alanjjohnstone
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Bridgett Floyd, George Floyd’s sister, has boycotted a meeting with Biden, saying he “broke a promise” to enact police reform legislation by the anniversary of her brother’s death.
“We have been respecting the space needed for negotiators to have these discussions,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said
Yoga against science in India
https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/india/ramdev-ima-harsh-vardhan-letter-b1852845.html
(free regitration for article)
Patrick Cockburn’s take
The Gaza Conflict Has Shown That the Trump-Netanyahu Policy has Utterly Failed
An ominous new feature of it is Palestinians in Israel taking to the streets to demand equality and an end to discrimination. Israeli settlers from the West Bank have been coming back to Israel to lead anti-Palestinian demonstrations within mixed Jewish/Palestinian towns and cities.
The latest from Jonathan Cook
…Zionist supporters of Israel are trying to turn logic and the world upside down. They are inverting reality. They are projecting their own racist, zero-sum assumptions about Israel on to Palestinian solidarity activists, those who support equal rights for Jews and Palestinians in the Middle East.
As they did with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition, these Jewish groups are twisting the meaning of antisemitism, skewing it from a fear or hatred of Jews to any criticism of Israel that makes pro-Israel Jews feel uncomfortable.
…pro-Israel Jewish groups want to treat us all like Corbyn, demonizing us as antisemites unless we fall silent even as Israel once again brutalizes Palestinians.
Fallen out of the news headlines but it is still taking place despite the Covid emergency
https://www.dw.com/en/what-happened-to-indias-farmer-protests/a-57646758
They have called for a nationwide day of protests on May 26, 6 months of protest.
A state-sponsored hijacking of a plane by a fighter-jet to arrest a dissident
https://www.dw.com/en/why-lukashenko-diverted-a-plane-to-catch-belarusian-blogger/a-57648496
The Back-lash
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/24/a-war-declaration-palestinians-in-israel-decry-mass-arrests
Israeli police announced they will arrest hundreds of Palestinian citizens of Israel over the coming days for their participation in recent sit-ins in support of Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem and the besieged Gaza Strip. Israeli police said some 1,550 people have already been arrested since May 9 and the campaign is a “continuation” that aims to “prosecute” demonstrators who have over the past two weeks taken to the streets in towns and cities across Israel.
Hassan Jabareen, the general director of Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, declared is a “militarised war against Palestinian citizens of Israel,”
British businesses have the opportunity to create 240,000 low-carbon jobs and boost green exports by billions of pounds over the next decade, the CBI has said. UK firms could boost low-carbon exports to the EU, including opportunities to grow electric vehicle and battery sales by £18bn over the next decade.
“Decarbonising our economy is a planetary imperative, we can use our transition to net zero to create green jobs, to find sustainable solutions and sell them to the rest of the world.”
Meanwhile
the UK experienced its longest spell of low wind output in more than a decade during the first three months of this year. The authors said output from the country’s 24.4GW fleet of wind turbines fell to as low as 0.6GW on 3 March – in contrast with the 18.1GW delivered later that month. Between 26 February and 8 March – a total of 11 days – the capacity of the national wind turbine fleet did not go above 20%.
Grid operators had to call on gas-fired units to generate power to plug the gap, with every gigawatt of falling wind output being replaced by 0.84GW of gas, thereby harming Britain’s carbon-cutting ambitions
A record was set in the early hours of Friday 21 May for the share of wind power in the generation mix, with wind providing nearly two-thirds of Britain’s electricity
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/may/24/businesses-unlock-uk-growth-green-exports-cbi
UAE offer to become peace mediator. Are they an honest broker?
They signed the Abraham Accords, normalising relations with Israel. They are political rivals to Qatar which funds Gaza. They are deeply involved in the Yemen war.
Perhaps it might suit Hamas to have a new sponsor.
Senate Bill 8, the six-week abortion ban that the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, signed into law last week, is a total ban on abortion in everything but name. The bill is one of several across the country that bans abortions at six weeks of gestation – in layman’s terms, four weeks after fertilization and two weeks after the first missed period.
Texas is the ninth state to pass such a bill, named by the anti-choice movement that lobbies for them as “fetal heartbeat bills”. The term is a misnomer, because at six weeks of gestation there is neither a fetus nor a heartbeat. Indeed, there is no heart.
At six weeks, the pregnancy consists of an embryo, which will not develop into a fetus for nearly another month. No heart, and no other organ, is present. The so-called “heartbeat” that abortion opponents refer to is actually the pulsing of some cells that are starting to specialize, and which will eventually form cardiac tissue if the pregnancy continues.
At that stage in a pregnancy, most women don’t yet know that they are pregnant. Even those who do sometimes can’t access abortion care that early, as providers often prefer to wait until eight or 10 weeks of gestation to perform abortions, for safety reasons. Before that stage, it is difficult to rule out the possibility of an ectopic pregnancy, an unviable condition that can be fatal.
At the phase of pregnancy when abortions are banned by the new Texas legislation, the embryo is about the size of a pea. There are no exceptions for rape or incest. After an outcry, the Texas legislature amended the bill to create an exception, saying that a rapist would not be permitted to use the law to sue the providers who gave his victim her abortion. But the law only applies to those men who have been convicted of rape. In Texas, 91% of rapes go unreported.
In addition to the abortion ban, the bill includes a peculiar provision that privatizes the enforcement of that law. SB8 grants standing to any individual – including those outside the state – to sue people in Texas who “aid or abet” an abortion or who “intend” to help an abortion patient. Like Trap laws – targeted restrictions on abortion providers, a separate slate of state level anti-choice laws that are designed to make it too expensive and burdensome for providers to perform abortions within a state – this part of the law seems largely intended at punishing doctors and nurses, increasing provider overhead costs, and ultimately shutting down clinics.
the Texas bill is so broadly written as to amount to a large-scale attack on any kind of action or speech in support of abortion rights. It would render virtually everyone involved with the operation of a clinic, or who materially contributes to a pro-choice organization, to be sued. Clinic escort volunteers can be sued; so can non-medical clinic staff, like janitors or receptionists. Anyone who has donated to an abortion fund, or a pro-choice organization such as Planned Parenthood, can be sued under the Texas law. So can anyone who provides any kind of material support to a patient seeking an abortion, such as a ride to or from the clinic.
Spin-off Animal Rebellion blockades McDonalds.
Animal Rebellion said it was protesting to “bring an end to the misery of fast food as it creates obesity, destroys the Amazon and warms up the planet”.
It wants McDonald’s to commit to becoming fully plant-based by 2025.
It describes itself as a mass movement that uses nonviolent civil disobedience “to bring about a transition to a just and sustainable plant-based food system”
Fourteen people were arrested
Israel indirectly assures Hamas funding
In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 News, former Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Liberman revealed details about a secret visit to Qatar by Mossad Chief Yossi Cohen and the Israeli military’s chief of Southern Command Herzl Halevi to allegedly “beg the Qataris to keep pouring money into Hamas.”
Qatar, with Israeli acquiescence, has provided substantial funding to Hamas in recent years, by some tallies, millions of dollars a month, chiefly to pay administrative salaries, some of which can then be siphoned off.
” A guy from Qatar comes every month with his suitcases of money accompanied by Israeli soldiers to pay Hamas administrative staff…” said the senior European official.
125,000 (one in four) school teachers in Myanmar have been suspended for joining a civil disobedience movement to oppose the military coup.
Around 19,500 university staff have also been suspended
Since my comments here didn’t result in disagreement, I once more dared to blog on the situation. It is difficult to present a case that is both sympathetic but also critical so I centred on Hamas as being problematic even if there can be much more to be said.
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2021/05/thoughts-on-hamas.html
I’m finding it frustrating that many are endorsing armed struggle by Hamas as justified, James. A common refrain online is it is not for us to determine the methods of resistance but the Palestinians themselves and they have chosen Hamas as their representatives.
Has it ended the siege? Has it provoked Israel to send in the army to suffer high casualties? Has it undermined Israel’s security with several hundred rockets fizzling out before even reaching Israeli territory and those that do, 90% shot down by Iron Dome? Has “self-defence” been a financial cost with the USA paying the bills?
It distracted from East Jerusalem and the Palestinian-Israeli protests and propped up Hamas efforts to control events.
It was a power-play by Hamas, not solidarity. They want to portray themselves as the leadership of the Israeli-Palestinians and not just over Gazans.
Hamas could so easily have revived the March of Return to the fences and if the Israeli snipers shot, it would expose once more who is the aggressor. They wanted a media event of Israeli bombing and Israel gave it to them, knowing in a few months it will all be old news and the stand-off status quo returned to with Gazans held as hostages.
