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Racing the Sun

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Category Archives: AIM Extra

Racing the Sun

By James Moore

“If you want to know the secrets of existence, do the math. There is no other way. There is only one truth, the truth of mathematics. It is the infallible, absolute truth. All truth-seekers come in the end to mathematics. Pythagoras got there first. It’s time for everyone else to join him and hear the Music of the Spheres. Are your ears attuned to the perfect notes of the universe? Only the gods can hear the divine music. Are you one of them?” – Thomas Stark, The Sheldrake Shift: A Critical Evaluation of Morphic Resonance.

Origination of the idea is still confounding. Maybe the cause was my endless fascination with the natural world, rhythms of the seasons, mysteries of the sky, mountains beyond mountains, and glorious desert lights. I only knew that I had never seen a total eclipse of the sun, and one was supposed to cross the North American continent one August day in 2017. In fact, the shadow was to mark a track northwest to southeast across the U.S. and turn midday into the dark of night, which was a phenomenon I wanted to experience. The location nearest to Austin was almost a thousand miles distant, and according to coordinates, sitting in the midst of a Nebraska cornfield.

I called Gary, who loves motorcycling almost as much as I.

“Hey, I want to go see the eclipse,” I said.

“It’s not coming anywhere near us, is it?”

“Depends on what you mean by ‘near.’ Is Nebraska included in that term?”

“Not exactly. Is that the closest? Where you can experience the ‘totality?’”

“Yeah, I wanna go. Nighttime in the middle of the daytime will be an amazing experience.”

“Isn’t it like 48 hours from now? And, not to repeat myself, but in Nebraska?”

“Yeah, let’s ride up there.”

“Seriously? It’s August, and 110 degrees, and we’re old guys.”

“All true. But at least we can still act like we aren’t, and usually do.”

“I don’t know, man. Lemme think about it and call you back.”

The next morning, just after dawn, we were rolling north of Austin on U.S. Highway 281, up through the Hill Country and the Bosque River Valley to pick up the Chisholm Trail Parkway to Fort Worth and beyond to the Interstate through Oklahoma. There was no real plan more detailed than just putting miles under our wheels until we ran out of daylight. We would find a campground, probably near the Kansas and Nebraska line, sleep in our tents, and get out early the next day for a few more hours to reach the path of totality.

There are places you can go and natural events to be experienced that take you closer to the world as it is. In the Australian Outback, beneath the shining coal curve of a night sky, a sense arrives that you are falling into the stars and the Southern Cross is almost at hand. There is nothing but you and the planet turning beneath your feet and you think you know and feel things you did not before the night arrived out there beyond human intervention. Up on the Great Divide in the Rocky Mountains, the stars seem to come up from an unseen valley and rise with a haste as if they were consciously chasing the sun from the sky. Nightfall on the South Rim Plateau of Big Bend National Park will drape you with constellations that create a night eternally different than any other you will ever live.

By the time we crossed the Red River on the Oklahoma border, the temperature was already past the century mark. Our goal for the day was to ride 650 miles to Salina, Kansas, where we would camp and leave early the next morning for a spot in Central Nebraska. The mileage was ambitious even in the best of motorcycle weather and the dry, 100-plus degree wind scouring the prairie was drawing moisture from our bodily determination to get as close as possible to the eclipse path. We were stopping every 100 miles to drink fluids to prevent dehydration but the previous summer I had learned even that simple protocol could be inadequate. On a ride down from Colorado with my bride sitting pillion, I had experienced 75-mile-an-hour vertigo in the July Texas heat. My view of the horizon began to teeter and flip. I was able to stop the motorcycle without falling, get the kickstand down, and dismount, but could not stand upright. Eventually, an ambulance took me to a hospital for an overnight of scans and IV drips.

 

 

“I hate the Interstate,” Gary said over the helmet intercom.

“Me, too, but in this case, it serves our purpose. Gets us far, fast.”

“I’m rethinking this a bit,” he said. “Maybe the heat is giving me unexpected clarity or something. But it seems a long way to go for a little over three minutes of excitement.”

“No turning around, man. We’re halfway across Oklahoma. More than halfway to Salina.”

“Let’s get off here and get something cold to drink.”

The American Interstate is a bane and a benefit. The hissing roar of rushing tractor-trailers and family sedans never ceases while suggesting endless commerce produced by the concrete. Somewhere near Salina, we would pick up a more sedate two-lane into the oceans of cornstalks and find our place to await the mysterious minutes of the total eclipse of the sun. After gassing up the bikes, we found shade next to the quick stop’s wall and guzzled water between bites of a microwave burrito with the texture of industrial cardboard.

“Pretty glamorous, eh?” I asked Gary.

“Yeah, only Kansas could be more amazing. I wonder what their microwave Mex food is like.”

“Never thought you’d have such adventure, did you?”

“Anything is possible in Oklahoma, ya know?” He tossed his burrito wrapper. “Let’s go. Beautiful Kansas awaits.”

The transition from day to night across the plains states is a process that often feels like it might be measured in almost geologic time. In Kansas, under clear skies, the planet feels like it slows on its axis to facilitate an appreciation of the celestial magic. Pastel blue begins to fade and become tinged with orange and then deepened with purple and mixtures of colors not clearly distinct as one but stunning in a combined clarity. We were, however, too busy to notice while looking for our tent sites in the dark at a commercial campground and discovered they were gravel parking slots. The circumstance was intolerable after 14 hours of suffering in the sun on a motorcycle and we found hotel rooms a few miles distant.

 

 

We ended up the next morning at an intersection of two roads not far from the Nebraska community of Belleville. The county chip seal cut through long fields of tall corn and we parked the motorcycles at a country convenience store. Above the ticking of the stopped engines, we were close enough to hear the shuffling of cornstalks brushing against each other in a rising breeze. Families were arriving in farm trucks and sedans, setting up lawn chairs and ice chests in the ditches by the road. A few tractors materialized out of a section of crop and stopped with a diesel rattle. Conversations were muted and I thought there was a sense among the small gathering that they were expressing reverence for the approaching moment. Gary and I sat a bench by the gas station and walked into a clearing as the light began a rare midday diminution.

 

 

There did not seem a shadow. Instead, it was if a giant rheostat that controlled the sun was twisted down to reduce illumination of its subject planet. A few children squealed with glee but I was concentrated on the grasshoppers, fooled by the darkness and chirping wildly in the cornrows. Birds nearby began to coo and sing with their evening rituals and the entire universe appeared to pause and listen for the music of the spheres. I did not dare even glance at the corona. I am monocular and have but one good retina and I was not willing to risk its rods and cones for a glimpse of the moon’s transit between the Earth and Sun. Just one quick look can cause damage to vision and two will almost certainly burn the thin tissue at the back of the eye that provides imagery to the brain by capturing light. In just over three minutes, nature gave back the light with the same predictability of a passing cloud. Engines started, ice chests thumped closed, car doors slammed, a few horns blew, power lines hummed, and the world wagged on.

 

 

The natural world is as kind and gentle as it is dangerous and cruel. As a TV correspondent, I witnessed communities destroyed by floods and hurricanes and tornadoes and earthquakes with a capricious kind of brutality. There was great horror in the suffering of those scenes but also marvel at the power of destruction, which is not accurately measured with dollar signs and damage estimates. Nonetheless, I have no memory of ever not being drawn to the trails and canyons and rivers and deserts and the mysteries of just being, my constant amazement at the miracle of all existence. I remember standing next to the Colorado River on a sandbar at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and staring at the water and thinking about the millions of years the river had been running to cut that deeply into rock. What also struck me was that throughout unknowable millennia from the instant I observed those racing waters and standing wave rapids, the Colorado, if unbothered by humans, would still be doing the same thing I was witnessing, running unto the sea.

My instinctual love of nature was probably a perception of it as a refuge from a troubled childhood and it did not find an expression until I came across a unique literary work during my collegiate years. On the Loose was a kind of diary, written by two brothers, Terry and Renny Russell, about their youth spent wandering seashores and national parks and any western landscape distant from civilization. Their poetic text and stunning photos became a touchstone for the nascent environmental movement after it was published by the Sierra Club and sold more than a million copies. Mine is worn from frequent rereads but still serves as a catharsis when I convince myself there are too many complications in all our lives, and their burdens cannot be eased. Nature, the Russell brothers, argued, resolved all such contentions.

“One of the best-paying professions is getting ahold of pieces of country in your mind, learning their smell and their moods, sorting out the pieces of a view, deciding what grows there and there and why, how many steps that hill will take, where this creek winds and where it meets the other one below, what elevation timberline is now, whether you can walk this reef at low tide or have to climb around, which contour lines on a map mean better cliffs or mountains. This is the best kind of ownership, and the most permanent. It feels good to say ‘I know the Sierra’ or ‘I know Point Reyes.’ But of course you don’t-what you know better is yourself, and Point Reyes and the Sierra have helped.”

 

 

An eclipse, like all of nature’s majestic endeavors, can fill a soul with edifying conclusions. Eclipses are rare and those with totality even more scant and scattered across history’s timeline. One is coming for my home in the Texas Hill Country and the odds indicate the moon shadow is not likely to pass this spot for another 375 years. On April 8th, I will not need to jump my motorcycle and chase a cosmic experience down lost highways. Instead, I will step out my door and stand by the back gate and watch the darkness cross the land. If I were as smart as the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras, I would reduce the experience to numbers, and listen. He was convinced the great movements of the sun and planets and all the stars in the sky created an eternal hum he described as “the music of the spheres.” I wish that I could sing along.

But I am grateful to have a chance to listen.

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

James Moore is the New York Times bestselling author of “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,” three other books on Bush and former Texas Governor Rick Perry, as well as two novels, and a biography entitled, “Give Back the Light,” on a famed eye surgeon and inventor. His newest book will be released mid- 2023. Mr. Moore has been honored with an Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his documentary work and is a former TV news correspondent who has traveled extensively on every presidential campaign since 1976.

He has been a retained on-air political analyst for MSNBC and has appeared on Morning Edition on National Public Radio, NBC Nightly News, Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, CBS Evening News, CNN, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Hardball with Chris Matthews, among numerous other programs. Mr. Moore’s written political and media analyses have been published at CNN, Boston Globe, L.A. Times, Guardian of London, Sunday Independent of London, Salon, Financial Times of London, Huffington Post, and numerous other outlets. He also appeared as an expert on presidential politics in the highest-grossing documentary film of all time, Fahrenheit 911, (not related to the film’s producer Michael Moore).

His other honors include the Dartmouth College National Media Award for Economic Understanding, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television News Directors’ Association, the Individual Broadcast Achievement Award from the Texas Headliners Foundation, and a Gold Medal for Script Writing from the Houston International Film Festival. He was frequently named best reporter in Texas by the AP, UPI, and the Houston Press Club. The film produced from his book “Bush’s Brain” premiered at The Cannes Film Festival prior to a successful 30-city theater run in the U.S.

Mr. Moore has reported on the major stories and historical events of our time, which have ranged from Iran-Contra to the Waco standoff, the Oklahoma City bombing, the border immigration crisis, and other headlining events. His journalism has put him in Cuba, Central America, Mexico, Australia, Canada, the UK, and most of Europe, interviewing figures as diverse as Fidel Castro and Willie Nelson. He has been writing about Texas politics, culture, and history since 1975, and continues with political opinion pieces for CNN and regularly at his Substack newsletter: “Texas to the World.”

 

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Israel government continues to block aid response despite ICJ genocide court ruling, says Oxfam

Oxfam Australia Media Release

International community resorts to sea routes and air drops rather than challenge Israel for systemically undermining unfettered access of relief

Israeli authorities have rejected a warehouse full of international aid including oxygen, incubators and Oxfam water and sanitation gear all of which is now stockpiled at Al Arish just 40 km away from the border of 2.3 million desperate Palestinians in Gaza.

The aid originates from many humanitarian organisations around the world and has been rejected over weeks and months as result of an unpredictable and chaotic regime of approval, scanning and inspection, ultimately controlled by Israeli authorities. The reasons for rejection are not clear, says Oxfam.

In a new report today, Oxfam said this rejected aid was just one example of an overall humanitarian response that Israel has made so dangerous and dysfunctional as to be impossible for aid agencies to work at the speed and scale necessary to save lives, despite best efforts.

Oxfam says that Israel’s government ultimately bears accountability for the breakdown of the international response to the crisis in Gaza. It is failing in its legal responsibilities to the people whose land it occupies and breaking one of the key provisions demanded by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – to boost humanitarian aid in light of the risk of genocide in Gaza.

Oxfam believes that people living in Gaza will suffer mass death from disease and starvation far beyond the current 31,000 Palestinian war casualties unless Israel takes immediate steps to end its violations.

“The ICJ order should have shocked Israeli leaders to change course, but since then conditions in Gaza have actually worsened,” said Oxfam Middle East and North Africa Director, Sally Abi Khalil. “The fact that other governments have not challenged Israel hard enough, but instead turned to less effective methods like airdrops and maritime corridors is a huge red flag, signalling that Israel continues to deny the full potential of better ways to deliver more aid.”

“Israeli authorities are not only failing to facilitate the international aid effort but are actively hindering it. We believe that Israel is failing to take all measures within its power to prevent genocide,” Abi Khalil said.

Oxfam’s report “Inflicting Unprecedented Suffering and Destruction” identifies seven crucial ways that Israel is actively preventing the delivery of international aid into Gaza and punishing all Palestinians living in Gaza by deliberately depriving them of life and safety.

The report says that Israeli authorities:

  • Only allow aid in via two crossings into Gaza – at Rafah and KarmAbu Salem/Kerem Shalom – despite having total control to open more, thereby creating avoidable choke points for aid;
  • Are leading a dysfunctional and undersized inspection system that keeps aid snarled up, subjected to onerous, repetitive and unpredictable bureaucratic procedures that are contributing to trucks being stranded in giant queues for 20 days on average;
  • Are routinely and arbitrarily rejecting items of aid as having “dual (military) use”, banning vital fuel and generators entirely along with other items vital for a meaningful humanitarian response such as protective gear and communications kit. Much rejected aid must go through a complex “pre-approval” system or end up being held in limbo at the Al Arish warehouse in Egypt;
  • Have cracked down on humanitarian missions, largely sealing off northern Gaza, and restricting international humanitarian workers’ access not only into Gaza, but Israel and the West Bank including East Jerusalem too.

Israel has allowed 15,413 trucks into Gaza during the past 157 days of war. Oxfam says the population of Gaza needed five times more than that just to meet their minimum needs. In February, Israel allowed 2,874 trucks in – a 44% reduction from the month before.

Israel’s actions are also undermining international aid by its continued military assault inside Gaza, unparalleled in terms of intensity, brutality and scope – and which Israeli leaders themselves have called a “total siege” – as Oxfam highlights:

  • Israel’s assault has caught Gaza’s own aid workers and international agencies’ partners inside a “practically uninhabitable” environment of mass displacement and deprivation, where 75% of solid waste is now being dumped in random sites, 97% of groundwater made unfit for human use, and the Israeli state using starvation as a weapon of war;
  • Israel has rendered nowhere in Gaza safe amid the forcible and often multiple displacements of almost the entire population, which makes the principled distribution of aid unviable, including agencies’ ability to help repair vital public services at scale;
  • Its attacks are disproportionate and indiscriminate upon civilian and humanitarian assets – including people – such as solar, water, power and sanitation plants, UN premises, hospitals, roads, and aid convoys and warehouses, even when these assets are supposedly ‘deconflicted’ after their coordinates have been shared for protection.

“The state of Israel has created the perfect storm for humanitarian collapse and only the state of Israel can fix it,” Abi Khalil said.

Celine Maayeh, the Advocacy and Research Officer for one of Oxfam’s partner organisations in Gaza, Juzoor for Health and Social Development, said:

“Juzoor has been overwhelmed with support from all over the world, but we’re so frustrated in our helplessness and inability to actually get enough aid into Gaza. For the first few weeks, we managed to procure whatever we could get our hands on from local markets. Now, there is almost nothing — no resources, no supplies. In the North the situation is beyond dire. There’s been an alarming increase in cases of malnutrition among children in the last month, and yet the only food the team is able to find to feed people living in 45 shelters is some vegetables. There is an indisputable, man-made, intentional deprivation of aid that continues to suck the life out of any and all humanitarian operations, including our own.”

Oxfam is calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire to end the death and suffering because the measures intended to protect civilians or give them aid are not working. Armed Palestinian groups must release the civilian hostages they hold unconditionally. Displaced people should be allowed to return home in safety.

Other states are obliged to take all diplomatic, economic and political actions necessary to prevent genocide in Gaza, to enable more aid and to prevent the possibility of Palestinians being forcibly displaced outside of Gaza. States should discontinue their arms sales and other forms of security assistance that would facilitate the risk of genocide and ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity by Israel upon Gaza.

Oxfam says that Israel’s 16-year illegal blockade had already left Gaza in a weakened state. “The international community has failed both Palestinian and Israeli people by ignoring the root causes of this decades-long conflict,” Abi Khalil said. “It is abundantly clear that military force cannot resolve this, but only intensify the cycles of violence.”

“Israel must lift its total blockade of Gaza and belligerent occupation of Palestinian territory and we call on all parties – finally – to work toward a fair, just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians grounded in international law,” she said.

 

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Siding with Spotify: The European Commission Fines Apple

It will come as little surprise that colossal Apple has been favouring its own music streaming service in snuffing and stuffing competitors. The company, it has been alleged, has prevented app developers from informing users of less expensive methods to purchase subscriptions outside the scope of Apple’s own services. Its cosmos was all.

Central to these claims is the ongoing battle between Apple and the Swedish music streaming service, Spotify, a largely amoral gladiatorial encounter of drain, pinch and seizure that saw the latter draw customers away from Apple’s iTunes. Territorial skirmishes have ensued over the years, with gains and losses evident on both sides. In 2015, Apple’s release of its own streaming service, Apple Music, enraged Spotify as an anticompetitive move. The tech behemoth, so the charge went, was able to undercut the prices of competitors as it could avoid paying the same App Store fees as others.

Not to worry. Spotify initiated its own assault (paywalled) in 2019, marked by disbursing US$500 billion worth of funds at podcast start-ups, in the process acquiring such outfits as Gimlet and Anchor. And as this was happening, a façade of decency was erected, keeping the battle between the two companies in boardrooms and backrooms.

Then came the tidal turn. Apple, along with the other apocalyptic agents of Big Tech, started becoming the source of much ire for politicians in the EU. The latest success by Spotify to convince the European Commission that Apple’s restrictions and fees imposed on developers wishing to list their apps in the App Store were too onerous, is merely one example of European disgruntlement.

Spotify’s 2019 filing with the European Commission against Apple’s practices was described by the company’s CEO and founder, Daniel Ek, as necessary so “that companies such as ours [can] operate in an ecosystem in which fair competition is not only encouraged, but guaranteed.” In his view, Apple’s introduction of various rules to the App Store had “purposely” limited choice and stifled innovation “at the expense of the user experience – essentially acting as both a player and referee to deliberately advantage other app developers.”

In its response at the time, Apple self-glorified, praising its own contribution to technological civilisation. Monopoly masquerading as benign, technological diversity is a form of reasoning familiar to all monopolists who tolerate competition on their terms. But for the company, Spotify had been less than clean on its dealings, “keeping all the benefits of the App Store ecosystem – including the substantial revenue that they draw from the App Store’s customers – without making any contributions to that marketplace.”

The European Commission was not to be convinced. The fine of 1.84 billion euros was imposed on Apple for its ban on developers from “fully informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services outside of the app.” In a statement from the EU’s competition chief Margrethe Vestager, the company was said to have “abused its dominant position in the market for the distribution of music streaming apps through the App Store.” This was achieved “by restricting developers from informing consumers about alternative, cheaper music services outside the Apple ecosystem.”

Ek was delighted, suggesting that an industrious punter had gotten exactly what he wanted. Apple, in no uncertain terms, had “decided that they want to close down the internet and make it theirs, and they view every single person using an iPhone to be their user and they should be able to dictate what that user experience should be.” In this modern game of tech robber barons and conquistadores, mumbling about human experience is hardly convincing. The feeling here is that Spotify and Apple treat their user base as mice chasing cheese in a maze. Apple lacks the glint and shine of virtue, but Ek is not exactly a knight in brilliant, shining armour.

In a statement responding to the Commission finding, the crew at Apple were combative, surly and resentful. “The decision was reached despite the Commission’s failure to uncover any credible evidence of consumer harm and ignores the realities of a market that is thriving, competitive and growing fast.” Despite eight years of investigating Apple’s corporate conduct, no “viable theory” had been “yielded” on “explaining why Apple has thwarted competition in a market that is so clearly thriving.”

There were also barbed words reserved for Spotify, a company with “the largest music streaming app in the world”, and one engaged in “more than 65” meetings with the Commission “during this investigation.” While Apple’s treatment is hardly bound to exercise the tear ducts, there is something smelly about conduct verging on connivance on the European side of the bargain – in this case, of a patriotic, underhanded sort.

Apple also suggested that Spotify had been an App Store triumph, something they were always bound to say. “They have a more than 50 percent share of the European market, and on iOS, Spotify has an even higher share than they do on Android.” The European Commission, it was felt, had intended this as an effort to enforce the Digital Markets Act (DMA) ahead of it coming into force.

Other questions have also been asked. If one is really looking at an open internet concept (such an idea has always been a glorious fancy and a deceiving fluff), the feeling that Spotify has been aided by a regulator in terms of its own market arrangements is hard to dispel. “Ironically, in the name of competition,” claims Apple, the “decision just cements the dominant position of a successful European company that is the digital music market’s runaway leader.” The mask of digital patriotism has been unmasked, and we await where the next blow will come from.

 

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ActionAid “categorically denounces” the reported forcible transfer of millions from Rafah to so-called “humanitarian islands”

ActionAid Media Release

Riham Jafari, Communications and Advocacy Coordinator at ActionAid Palestine, said:

“We categorically denounce the reported green light from the US for Israel to undertake military action in Rafah and forcibly transfer the million plus people sheltering in Rafah to so-called “humanitarian islands” within Gaza so Israel can continue its violent rampage which is now entering its 6th month.

“These people are not simply an inconvenience in this war, this flagrant disregard for international law constitutes a gross violation of the rights of Gazans, who have already endured countless displacement since this crisis began. Palestinians in Gaza must be guaranteed their inalienable right to return to their homes.

“We demand an immediate cessation of this plan and call for all parties to prioritise the protection of civilians and adhere to their obligations under international law. All this ceasefire talk from leading nations is hot air if they allow the Israeli government to facilitate the mass transfer of the now largest refugee camp on earth. This cannot be allowed to happen, and we urge governments to ensure it does not for the good of humanity.”

 

About ActionAid

ActionAid is a global federation working with more than 41 million people living in more than 71 of the world’s poorest countries. We want to see a just, fair, and sustainable world, in which everybody enjoys the right to a life of dignity, and freedom from poverty and oppression. We work to achieve social justice and gender equality and to eradicate poverty.

 

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EVs now mainstream in Australia after record year of growth

2023 was another landmark year for electric transport in Australia with rapid growth in both EV sales and charging infrastructure, according to the Australian Electric Vehicle Industry Recap 2023 released today.

The Recap, produced by the Electric Vehicle Council finds:

  • EV sales (including both battery EVs and plug-in hybrids) grew by 120%
  • The total Australian EV fleet surpassed 180,000 electric vehicles
  • Charging infrastructure locations increased by 75 per cent on the previous year, with 348 locations added across Australia

The Recap also contains details on the top 20 EV models sold, an update on how Australia is tracking against the EVC’s recommended target of 1 million EVs by end of 2027, and the launch of a national EV ownership survey in collaboration with the University of Sydney.

The Recap also includes analysis of media claims about a slowdown in EV sales in the US, which the report finds has been vastly overstated.

“Most of the commentary about a slowdown in the US has come from those with an interest in talking down the growth of EVs, when the reality is electric car sales are still going strong in America,” said EVC chief executive Behyad Jafari.

“Naturally, as the total number of EVs sold continues to become ever larger, achieving the same levels of annual growth in percentage terms becomes increasingly difficult to achieve. The growth in EVs between 2021 and 2022 in the US was 66 per cent while in the most recent year it was 46 per cent. 46 per cent is extraordinary annual growth in any market.”

Mr Jafari noted that extending the benefits of EVs to a broader cohort of Australians would requiring ongoing policy reform.

“After a long period of anticipation last decade, it’s now genuinely exciting to see the electric vehicle revolution now rolling out all over Australia,” Mr Jafari said.

“EV drivers are everywhere and if you talk to them they’re typically effusive about their decision. Not having to worry about petrol prices or regular maintenance, and enjoying a more fun driving experience tend to top the reasons given for satisfaction. And our cities and towns are benefiting with less and less air and noise pollution.

“To sustain this positive trajectory we need sensible reform. The federal government’s New Vehicle Efficiency Standards are a crucial step that finally brings Australia into line with the rest of the developed world. This move will see Australian drivers finally being given the same kind of choice offered to Americans and Europeans.

“EVs are no longer a novelty, they are a core part of everyday Australian lives. Hopefully the abundant benefits of switching to an EV will be embraced by millions more Australians as the decade progresses.”

 

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Intelligence Committee tables report on military secrets legislation

Parliament of Australia Media Release

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) today tabled its Advisory Report on the Defence Amendment (Safeguarding Australia’s Military Secrets) Bill 2023.

The Committee’s unanimous report recommended that the Bill pass and made four recommendations for the Government’s consideration including:

  • assessing the existing legislation and procedures and whether they sufficiently cover working or training for paramilitary organisations and militias by former defence personnel
  • providing the Minister for Defence with the ability to determine by legislative instrument classes or categories of non-former Defence members that are not required to apply for an authorisation – for example, in cases where a company has been approved to provide goods under the Defence Export Control (DEC) arrangements
  • assessing how existing legislation and procedures covering former National Intelligence Community officers and their work for foreign governments should be strengthened, and address the need for further legislation

The Bill would amend the Defence Act 1903 to regulate the work that certain former defence staff members can perform for or on behalf of a military organisation or government body of a relevant foreign country, without a foreign work authorisation.

Mr Peter Khalil MP, Chair of the PJCIS, said “Once passed, this Bill will deal with the potential of former defence staff members revealing sensitive defence information and placing Australia’s national security at risk. In addition it provides our allies with more confidence that securing sensitive military information is at the forefront of the Australian Government’s national security thinking.”

Further information on the inquiry can be obtained from the Committee’s website.

 

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Prejudicial Bans: Congress Tosses over TikTok

How delicious is political hypocrisy. Abundant and rich, it manifests in the corridors of power with regularity. Of late, there is much of it in the US Congress, evident over debates on whether the platform TikTok should be banned in the United States. Much of this seems based on an assumption that foreign companies are not entitled to hoover up, commodify and use the personal data of users, mocking, if not obliterating privacy altogether. US companies, however, are. While it is true that aspects of Silicon Valley have drawn the ire of those on The Hill in spouts of select rage, giants such as Meta and Google continue to use the business model of surveillance capitalism with reassurance and impunity.

In May 2023, the disparity of treatment between the companies was laid bare in a Congressional hearing that smacked the hands of Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pinchai with little result, while lacerating TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew. “Your platform should be banned,” blustered Chair Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-WA) of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The ongoing concern, and one with some basis, is TikTok’s link with parent company ByteDance. Being based in China, the nexus with the authoritarian state that wields influence on its operations is a legitimate concern, given national security laws requiring the company to share data with officials. But the line of questioning proved obtuse and confused, revealing an obsession with themes resonant with McCarthyite hysteria. On several occasions, the word “communists” issued from the lips of the irate politicians, including regular references to the Chinese Community Party.

Alex Cranz, writing for The Verge, summarised the hectoring session well: “Between their obsession with communism, their often obnoxious and condescending tone, and the occasional assumption that Chew was Chinese, despite his repeated reminders that he is Singaporean, the hearing was a weird, brutal, xenophobic mess.”

TikTok, for its part, continues to tell regulators that it has taken adequate steps to wall off the data of its 150 million users in the US from ByteDance’s operations, expending US$1.5 billion in its efforts to do so. A January investigation by the Wall Street Journal, however, found that “managers sometimes instruct workers to share data with colleagues in other parts of the company and with ByteDance workers without going through official channels.” How shocking.

Cranz might have also mentioned something else: that the entire show was vaudevillian in its ignorance of US government practices that involved doing exactly what ByteDance and TikTok are accused of: demanding that companies share user data with officials. If he is to be forgotten for everything else, Edward Snowden’s 2013 disclosures on the National Security Agency’s collaboration with US telecom and internet companies on that point should be enshrined in posterity’s halls.

The PRISM program, as it was called, involved the participation of such Big Tech firms as Google, Facebook, YouTube and Apple in sharing the personal data of users with the NSA. Largely because of Snowden’s revelations, end-to-end encryption became both urgent and modish. “An enormous fraction of global internet traffic travelled electronically naked,” Snowden remarked in an interview with The Atlantic last year. “Now it is a rare sight.”

The US House of Representatives has now made good its threats against TikTok in passing a bill that paves the way for the possible imposition of a ban of the app. It gives ByteDance a six-month period of grace to sell its stake in the company, lest it face a nationwide block. Whether it passes the Senate is an open question, given opposition to it by certain Republicans, including presidential hopeful Donald Trump. Other politicians fear losing an invaluable bridge in communicating with youthful voters.

On March 13, however, the righteous were shining in confidence. The House’s top Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, claimed that the bill would lessen “the likelihood that TikTok user data is exploited and privacy undermined by a hostile foreign adversary” while Wisconsin Republican Mike Gallagher declared that the US could no longer “take the risk of having a dominant news platform in America controlled by a company that is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party.” The subtext: best leave the despoiling and abuse to US companies.

The blotted copybooks of such giants as Meta and Google have tended to only feature in morally circumscribed ways, sparing the model of their business operations from severe scrutiny. On January 31, the Senate Judiciary Committee gave a farcical display of rant and displeasure over the issue of what it called “the Online Child Exploitation Crisis.” Pet terrors long nursed were on show: the mania about paedophiles using social media platforms to stalk their quarry; financial extortion of youth; sexploitation; drug dealing.

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) made much of Zuckerberg on that occasion, but only as a prop to apologise to victims of Meta’s approach to child users. The Meta CEO has long known that such palliative displays only serve as false catharsis; the substance and rationale of how his company operations gather data never changes. And the show was also all the more sinister in providing a backdrop for Congressional paranoia, exemplified in such proposed measures as the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA).

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has rightly called KOSA a censorship bill which smuggles in such concepts as “duty of care” as a pretext to monitor information and conduct on the Internet. The attack on TikTok is ostensibly similar in protecting users in the US from the prying eyes of Beijing’s officials while waving through the egregious assaults on privacy by the Silicon Valley behemoths. How wonderfully patriotic.

 

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Independence Way

By James Moore

There was a line, but we pretended it did not exist. That was the best way to get through each day as we came of age. In our factory town, there were the laborers and the management, and the families in our neighborhood supplied the muscle and bone to build the cars rolling out onto the American road. Mostly, our fathers were from below the Mason-Dixon Line and bending their backs to an assembly line felt like no great chore and paid immensely better than chopping cotton. Until the unions, laborers could not afford to own what they built for others.

A great, gray factory separated our fortunes. After World War II, it had begun manufacturing cars but retained its name as the Tank Plant. Sherman tanks were assembled, tested, and shipped out of the facility in Southern Lower Michigan. Great pride was taken in delivery of the armored attack vehicles to Allied troops moving across the European and African continents. Blue collar workers of both sexes, not carrying guns, felt the importance of their contributions. The families living on our side of the vast structure, after the war, were the welders and fabricators and drill operators and people with modest skills and growing families.

Managers of the workers, foremen and shop executives, and businesses that thrived by serving the factory’s needs for raw materials and services, lived on the other side of the Tank Plant. Their homes were middle and upper middle class but when we were inhabiting 800 square feet tract houses, the contrast was startling. I did not ever enter those grand houses, except for rare moments when invited by a classmate, and I was always afraid to brush against the wall and looked at my feet to make certain I did not track the floors. In one of the wealthiest neighborhoods, there was golf course that held a big professional tournament and as I dragged my pro’s bag around the course I looked at the magnificent homes that lined the fairways and wondered how such money was accumulated.

 

The Tank Plant, Grand Blanc, Michigan, 1945

 

I had no understanding of how class distinctions evolved, or why my situation was so dramatically different from the overwhelming majority of the other students in my school. When I saw them in their new cars and down jackets in the winter time, though, I understood there were economic and educational forces at work that made our lives abundantly different. My mother carried burgers and open-faced sandwiches as a waitress at a short order restaurant and my father lifted bumpers out of a metal press and stacked them on pallets for delivery to the assembly line. Neither ever drew a breath without worrying about money, how to pay for school clothes, the oil delivery truck that filled up the tank out back to run the furnace in the middle of the house, groceries, electricity, and the burdensome monthly mortgage of $62.50 on a $10,000 VA loan.

I only have memories of wanting to leave and five decades later I still do not want to go home, though I infrequently visit. Our little house had neither space nor money to make life enjoyable and when the snow piled up the window frame and we were unable to leave, I felt as if I might be trapped for the rest of my existence. When the roads became passable after a blizzard, we often wore old socks on our hands for gloves and stuffed them into our pants pockets before we got off the bus at school because we did not want our classmates to know our modest deprivations. Such humiliation is hard to endure when both of your parents are working 60-hour weeks and still cannot afford to properly clothe their six children. I was angry because I listened to too many people talk about opportunities my struggling parents never encountered in their American life.

To get away from all this, I took to the highway when I graduated high school at age seventeen. I was less afraid of strangers on the road than I was of my father’s thundering right hand or his snapping razor strop and the kitchen drawers he tossed through the living room window when he could not control the anger he possessed after how his life had unfolded. These were factors I was unable to explain to drivers who stopped to offer a ride when I stood by the pavement with my thumb cast into the traffic. I did not want to offer up any background, I just wanted to put miles of road behind me and keep moving westerly. The questions kept recurring, though.

“Hop in kid. Where you going?”

“Out west. Maybe California, if I can get there.”

“What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what you mean.”

“You look like you weigh maybe 140 pounds. Somebody could hurt you. Do your parents know what you are doing or where you are going?”

“My mother does. She cried when I left, but she knew I had to go.”

“Why’d you have to go? You like sleeping under bridges and in cornfields more than sleeping under the roof at your parents’ house?”

“No mister, but it ain’t that simple. Honest.”

I remember that conversation with a trucker near Scottsbluff, Nebraska, out near the Wyoming line. He was not just big in the middle like a man who sat and ate and worried all day but his arms were large with rounded muscles and the more questions he asked the more afraid I became. When he stopped talking, he kept looking over at me as if he were making an assessment as to whether I was crazy or if I might be able to escape. I never knew which.

“Hey, can you let me off up here, a few miles down the road? I kinda want to spend time in Wyoming, hiking around.”

“What for?”

“I like history, you know, westward expansion and that stuff. I want to see that Independence Rock that’s around here somewhere. Lots of people traveling on wagon trains left their names and initials carved into the rock. There are even still ruts where all the wagon trains went by.”

“Okay, kid. Whatever you want. But you sure?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m sure.”

He reached across the bench seat in the cab and patted my knee. I did not look at his face but I wanted out of his truck.

“You can go all the way to California with me, if you want. I could use the company. I’ll get you a few meals, too. Road gets lonely when you live on it.”

“No, no,” I said. “I’ve got to get off here. I’m doing research, see, about Manifest Destiny, you know, when all the Europeans went over the mountains and wiped out the Indians on the way.’

“Manifest destiny, huh? Okay, kid. Whatever ya want.”

 

Independence Rock, Oregon Trail, Wyoming

 

The truck slowed in the breakdown lane and my hand was on the metal frame of my backpack before he had engine-braked to a full stop. I opened the door and dropped the nylon pack to the ground, thanked him quickly, and jumped out behind my gear. I reached up and swung the passenger door closed and heard the air brakes hiss as he released them and dropped the cabover into gear.

I walked away from the Interstate and did not look back because I wanted to be certain the 18-wheeler was moving west with its load of refrigerators. About five minutes later, I turned around and went back and quickly got a ride in the bed of a pickup that was going south of Casper toward Independence Rock. When I finally jumped over the tailgate and onto the road, I was disappointed at the famous formation I had read about in school. I thought it looked a bit like a giant turtle and was oddly insignificant to have become a place of such import in American history.

 

 

The rock was covered with the names of an estimated 5000 travelers who had moved past it on their way west during the 1800s. I had already begun to think if it as a place of hope because every wagon train that had gone west from Fort Laramie included people who had survived attacks by indigenous peoples, endured winds and rain and floods and hunger, but had pressed onward to whatever they had envisioned might exist for them in Utah or the Willamette Valley or the California coast. The granite outcrop became a kind of bulletin board for travelers on the Oregon Trail, who carved inscriptions of their names and dates and observations as they began the long, dangerous climb toward the Great Divide.

On July 26, 1849, J. Goldsborough Bruff

“… reached Independence Rock … at a distance looks like a huge whale. It is being painted & marked every way, all over, with names, dates, initials, &c – so that it was with difficulty I could find a place to inscribe it.”

 

Pioneer Inscriptions, dated 1850

 

The name was derived from a Fourth of July celebration at the site in 1830 by a group of fur trappers. Even as a 17-year-old in his first summer of wandering, I knew I was in a spot both sacred and profane. The Plains Indians certainly did not want to tolerate the strangers transiting lands they had roamed freely in time beyond memory and they often fought desperately, and futilely, to stop the increasing numbers of white transgressors. The emigrants, though, were too numerous and did not stop coming and their determination outweighed their fears. The trail was also fraught with perils of disease like small pox and yellow fever and dysentery from bad water, and had claimed thousands of lives, but the survivors remained hopeful of a life they were barely able to describe or define.

Even though I wondered if there were ghosts still hovering nearby, the spirits of travelers who had died with their unrealized aspirations somewhere near the rock, I still walked off to find a place to unroll my bag and sleep. There did not seem to be many tourists about and traffic was hurrying to bigger national parks with grander views. I belonged where I found myself at the end of that day. I, too, was determined to make it over the Divide, if only by hitchhiking the next morning, but as my eyes grew heavy and the wind came down off the Rockies, I was also unable to see my future. I felt, though, the power of all the hope that had led those souls of long ago to that rock.

And I was anxious to move further west.

 

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

James Moore is the New York Times bestselling author of “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,” three other books on Bush and former Texas Governor Rick Perry, as well as two novels, and a biography entitled, “Give Back the Light,” on a famed eye surgeon and inventor. His newest book will be released mid- 2023. Mr. Moore has been honored with an Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his documentary work and is a former TV news correspondent who has traveled extensively on every presidential campaign since 1976.

He has been a retained on-air political analyst for MSNBC and has appeared on Morning Edition on National Public Radio, NBC Nightly News, Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, CBS Evening News, CNN, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Hardball with Chris Matthews, among numerous other programs. Mr. Moore’s written political and media analyses have been published at CNN, Boston Globe, L.A. Times, Guardian of London, Sunday Independent of London, Salon, Financial Times of London, Huffington Post, and numerous other outlets. He also appeared as an expert on presidential politics in the highest-grossing documentary film of all time, Fahrenheit 911, (not related to the film’s producer Michael Moore).

His other honors include the Dartmouth College National Media Award for Economic Understanding, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television News Directors’ Association, the Individual Broadcast Achievement Award from the Texas Headliners Foundation, and a Gold Medal for Script Writing from the Houston International Film Festival. He was frequently named best reporter in Texas by the AP, UPI, and the Houston Press Club. The film produced from his book “Bush’s Brain” premiered at The Cannes Film Festival prior to a successful 30-city theater run in the U.S.

Mr. Moore has reported on the major stories and historical events of our time, which have ranged from Iran-Contra to the Waco standoff, the Oklahoma City bombing, the border immigration crisis, and other headlining events. His journalism has put him in Cuba, Central America, Mexico, Australia, Canada, the UK, and most of Europe, interviewing figures as diverse as Fidel Castro and Willie Nelson. He has been writing about Texas politics, culture, and history since 1975, and continues with political opinion pieces for CNN and regularly at his Substack newsletter: “Texas to the World.”

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Join Craig Foster for Sydney Big Walk 4 Refugees this Sunday

Media Release

Join Craig Foster, refugee communities and dignitaries for the Sydney leg of the Big Walk 4 Refugees – a 2.5km walk from the Maritime Museum to Fleet Park – this Sunday 17 March.

In the first four weeks of the virtual walk, hundreds of people in all states and territories have powered through 40,000 kilometres to show support for 10,000 refugees living in Australia who are waiting for permanent visas.

Clocking 60 million steps to date – or 2.5 laps of Australia ­­- walkers are expected to complete more than 50,000 kilometres by the time the virtual walk completes on 26 March 2024.

According to Craig Foster, humanitarian and former Socceroo captain:

“We’re walking together to raise awareness of the impact of endless uncertainty and impermanence on 10,000 children, women and men who came to our shores seeking safety more than a decade ago.

“These families and children are stuck in limbo, waiting for permanent protection. Despite contributing in every way and being loved members of our communities; growing up here and completing their schooling here, they still don’t have the same opportunities, protections and sense of inclusion.

“As a country, we have made progress and there is more work to do, more people who also need and deserve our help. Which is why I’m calling on the Australian government to provide permanent visas for all 10,000.”

Refugee Rights Campaigner at Amnesty International Australia, Zaki Haidari will also attend:

“We are walking in solidarity with our 10,000 brothers and sisters. The walk highlights that they have been living without certainty or clarity for over a decade, mainly on short-run temporary visas with no way to meet goals or plan their futures.

“They are part of our community and have contributed significantly to Australia as workers, volunteers, cultural ambassadors. Their visa status has denied them reunion with parents, siblings, partners, children.

“It is time for the Labor government to stop such unnecessary, inhumane practices and treat them with the dignity and respect they deserve.”

 

 

Refugee supporter and activist, Ian Rintoul, Refugee Action Coalition Sydney says:

“Why are we blocking brilliant young people from going to university after completing their secondary schooling in Australia?

“Why are we blocking people from being able to work in much-needed areas such as aged, disability and child care where we have skill shortages?

“Why are we blocking families from reuniting after a decade?

“The Australian government needs to have the ticker to stop this cruelty and provide permanent visas for all 10,000 so they can plan and rebuild after living here for more than 10 years.”

The Big Walk 4 Refugees was launched on 13 February to show support for 10,000 refugees who were overlooked by the Australian Government’s announcement a year earlier of permanent pathways for 19,000 refugees.

In the first two weeks of the Big Walk, walkers smashed out 16,650 km from Hobart, around the coastline, arriving in Canberra on 27 February four weeks ahead of schedule. Walkers are running more than 500 virtual rings around Parliament House each day.

Join us on for the Sydney Big Walk 4 Refugees. Meeting at 1pm at the Welcome Wall, Maritime Museum, 1 Murray Street, Darling Harbour for our walk to First Fleet Park near Circular Quay. Distance has been limited to accommodate walkers fasting for Ramadan.

 

 

Photo opportunities are available with refugee walkers:

  • 1pm: Welcome Wall, Maritime Museum (Murray Street) Darling Harbour
  • 1-2pm: Walking to First Fleet Park
  • 2pm: At First Fleet Park.

Spokespeople available for interview before, during or after the walk:

  • Craig Foster, humanitarian and ex-Socceroo coach
  • Zaki Haidari, Amnesty International campaigner and refugee from Afghanistan who received permanent residency in Australia in 2023
  • Ian Rintoul, refugee advocate, Refugee Action Coalition Sydney

Facebook event: https://fb.me/e/19v2bOEjd

For more information about the Big Walk 4 Refugees visit www.bigwalk4refugees.au

 

 

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Bridging The Gap In Remote, Rural & Regional Skills Training

Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia (ITECA) Media Release

A new assessment of skills training across remote, rural and regional Australia highlights the complementarity of independent Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) and public TAFE colleges. The 2024 Remote, Rural and Regional Skills Training Snapshot is published by the Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia (ITECA), the peak body representing independent skills training, higher education, and international education providers.

Data in the 2024 Remote, Rural and Regional Skills Training Snapshot shows that approximately 1.12 million students engaged in skill training in remote, rural, and regional settings choose to study with an independent RTO. This is 87.3% of all students in skills training across these regions.

“Investing in skilling, upskilling, and reskilling workers in remote, rural, and regional Australia drives economic vitality, fosters community resilience, and bridges opportunity gaps. This is what makes the work of ITECA members so critical to these communities,” said Troy Williams, ITECA Chief Executive.

ITECA’s view is that the data shows the need for the Australian, state and territory governments to put students at the heart of the skills training system, ensuring that they are supported to study with the provider of their choice.

“The key to improving skills training across remote, rural and regional Australia relies on a mutually supportive network of quality independent RTOs and public TAFE colleges,” Mr Williams said.

The official data on student satisfaction shows why students trust independent RTOs to deliver the training to help them achieve their life and career goals.

“When supporting remote, rural and regional students to get into a job and secure, private RTOs achieve great outcomes with 84.8% per cent of students employed after training. Independent RTOs achieve some of the highest levels of student satisfaction,” Mr Williams said.

The 2024 Remote, Rural and Regional Skills Training Snapshot also highlights that 86.4% of female students in remote, rural and regional areas study with independent RTOs, that’s 505,255 students.

In the Regionalisation Ambition 2032 vision statement, the Regional Australia Institute (RIA) sets a national goal to increase the share of skilled workers employed in regional Australia to 80% of the regional workforce.

“It’s clear that both students and employers trust independent RTOs to help achieve this target,” Mr Williams said.

ITECA is an active participant in the Alliance For Regionalisation, a grouping of more than thirty Chief Executive Officers from from the most influential peak bodies in the country, with the purpose of working to help bring the Regionalisation Ambition 2032 to life.

 

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Aid Wars over Gaza: Resuming Funding to UNRWA

The steady and ruthless campaign by Israel to internationally defund the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), is unravelling. The lynchpin in the effort was a thin, poison pen dossier making claims that 12 individuals were Hamas operatives who had been involved in the October 7 attacks. Within a matter of days, two internal investigations were commenced, various individuals sacked, and US$450 million worth of funding from donor states suspended.

As the head of the agency, Philippe Lazzarini, explained at a press conference on March 4, he has “never been informed” or received evidence of Israel’s claims substantiating their assertions, though he did receive the prompt about the profane twelve directly from Israeli officials. Every year, both Israel and the Palestinian authorities were furnished with staff lists, “and I never received the slightest concern about the staff that we have been employing.”

Had Israeli authorities signed off on these alleged participants in bungling or conspiratorial understanding? Certainly, there was more than a pongy whiff of distraction about it all, given that Israel had come off poorly in The Hague proceedings launched by South Africa, during which the judges issued an interim order demanding an observance of the UN Genocide Convention, an increase of humanitarian aid, and the retention of evidence that might be used for future criminal prosecutions for genocide.

An abrupt wave of initial success in starving the agency followed, with a number of countries announcing plans to freeze funding. In the United States, irate members of Congress accused the agency of having “longstanding connections to terrorism and promotion of antisemitism.” A hearing was duly held titled “UNRWA Exposed: Examining the Agency’s Mission and Failures” with Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies frothing at an agency that supposedly incited “violence against Israel, subsidizes US-designated terrorist organizations, denies Palestinians their basic human rights, and blocks the pathways to a sustainable peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”

The attempt to cast UNRWA into gleefully welcomed oblivion has not worked. Questions were asked about the initial figure of twelve alleged militants. News outlets began questioning the numbers.

The funding channels are resuming. Canada, for instance, approving “the robust investigative process underway”, also acknowledged that “more can be done to respond to the urgent needs of Palestinian civilians.” The initial cancellation of funding to the agency, charged Thomas Woodley, president of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, had been “a reckless political decision that never should have been made.”

The Swedish government was also encouraged by undertakings made by UNRWA “to allow independent auditing, strengthen internal supervision and enable additional staff controls”, promising an initial outlay of 200 million kroner (US$19 million).

The Minister for International Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade, Johan Forssell, promised that it would “monitor closely to ensure UNRWA follows through on what it has promised.” Aid policy spokesperson for the Christian Democrats, Gudrun Brunegård, also conceded that, given the “huge” needs on the part of the civilian population, that UNRWA was “the organisation that is best positioned to help vulnerable Palestinians.”

Much the same sentiment was expressed by the European Union, with the Commission agreeing to pay 50 million euros to UNRWA from a promised total of 82 million euros on the proviso that EU-appointed experts audit the screening of staff. “This audit,” a European Commission statement explains, “will review the control systems to prevent the possible involvement of its staff and assets in terrorist activities.” Having been found wanting in her screeching about-turn, the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen insisted that the EU stood “by the Palestinian people in Gaza and elsewhere in the region. Innocent Palestinians should not have to pay the price for the crimes of [the] terrorist group Hamas.”

Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi was stiffly bureaucratic in expressing satisfaction at “the commitment of UNRWA to introduce robust measures to prevent possible misconduct and minimise the risk of allegations.” At no point was Israel’s own contribution to the calamity, and its insatiable vendetta against the agency, mentioned.

The bombast and blunder of the whole effort by Israel was further discoloured by claims that UNRWA staff had been victims of torture at the hands of the IDF in drafting the dossier. In a statement released by the agency, a grave accusation was levelled: “These forced confessions as a result of torture are being used by the Israeli Authorities to further spread misinformation about the agency as part of attempts to dismantle UNRWA.” In doing so, Israel was “putting our staff at risk and has serious implications on our operations in Gaza and around the region.”

For its part, the IDF, through a statement, claimed that this was all exaggerated piffle: “The mistreatment of detainees during their time in detention or whilst under interrogation violates IDF values and contravenes IDF [sic] and is therefore absolutely prohibited.”

Increasingly on the losing side of that battle, Israeli authorities decided to cook the figures further, declaring with crass confidence that 450 URWA employees in Gaza were members of militant groups including Hamas. Sticking to routine, those making that allegation decided that evidence of such claims was not needed. Those employees, claimed Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, “are military operatives in terror groups in Gaza”. “This was no coincidence. This is systematic. There is no claiming, ‘we did not know’.”

In the fog of war, mendacity thrives with virile vigour; but the current suggestion on the part of various donor states is that the humanitarian incentive to ameliorate the suffering of the Gaza populace has taken precedence over Israel’s persistently lethal efforts. That, at least, is the case with certain countries, leaving the doubters starkly exposed.

 

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The Campaign to Free Assange: Reflections on ‘Night Falls’

The town hall meeting is the last throbbing reminder of the authentic demos. People gather; debates held. Views converge; others diverge. Speakers are invited to stir the invitees, provoke the grey cells. Till artificial intelligence banishes such gatherings, and the digital cosmos swallows us whole, cherish these events.

And there was much to cherish about Night Falls in the Evening Lands: The Assange Epic, part of a global movement to publicise the importance of freeing WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, who remains in the forbidding confines of Belmarsh Prison in London. Held on March 9 in Melbourne’s Storey Hall, it was a salutatory minder that the publisher’s plight has become one of immediate concern. Worn down by judicial process and jailed by a US surrogate power, he faces a vicious political indictment of 17 charges focused on the Espionage Act of 1917 and one on computer intrusion. A UK High Court appeal on the matter of extradition hangs in the balance.

The thematic nature of such events can be challenging. One should never be too gloomy – and in Assange’s case, be it in terms of health, torture, injustice and pondered attempts by US intelligence officials to take his life or kidnap him – there is much to be gloomy about. Bleakness should be allowed, but only in modest, stiff doses. Try, as far as you can, to inject a note of encouraging humour into proceedings. Humour unsettles the tyrannically inclined, punctures the ideologue’s confidence. Then reflect, broadly, on the astonishing legacy on the subject and ask that vital question: Where to now?

The sessions, superbly steered through by Mary Kostakidis (“Try to avoid lengthy preambles to your questions, please”), covered a fanned out universe: the nature of “imperial law” and extra-territorial jurisdiction; the stirring role of WikiLeaks in exposing state atrocities; the regenerative tonic Assange had given to an ungrateful, envious Fourth Estate; the healthy emergence of non-mainstream media; and the tactics necessary to convince politicians that the publisher’s release was urgently warranted.

Two speakers were spear-sharp on both the legacy of Assange and what had to be done to secure his release. The Greek former finance minister and rabble-rousing economist, Yanis Varoufakis, was encouraging on both scores. A picture of pugilistic health, Varoufakis pondered “what Julian had taught” him. People forget, Varoufakis reminded his audience, Assange’s genius as one of the original cypherpunks, able to build a website that has managed to weather hacking storms and stay afloat in treacherous digital waters. Whistleblowers and leakers could be assured of anonymous contributions to the WikiLeaks website.

He was also impressed by the man’s towering, almost holy integrity. As much as they disagreed, he recalled, “and as much as I wanted to throttle the man”, he brimmed with intellectual self-worth and value. On the subject of revealing his sources, quite contrary to the spirit and substance of the US indictment, Assange was scrupulous to a fault. To betray any would endanger them.

Most movingly, Varoufakis reflected on his own intellectual awakening when reading Assange’s meditations on the internet; how it might, just might, fracture the imperium of information guarded so closely by powerful interests. Finally, the common citizenry would have at their disposal the means of returning the serve on spying and surveillance. The digital mirror would enable us to see what they – the state operatives, their goons and their lickspittle adjutants – could see about us. This was as significant to Varoufakis as George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, books he read with some anxiety during the days of Greece’s military junta.

On the nature of power – in this case, the menace posed by the US imperium – Australia had to be break free and embrace non-alignment. With characteristic flavour, Varoufakis characterised Washington’s exertion of influence over its satellite states as that of a mafia gang: “They manufacture insecurity in order to sell protection.” It was a brilliant formulation and goes to the centre of that infantile desire of Australian policy makers to endorse AUKUS, a dangerous military compact with the US and the UK that will mortgage the country to the sum of A$368 billion.

Even assuming that this arrangement would remain in place, those in the nation’s capital, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, had to ask the fundamental question on Assange. “Make it a condition of AUKUS that Assange returns to Australia,” insisted Varoufakis. “And the powerful will respect you even if you disagree with them.” To date, the PM had been a sore disappointment and hardly likely to be respected, even by the near comatose US President Joe Biden.

Virility, however, may be returning. That theme was evidenced in the sharp address from Greg Barns, a seasoned barrister and campaign strategist who has been involved in the WikiLeaks journey since 2012. While drawing attention to the outrageous assertion of extra-territorial jurisdiction by Washington to target Assange, he saw much promise in the political dawn in Canberra. A few years ago, he would never have envisaged being in a room where the Australian Greens leader, Adam Bandt, would be seated next to a fossil fuel advocate and Nationals senator, Matthew Cannavan. “Beside Mr Green sat Mr Coal.” Their common purpose: Assange’s release and the termination of a state of affairs so unacceptable it is no longer the talk of academic common rooms and specialist fora.

For the audience and budding activists, Barns had sound advice. Pester local political representatives. Arrange meetings, preferably in groups, with the local member. Remind them of the significance of the issue. “Make it an alliance issue.” There is nothing more worrying to a backbencher than concerned “traffic” through the electoral office that suggests a shift in voter sentiment. “I will bet good odds that the treatment of Assange has made it into party room discussions,” declared Barns with certitude.

In closing, Assange’s tireless father, John Shipton, washed his audience with gentle, meditative thoughts. Much like a calming shaman, he journeyed through some of the day’s themes, prodding with questions. Was AUKUS a bribe? A tribute? A payment for knowledge? But with optimism, Shipton could feel hope about his son: “Specks of gold” had formed to stir consciousness in the executive. Those in power were at long last listening.

 

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Alexey and Yulia: Faith, hope … and the greatest of these is love

By unashamed believer in Love, guest columnist Tess Lawrence

The romance between the Navalnys, Alexey and Yulia is destined for historical and cinematic heroic grandeur, now that Vladimir Putin’s nemesis has been put to death by murder most foul.

For sure, in due course, there will be a film, a popera, a musical, a docudrama series, and merch. I bags a tee shirt.

There should be scholarships, and awards in his honour and I daresay, hundreds of babies will be named for him.

Navalny murder, Novichokolat or poison in boxer shorts?

Whether his murder was precipitated by a variant of Novichokolat cookies or no, or poison placed in his boxer shorts, may not be known for some time.

I am transfixed with what I saw in this particular photo of this most extraordinary couple.

Perhaps I saw too much. Perhaps I saw not enough. Regardless it is a photo worth a thousand and one words.

I see Love. Joy. Two Hearts beating as one, visions of dismembered children momentarily leave me

Most of all I see deep love and joy; two hearts beating as one as their eyes lock in sensual embrace.

For a moment, it cleansed my driven journalist’s mind and lacerated soul of visions that often haunt and taunt me; visions of dead, dying and dismembered children of our beleaguered world at the behest of the bloodied hands of adults doing the bidding killing in the sullied names of their fallacious gods.

Navalny’s cause held threat of unhappy ending for family

Given the cruel interplay between kismet, Alexey and Yulia, the sacrifices and trauma endured by the Navalny family whose father willingly placed himself on the frontline of a cause that always held threat of an unhappy personal ending, given Putin’s cowardly penchant for murdering his political rivals and critics.

How can a man so cowardly, so paranoid, the archetypal bully so fearful of certain other men, afraid even of his own invisible shadow, whose politics manifest in sadism, sadomasochism and sadomachismo in equal measure, become the brutal and tyrannical ‘dicktator’ of the largest land mass country in the world?

Putin has turned Russia into a Pariah nation

Despite his power. Despite his obscene wealth, secret opulent palaces (exposed by Navalny), global holdings held by proxies and assets, all stolen from his own people, despite his iron Rule by Fear manifesto and Hitleresque encroaches into Crimea and Ukraine with forces dragooned from prisons and civvie street as well as mandated conscripts, Putin has managed to turn Russia into a pariah nation.

Surrounding himself with acolytes, sycophants and sickos and those supplicants fearful for their own lives and families should Putin catch even a whisper of dissent from them, Putin’s realm is already a catalogue of war mongering and joyless lost years.

His self-love and self-gratification speaks loud and his absence from so many political fora, sanctions notwithstanding reflects his personal insecurities and inability to confront his peers.

Putin’s joyless realm has fashioned Russia into a gulag

At times, it seems as if Putin has fashioned Russia into a gulag of sorts. Somehow, I feel the ghosts of Stalin and Beria lurking in Putin’s dystopian universe.

They never left the Lubyanka building.

Alexey Navalny unnerved Putin

Alexey Navalny’s growing presence and following clearly unnerved Putin.

Putin knows how to handle a man in uniform, but he cannot fathom a man, an Opposition Leader, who dresses in cool clothes, who’s a cool dude with a steadfast family and supporters, with a jocular irrepressible prankster sense of humour, even whilst in his IK-3 prison cell in the notorious ‘Polar Wolf,’ in Russia’s Yamalo-Nenets region, high above the Arctic Circle.

Navalny could take the Kremlin not by bullet but the ballot

Navalny was a leader who could persuade followers with his vision for a Russia without Putin, without taking the Kremlin by the bullet but rather, by the ballot box.

Remember how the vain glorious Putin thought by taking his clothes off, baring his torso on horseback or whatever, he would impress the world.

For a while it was as if Putin tried to emulate the spectacular and handsome Russian borne film star Yul Brynner.

For a while, Putin ludicrously tried to emulate Yul Brynner

He of the flaring nostrils and impressive physique who bared his chest in The King and I was to tragically die young of lung cancer in 1985, but not before he recorded a profoundly moving anti-smoking commercial to be played after the five-pack a day actor’s death.

Such things I am thinking as I contemplate the photo of Alexey and Yulia. It is so far removed from the bleakness of the malevolent Putin. He would have seen this photo of the lovers.

Russian official says Putin obsessed with Alexey Navalny, Yulia and family

A former Russian official who still has contacts on the periphery of Putin’s inner circle tells me that Putin is obsessed with all things Navalny, including Yulia and the children Dasha and Zakhar and remains constantly informed on everything and anything to do with all things Navalny.

Tess… Putin was “in love” with Alexey

“Tess, it was like he was in love with Alexey.” Putin is shown file upon file about Navalny, with endless photos and clandestine images taken by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) and others.

I’m rather in love with Alexey and Yulia myself, I told my friend. To me they represent Russia far more than Putin ever will.

“ … Alexey Navalny is Vladimir Putin’s Taylor Swift… spends more time on Navalny than… Ukraine War…”

“You can say that Alexey Navalny is Vladimir Putin’s Taylor Swift… he spends more time on Navalny than he does the Ukraine War. It is a joke.”

I’m told that Putin took a prurient interest in the conjugal visits Yulia was occasionally allowed when Alexey was in a prison in Pokrov.

Pokrov locals joke Putin perved on cctv Alexey and Yulia’s conjugal visits

Locals joked about how the loving couple were captured on non-secret secret cameras, for every second (pro forma), and that copies were sent to the Kremlin for Tsar Putin’s pleasure.

Putin taken with Yulia’s beauty and grace

He is said to be taken with Yulia’s beauty, elegance and grace and jealous of the obvious love and affection that she and Alexey unashamedly display in public, regardless of whom is watching.

Somehow, with their arms locked around each other, they seem utterly absorbed in a world of their own making; in a time suspended from the shackles of measurement in minutes or seconds. There is just the now; just the moment. The rest of us do not exist.

Star crossed lovers Yulia and Alexey and their date with destiny – In all the Vodka joints in all the towns in all the world…

Am a believer in romantic love. I think it wondrous that in all the vodka joints in all the towns in all the world, Yulia and Alexey’s fell into each other’s arms. The star-crossed lovers had a date with destiny, and they have surely kept it, at great cost to themselves but one hopes, for the greater good, small consolation that may be.

Yulia, Alexey’s Muse. Theirs a marriage of equals

Theirs appears to be a great and abiding love. By all accounts, Yulia was Alexey’s Muse and they were equal partners in a marriage that was also a political tour de force that remains determined to free Russia from the megalomanic, despotic and malignant regime of the psychopathic dicktator President Putin.

Comparatively little has been written about the critical role Yulia played in saving her husband’s life after that first poisoning in 2020. It was Yulia who fought tooth and nail, including writing directly to Putin, to evacuate a then dying Alexey from Russia to Germany.

Yulia’s decisive role in keeping her husband alive after first murder attempt

In her compelling and revelatory 2021 article for Vanity Fair, Russian born American journalist Julia Ioffe dug deep behind the lurid scene of the Navalny assassination attempt.

Ioffe’s forceful prose consigned Yulia Navalnaya’s rightful place in history, not only in relation to Russia but to the world. Navalnaya was no mere adjunct not Alexey Navalny, but she was his equal in every way. Unquestionably, her courageous and resolute intervention saved her husband’s life.

From Ioffe’s article, some powerful excerpts:

… At the hospital in Omsk, Navalnaya would encounter a wall of doctors who seemed more scared of their civilian superiors than they were of losing their patient. They were reinforced – or kept in line – by a small battalion of plainclothes federal security officers, all intent on keeping her from seeing her husband. To enter his room, she would need to present a marriage certificate, they said, and secure verbal consent from Navalny, who was still unconscious and on life support. She would stare them down, out-argue them, and bend their will to hers, all while a gathering swarm of journalists trained their cameras and microphones and smartphones on her. She would finally break through to see him, his body sprouting tubes and cords like vines, writhing in near-constant seizures. (She wouldn’t know until days later that this was the result of a military-grade nerve agent in the Novichok family.) She would have to fight with doctors and hospital administrators to see the results of her husband’s lab work, to give impromptu press conferences on the hospital steps, to sneak around the city to find the German doctors who had arrived with a private medevac plane and whom the authorities had barred her from seeing. She would have to demand, over and over, that the Omsk hospital release her husband and allow him to be loaded onto the plane and taken to Berlin, the only way, everyone knew, of possibly saving his life…

… For two days, Russia and the world waited nervously to see if Navalny, the only halfway plausible alternative to Vladimir Putin, lived or died. Instead, they saw Navalnaya. This pretty blond woman in a black leather jacket who had always appeared silently at her husband’s side was suddenly alone on the world stage, doing battle with the entire repressive machinery of the Russian state to pull her husband from the jaws of death. What people saw astounded them. “Russia is still a sexist country,” says economist Sergei Guriev, a friend and onetime adviser to Navalny. “People think that a woman is not an independent person, especially if she doesn’t work. Therefore, they didn’t understand that Yulia is an independent person. And then they understood. They saw Yulia fight the machine and win. I think for many people it was eye-opening.”

…The next day, with the plane from Germany already on the ground in Omsk, Navalnaya issued a public letter to Putin. “I am officially addressing you,” she wrote, “with a demand for permission to transport Alexey Anatolievich Navalny to the Federal Republic of Germany.” Within hours, she was boarding the plane alongside her husband, invisible on a gurney that was part cocoon, part coffin. Her formulation – a demand rather than a plea – was not lost on the Russian opposition. Even at her most desperate and vulnerable, she approached Putin, the man trying to kill her husband, not as a fearful supplicant but as a defiant equal.

In the following months, as Navalnaya and her husband documented his resurrection and recovery on social media, they became the measure of decency and nobility for millions of Russians…

Alexey a Lazarus of sorts – thanks to his love, Yulia

If Yulia had not been the tour de force she is, Alexey Navalny would not have ultimately been brought back from the brink of death. Still, he was a Lazarus of sorts because of her- and because she was able to get into Russia and somehow take control.

Yulia learns of Alexey’s death

Yulia was in Germany attending the Munich Security Conference 2024 when, along with the rest of us, she first learned of her husband’s murder.

She came out on centre stage, just after US Vice President Kamala Harris spoke and delivered an electrifying speech, addressing Vladimir Putin as much as the world and Navalny’s supporters.

A Message from Yulia Navalnaya:

 

 

The prison authorities issued this statement in Russian confirming Navalny’s death:

УФСИН России по Ямало-Ненецкому автономному округу сообщает

16.02.2024
16.02.2024 года в исправительной колонии №3 осужденный Навальный А.А. после прогулки почувствовал себя плохо, практически сразу потеряв сознание.
Незамедлительно прибыли медицинские работники учреждения, была вызвана бригада скорой медицинской помощи.
Проведены все необходимые реанимационные мероприятия, которые положительных результатов не дали. Врачи скорой медицинской помощи констатировали смерть осужденного.
Причины смерти устанавливаются.

(English translation) THE FEDERAL PENITENTIARY SERVICE OF RUSSIA IN THE YAMALO-NENETS AUTONOMOUS OKRUG REPORTS

16.02.2024

On 16.02.2024, in correctional colony No. 3, convict A.A. Navalny felt ill after a walk, almost immediately losing consciousness.

The medical staff of the institution immediately arrived, and an ambulance team was called.

All the necessary resuscitation measures were carried out, which did not give positive results. Ambulance doctors pronounced the convict dead.

The cause of death is being established.

Yulia vows to sip from the poisoned chalice of opposition leadership

Since her Munich speech, Navalnaya has made it clear she will not give up Navalny’s fight; that she will also sip from what some feel is a poisoned chalice.

She and Alexey knew such a day could come and they surely would have prepared for it.

When Alexey Navalny went back to Russia after Putin’s first attempt to assassinate him failed, he too was taking the fight – not flight – to Putin. Navalny was pissing in Putin’s face.

Navalny’s return to his homeland was a public humiliation for Putin and confirmed Alexey Navalny had no respect for, or fear of Putin. Even if the world didn’t always know where Navalny was or what was happening to him, the international spotlight was firmly trained on Navalny and his predicament.

Navalny had what Putin didn’t – respect

Navalny had what Putin wanted; something that had never been freely given. Respect. Respect on the international stage too.

It was not only a courageous decision, but it was also a show of solidarity with like-minded fellow Russians within – and without Russia and its great diaspora that includes Australia.

Navalny became a growing symbol of a glimpse of Russia without Putin. He had an indefatigable sense of humour, sarcasm and satire that was always present in his journalism, documentaries, podcasts and interviews.

I sent the ‘love photo’ to a few dear ones and wrote of how powerful a photo it was. How sexually charged it was, with the power of love, of secrets between lovers and how it made the viewer (me) feel almost a voyeur; even though we are all invited to view them through the collective peephole of social media.

The photo: luscious carnality in Alexeys’ eyes as he looks at his beloved Yulia

There is a luscious carnality in Alexey’s eyes that goes beyond lust to an even lustier place. Swoon. His lips are slightly parted, and his eyes burn with love. Even from here I can feel his breath upon my face.

Yulia’s lips are not parted. But her profile exudes both knowing and shared intimacy between the two, and she displays an elegant and steely queenly resolve that has already manifested into a leading role of Keeper of the Flame.

I ponder upon what Sister Wendy would have made of this picture, given her daring and courageous proclivity to describe fleshly attributes in artworks, as she saw fit.

Alexey Navalny more powerful in death than life

Alexey Navalny may yet prove to be more powerful in death than he was in life insofar as Putin and his henchmen are concerned.

The photo first appeared, I understand in Navalny’s Instagram account, posted on St Valentine’s Day.

 

 

Navalnys make it clear they fight for all political prisoners, not just Alexey

Yulia has made it clear that she holds Vladimir Putin responsible for Alexey’s awful death. The couple has made it clear their cause and their concern is not only for themselves but for all political prisoners, Russian or otherwise.

If you think such talk of Love is a bit twee or Mills and Hoonish, then go for it. You may be right.

Navalnys campaign pivots on jou and optimism, hope and faith, greater good

The thing is, that closer scrutiny of the Nalvalny Opposition campaign

reveals it pivots on joy and optimism, hope and faith in the greater good. And Love.

On his Valentine’s Day post featuring the ‘Love Photo’ Alexey wrote to Yulia… I feel you near me every second, and I love you more and more…

Two days later, Alexey Navalny was dead.

Their social media accounts are full of embraces and kisses.

Navalny’s Chief of Staff, Leonid Volkov is quoted as saying “Putin is fear. Navalny is Love. That’s why we will win” Volkov announced on Twitter/X.

Their campaign rhetoric is far from the phallic war mongering machismo of Putin and his political siblings around the world; the so-called iron men who rule by instilling fear; who do not realise you cannot enforce respect. It has to be earned and freely given.

Putin must now be aware he killed the wrong person. That is, if he wanted to annihilate the Opposition. Instead, in Alexey’s wake, he has inadvertently paved the way for someone else who may yet prove to be an even more formidable foe than Navalny.

Yulia Navalnaya is already deemed a contender for Russia’s first female President. She certainly has the credentials, the capacity and street cred amongst younger Russian supporters and yes, there is dissent and disagreement within the Opposition and also about Navalny’s leadership that has yet to be overcome.

Nonetheless Yulia has vowed to carry on the work of the Anti-Corruption Foundation. Even though her pledge is made in Russian, you are sure to understand every word.

Today, Yulia and the Anti-Corruption Foundation announced the lanch of a large scale election campaign under the slogan ‘ The Noon Against Putin ‘ with the aim of showing many Russians are really against the dictatorship.

From the Press Release:

On March 17, election day, the “Russia without Putin” campaign will not end. The name of the campaign makes it clear that it will only end when the main goal has been achieved.

Alexei Navalny has become a symbol of the fight against Putin. We will do everything we can not only to avenge Putin’s power for this despicable murder, but also to unite all the free people of Russia under Alexei’s name. To liberate our country, end the war and bring all those responsible to justice.

Putin beware. Yulia’s coming for you.

Putin better watch out.

She is coming for him.

 

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CFMEU backs build-rent-buy scheme expansion as part of housing fix

The Construction Forestry Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU) has called for the federal government to expand build-to-rent-to-buy schemes.

The Greens’ housing policy, released yesterday, calls for the government to build 360,000 homes over five years that would be available to rent and buy at discounted rates.

CFMEU National Secretary Zach Smith said the Federal Labor Government was already involved in building houses to rent and buy in the ACT.

“The federal government building houses to rent and buy isn’t a pie-in-the-sky dream, it’s already happening in Canberra,” Mr Smith, who is also the union’s ACT secretary, said.

“Federal Labor should look at the ACT scheme and expand it so we can give more Australians access to the right to affordable home ownership.

“Just because you’re a low-income worker doesn’t mean you should be stuck in a never-ending cycle of renting and locked out of home ownership forever.

“Housing is a fundamental human right that our society is failing to provide. Build to rent or buy schemes are just one piece of the complex housing puzzle Australia must solve.

“We need a massive increase in the nation’s public housing and affordable housing stock.

“The CFMEU’s plan to tax the outrageous profits of just a tiny portion of corporate giants will raise the $511 billion we need to build almost one million homes over the next two decades.”

 

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Aid system at the brink of total collapse and women give birth to stillborn babies as the risk of famine looms large in Gaza

ActionAid Media Release

With one-quarter of Gaza’s population being one step away from famine and more than a dozen children dying from malnutrition in the north of the enclave, ActionAid is warning that an already extremely strained humanitarian system will face total collapse amidst the apparent looming offensive of Rafah. A senior UN aid official warned a quarter of the population faced severe levels of food insecurity and that one in six children under the age of two in the north were suffering from acute malnutrition.

Over the last week, aid distributions across Gaza have come under attack, claiming lives while further endangering aid operations. As a result of the growing attacks on paramedics in Gaza, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society announced last week that it was suspending its medical missions across the Strip. On top of this, UNRWA, the largest aid agency in Gaza, is facing an uncertain future after seeing its budget severely slashed as many large donors, including the Australian government have withdrawn their financial support.

“This is a dire humanitarian crisis with children dying of starvation and women giving birth in the most inhumane conditions due to so little aid and medical supplies being permitted to enter Gaza. The situation will only get worse unless the Australian government and other donor nations urgently reinstate funding to UNRWA and ensure Israeli forces stop blocking aid from reaching people in urgent need of assistance. We cannot stand by and allow people to starve to death,” said Michelle Higelin, Executive Director of ActionAid Australia.

As western nations begin air drops of aid into Gaza, Amjad Al-Shawa of the Palestinian NGOs Network in Gaza, explained why it will not be enough to reliably meet the needs of Gazans. His explanation comes as a 14-truck aid convoy was turned away by Israeli forces yesterday in northern Gaza, the first attempted delivery in two weeks by the World Food Programme.

“The air drop [of humanitarian aid] is not enough at all in such conditions; there is a need for land transportation of aid.

“Every day we’re in [dire] need of 4,000 truckloads in order to cover the basic needs of these people.

“It’s very important to work urgently to stop this war on the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and to open all the crossings to let in all the required aid to reach all people.

“This is an urgent request from the people who are in Gaza, in the north and the south, who [are] still in the shelters, from the children, from the babies, and from women.”

The catastrophic humanitarian situation in northern Gaza, which has largely been cut off from aid since the start of the conflict, is rapidly deteriorating. In recent days, the Ministry of Health in Gaza reported that 15 children had died of malnutrition and dehydration at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, with six other infants who are suffering from acute malnutrition at risk of dying.

Dr Mohammed Salha, director of Al-Awda, ActionAid’s partner in northern Gaza, explained how a sharp increase in malnutrition has led to an increase in death among children and cases of stillborn babies.

“Many cases were recorded in government hospitals of children who died due to malnutrition.

“We are a hospital specialised in women’s services and childbirth. There are many operations that have been performed, like caesarean sections to remove fetuses, [which] died due to malnutrition among women. More than 95% of women [who] come to the hospital and undergo the necessary medical examinations [are suffering] from anemia.”

Al-Awda Hospital – the only hospital with maternity services in northern Gaza – was supplied two days ago with fuel by the World Health Organisation, enough to last for two weeks only but crucially without a fresh supply of vital, lifesaving medicines.

Suhaila, a displaced mother sheltering with eight others in Gaza, spoke about how her two-year-old son is suffering from diarrhea amidst intense food shortages.

“We really need the basic necessities; it is difficult to get fresh drinking water. My son goes on several trips to fill only one gallon [with water]. We fill one gallon with fresh drinking water and another with water for cleaning. But it is a long way to get water, and it is also tiring. Sometimes my kids fall asleep without water because we couldn’t get any.”

“My youngest boy is two and a half years old. He is suffering from diarrhea and stomach flu. He needs several changes of clothes, and nappies. Nappies are really expensive. We cannot afford [them] at times.

“We need food supplies; we need food to feed our children. Aid does not come frequently. Sometimes we are able to get food, other times we [can’t]. We need food, medication, fresh water, and we really need clothes. It is freezing cold at night in our tent. None of us have extra clothes.”

Since aid convoys started entering Gaza at the end of October, around 70% of all humanitarian assistance has crossed the border with Egypt into Rafah. It is also where many aid agencies are headquartered meaning that any ground offensive will spell complete catastrophe for over two million people in Gaza.

Buthaina, Director of Wefaq, ActionAid Palestine’s partner in Gaza, said: “All the aid that crosses into the Gaza Strip from the Rafah crossing in the south through the Egyptian crossing does not meet [people’s] needs. There are groups that suffer [a lot of] difficultly, such as newly born children, as there are no diapers or milk, the price of a box of diapers has become 200 shekels [£43.88].’

“Most families here depend on tinned food, and this has caused many problems. We need hot meals, such as vegetable [dishes], to be provided to families to meet their basic needs. Also, medication is not available for most patients, especially cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, and dialysis patients.

“The needs of women, children and people in general are [very high]. The capabilities that reach the Gaza Strip are very small and hardly meet these increasing needs.”

Riham Jafari, Advocacy and Communications Coordinator at ActionAid Palestine said: “With the IPC potentially announcing next week that pockets of Gaza are facing famine, an already overwhelmed aid system will be unable to respond while many more continue to face extreme hunger. The lives of thousands more babies, children, and pregnant women depend on urgent action being taken right now to prevent famine.

“We are calling for Israel to open reliable and safe entry points for aid to flow at scale into Gaza, with no denials, delays or barriers. But what millions in Gaza need more than anything right now is an end to this brutal war and an immediate and permanent ceasefire. If people in Gaza don’t die from the bombs, they will likely die from starvation. This is not a reality anyone should face; we are urging the international community to act now to end this senseless cycle of violence and suffering.

About ActionAid

ActionAid is a global women’s rights organisation working with more than 41 million people living in over 70 of the world’s poorest countries. We want to see a just, fair, and sustainable world, in which everybody enjoys the right to a life of dignity, and freedom from poverty and oppression. We work to advance gender equality and end poverty and injustice.

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