The Electronic Intifada and Palestine Chronicle.
Four Major News Agencies Warn Gaza Staff Face Starvation Due to Israeli Blockade
Gaza’s Health Ministry said two more Palestinians starved to death under the siege
by Dave DeCamp | July 24, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/07/24/four-major-news-agencies-warn-gaza-staff-face-starvation-due-to-israeli-blockade/
Four of the world’s major news agencies have issued a rare joint statement warning that their journalists in Gaza are unable to feed themselves due to the US-backed Israeli blockade, as Palestinians continue to starve to death under the siege.
“We are desperately concerned for our journalists in Gaza, who are increasingly unable to feed themselves and their families,” AFP, The Associated Press, Reuters, and BBC News said. “For many months, these independent journalists have been the world’s eyes and ears on the ground in Gaza. They are now facing the same dire circumstances as those they are covering.”
The news agencies said that journalists “endure many deprivations and hardships in war zones. We are deeply alarmed that the threat of starvation is now one of them.” They urged the “Israeli authorities to allow journalists in and out of Gaza” and said it was “essential that adequate food supplies reach the people there.”
On top of the starvation, journalists in Gaza continue to be targeted by the IDF. On Wednesday, Walaa al-Jabari, who worked for local news outlets, was killed along with her husband and four children. Al-Jabari was pregnant at the time of her killing, and the Gaza Government Media Office said her death brought the total number of journalists killed by Israel since October 7, 2023, to 231.
The statement from the news agencies came as Gaza’s Health Ministry said another two Palestinians had starved to death over the previous 24-hour period. Starvation deaths have spiked over the past week, with dozens, mostly children, dying of malnutrition due to Israeli-imposed restrictions and the killing of aid seekers. The Health Ministry said it has recorded a total of 113 starvation deaths.
Palestinians in Gaza also continue to be gunned down while attempting to reach food aid. Since the end of May, more than 1,000 aid seekers have been killed by Israeli forces, mainly near distribution sites run by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
Sabreen Abu al-Kass, a mother of 10 in Gaza, told Al Jazeera on Thursday that she attempted to get aid from a GHF site on Thursday but failed. “I went to get food, to support my children, and I fainted there. No one helped me,” she said. “I couldn’t bring back any aid at all. We returned home empty-handed, just like we came. Out of maybe 50 attempts, I was only able to get some food once. One time, among thousands of women.”
Ukrainian bots want the BBC to endorse war crimes
Social media trolling takes a new and sinister turn
Ian Proud, Jul 23, 2025, https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/ukrainian-bots-want-the-bbc-to-endorse?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=168976248&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
On 18 July I made a post on social media platform X in response to a BBC report entitled ‘Kill Russians, win points: is Ukraine’s new drone scheme gamifying war?’ It produced a spectacularly dark backlash from the Ukrainian bot community.
The BBC report explored a Ukrainian military scheme in which its soldiers could claim points for kills by First Person View (FPV) drones and use those points to buy the most preferred military technology in an ‘Amazon for war’.
While Paul Adams, the BBC diplomatic correspondent, touches briefly on the moral challenges that this scheme presents, he was clearly impressed.
‘The e-points scheme is typical of the way Ukraine has fought this war: creative, out-of-the-box thinking designed to make the most of the country’s innovative skills and minimise the effect of its numerical disadvantage.’
‘Points for kills. Amazon for war. To some ears, it might all sound brutal, even callous. But this is war and Ukraine is determined to hold on. By fighting as effectively, and efficiently as it can.’
Every day, military personnel on both sides of the conflict are killed by drones and other military technologies. That is why I have consistently called for the war in Ukraine to be ended through diplomatic means and is why I continue to do so.
The problem I had with the article was its heading – about killing Russian soldiers using drones – was accompanied by a photograph of a soldier (one might presume, Russian) with his back turned to the First Person View on screen with his hands in the air, suggesting surrender. I found this juxtaposition, on UK state-owned media, deeply troubling.
One might easily gain the impression by the headline and the photograph combined that the soldier’s fate was death. And if that was so, then that would constitute a war crime.
Under the Statute of the International Criminal Court, “killing or wounding a combatant who, having laid down his arms or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion” is a war crime in international armed conflicts
One cannot know the fate of the soldier and whether he is killed or taken prisoner. And the article goes on to point out that Ukrainian soldiers can claim higher points for encouraging a Russian soldier to surrender, though does not point out how this would be possible with an armed drone.
It is certainly the habit of the western media to churn out clickbait headlines in a bid to maintain waning public appetite for a war that Ukraine is losing and which Europe is funding at enormous expense.
However, it sets a dangerous precedent if the UK state-owned broadcaster is producing articles that infer war crimes are taking place and implicitly endorse the means of that happening.
I therefore included in my post a poll which asked people to vote on:
Do you want the BBC through its reporting implicitly to endorse war crimes and show images purporting to or giving the impression of the circumstances leading up to a war crime taking place?
I don’t have a huge X following, but my post garnered 20,000 votes over three days with over 90% of those who voted responding ‘no’, specifically that appearing to endorse war crimes in media reporting was wrong.
As I didn’t mention a specific country, some people argued that the allegation might also be levelled at BBC reporting of IDF atrocities in Gaza.
However, on 21 July my post was seized on by very-obviously-Ukrainian bots flinging all sorts of insults in my direction, such that I spent several hours blocking and reporting offensive content on my feed.
In a very short space of time, my account was swarmed by a blizzard of insults and false accusations, including of being an asset of the KGB (sic!).. being a Putin apologist, sucking Russian dicks and being a paedophile who uses teenage Russian prostitutes.
I was added to hate ‘Lists’ that x members keep, such as ‘nazi whore cowards’ and ‘vatniks’ (Russian propagandists).
All very annoying and intended to discredit me en-masse. But as Glenn Diesen joked when we spent some time together in Tblisi, in early June, ‘if you wanted to be popular, you should have sold ice creams’.
When one expresses a personal view on such an emotive topic as this pointless war in Ukraine, you are likely to get attacked from one direction or the other, or even both. However, some made more disturbing comments that can only be interpreted as threats of causing me physical harm.
Many made generalised comments about how any Russian solider in Ukraine should deserve such a fate (to die while surrendering) and so on. However, this was not the most sinister aspect of the response to my post.
In addition to voting that the BBC should not implicitly endorse war crimes, the other option was to vote for: ‘Please endorse war crimes’.
353 people voted in the poll before I closed my post to public comments. 213 people voted in favour of the BBC endorsing war crimes through its reporting of Ukraine. That’s right, just over 60% of, one assumes, mostly Ukrainian or Ukraine-supporting voters, endorses the BBC endorsing war crimes, in this context committed by Ukraine.
Herein the central truth of this and all wars; that they generate intense hatred of the other. That hatred fires the bloodlust that drives war crimes in any theatre of conflict. No war is free of war crimes. British, French, American, Russian and, yes, Ukrainian, service personnel have been documented as having committed war crimes, together with those of many other countries.
War reduces humanity to the darkest depths of depravity in which the most unconscionable acts are justified on the basis of defeating the hated other. Forgive me for believing that the BBC should not be glorifying that, even if implicitly, or encouraging others to do so.
I would far sooner they were pushing for a negotiated settlement to this terrible war.
1 This Month
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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