Australians Call to End Long Persecution of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange
ROBIN ANDERSEN, 25 Oct 23 https://fair.org/home/australians-call-to-end-long-persecution-of-wikileaks-julian-assange/
As WikiLeaks founder and Australian citizen Julian Assange has nearly exhausted his appeals to British courts against a US extradition order, Australia has ramped up its advocacy on his behalf. Six Australian MPs held a press conference outside the US Department of Justice on September 20 to urge the Biden administration to halt its pursuit of Assange (Consortium News, 9/20/23).
They came representing an impressive national consensus: Almost 80% of Australian citizens, and a cross-party coalition in Australia’s Parliament, support the campaign to free Assange (Sydney Morning Herald, 5/12/23). Opposition leader Peter Dutton joined Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in urging Assange’s release.
The day before, an open letter to the Biden administration signed by 64 Australian parliamentarians appeared as a full-page ad in the Washington Post. It called the prosecution of Assange “a political decision” and warned that, if Assange is extradited, “there will be a sharp and sustained outcry” from Australians.
Given what is at stake for freedom of the press in the Assange case, and the intensified pressure from Australia—a country being wooed to actively enlist in the US campaign against China by spending $368 billion on nuclear submarines and supersonic missiles (Sydney Morning Herald, 8/10/23)—we ought to expect coverage from the Washington Post, New York Times and major broadcast networks. But coverage of the press conference was virtually absent from US corporate media.
Prosecuting publishing
The US has been seeking to extradite Assange from Britain on charges relating to the leaking of hundreds of thousands of documents to international media in 2010 and 2011, many of which detailed US atrocities carried out in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and other human rights violations, such as the torture of detainees at Guantánamo Bay (Abby Martin, 3/10/23).
In 2019, President Donald Trump’s administration brought Espionage Act charges against Assange for obtaining and publishing leaked documents, a dramatic new attack on press freedom (FAIR.org, 8/13/22). Assange could face 175 years in a supermax prison if convicted under the Espionage Act, “a relic of the First World War” meant for spies (American Constitution Society, 9/10/21), and not intended to criminalize leaks to or publications by the press. The Biden administration has rolled back much of the legal mechanism used by Trump to attack journalists, but President Joe Biden has reaffirmed the call to extradite Assange.
Assange also coordinated with international news outlets to publish other material known as Cablegate about the “inner-workings of bargaining, diplomacy and threat-making around the world” (Intercept, 8/14/23). Indeed, the New York Times (e.g., 11/28/10) published many articles based on the WikiLeaks documents, which had been sent to Assange by US army whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
US officials have repeatedly justified their case by charging that Assange put lives at risk; to date, no evidence has surfaced that any individuals were harmed by the leaks (BBC, 12/1/10; Chelsea Manning, Readme.txt, 2022). As the Columbia Journalism Review (12/23/20) admonished, don’t let the Justice Department’s
misdirection around “blown informants” fool you—this case is nothing less than the first time in American history that the US government has sought to prosecute the act of publishing state secrets, something that national security reporters do with some regularity.
US officials have repeatedly justified their case by charging that Assange put lives at risk; to date, no evidence has surfaced that any individuals were harmed by the leaks (BBC, 12/1/10; Chelsea Manning, Readme.txt, 2022). As the Columbia Journalism Review (12/23/20) admonished, don’t let the Justice Department’s
misdirection around “blown informants” fool you—this case is nothing less than the first time in American history that the US government has sought to prosecute the act of publishing state secrets, something that national security reporters do with some regularity.
In failing health after suffering a stroke, Assange has been held in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison since he was removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy in April 2019. He had sought asylum at the embassy in London in 2012 to avoid being sent to Sweden for questioning over sexual assault allegations, because Sweden would not provide assurances it would protect him from extradition to the US. Sweden dropped charges against Assange in November 2019 (BBC, 11/19/19), after he was in British custody.
International condemnation
The Australian diplomatic mission coincided with the convening of the UN General Assembly in New York City, where President Lula da Silva of Brazil condemned the prosecution of Assange, offering yet another opportunity for US corporate media to cover the strong international opposition to Assange’s treatment.
A video (9/19/23) of Lula speaking at the opening of the UN General Assembly was widely circulated on social media. “Preserving press freedom is essential,” Lula declared. “A journalist like Julian Assange cannot be punished for informing society in a transparent and legitimate way.”
Former British ambassador Craig Murray commented about Lula’s reception at the UN (Twitter, 9/17/23):
It is really not normal for the hall at the UN General Assembly to break into this kind of spontaneous applause. The US has been losing the room internationally for a decade. The appalling treatment of Julian is a focus for that.
US media absence
Yet, with a few exceptions (Fox News, 9/20/23; The Hill, 9/21/23; Yahoo News, 9/21/23), none of this made the major US news outlets.
Over a week later, Business Insider (10/1/23) ran a long piece that featured an interview with Gabriel Shipton, Assange’s half-brother. It pointed out that Assange had become an obstacle to US plans to involve Australia in its aggression toward China, quoting the PM. But the piece also hashed through a number of long-debunked claims, including one that reminded readers that Mike Pompeo once called Assange “a fugitive Russian asset” (FAIR.org, 12/03/18; Sheerpost 2/25/23), and another that repeated US assertions that WikiLeaks releases would put the US at risk.
The New York Times has been conspicuously absent from the coverage of Assange. Though the Times signed a joint open letter (11/28/22) with four other international newspapers that had worked with Assange and WikiLeaks, appealing to the DoJ to drop its charges, the paper has remained almost entirely silent on both Assange and the issues raised by his continued prosecution since then.
As FAIR pointed out, during the Assange extradition hearing in London, the Times
published only two bland news articles (9/7/20, 9/16/20)—one of them purely about the technical difficulties in the courtroom—along with a short rehosted AP video (9/7/20).
There were no editorials on what the case meant for journalism. FAIR contributor Alan MacLeod noted that the Times seemed to distance itself from Assange and WikiLeaks, and its own reporting on the Cablegate scandal, coverage that boosted the papers’ international reputation.
Other opportunities for coverage have been missed by the Times. For instance, Rep. Rashida Tlaib wrote a letter (4/11/23), signed by six other members of the Progressive Caucus, calling for the DoJ to drop the charges against Assange. Tlaib cited support from the ACLU, Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Defending Rights & Dissent and Human Rights Watch, and many others, stating that his prosecution “could effectively criminalize” many “common journalistic practices.” The letter was covered by The Nation (4/14/23), the Intercept (3/30/23), Fox News (4/1/23), The Hill (4/11/23) and Politico (4/11/23), but the Times and other major newspapers were conspicuously silent.
When Assange lost his most recent appeal against extradition in June, a few outlets reported the news online (e.g., AP, 6/9/23; CNN, 6/9/23), but not a single US newspaper report could be found in the Nexis news database. (Newsweek‘s headline framed the news as a “headache for Biden”—6/8/23—rather than a blow for press freedom.) The Times only vaguely referred to the news (Assange “keeps losing appeals”) two weeks later in a feature (6/18/23) on the late whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who had criticized Biden’s decision not to drop the case against Assange.
The world is watching
A huge collective breath is being held as the world watches to see what will happen to Assange, the most famous publisher on the globe. Will he be returned to his country and his family by Christmas, as the Australian MPs have requested? Or will Britain and the US continue to slowly execute him?
Assange’s case is expected to be discussed during Prime Minister Albanese’s current visit to the US, which includes a state dinner hosted by Biden on October 25. MP Monique Ryan, part of the pro-Assange delegation, told news outlets: “Our prime minister needs to see this as a test case for standing up to the US government. There are concerns among Australians about the AUKUS agreement, and whether we have any agency” (Business Insider, 10/1/23).
As Common Dreams (9/19/23) quoted from the delegation’s letter:
We believe the right and best course of action would be for the United States’ Department of Justice to cease its pursuit and prosecution of Julian Assange…. It is well and truly time for this matter to end, and for Julian Assange to return home.
Why Is Biden Enabling Genocidal Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza?
by Walt Zlotow https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2023/10/24/why-is-biden-enabling-genocidal-ethnic-cleansing-of-gaza/#more-44443
Over 5,000 dead, mostly civilians, from 2 weeks of relentless Israeli bombing, turning much of the 139 square miles of Gaza into rubble, is a genocidal act of ethnic cleansing. It is designed to diminish, if not eliminate the 2.3 million Gazans. The many who have died from lack of food, water, medicine and electricity, while unknown, may be in the thousands as well. It is a monumental crime against humanity.
Much of the world is repulsed, including many in Israel. Yesterday, dozens from local Chicago Jewish groups, If Not Now, Never Again Action, and Jewish Voice for Peace, held up traffic in the Loop for over an hour during rush hour in their call for immediate ceasefire. Bravo.
But not President Biden who is arming Israel and giving it a virtual blank check for an imminent invasion likely to further kill, degrade and ethnically cleanse those 2.3 million Palestinians. That imminent invasion may unleash blowback that could involve Iran, Lebanon and Syria; a regional conflict that may be uncontainable.
Biden preaches aid for starving, dying Palestinians but what has arrived is a pittance that will make no difference in their ongoing destruction from the worst collective punishment inflicted upon a civilian population in our lifetime. His aid lip service is not soothing…. it is deadly.
Biden’s cruel greenlighting of Gaza’s impending demise is no surprise. He’s simply following US policy for the last 18 years supporting Israel’s blockade of Gaza since they withdrew in 2005. But he has the opportunity. It requires true, humane statesmanship to lead the world in confronting the need for a Palestinian state prevented by Israeli intransigence and enabled by the US for 75 years now. Biden should demand an immediate ceasefire. He should suspend all aid to Israel including the proposed $10 billion in weaponry to conduct their impending invasion.
A more destructive US policy destroying peace and bringing needless death and suffering to millions is hard to imagine. But it is happening, which requires every American to demand Biden, his administration and Congress pivot from supporting relentless war to promoting a lasting peace in Israel and Gaza/West Bank. #Israel #Palestine
Israeli Attacks on Journalists Stifle Reporting on Gaza Horrors
By Ari Paul / Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), October 23, 2023 https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/23/israeli-attacks-on-journalists-stifle-reporting-on-gaza-horrors/
The ability of reporters to cover Gaza is jeopardized by the alarming number of newspeople Israel has killed since the crisis began.
he Israeli communications minister’s attempt to shut down Al Jazeera’s bureau in Jerusalem—on the grounds that the Qatari news outlet is biased in favor of Hamas and is actively endangering Israeli troops (Reuters, 10/15/23)—should inspire some déjà vu. In the last war in Gaza, an Israeli air strike destroyed a Gaza building housing both Al Jazeera and Associated Press offices (AP, 5/15/21). And just months ago, Al Jazeera (5/18/23) reported that “the family of Shireen Abu Akleh,” a Palestinian-American AJ journalist killed by Israeli fire while on assignment, “has rebuked Israel for saying it is ‘sorry’ for the Al Jazeera reporter’s death without providing accountability or even acknowledging that its forces killed her.”
Since the launch of the network’s English service, Americans interested in Middle East news beyond what can be found in US broadcasting have often turned to Al Jazeera, and even more so as the BBC’s foreign service has declined (Guardian, 9/29/22).
But the ability of Al Jazeera and other Arab reporters to cover the assault on Gaza is jeopardized by the alarming number of newspeople Israel has killed since the crisis began. The Committee to Protect Journalists (10/18/23) has counted 13 Palestinian journalists killed by Israel in Gaza since the crisis began, with two more missing or detained. Three Israeli journalists were also killed in Hamas’s October 7 attack, with another taken prisoner.
While the primary focus of this conflict is Gaza, journalists have wondered if a second northern front would open between Israel and the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah, creating a multifaceted regional war (New York Times, 10/17/23; CNN, 10/17/23). Israeli fire in southern Lebanon injured Al Jazeera staffers, along with Agence France-Presse personnel, and killed a Reuters journalist (Reuters, 10/14/23). Lebanon has planned to file a complaint with the United Nations over the incident (TRT World, 10/14/23), calling the attack deliberate (Telegraph, 10/14/23).
Press advocates fear those numbers will rise, and it is all happening as the humanitarian situation in Gaza worsens (UN News, 10/13/23).
The BBC (10/15/23) reported that its own journalists “were assaulted and held at gunpoint after they were stopped by police in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv,” and that they were “dragged from the vehicle—marked ‘TV’ in red tape—searched and pushed against a wall.”
In addition, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said in a statement that the Israeli military caused “severe damage to 48 centers of press institutions,” including “the Palestine and Watan towers, and other buildings that include media institutions,” including the AFP office. It said that the army had also “completely or partially demolished the homes of dozens of journalists.”
‘Terror attack against democracy’
War reporting always carries risk. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented the deaths of media workers in the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria. Middle East conflicts have always been dangerous places for journalists; it’s hard to ignore high-profile deaths of journalists like Marie Colvin of London’s Sunday Times in Syria (CNN, 2/1/19), or freelance photographers Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington in Libya (Washington Post, 4/21/11). In that sense, the war in Gaza and a possible war in southern Lebanon are no exceptions.
But as FAIR (5/19/21) documented during the previous Israeli military operation against Gaza, Israel has a long history of targeting Palestinian journalists, as well as harassing foreign journalists and human rights activists entering the country. Over the summer, the International Federation of Journalists (7/4/23) reported that “several journalists have been directly targeted by Israeli snipers as they were reporting on Israel’s large-scale military operation in Jenin.”
Inside Israel, the situation for journalists is relatively safer, but the far-right government has—like authoritarian governments in Poland and Hungary—attacked journalists and the ability to critically cover institutions in power. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2019 accused the owners of Israel’s Channel 12 of committing a “terror attack against democracy” for reporting on the corruption charges against him (Times of Israel, 9/1/19).
In 2020, Netanyahu (Ha’aretz, 6/11/20) indicated that “Channel 13 journalist Raviv Drucker should be arrested and jailed” for airing “recordings of Netanyahu crony Shaul Elovich and his wife, which demonstrated how they sought to tilt news coverage in the prime minister’s favor.”
Galit Distel-Atbaryan, who recently resigned from her role as public diplomacy minister (Jerusalem Post, 10/14/23), reportedly said this summer that she wanted the “authority to deny press credentials to foreign journalists critical of Israel” (Ha’aretz, 8/30/23).
‘You better be saying good things’
The threat to journalism has only become more explicit as Israel’s assault on Gaza escalates. An Israeli security officer interrupted a live report by Ahmed Darawsha, correspondent for Qatar-based Al-Araby news (Arab News, 10/15/23):
The officer then shouted at the camera: “Detestable! We’ll turn Gaza to dust. Dust, dust, dust.”
Israel’s siege of Gaza becomes more nightmarish as the days go on, and as that happens, the ability of journalists to document the horror becomes next to impossible. Palestinian journalist Sami Abu Salem told the International Federation of Journalists (10/12/23) about working in Gaza: “We have no internet service, there is a lack of electricity, no transportation, and even the streets are damaged. That’s why we cannot tell lots of stories—thousands of stories.”
Because audiences in the US and the Anglosphere depend on Al Jazeera, as well as local journalists in Israel and the Occupied Territories, to receive news from the region, these attacks do act as filters through which the truth is diluted. In many ways, Americans can see in real time how the powers that be attempt to control information coming out of the region. #Israel #Palestine
A wall of silence: atom bosses remain tight-lipped over Fukushima whistleblower claims
collaboration between the IAEA and the Japanese Government over the Fukushima radioactive water releases was imperative as the continuation of sea dumping regardless of the adverse impact to the marine environment represents a ‘make or break issue’ for the nuclear industry.
Over seven weeks have passed without an acknowledgement or reply to a letter the UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities co-signed which was sent to the UN International Atomic Energy Authority calling for transparency over claims that the organisation collaborated with the Japanese Government to ‘manage the message’ over the ocean dumping of 1.3 million tonnes of radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear disaster site.
On 28 June, an anonymous whistleblower posted a document, seemingly issued by the Department of Nuclear Safety at the IAEA, to the website/blogsite dunrenard[1]. If genuine, the document, titled ‘IAEA REVISION PROPOSAL FOR THE FINAL REPORT OF HANDLING ALPS TREATED WATER AT TEPCO’S FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI NUCLEAR POWER STATION’, appears to indicate that the international agency has actively sought to downplay the dangers associated with discharging millions of barrels of water which remain contaminated with highly toxic tritium.
The NFLA’s first covered this story and our disquiet at the revelations in a media release dated 3 July:
https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/cover-up-did-atom-bosses-collude-to-manage-message-of-japanese-plan-to-poison-pacific/
One of the recipients of the leaked document was Mr Tim Deere-Jones, a graduate in Marine Studies from Cardiff University. Tim, an independent marine pollution researcher and consultant since 1983, is highly regarded by the many international organisations who have engaged him in their campaigns against the damage caused to our oceans and inland waterways by radioactive and other contaminants.
Tim was incensed that the Japanese Government was quick to condemn the claim that Japan had pressurised the IAEA to remove ‘negative information’ about the environmental impact that would result from the radioactive waste discharges from the final report, but also noted that on the claims themselves the IAEA made no comment.
Keen to seek clarification and action on the veracity of the whistleblower’s claims, Tim went right to the top of the IAEA and penned a letter to the head of the management office for the Deputy Director General. Here he explains why:
“To date there has been no detectable independent action to investigate and test the veracity of the whistleblower’s claims against the claim of non-interference made by the Government of Japan.
“I fear that if this is scenario is allowed to continue the whistleblower’s action and disclosure will be historically characterised by the Government of Japan statement, sink into obscurity and be forgotten and the whistleblower’s heroic action will have been wasted, while he/she is still under threat of investigation, identification, and penalty.
“My disclosure request to the IAEA is intended to elicit a direct response from the agency to the claims made by the whistleblower as to date my online media searches have yet to reveal any related statement made by the organisation.
“This creates the impression that the Government of Japan has been acting as the IAEAs mouthpiece in respect of the whistleblower disclosure and that the IAEA would prefer NOT to be associated in anyway with the issue, to the extent that it has not made any public statement”.
Tim’s request for disclosure, submitted by registered post to the IAEA’s Vienna office and by email to the official account on 1 September, was backed by five British anti-nuclear groups and individuals from Europe and the Pacific Ocean, representing commercial fishers, other marine stakeholders, and coastal zone and Pacific Island communities.
Although the registered letter was tracked as received at the Vienna office on 9 September, Tim has yet to receive any response from the agency, and on 16 October sent a reminder:
“I have concluded that the absence of a receipt or response is a clear indication of the IAEA’s resistance to any discussion of the issues raised.
“My reading critique of the IAEAs final report to TEPCO re the issue of the ALPs treated water release certainly supports the drift of the whistleblower statement”.
Amongst the co-signatories to the letter, which is reproduced at the end of this press release, were the NFLAs, which have objected in letters to Japanese Ministers, senior officials at TEPCO (the nuclear operator), and the United Nations to the discharge of radioactive water from Fukushima, and signed a partnership agreement with its counterparts, Mayors for a Nuclear Power Free Japan, to collaborate in opposing the plan.
Though disappointed at the continued wall of silence, Chair Councillor Lawrence O’Neill is unsurprised that the IAEA remains tight-lipped:
“Sadly, the duties of disclosure required of public bodies in the UK through the Freedom of Information Act do not apply to an international agency based in Vienna and the IAEA’s statutes appear to contain no provisions for transparency or external accountability, despite the agency being funded by the member states, and so the taxpayers, of the United Nations.
“Although the organization claims to want to become more open, the lack of a response, or even an acknowledgement, to our legitimate request for information belies the fact that, on controversial issues, a culture of secrecy still prevails.”
Tim believes that collaboration between the IAEA and the Japanese Government over the Fukushima radioactive water releases was imperative as the continuation of sea dumping regardless of the adverse impact to the marine environment represents a ‘make or break issue’ for the nuclear industry. He has produced a short paper explaining his reasoning, which also appears at the end of this media release.
For further information about this media release please contact NFLA Secretary Richard Outram by email to richard.outram@manchester.gov.uk or telephone 07583097793
1. https://dunrenard.wordpress.com/2023/06/28/will-this-whistleblower-be-heard-by-anyone/
Notes to Editors:
The reminder sent to Ms Margaret Doane, Head, Department of Management Office of the Deputy Director General, IAEA, 16 October 2023
#nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
Rolls-Royce facing £350m class action lawsuit from investors
Rolls-Royce, the FTSE 100 engineering giant, is facing a potential legal
claim from investors worth at least £350m after a bribery and corruption
scandal wiped millions of pounds from the company’s value. City lawyers
are working with a group of investors seeking compensation from Rolls-Royce
after the bribery allegations rocked the aircraft engine maker in 2017.
Shareholders are to claim that the company made misrepresentations to the
market about the bribery scandal. Rolls-Royce previously agreed to a £497m
settlement with the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in a bid to draw a line
under the wrongdoing. The SFO’s agreement with Rolls-Royce in 2017
covered “12 counts of conspiracy to corrupt, false accounting and failure
to prevent bribery” across its aerospace and energy divisions.
Telegraph 22nd Oct 2023
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/10/22/rolls-royce-face-350m-lawsuit-investors/
#nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
Amnesty Probe Finds ‘Damning Evidence of War Crimes’ by Israel in Gaza
“Our entire family has been destroyed,” said one survivor of an Israeli bombing in the besieged Palestinian territory.
SCHEERPOST, By Brett Wilkins / Common Dreams 21 Oct 23
As Israel’s assault on Gaza continued Friday with 4,100 Palestinians—including over 1,600 children—killed and at least 13,000 others wounded by relentless bombardment that’s destroyed or damaged nearly a third of the besieged strip’s homes, Amnesty International shared “damning evidence of war crimes as Israeli attacks wipe out entire families.”
Amnesty interviewed survivors and eyewitnesses, analyzed satellite imagery, and verified photos and videos to investigate the Israeli aerial bombardments of Gaza, documenting “unlawful Israeli attacks, including indiscriminate attacks, which caused mass civilian casualties and must be investigated as war crimes.”
Agnès Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary-general, said in a statement: “In their stated intent to use all means to destroy Hamas, Israeli forces have shown a shocking disregard for civilian lives. They have pulverized street after street of residential buildings killing civilians on a mass scale and destroying essential infrastructure, while new restrictions mean Gaza is fast running out of water, medicine, fuel, and electricity.”
“Testimonies from eyewitnesses and survivors highlighted, again and again, how Israeli attacks decimated Palestinian families, causing such destruction that surviving relatives have little but rubble to remember their loved ones by,” she added.
Amnesty’s report focused on five specific incidents the group said amount to war crimes, including the October 7 bombing of a three-story residential building in the al-Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City that killed 15 members of the al-Dos family, including seven children.
“Two bombs fell suddenly on top of the building and destroyed it,” said Mohammad al-Dos, whose 5-year-old son Rakan was killed in the attack. “My wife and I were lucky to survive because we were staying on the top floor. She was nine months pregnant and gave birth at al-Shifa Hospital a day after the attack. Our entire family has been destroyed.”
The report also details an airstrike on the Gaza City home of the Hijazi family that killed 12 relatives, including three children, as well as four neighbors. Amnesty found no evidence of any military targets in the area at the time of the attack.
Amnesty’s report focused on five specific incidents the group said amount to war crimes, including the October 7 bombing of a three-story residential building in the al-Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City that killed 15 members of the al-Dos family, including seven children.
“Two bombs fell suddenly on top of the building and destroyed it,” said Mohammad al-Dos, whose 5-year-old son Rakan was killed in the attack. “My wife and I were lucky to survive because we were staying on the top floor. She was nine months pregnant and gave birth at al-Shifa Hospital a day after the attack. Our entire family has been destroyed.”
The report also details an airstrike on the Gaza City home of the Hijazi family that killed 12 relatives, including three children, as well as four neighbors. Amnesty found no evidence of any military targets in the area at the time of the attack.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, more than 50 entire families have been removed from the civil registry after most or all of their members were killed in Israeli attacks.
“The five cases presented barely scratch the surface of the horror that Amnesty has documented and illustrate the devastating impact that Israel’s aerial bombardments are having on people in Gaza,” Callamard said. “For 16 years, Israel’s illegal blockade has made Gaza the world’s biggest open-air prison—the international community must act now to prevent it becoming a giant graveyard.”………..
Other possible war crimes perpetrated by Israeli forces not specifically covered in the Amnesty report include but are not limited to collective punishment; an order to evacuate more than 1.1 million people from northern Gaza ahead of an expected ground invasion; Israel’s stated focus on “damage and not accuracy” in its war on Hamas; bombing a civilian convoy heeding the evacuation order that killed around 70 people on a route Israeli authorities said was “safe”; use of white phosphorus munitions in a densely populated area; bombing schools and civilian shelters; and deadly attacks by Israeli settlers and soldiers on West Bank Palestinians.
Amnesty also said that Hamas and other Palestinian militants have committed war crimes including the deliberate killing of 1,400 Israelis—most of them civilians—during last week’s surprise attack on Israel, the taking of around 200 Israeli and international hostages during the incursion, and the indiscriminate firing of rockets at civilian targets.
“Amnesty International is calling on Hamas and other armed groups to urgently release all civilian hostages, and to immediately stop firing indiscriminate rockets,” said Callamard. “There can be no justification for the deliberate killing of civilians under any circumstances.”
The Amnesty analysis came amid reports of possible fresh Israeli war crimes, including an airstrike on the Church of Saint Porphyrius, an 873-year-old Christian Orthodox house of worship crowded with people seeking shelter from the bombing. Officials said at least 18 people were killed in the attack, including numerous children………………………………………………………………………………..
Earlier this week, lawyers with the U.S.-based Center for Constitutional Rights warned that the Biden administration is rendering itself complicitin possible genocide against Palestinians by providing weapons, political support, and diplomatic cover for Israel’s war.
On Wednesday, the U.S. vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning violence against civilians in Israel and Gaza and calling for “humanitarian pauses” to allow aid to enter the enclave. https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/21/amnesty-probe-finds-damning-evidence-of-war-crimes-by-israel-in-gaza/ #Israel #Palestine
Nuclear Reactors Restarting: Holtec’s Secret Plans Again Reveal Why New Mexicans Cannot Believe What the Corporation Says
https://nuclearactive.org/ 20 Oct 23
Holtec International, a corporation with a license for a consolidated interim storage facility in southeastern New Mexico for 173,600 metric tons of irradiated nuclear fuel from atomic power plants, submitted a secret application to the Department of Energy seeking at least $2 billion dollars to restart Palisades, a closed nuclear reactor in Michigan. Holtec’s request also includes plans to build small nuclear modular reactors, or SMRs, with electric generation capacity of 160 Megawatts, on site.
In response to a Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA) made by Beyond Nuclear the public learned that Holtec also plans to restart the reactors not only at Palisades, but other shutdown nuclear power plants at Oyster Creek in New Jersey; Pilgrim in Massachusetts; Indian Point in New York, and another shutdown reactor in Michigan at Big Rock Point. Holtec acquired the shutdown reactors under the false pretense to decommission them using ratepayer money, while at the same time submitting applications to DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy for taxpayer funding. https://beyondnuclear.org/5775-2/
Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear based in Takoma Park, Maryland, and a member of the Don’t Waste Michigan board of directors, filed the FOIA with the State of Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs. The 967-page response included Holtec’s application to DOE. #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
Israeli Politician Says “Children of Gaza Have Brought This Upon Themselves”
When children are explicitly framed as “not innocent,” all-out genocidal warfare is possible.
TruthOut, By Jonathan Ofir , MONDOWEISS, October 18, 2023
t really is hard to imagine a more malicious statement than “the children of Gaza have brought this upon themselves” when children in Gaza are now being massacred by the hundreds. But this was actually said in a recent Knesset session. And it wasn’t someone considered an extreme right-winger, but a liberal centrist – Meirav Ben-Ari from Yair Lapid’s opposition party Yesh Atid.
The full, over-three-hour session from Monday can be seen here. Ben-Ari is evidently getting worked up as Palestinian lawmaker Aida Touma-Sliman (around two hours into the session) bemoans the loss of civilian lives “both in the area surrounding Gaza and in Gaza,” imploring to make an effort to release hostages and to “get the civilians out of the circle of blood.” “Jews as well as Arabs, Israelis as well as Palestinians.” “A child is a child,” Touma-Sliman reminds everyone, pointing out that at that point, over 900 children had been killed from Israel’s bombing of Gaza (a day later, that number swelled to well over a thousand).
All this humanity was just too much for Ben-Ari. She started shouting and heckling Touma-Sliman, saying, “There is not symmetry, there is no symmetry!”
“Between children there is symmetry,” she said.
Ben Ari went livid: “There is no symmetry!!”
Touma-Sliman emphasized: “A child is a child is a child.”
Twenty-five minutes after this unbearable episode, Ben-Ari came up to speak, admittedly unplanned. This is precisely 2.5 hours into the session video:
“I did not plan to speak, of course, but I have to say one thing that should be clear: There is no symmetry. There is no symmetry. Me, my friends, ok, were on the way to the synagogue on the day of Simchat Torah, and they were shot at, only because they were Jews in this state. That’s it. And friends of mine – their children went to the party, to celebrate – seculars, religious, doesn’t matter who, only because they were Jewish, they were murdered. So there is no symmetry! And the children in Gaza – the children in Gaza have brought this upon themselves! We are a peace-seeking nation, a life-loving nation. There is no symmetry – our children are kidnapped over there!” (My emphasis)……………………………………………………………………..
Ben-Ari’s genocidal rhetoric was actually echoing a comment just made by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who is also known as a liberal, even from further left. At a recent press conference on October 13, Herzog answered a question by Rageh Omar from ITV, who asked him what Israel can do to alleviate the impact on the over two million civilians in Gaza, many of whom have nothing to do with Hamas. Herzog answered:
“We are working, operating militarily in terms according to rules of international law, period. Unequivocally. It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. …………………………………..
This is really unmistakable – Herzog is really implying that an “entire nation is responsible,” and the implication is that they are legitimate targets. However, he later denied that this is what he meant.
This rhetoric has a long history among Israeli politicians. In 2018, when Avigdor Lieberman was Defense Minister, he declared that “there are no innocent people in the Gaza Strip” because “everyone has a connection to Hamas.” This was in April 2018, when Israel was beginning to turkey-shoot unarmed Palestinian protesters in the Great March of Return. When a video filmed by Israeli snipers, where they celebrate their shooting of a motionless, unarmed Palestinian, surfaced on social media around that same time, Lieberman commented that they deserved a medal for their shots. I could just as well mention that Lieberman has advocateddecapitating “disloyal” Palestinian citizens with an axe and the drowning of Palestinian prisoners in the Dead Sea. Lieberman is now regarded as a Netanyahu critic who is considering joining the “unity government” so as to “join the war cabinet in order to bring about the fastest possible victory.”
You may say this is just rhetoric, but these words also lead to actions. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant’s comments referred to Palestinians as “human animals” as Israel closed all the water taps to Gaza, making the already unlivable living conditions there a genocidal nightmare. The relationship between words to actions is obvious. ……. more https://truthout.org/articles/israeli-politician-says-children-of-gaza-have-brought-this-upon-themselves/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=431d0bc2ba-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_3_20_2023_13_41_COPY_05&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-431d0bc2ba-650192793&mc_cid=431d0bc2ba&mc_eid=73e1cd43d0 #Israel #Palestine
Zelensky orders reporters to keep silent about corruption – Ukrainian media.
https://www.rt.com/russia/584929-ukraine-gags-media-corruption/ 16 Oct 23
The Ukrainian president reportedly told journalists not to mention the issue until the end of the Russia-Ukraine conflict
President Vladimir Zelensky has allegedly ordered Ukrainian journalists to avoid reporting on corruption, the editor-in-chief of the Zerkalo Nedeli (‘Mirror of the Week’) news outlet has claimed.
The Ukrainian president told journalists not to mention the issue until the end of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, according to a leading Kievb outlet.
Speaking at the National Media Talk 2023, Yulia Mostovaya said that she had learned of Zelensky’s demand from colleagues who had attended an off-the-record meeting with him.
The president reportedly made the request after the Ukrainian press published reports about inflated food prices paid by the country’s armed forces.
According to Ukrainian media reports, including Zerkalo Nedeli, the Defense Ministry had been buying food and clothing for its service members at prices two to three times higher than the market price. For example, the ministry paid up to 17 hryvnia ($0.47) for a single egg and 22 hryvnia ($0.60) for a kilogram of potatoes, while the average prices for those goods at stores in Kiev at the time were about seven hryvnia ($0.19) and eight hryvnia ($0.22), respectively.
Mostovaya stated that Zelensky’s request to avoid the topic of corruption in media publications was something the Ukrainian press may have considered if Zelensky had presented it in a “balanced manner” and explained that reporting on such issues could affect Ukraine’s battlefield capabilities.
“We would accept these conditions if the president had said: ‘Here is a person. Here’s his phone number. If you have substantiated facts, please provide them to this person, he will immediately pick up the phone. And give us a week to respond. If there is no reaction within a week, send it to print.’”
However, no such proposal was put forward by Zelensky, Mostovaya claimed, noting that instead the president told reporters to “remain silent until victory.”
“If we remain silent, there will be no victory,” the editor-in-chief said.
The issue of corruption in Ukraine has repeatedly been brought up by journalists and officials, both within the country and in the West.
Last week, the former president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, stated that Ukraine will likely be unable to join the EU anytime soon because it is “corrupt at all levels of society.” He also urged Brussels not to make any “false promises” to the Ukrainian people who are already “up to their neck in suffering.”
Ukraine has for years been seen as among the most corrupt countries in Europe and was ranked 116th out of 180 in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index for 2022. #Ukraine
This Way for the Genocide, Ladies and Gentlemen
This is not a war. It is the obliteration of civilians trapped for 16 years in the world’s largest concentration camp. Gaza is being leveled, flattened, destroyed, reduced to rubble. Hundreds of thousands of its impoverished residents will be killed, wounded or left homeless without food, fuel, water and medical help. Nearly 600 children are already dead.
Israel, as it has in the past, will block the dissemination of independent reporting and images once some 360,000 soldiers launch a ground assault. It cut internet service in Gaza on Saturday. The brief glimpses of Israeli atrocities that make it out will be dismissed by Israeli leaders as anomalies or blamed on Hamas.
By Chris Hedges / Original to ScheerPost, October 15, 2023 https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/15/this-way-for-the-genocide-ladies-and-gentlemen/
Washington and European governments are cheerleading Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. The failure to intervene to halt the carnage threatens to ignite violence throughout the region.
I have been in urban warfare in El Salvador, Iraq, Gaza, Bosnia and Kosovo. Once you fight street by street, apartment block by apartment block, there is only one rule — kill anything that moves. The talk of safe zones, the reassurances of protecting civilians, the promises of “surgical” and “targeted” air strikes, the establishment of “safe” evacuation routes, the fatuous explanation that civilian dead were “caught in the crossfire,” the claim that the homes and apartment buildings bombed into rubble were the abode of terrorists or that errant Hamas rockets were responsible for the destruction of schools and medical clinics, is part of the rhetorical cover to carry out indiscriminate slaughter.
Gaza is such a small area — 25 miles in length and about 5 miles wide — and so densely populated that the only outcome of an Israeli ground and air assault is the mass death of those Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant calls “human animals” and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls “human beasts.” Israeli Knesset member Tally Gotliv suggested dropping “doomsday weapons” on Gaza, widely seen as a call for a nuclear strike. Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Friday dismissed calls to protect Palestinian civilians. “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible … this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true,” Herzog said. “They could’ve risen up, they could’ve fought against that evil regime that took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.” He added, “We will break their backbone.”
The demand by Israel that 1.1 million Palestinians — nearly half of Gaza’s population — evacuate northern Gaza, which will become a free fire zone, within 24 hours, ignores the fact that given the overcrowding and sealed borders there is no place for the displaced to go. The north includes Gaza City, the most densely populated part of the strip, with 750,000 residents. It also includes Gaza’s main hospital and the Jabalia and al-Shati refugee camps.
Israel, by employing its military machine against an occupied population that does not have mechanized units, an air force, navy, missiles, heavy artillery and command-and-control, not to mention a U.S. commitment to provide a $38 billion military aid package for Israel over the next decade, is not exercising “the right to defend itself.” This is not a war. It is the obliteration of civilians trapped for 16 years in the world’s largest concentration camp. Gaza is being leveled, flattened, destroyed, reduced to rubble. Hundreds of thousands of its impoverished residents will be killed, wounded or left homeless without food, fuel, water and medical help. Nearly 600 children are already dead.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has been forced to close 14 food distribution centers leaving half a million people without food relief. Gaza’s only power plant has run out of fuel. The United Nations says 12 of its staff have been killed by Israeli air strikes, 21 out of 22 UNRWA health facilities in Gaza have been damaged and hospitals lack basic medicines and supplies.
Israel, as it has in the past, will block the dissemination of independent reporting and images once some 360,000 soldiers launch a ground assault. It cut internet service in Gaza on Saturday. The brief glimpses of Israeli atrocities that make it out will be dismissed by Israeli leaders as anomalies or blamed on Hamas.
The West refuses to intervene, as 2.3 million people, including 1 million children, are deprived of food, fuel, electricity and water, see their schools and hospitals bombed and are butchered and rendered homeless by one of the most advanced military machines on the planet.
The gruesome images of Israelis gunned down by Hamas is the currency of death. It trades carnage for carnage, a macabre dance that Israel initiated with the massacres and ethnic cleansing that allowed for the creation of the Jewish state, followed by decades of dispossession and violence meted out to the Palestinians. The Israeli army, before the current assault, had killed 7,779 Palestinians in Gaza since 2000 including 1,741 children and 572 women, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. This figure does not include Gazans who died due to drinking contaminated water or being denied access to medical treatment. Nor does it include the rising number of Gazan youth who, having lost all hope and struggling with deep depression, have committed suicide.
I spent seven years reporting on the conflict, four of them as the Middle East Bureau Chief of The New York Times. I stood over the bodies of Israeli victims of bus bombings in Jerusalem by Palestinian suicide-bombers. I saw rows of corpses, including children, in the corridors in Dar Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. I watched Israeli soldiers taunt small boys who in response threw rocks and were then callously shot in the Khan Younis refugee camp. I sheltered from bombs dropped by Israeli warplanes. I climbed over the rubble of demolished Palestinian homes and apartment blocks along the border with Egypt. I interviewed the bloodied and dazed survivors. I heard the soul crushing wails of mothers keening over the corpses of their children.
I arrived in Jerusalem in 1988. Israel was busy discrediting and marginalizing the secular, aristocratic Palestinian leadership of Faisel al-Husseini and driving Jordanian administrators from the occupied West Bank. This secular and moderate leadership was replaced by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Yasser Arafat. But Arafat, very likely poisoned by Israel, and the PLO were also ruthlessly pushed aside by Israel. The PLO was replaced by Hamas, which Israel openly fostered as a counterweight to the PLO.
The escalating savagery of Israel against the Palestinians is reflected in the escalating savagery of the Palestinians. The resistance groups are Israel’s doppelgängers. Israel believes that with the eradication of Hamas the Palestinians will become docile. But history has shown that once one Palestinian resistance movement is destroyed, a more virulent and radical one takes its place.
The killers feed off each other. I saw this in the ethnic wars in Bosnia. When religion and nationalism are used to sanctify murder there are no rules. It is a battle between light and dark, good and evil, God and Satan. Rational discourse is banished.
“The sleep of reason,” as Francisco Goya said, “brings forth monsters.”
The Jewish extremists, fanatic Zionists and religious bigots in the current Israeli government need Hamas. Revenge is the psychological engine of war. Those targeted for slaughter are rendered inhuman. They are not worthy of empathy or justice. Pity and grief are felt exclusively for one’s own. Israel vows to eradicate a dehumanized mass that embodies absolute evil. The maimed and dead in Gaza, and the maimed and dead in Israeli towns and kibbutzim, are victims of the same dark lusts.
“From violence only violence is born,” Primo Levi writes, “following a pendular action that, as time goes by, rather than dying down, becomes more frenzied.”
The Biden administration has promised unconditional Israeli support and weapons shipments.
The USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group has been deployed to the eastern Mediterranean Sea to “deter any actor” who might widen the conflict between Israel and Hamas. The carrier group includes the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford; its eight squadrons of attack and support aircraft; the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Normandy; and the Arleigh-Burke class guided missile destroyers USS Thomas Hudner, USS Ramage, USS Carney and USS Roosevelt, according to a Pentagon statement.
The U.S., as in the past, ignores the far greater death and destruction, as well as the illegal occupation, meted out by Israel to the Palestinians or the periodic military campaigns — this is the fifth major military assault by Israel on Gaza in 15 years — against civilians.
Israel says it recovered 1,500 bodies of Hamas fighters after the incursion. This is a number greater than the 1,300 Israeli victims. Nearly all the dead Hamas fighters, I suspect, were young men born inside the Gaza concentration camp who had never seen the outside of the open-air prison until they burst through the security barriers erected by Israel. If Hamas fighters possessed Israel’s technological arsenal of death, they would be able to do their killing more efficiently. But they do not. Their tactics are cruder versions of those Israel has used against them for decades.
I know this disease, the exaltation of race, religion and nation, the deification of the warrior, the martyr and violence, the celebration of victimhood. Holy warriors believe they alone possess virtue and courage, while their enemy is perfidious, cowardly and evil. They believe they alone have the right to revenge. Pain for pain. Blood for blood. Horror for horror. There is a fearsome symmetry to the madness, the abandonment of what it means to be humane and just.
T.E. Lawrence calls this cycle of violence “the rings of sorrow.”
Once these fires are lit they can easily become a conflagration.
Israeli tanks and soldiers, to thwart an attack by Hezbollah in support of the Palestinians, have been deployed to the border with Lebanon. The Israeli forces killed fighters from Hezbollah, as well as a Reuters journalist, which saw Hezbollah fire a salvo of rockets in retaliation. Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir announced he would distribute 10,000 assault rifles to Israeli settlers, who have carried out murderous rampages in Palestinian villages in the West Bank. Israel has killed at least 51 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since Hamas launched its attack on October 7.
Psychologist Rollo May writes:
At the outset of every war…we hastily transform our enemy into the image of the daimonic; and then, since it is the devil we are fighting, we can shift onto a war footing without asking ourselves all the troublesome and spiritual questions that the war arouses. We no longer have to face the realization that those we are killing are persons like ourselves.
The killing and torture, the more they endure, contaminate the perpetrators and the society that condones their actions. They sever the professional inquisitors and killers from the capacity to feel. They feed the death instinct. They expand the moral injury of war.
Israel taught the Palestinians to communicate in the primitive howl of hatred, war, death and annihilation. But it is not Israel’s assault on Gaza I fear most. It is the complicity of an international community that licenses Israel’s genocidal slaughter and accelerates a cycle of violence it may not be able to control. #Israel #Palestine
‘Humanity Must Prevail’ in Gaza, Says UN Official as Refugee Shelters Become IDF Targets
“Wars have rules,” said the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees. “Civilians, hospitals, schools, clinics, and UN premises cannot be a target.”
By Julia Conley / Common Dreams SCHEERPOST, October 15, 2023
The emergency relief coordinator for the United Nations on Saturday said that “humanity is failing” as officials in the United States and other powerful Western countries refused to hear the calls of a growing number of humanitarian groups, progressive lawmakers, and governments for a cease-fire in Gaza—allowing Israel to forge ahead with what will likely be an imminent ground assault on the blockaded enclave.
“The past week has been a test for humanity,” said Martin Griffiths one week after Hamas unleashed a brutal surprise attack on Israel, killing at least 1,300 people and taking scores of people hostage. As Israel’s response has targeted Gaza—home to two million people, about half of whom are children—repeated airstrikes have bombarded “homes, schools, shelters, health centers, and places of worship,” Griffith said, leaving at least 2,215 Palestinians dead, including more than 600 children.
“Entire residential neighborhoods have been razed to the ground,” added Griffiths, who serves as under secretary-general for humanitarian affairs at the United Nations. “Aid workers have been killed. The humanitarian situation in Gaza, already critical, is fast becoming untenable.”
Griffith’s comments came as the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) reported that the indiscriminate bombing campaign has placed its own shelters in “unprecedented” danger, making it impossible for workers to ensure the safety of some 270,000 peoplewho have been displaced and sought shelter at 102 schools run by the agency.
“Wars have rules. Civilians, hospitals, schools, clinics, and UN premises cannot be a target,” said the UNWRA said in a statement. “We are sparing no effort to advocate with parties to the conflicts to meet their obligations under international law to protect civilians including those seeking refuge in UNRWA shelters.”……………………………………………………………………………….. more https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/15/humanity-must-prevail-in-gaza-says-un-official-as-refugee-shelters-become-idf-targets/ #Israel #Palestine
Palestinians Speak Out
#Israel #Palestine
Report From Gaza: Fears That Israeli Army Is Preparing for Ethnic Cleansing
As Israel massacres entire families and wipes out whole neighborhoods, the Israeli army’s calls for Gazans to flee to the Egyptian border are stoking fears of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
SCHEERPOST, By Tareq S. Hajjaj / Mondoweiss 13 Oct 23
The WHO put out a statement yesterday saying that medical supplies in all of Gaza’s hospitals have started to run out. At the same time, Dr. Ashraf al-Qidra, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, put out a press release saying that health services have entered a “critical phase,” and that medical supplies, tools, and fuel are about to run out. He added that the hospitals are at full capacity, and the injured are now forced to lie on the floor.
The scene at al-Shifa’ Hospital, Gaza’s central hospital, is bloody. Women, children, and the elderly, and even young people, are forced to lie down on the floor.
Yesterday, Gaza’s sole power plant said that within the next few hours, the plant would shut down completely due to the lack of fuel. Today, electricity has almost been completely shut off everywhere in Gaza; the only exceptions are places with commercial generators, which are also running out of fuel.
The Israeli army sent threatening messages to residential tower inhabitants instructing them to evacuate their homes in the al-Nada and al-Awda complexes in northern Gaza, which include approximately fifty residential towers, and are home to thousands of people.
The humanitarian situation in homes and at UNRWA schools, where many have taken refuge to escape the bombardment, is catastrophic. Homes are overcrowded due to the internal displacement of families to their relatives’ homes in areas they believe to be farther from the line of fire. But no place in Gaza is outside the line of fire. The crowding in homes and schools has led to inhumane conditions, including hour-long lines to use bathrooms.
Last night was bloody. The missiles used by the occupation seem to be new, and haven’t been used in Gaza before. We’ve noticed that there are missiles that explode without making a large sound, but that make the ground shake under people’s feet.
Fears of ethnic cleansing and second Nakba
People are now fearing the mass ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip to Egypt after an Israeli military spokesperson said that the Palestinians affected by the airstrikes can make their way to Egypt. Since the U.S. and Egypt are now working to open a “humanitarian corridor” for aid to enter Gaza, another Israeli military spokesperson said that civilians may all pass through that corridor to Egypt.
These statements have led Gaza residents to fear an impending second Nakba and mass ethnic cleansing. At the same time, rumors are spreading among people in Gaza that the Egyptian city of Sheikh Zweid and other areas in the Sinai have been prepared ahead of time to receive refugees, which many say is an old plan whose time has now come. Talk has also been spreading of how the eventuality of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to areas of the Sinai would be followed by the establishment of a Palestinian state on what remains of the Gaza Strip, in which Egypt would supposedly swap land with Israel. Yet these rumors remain unsubstantiated.
What is certain, however, is that U.S. officials have started to discuss the possibility of the flight of thousands of families and civilians to Egypt through the Rafah crossing.
The Rafah crossing was targeted yesterday by Israeli airstrikes from the Palestinian side, but firefighters and civil defense teams have since cleared the rubble from the area and reopened the crossing………………………………………………………………… more https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/13/report-from-gaza-fears-that-israeli-army-is-preparing-for-ethnic-cleansing/ #Israel
France uses teargas on banned pro-Palestinian rally
By Layli Foroudi and Michel Rose, October 13, 20233
PARIS, Oct 12 (Reuters) – French police used teargas and water cannon to break up a banned rally in support of the Palestinian people in Paris on Thursday, as President Emmanuel Macron urged the French to remain united and refrain from bringing the Israel-Hamas conflict home.
Macron’s interior minister had earlier banned pro-Palestinian protests, saying they were “likely to generate disturbances to public order”.
France is home to Europe’s largest Muslim and Jewish communities. The Middle East conflict has often stoked domestic tensions in the past.
“This event is an earthquake for Israel, the Middle East and beyond,” Macron said in a solemn TV address. “Let’s not pursue at home ideological adventures by imitating or projecting.”
“Let’s not add, through illusions or calculations, domestic divides to international divides,” he said. “The shield of unity will protect us from hatred and excesses.”
Macron said the government had acted to boost police protection of Jewish sites, including schools and synagogues, and that there could be no justification for atrocities……………..
BANNED RALLY
Despite the ban, several hundred pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered in central Paris in separate groups that police forces sought to keep from merging……….
“We live in a country of civil law, a country where we have the right to take a stand and to demonstrate. (It is unfair) to forbid for one side and to authorise for the other,” said Charlotte Vautier, 29, an employee at a non-profit who took part in the rally…………….
Two pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Paris had already been banned on Thursday for fear of outbursts when interior minister Gerald Darmanin told prefects to ban all pro-Palestinian demonstrations across the country…………more https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/france-bans-pro-palestinian-protests-citing-risk-disturbances-public-order-2023-10-12/
How criminalisation is being used to silence climate activists across the world
As wildfires and extreme temperatures rage across the planet, sea
temperature records tumble and polar glaciers disappear, the scale and
speed of the climate crisis is impossible to ignore. Scientific experts are
unanimous that there needs to be an urgent clampdown on fossil fuel
production, a major boost in renewable energy and support for communities
to rapidly move towards a fairer, healthier and sustainable low-carbon
future.
Many governments, however, seem to have different priorities.
According to climate experts, senior figures at the UN and grassroots
advocates contacted by the Guardian, some political leaders and law
enforcement agencies around the world are instead launching a fierce
crackdown on people trying to peacefully raise the alarm.
Guardian 12th Oct 2023
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