At least 22 killed by Israel in occupied West Bank as Israel’s aggression escalates
Al-Jazeera footage shows Israeli soldiers stopping and searching ambulances in the West Bank city of Jenin as Israel’s huge ‘raid’ – which saw at least twenty-two more civilians killed on Saturday as well as deliberate destruction of homes and roads – continues. Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas were attacked, with drones and troops firing on people attempting to take shelter.
Al-Jazeera’s Mohammad al-Atrash reported that all ambulances going to or from hospitals in Jenin are being held up, reckless of whether this costs lives.
Occupation troops have forced Palestinians out of their homes in Jenin as a major offensive in the occupied West Bank enters its fourth day. Others have been bottled up in their homes without food or water in what many believe is an extension of Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza to the separate West bank territory. Israeli snipers have been targeting Palestinian civilians in the street or even in their homes.
Israel has killed at least seven hundred Palestinians in the West Bank while carrying out its genocide in Gaza, where it has murdered as many as 200,000 people – around the same number as were killed in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb attacks combined – and has imposed starvation and disease on two million more.
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Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt
@FranceskAlbs
SELF-DEFENSE?
Israel claims that what it is doing in the West Bank is justified under the law of self-defence. This claim has no validity.
Twenty years ago the @CIJ_ICJ
determined that Israel could not invoke self-defence under article 51 of the UN Charter to justify its Wall in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). This past July the Court indicated that Israel’s very presence in the oPt is itself unlawful.
As an ongoing unlawful use of force, Israel’s occupation of the OPT cannot be justified by any claim of self-defence.
Israel’s perversion of the law on self-defence must be recognized for what it is: a brazen attempt to provide an imprimatur of ‘legality’ to the maintenance of its unlawful aggression against the territorial integrity and political independence of the State of Palestine.
If Israel truly wants to achieve its claimed security, the best and most obvious way to do that would be to cease its colonization of another people’s land, withdraw from all of it, and make appropriate reparation for damage caused (as requested by the ICJ), while being sure to apologize to its victims on the way out.
Quote
———————————————————————————
Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt
@FranceskAlbs
EMERGENCY IN THE WEST BANK & EAST JERUSALEM:
Predictably, violence against all Palestinians under Israel’s unlawful occupation is dangerously escalating. In the past 11 months, Israeli forces have killed 637 Palestinians, including 151 children, amid military assaults, raids, and settler-led pogroms in the West Bank/east Jerusalem.
Israeli MFA’s recent call to treat the West Bank as Gaza is deeply alarming.
Are we blind to history repeating?
The world’s failure to protect Palestinians echoes its failures with Bosnians and Tutsis, despite promises made after the Holocaust to prevent such atrocities.
Human rights are being buried altogether, one by one.
1:25 pm · 29 Aug 2024
https://x.com/FranceskAlbs/status/1829133249911681350
Billy – Let’s see if we have this right in terms of the general principle you are very obviously favourably highlighting here – as opposed to picking and choosing in which cases to apply that general principle to suit subjective convenience:
If a State uses its military and other resources to vilify, attack, kill, and delegitimise a specific group of people located and living within the territory of that State and the specific group of people subject to this action react by defending themselves, the State in question cannot claim that any reaction of that State to that specific group defending themselves against the actions of that State is self-defence.
Moreover, the statement….
“The world’s failure to protect Palestinians echoes its failures with Bosnians and Tutsis, despite promises made after the Holocaust to prevent such atrocities.”
…further implies that some other party coming to the aid of the specific group under attack by that State to forcibly protect that specific group from those attacks is wholly legitimate in every way. Underlining the existing R2P (Right to Protect) Principle under International Law.
In terms of the example of this General Principle as applied to the Palestinians, it is reasonable to conclude on this basis that no objection whatsoever could be made, either legally, morally or ethically, to the neighbouring States of Egypt, Jordon, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yeman etc stepping in to physically prevent the State attacking the Palestinians from doing so.
Assuming, reasonably, that your purpose in posting this link and the accompanying text is to recommend not just its content but also the General Principles inherent in that content, it is reasonable to conclude that your position has changed 180 degrees from the nonsense you have previously articulated when dealing with this General Principle.
ie: That you now recognise the applicability of that General Principle – as I have described and laid out above – in other contemporary conflict examples which you have previously, erroneously, and disingenuously criticised and vilified others, such as myself, for doing so
Glad we’ve sorted that out. Welcome back to Reality.
…and Kamala Harris parrots Starmer’s ‘unequivocal’ support for Israel :
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/west-bank-incursions-terrifying-parallels-with-gaza/
From Paul Knaggs on Labour Heartlands:
Starmer’s Britain: The Chilling Arrest of Sarah Wilkinson
Sarah Wilkinson, a British human rights activist arrested for the grave crime of…typing truths on the internet…
The arrest of Sarah Wilkinson marks a chilling new low in the UK’s descent into authoritarianism. Wilkinson was detained for her reporting on the Israeli genocide in Gaza and her support for the beleaguered Palestinians. This blatant attack on freedom of speech is part of a broader crackdown by the British ruling class against left-wing journalists and critics of Israeli aggression…
Let’s be clear: this isn’t about national security. It’s about silencing dissent. When describing Hamas’ October 7th attack as an “incredible infiltration” becomes grounds for arrest, we’ve entered dangerous territory indeed…
But Wilkinson’s case is merely the tip of a chilling iceberg. Like dominos falling in a perfectly choreographed dance of oppression, we’ve seen a parade of arrests that would make a tin-pot dictator blush with envy…
Let us be perfectly clear…these individuals’ alleged transgressions are nothing more than the exercise of conscience. They dared to question, to report, to give voice to the voiceless…The International Court of Justice itself deems these matters worthy of investigation, yet in Starmer’s Britain, such concerns are met not with thoughtful debate but with the heavy hand of the law…
But perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. This is the same Starmer who purged the Labour Party of its left wing with surgical precision. Now, he’s applying those same authoritarian instincts to the nation at large. All in the name of…what, exactly? Protecting us from dangerous ideas? Or perhaps protecting himself from uncomfortable truths?…
The message is clear: criticize the government’s stance on Gaza, question the narrative on Ukraine, and you too might find yourself branded a terrorist sympathizer. It’s a masterclass in political intimidation, dressed up as national security…
This is not the Britain I recognise. This is not the land that gave birth to the Magna Carta, that birthed the Leveller leader John Lilburne (Free born John) who was the inspiration for freedom of speech both here and the US. A country that gave rise to freedoms and liberties of all from chartist to suffrage. that stood against tyranny in two World Wars, that once prided itself on being a beacon of democracy. No, this is Starmer’s Britain: a place where freedom of speech goes to die, smothered by the pillow of political expediency and cowardice. It is not our Britain.
As we stand witness to the erosion of our rights…we must confront an uncomfortable question: What price are we truly paying? Is this the cost of security, or the ransom demanded by our own silence? George Orwell, that prescient prophet of our times, reminds us, “If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” Yet in Starmer’s Britain, it seems we are being charged not just for the right to speak, but for the audacity to think freely at all. The true danger, dear reader, lies not in the words of dissenters, but in the creeping normalcy of their suppression.
Forgot the link:
https://labourheartlands.com/starmers-britain-the-chilling-arrest-of-sarah-wilkinson/
From the above article:
“This is the Britain that Starmer, our would-be Lord protector and guardian of justice, has wrought. A land where the counter-terrorism police are deployed not against those who plot violence, but against those who wield keyboards as weapons of truth. Where electronic devices are seized to gag decent, and where bail conditions include the Kafkaesque demand to “never” use a phone or laptop again…..
Let’s be clear: this isn’t about national security. It’s about silencing dissent. When describing Hamas’ October 7th attack as an “incredible infiltration” becomes grounds for arrest, we’ve entered dangerous territory indeed. Are we now to be hauled before the courts for accurate descriptions of events? Perhaps we should consult our Newspeak dictionaries before uttering a word.”
For some time, the most heinous and unforgivable crime in the Labour Party under the neo-feudalists running that shit show has been the expression and articulation, in any form, of any view, opinion, analysis, critique, or observation which differs a single iota from The Official Narrative (TON). A “crime” which always and without exception triggers the nuclear option against any deviation.
We have seen this in case after case, example after example.
Now, as many of us predicted (and it was not exactly difficult to do so), that dictatorial due process free approach is being rolled out across the Country, full spectrum dominance style, as a direct result of these dangerous sociopaths finding themselves in Government on only around 20% of the eligible electorate.
Clearly indicating a systemic failure of the democratic process.
Knagg’s makes the point:
“The message is clear: criticize the government’s stance on Gaza, question the narrative on Ukraine, and you too might find yourself branded a terrorist sympathizer. It’s a masterclass in political intimidation, dressed up as national security…”
A point which is not limited to the political and media class branding anyone who goes off script in such a way. You can experience and witness the same process copied by a plethora of unthinking, sycophantic useless idiots in not only LP Unit meetings and discussions but also online. Where the same attempts at labelling anyone who goes off script with similar kinds of evidence free invectives whose aim is intimidating people into silence are evident.
This is not the Britain I recognise. This is not the land that gave birth to the Magna Carta…
What of Magna Carta? Doesn’t exist. Hasn’t since they removed the right to silence, then (once they realized they were onto something when people merely shrugged their shoulders) removed double jeopardy, the right to defend oneself, the right to a trial by peers and habeus corpus – not necessarily in that order.
Magna Carta MY ARSE. Anyone mentioning it needs a good kick up the arse imo.
Off topic:
From Richard J Murphy:
Labour is a neoliberal political party
Labour chooses austerity: the black hole is an illusion
The supposed fiscal black hole is needed by Starmer’s government in order to justify austerity, not the other way around, argues Dominic Alexander.
The £22bn ‘black hole’ is no way a hard fact; it is merely a dubious metaphor designed to frighten us, and to justify continuing austerity. All it means is there’s a gap between projected government income and the entirely artificial target for government borrowing over a set period. No gravitational doom is involved…
The arbitrary nature of the fiscal rules is reflected in the fact that, since 1997, they have been significantly changed nine times. If chancellors find the targets too difficult to meet, they change them, making them little more than a tactic in political messaging. There are, therefore, a host of choices involved in Starmer and Rachel Reeves’ decision to choose austerity based on a fictional ‘black hole’…Austerity, in any case, does nothing to bring about a falling ratio of debt to GDP: the debt-to-GDP ratio was substantially higher at the end of Tory George Osborne’s period as Chancellor than at the start. The current fiscal rules have been proven to be self-defeating…
If the fiscal rules are to be kept, out of fear of the reaction from financial markets if they were to be abolished, then there are still many options…
Instead of a very limited clipping of the wings of capitalist interests, this government prefers to whittle down its imaginary £22bn deficit by refusing to spend the £3.4bn a year it would take to lift the two-child benefit cap. It has also decided to remove winter fuel allowance from pensioners, saving as little as £1.4bn. The poorest pensioners keep the allowance, of course, but those on the margin of the cut-off point, with still limited means, will suffer greatly from this move. Meanwhile, the government is quite happy to spend more than that, £1.7bn, on prolonging the bloody and unwinnable war in Ukraine. The damage done to the fabric of society with the suffering caused by these measures of welfare cruelty will, in the long run, more than outweigh any benefit in terms of meeting arbitrary fiscal rules…
However, our ‘Labour’ government prefers class war on the poor and vulnerable, rather than the smallest confrontation with the power of capital. This is the same reason why they have ruled out any of the wealth taxes and other measures that could redistribute away from the UK’s bloated wealthy towards public services…
The problem is the long-term disinterest capital has had in investing productively in Britain. Instead, capital has been investing in the more profitable sectors of finance, real estate, insurance and defence sectors. This trend has increasingly hollowed out the British economy to the point that it is become dangerously reliant on mobile capital that flows through the City of London, to no benefit to most people…
The answer to this is not to revive the disasters of Blairite private-finance-initiative type of arrangement, as Starmer seems keen to do with plans like ‘Great British Energy’, but genuinely to invest public money in a massive overhaul of infrastructure, and building a sustainable energy system. This would mean moving beyond neoliberalism, and probably taking control of the banks to fund it, but it could be done…
The public ‘debates’ about economics have become so divorced from any sensible reality, that we are now regularly trolled with horror stories about fiscal ‘black holes’, which are no more than excuses for new rounds of class war and austerity.
https://www.counterfire.org/article/labour-chooses-austerity-the-black-hole-is-an-illusion/
Actually, the black hole is due to Ukraine. Loans to Ukraine, underwritten by us and Japan.
The difference between us and Japan is there’s a rule here that us plebs bail out the BoE for losses. And they’re coming. They’ll never admit to this, obviously. Just think about all that money going to the most corrupt country on earth and expecting them to beat the Russians on top of that “challenge”
Keeping with this specific theme, Richard Murphy……
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/09/01/labours-style-of-lifebelt/
….highlights this from Reeve’s article in yesterday’s Observer….
“[I]t was made clear to me that unless I acted urgently, market confidence in the UK’s fiscal position could be seriously undermined. That would have meant higher debt, higher mortgages and higher prices in the shops. I was not prepared to let that happen.”
…..and notes…..
“….her message, when decoded, is that she is very sorry that she thinks that people are going to have to die to pacify the financial markets, but when given the choice between them dying and keeping the markets happy, she chose the markets and threw away the lifebelts required by those in need.”
It is also worth noting the absurd claim that the UK economy would have collapsed if the Winter Fuel Payment had not been cut.
Cue Lucy Powell quoted on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips:
“Asked why pensioners had been targeted in the cuts – when public sector workers are in line for an above-inflation pay rise – Ms Powell said: “Finding savings in the current year that you are in is very difficult indeed.
“And why we had to do that was because if we didn’t, we would have seen the markets losing confidence, potentially a run on the pound, the economy crashing,…”
The question is who the fuck is really in charge here? The Government or the unelected and undemocratic markets? (Which is merely a codeword for what no one wants to say out loud – ie The Oligarchy).
What exactly is Starmer, Reeves, Streeting and the rest of this malice in Blunderland crew here for?
When it is clearly to simply realise and reflect market – ie Oligarch – sentiment and requirements and every decision has to go through and meet the requirements of an unelected rentier feudal elite, why bother with the charade of having elections?
We could get rid of most of the useless tossers currently infesting Parliament and have half a dozen flunkeys in a Portakabin relaying the wishes of our Overlords to the rest of us serfs.
At least as an interim measure until the technological substitution of AI can be implemented.
Because right now the only message coming out of the mouths of these automatons is that the filthy rich are in charge of the planet, and the rest of us deplorables had better get used to it or end up being locked up for disagreeing.
Meanwhile, see below for another interesting take on the smoke and mirrors game that passes for ‘Labour’ Party economic ‘thinking’………..
As NVLA notes, above……
“the ‘black hole’ is due to Ukraine.”
This piece….
https://substack.com/@alexkrainer/p-148160997
….attempts to put some meat on that bone – albeit within a wider narrative:
“The UK will likely make all the mistakes made by other powers in that similar position through history: it will suffocate its domestic economic growth by imposing hard austerity at home while at the same time increasing military spending and foreign adventurism. Britain’s public debt will continue to outpace its GDP growth and the government’s budget deficits will be covered by Bank of England’s monetary inflation. This recipe reliably leads to stagflation and possibly to hyperinflation.”
Sidebar: Though one is tempted to observe ‘no shit Sherlock’ in regard to the claim that GDP growth will not keep up with debt repayments. As any fourth former will tell you, compound interest grows exponentially whilst productive growth is largely an S curve and grows, at best, logarithmically. Consequently, as actual economic history – rather than the present made up version – demonstrates, while ever creditor interests dominate over debtor interests based on forcing repayment based on compound interest growth will never ever catch up, and a collapse is inevitable. As occurred in Ancient Greece and Rome.
The actual “Black Hole” is the debt levels of Ukraine, which has defaulted on many of its loans – and subsequently had its credit rating downgraded from CC to C by Fitch a full six months before their next review was actually due.
Many of these loans have been underwritten by the City of London.
The author of this piece makes three interesting observations on this issue:
1. “Thus, Fitch brought forward their credit rating review for Ukraine by nearly six months, either because her financial position suddenly and significantly deteriorated, or because somewhere, someone who had the power to pull strings, decided to capsize Ukraine (and the UK and EU along with it).”
2. Referencing the autumn 2022 crisis under the short-lived Truss administration:
“What’s peculiar about the British financial system is that the taxpayers are obliged to reimburse the Bank of England for any losses it sustains on its balance sheet assets. If the price of gilts on the bank’s balance sheet collapses, British taxpayers must cover those losses and make the bank whole.”
3. Bringing us up to date on the economic black hole that is Ukraine which the Bank of England is effectively underwriting the author notes the following event; the decisions taken at that event; and what those decisions mean:
Firstly, the event;
“On 22 July, the same day when the agreement between the government of Ukraine and the “ad hoc committee” of her private creditors was announced, the Bank of England also announced a seminar titled “The Future Bank of England Balance Sheet – managing its transition towards a new system for supplying reserves.” The seminar took place the same day (a bit of a short notice for most people) and featured a speech by Victoria Saporta, Executive Director of the bank’s Markets Directorate. In the announcement, the BOE explained that its “balance sheet plays a key role in helping [the bank] achieve its financial stability and monetary policy objectives.”
Secondly, the decisions:
“Saporta’s speech, titled “Let’s Get Ready to Repo!” laid out the Bank’s latest thinking on the future of its balance sheet which would transition towards a demand-driven system for supplying reserves. Saporta suggested that the bank would need to accept a “broader range of assets” as collateral to make the system “usable for the widest range of firm business models.” She added that, “The single punchline is that both we, the Bank and you, the market, need to prepare ourselves for increased usage of both our short term and long term repo operations. Or in short, let’s get ready to repo!””
Finally, what those decisions mean:
“Here’s how Bloomberg’s macro strategist Simon White put it: in a demand-led system, “what banks use to settle balances each day *must* be ‘shiftable’ on to the central bank’s balance sheet in a crisis. If they are not, liquidity is at risk of seizing up altogether. Thus, in a crisis, potentially no asset under this scheme will be turned away.” That could include even Ukraine’s bonds.
What is clear from this and from the BOE’s language is that the bank is now anxious about Britain’s financial system collapsing and it has resolved to avert the collapse in the worst possible way: by loosening its credit standards and accepting junk quality collateral in exchange for cash. This is the clearest possible sign that the system came to the verge of collapsing. Not so long ago, we had a glimpse of just how fragile Britain’s financial system is.”
What does this mean in concrete terms in regard to the economic black hole that is Ukraine and the “Ukraine project” and in terms of the BoE and the City underwriting that ‘black hole’?
This can be found at the end of the paragraph quoted in point 2. above.
“So, what kind of money are we talking about? As the the FT reported last July, the BOE has estimated it will require the Treasury to transfer a total of £150 billion by 2033 to cover expected losses on the central bank’s quantitative easing program.”
i.e. increasing austerity is built in for at least the next nine years and most likely beyond unless the Ukraine Project can deliver the trillions of dollars in resources currently located not just in Ukraine but Russia and the Eurasian landmass. Makinder’s ‘Heartland”.
Which is why the USA’s Rand Corporation recommended a policy of breaking up Russia and subjugating its people colonial style back in 2019.
In short, the collateral, as former diplomat Alistair Crook keeps telling us, has run out in the Oligarchy of the Collective West’s Ponzi Scheme. Hence the forever wars. The only way of avoiding the complete systemic collapse of the Collective West as a civilisation, economically, culturally, and socially and is to forcibly steal, by war if necessary, the assets and resources of the rest of the planet.
The real “Black Hole”, as NVLA identifies, is not the £22 billion from the Hunt Budget. It is the far larger sum in junk repo bonds, gilts and collateral from Ukraine. Which is currently around £150 billion.
£150 billion of worthless junk which, as noted above, has to be reimbursed to the BoE, the city, and the Markets by the populace of the UK.
The so-called “savings” made by the WFA cut and not removing the cap on second child benefit are negligible against this amount. It seems reasonable to surmise that Herr Starmer’s “Things can only get worse” pitch of last week is preparing us for far more draconian similar cuts to meet the requirements of the junk the political class and its uni-parrty have underwritten on our behalf for the failed Project Ukraine.
Which is why the legislation and precedents are being rapidly built against dissidence of any and every kind, in advance of the expected backlash when those cuts are applied.
Let no one claim that they were not sufficiently warned well before this set of chancers came into power.