This cult of balance or even-handedness has now come to the point where it serves only to hinder the pursuit of investigative truth. It obscures wider context, abdicates ethical responsibility to call wrong out for being wrong, provides justification for all manner of evil, and gives air to voices often best left unheard. It has become farcical.
Source: Even-handed? No. Just inane – Pearls and Irritations
While we might still have two older white men in change at the next election, one hopefully will be able to sell policies with positivity and vision while the other still apparently seeks a return to the days and practices of the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison government. If so, it might be a really interesting contest of ideas – at last!
Source: Remember when they had vision – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The entrenched regime of systematic media deception is growing challenged, as Labor’s management of the economy continues to prove effective, Alan Austin writes.
Source: Deceitful media attacks on Labor under challenge by independent news sources
I am reminded of the military scholar Christopher Coker’s words: “we must choose our tools carefully, not because they are inhumane (all weapons are) but because the more we come to rely on them, the more they shape our view of the world”. It is clear that military AI shapes our view of the world. Tragically, Lavender gives us cause to realise that this view is laden with violence.
Source: Gaza Conflict: Israel using AI to identify Human Targets raises Fears Innocents are Targeted
Despite these frank admissions, which come far too late, the reek of rank hypocrisy in the Democratic Party concerning the impunity of Netanyahu and his fascist henchmen continues to lie like a thick layer of fog over our nation’s capital.
Israel expects & demands NO CONSEQUENCES
Source: Iran Launches Drone Attack Against Israel Over Consulate Bombing | Common Dreams
The administration has not stopped supplying Israel with military assistance or attached any conditions on that aid, despite some congressional pressure. More than 30 House Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, recently sent a letter strongly urging Biden “to reconsider your recent decision to authorize the transfer of a new arms package to Israel, and to withhold this and any future offensive arms transfers until a full investigation into the airstrike is completed.” The distressing part is that it took the killing of international aid workers, not the tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, to prompt such a letter.
Source: Are the United States and Israel heading toward a Divorce?
Today despite the Palestinian Authority’s responsibility for archaeology and heritage in the West Bank, the Israel Antiquities Authority has taken up the management of many sites in the occupied territories. The Israeli non-profit organisation Emek Shaveh has lobbied long and consistently against the interventions of Israeli archaeology beyond its internationally recognised remit. Meanwhile leading US scholars have recently drawn attention to the substantial destruction of cultural heritage arising from Israel’s current attack on the people of Gaza.
Source: The stark monuments of conflict in Israel and Palestine – Pearls and Irritations
Declassified Australia can reveal that the Defence Department has started obscuring munitions-specific export data for Israel that it was previously willing to release. This occurred in its response to the most recent Freedom of Information (FOI) request.
Source: Secrets of the Weapons Trade
Let’s pretend for a moment that, in the course of waging war against the state of Israel, Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip had taken to posing for social media posts with lingerie belonging to Israeli women who had been forced to flee their homes and/or killed in the war.
Source: Weaponising underwear: Genocide with a semi-pornographic twist | Israel War on Gaza | Al Jazeera
Gordon talks about the “massive surveillance apparatus” Israel has imposed on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, the use of artificial intelligence tools to bomb targets despite the high error rate in those systems, and the shock of the October 7 attack by Hamas that killed some 1,200 Israelis. “The state seemed not to be functioning, so most Israelis were in great pain, were in great fear,” he says. “My fear is that most Israelis are still trapped, still stuck in that October 7th moment and unwilling to lift their eyes to see basically the genocide unfolding in the Gaza Strip.”
But as The Guardian reported Friday, the Ashdod port has not been opened yet, and instead of opening the Erez crossing last Sunday as promised, Israel has opened another crossing into northern Gaza but has not yet allowed U.N. agencies to use it.
“It’s very easy for Israel to say, ‘We’ve sent you 1,000 trucks so please deliver them inside Gaza,'” McGoldrick said, noting that Israel has held trucks up at checkpoints “for hours” and that many roads are not open to deliveries.
Source: ‘Genocidal Actions’ Persist in Gaza as Israel Blocks Aid and US Weapons Flow | Common Dreams
Varoufakis—a former Greek finance minister who heads the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25)—was scheduled to address the Palestine Congress, which was slated to run through Sunday in the German capital. However, hundreds of police officers blockaded the event venue on Germaniastraße in Templehof before storming the building and demanding organizers cut the livestream and end the event. Several people including at least one Jewish participant were led away by police.
Violence traverses the world like a new pandemic not only in Gaza, but spreading outward to this brewing conflict around Ecuador and the ugliness of the wars in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and the continuing stalemate in Ukraine.
Joe Biden says he’s “considering” an end to the prosecution of Julian Assange. Anthony Albanese says, “enough is enough,” but not much else. Rex Patrick and Philip Dorling discuss the latest developments in the Assange case.by | Apr 13, 2024
Source: Michael West Media – investigative journalists – always independent
Advocacy groups have welcomed the release of the Federal Government’s announcement of a heat mapping tool to assist affected communities deal with the worst of extreme heat, but have called on government to do more to address the root cause, climate change caused by the continued use of fossil fuels.
In an interview with Jacobin, filmmaker and academic Ariella Aïsha Azoulay traces how Western powers’ exploitation of Zionism led not just to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine but to the demise of Jewish communities across the Middle East.
On March 25 the two of us, an orthopedic surgeon and a trauma surgeon, traveled to the Gaza Strip to work at Gaza European Hospital in Khan Younis. We were immediately overwhelmed by the overflown sewage and the distinct smell of gunpowder in the air. We made the short journey from the Rafah crossing to Khan Younis, where Gaza European Hospital stands as one of the last remaining semi-functional hospitals for the 2.5 million human beings—half of them children—in the Gaza Strip. As humanitarian surgeons we thought we had seen all manner of cruelty in the world, but neither one of us has ever experienced anything like what we found when we arrived in Gaza.
Source: Opinion | As Surgeons, We Have Never Seen Cruelty Like Israel’s Genocide in Gaza | Common Dreams
The voice of Israel can be heard in the background calling for “voluntary migration” The American Pit Bull was allowed out to play hard.
“Unfortunately, the occupation has distorted this beautiful city. I do not know how it will rise again and return to its vitality. The destruction is enormous and cannot be described in words. But I will wait for the water lines to be extended in the area, and I will put up a tent and sleep in it with my children.”
Israel’s forces withdrew from the vicinity of Gaza’s largest and most important hospital after perpetrating what may be one of the worst massacres in Palestinian history; an Israeli attack destroyed the Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing 12, including two Iranian generals; and Israeli personnel killed seven aid workers, including nationals of some of Israel’s closest allies, in central Gaza while they were undertaking an aid mission coordinated with the military.
“Israel is crossing every possible red line, still with full impunity,” Albanese said the following day.
“Sanctions now. Indictments now,” she added.
In the absence of such accountability measures for past and ongoing rights violations, and enabled by decades of impunity, Israel’s total war on Palestinians in Gaza is also a war on the principles of international law, the impact of which will surely be profound.
Redress for Israel’s crimes in Gaza, aided and abetted by the US, Germany, UK and others, would have to address the violations of Palestinians’ individual and collective rights and the original sin of Zionist colonization of their land.
“The ongoing Nakba must be stopped and remedied once and for all,” Albanese says, referring to the genocidal expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland during the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.
“This is an imperative owed to the victims of this highly preventable tragedy, and to future generations in that land.”
Source: Israel and US deliberately gutting international law in Gaza | The Electronic Intifada
Foreign Minister Penny Wong has taken Australian policy a modest step towards embracing recognition of a Palestine state ahead of a two-state solution, as a pathway to a lasting Middle East peace.
“At the same time, [Opposition Leader Peter] Dutton reflexively dismisses concern for Palestinians as ‘Hamas sympathising’. On this, and in his approach to the world, Mr Dutton needs to decide if he wants to be a leader in difficult times – or if he wants to continue being a wrecking ball, making those times even more difficult.”
Source: Countries like Australia are Floating the idea of Recognizing Palestine to push Peace
Hundreds of Egyptians are pressuring their government to let them form an international civilian convoy to escort lifesaving humanitarian aid into Gaza after six months of deprivation has pushed many to the brink of starvation if not famine.
News Corp was at the centre of the media campaign against the Voice. While the organisation claimed to be explaining both sides…
The Defence Department and the ADF should keep secrets important to protect our national security. But that doesn’t mean everything they do should be secret. Rex Patrick on the cost of needless secrecy.
Source: The cost of needless secrecy on nuclear. What’s the scam? – Michael West
Last week, Australian Border Force deployed one hundred officers to detain a dozen asylum seekers on the Kimberley Coast. Meanwhile, an estimated 2000 asylum seekers arrive in Australia by plane every month. Duncan Graham reports from Indonesia.
Source: Australia’s Border Farce. Stops a boat, ignores the planeloads, targets the 0.05% – Michael West
And as if that weren’t enough, I’ve also had to deal with the martyrdom of my brother, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on March 14, and the month-long detention of my father by Israeli forces. These events have deeply affected my heart, changed my personality, and severely impacted my mental state. I have become inclined toward silence, and struggle with the inability to carry out my journalistic tasks. No matter what we write, our pens feel powerless in the face of the magnitude of death, destruction, and fear that we’re living through.
Source: Against the magnitude of death, our pens feel powerless in Gaza
Palestinian delegation departing from Lydda to participate in the First Conference of Arab Women in Cairo, October 12, 1938. (The G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection)
Zionist propaganda refers to pre-1948 Palestine as a “land without a people.” A new photographic collection pushes back against this erasure of Palestinian history — and shows the vitality of its society before the Nakba.
Girls pushing their belongings in strollers and wheelbarrows and fleeing Jaffa, 1948. (UNRWA Archives)
Source: These Stunning Images Show Palestinian Life Before the Nakba
Can we think our way past the mental slavery imposed on us by the Western elites’ massive global PR machine that has invested billions in getting you to connote “Hamas” with “evil” – and the inverse: that Israel is somehow a plucky battler fighting for democracy in a rough neighbourhood?
Sheikh Ahmad Yassin the first leader of Hamas said some time before his assassination in 2004: “The intifada will go on and the suffering of the Palestinian people will continue. But so will our absolute determination to pursue the struggle”.
It is time to de-demonise Hamas.
Source: It is time to de-demonise Hamas – Pearls and Irritations
Protests at universities are now being met with a wave of censorship and suppression, targeting students most directly.
Source: Amid Gaza War, U.S. Campuses Become Free Speech “Testing Ground”
Remorseless killing at the initiation of artificial intelligence has been the subject of nail-biting concern for various members of computer-digital cosmos. Be wary of such machines in war and their displacing potential regarding human will and agency. For all that, the advent of AI-driven, automated systems in war has already become a cold-blooded reality, deployed conventionally, and with utmost lethality by human operators.
The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, stated how “deeply troubled” he was by reports that Israel’s bombing campaign had used “artificial intelligence as a tool in the identification of targets, particularly in densely populated residential areas, resulting in a high level of civilian casualties.” It might be far better to see these matters as cases of willing, and reckless misidentification, with a conscious acceptance on the part of IDF military personnel that enormous civilian casualties are simply a matter of course. To that end, we are no longer talking about a form of advanced, scientific war waged proportionately and with precision, but a technologically advanced form of mass murder.
Source: Death by Algorithm: Israel’s AI War in Gaza – » The Australian Independent Media Network
As Israel’s military continues to impose famine on Gaza, and without any semblance of law and order, since local police are targets for Israeli soldiers, an estimated 500,000 people who stayed in the north are facing imminent death from starvation.
The few orderly aid distributions that do come through are inevitably organized by the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) in coordination with law enforcement – as much as they can – and local clans.
One such moment of relief came in mid-March.
Source: The desperate scrabble for food in northern Gaza | The Electronic Intifada
Medic carries an injured Palestinian child into Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City following an Israeli airstrike on Oct. 11, That hospital is no longer there
Israel has killed 14,350 Palestinian children between Oct. 7 and April 4. This means children account for 44 percent of all Palestinians killed in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) said ahead of Palestinian Child’s Day.
Source: Children 44% of Palestinians Killed by Israel Since Oct 7
President Biden called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies in Gaza a “mistake” and urged Israel to call for a temporary ceasefire to allow in more aid in a televised interview on Tuesday. While Israel has pledged to open new aid crossings, the U.N. said on Tuesday that there has been “no significant change in the volume of humanitarian supplies entering Gaza,” and the Biden administration has not actually changed its policies or withheld any arms transfers to Israel. “Words are cheap, and statements are a dime a dozen,” says Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani, who explains Israel can safely ignore statements if policy remains unchanged. “What really matters is not what these people say, but what they do.” Rabbani also speaks about the United Nations considering Palestinian statehood, ongoing negotiations over a Gaza ceasefire, and Israel attacking the Iranian Consulate in Syria.
The Open Letter makes seven calls to action:
Source: Over 1,500 North American Academics Condemn Scholasticide in Gaza
Evidence that support for the Liberal Party is softening in its affluent inner-city homelands continues to accrue, while its hopes of capturing disgruntled voters in Labor seats in the suburbs and regions presume a historic shift in voting patterns.
Source: Why moving to the right could be wrong for Dutton and the Coalition
Government officials are using disappearing text messages to circumvent scrutiny, threatening transparency and risking democracy. Rex Patrick exposes a dangerous practice ignored by the PM.
The founders of modern Zionism were both Jews and Europeans, and (as such) had acquired the West’s cultural sense of superiority in relation to non-Europeans.
This sense of superiority would play an important role when a deal (the Balfour Declaration) was struck in 1917 between the World Zionist Organization and the British Government. The deal stipulated that, in exchange for Zionist support for the British war effort (World War I was in progress), the British would (assuming victory) help create a “Jewish national home” in Palestine. It was no oversight that neither side in this bargain gave much thought to the Palestinian native population.
olddogthoughts 
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