It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, January 19, 2022
THIRD WORLD USA
Child poverty rate could jump to 17% this month, study finds
By Megan Hadley Around 4 million children could go into poverty this month without the Child Tax credit that is being stalled in Congress. Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI | License Photo
Jan. 19 (UPI) -- The U.S child poverty rate could jump to 17% this month in absence of the Child Tax Credit, a new study found.
However, that may change, as Congress has not acted to extend the payments into 2022.
Without the tax credit, childhood poverty could jump to 17% in January, the highest rate since December 2020.
"The monthly child tax credit payments have buffered family finances amidst the continuing COVID-19 pandemic," the report said.
That affects around 4 million children, who receive $250 to $300 a month in Government aid.
"Few federal programs have had such a direct & demonstrable impact on Americans as the expanded #ChildTaxCredit," Representative Suzan DelBene said on Twitter.
U.S. President Joe Biden's Build Back Better Act -- which remains in limbo -- would have ensured that families receive a payment on Friday.
The effort hit a roadblock with opposition from Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., whose support is crucial in passing the legislation.
Though Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi believes that a deal can be reached, it wouldn't happen in time for families to receive a check this week.
US biotech tycoon opens Africa's first end-to-end Covid-19 jab plant Scissor ceremony: President Cyril Ramaphosa, left, joins biotech tycoon Patrick Soon-Shiong in launching the vaccine hub (AFP/GIANLUIGI GUERCIA)
Wed, January 19, 2022, 4:53 AM·2 min read
US biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong on Wednesday opened a plant in Cape Town that will be the first in Africa to produce Covid-19 vaccines from start to finish.
The factory should churn out its first vials of second-generation coronavirus vaccine "within the year" and produce a billion doses annually by 2025, said Soon-Shiong.
The plant will be South Africa's third Covid vaccine manufacturing facility but the first in the continent to make the formula across every stage, rather than producing it from semi-finished batches.
Africa currently manufactures less than one percent of all vaccines administered on the continent, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, speaking at the inaugural event, hailed the plant as a sign of African self-reliance.
"Africa should no longer be the last in line to access vaccines against pandemics, African should no longer go cap in hand to the Western world begging and begging for vaccines," said Ramaphosa.
"We will stand on our own," he vowed.
He thanked Soon-Shiong, a South African-born and now United States-based doctor-turned-entrepreneur -- for returning "home" to invest in vaccine production.
Born in South Africa to Chinese parents and now a US citizen, the billionaire said the launch was "one of the momentous moments of my life -- this is a homecoming."
He made a fortune by inventing a cancer drug and then founded NantWorks, a California-based startup in healthcare, biotech and artificial intelligence, in 2007.
Production at the state-of-the-art vaccine manufacturing campus will be a collaborative effort between NantWorks, South African research institutions and four local universities.
"We have now developed this SN (spike nucleic) T-cell vaccine, a second-generation vaccine, and we want to manufacture this in Africa, for Africa, and export it to the world," said Soon-Shiong.
str-sn/ri
#UBI How $1,000 a Month in Guaranteed Income Is Helping NY Mothers Andy Newman Tue, January 18, 2022 Daniela Gutierrez, with her 6 month old son, Jeremiah, at their apartment in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan on Dec. 17, 2021. (Gregg Vigliotti/The New York Times)
NEW YORK — The flyers that appeared at bus stops and nail salons and health clinics in upper Manhattan last June sounded too good to be true.
“New mothers can receive $500 or $1,000 a month, with no strings attached!” they read.
“I thought it was a scam,” said Angelina Matos, who had just given birth to a daughter.
It was not a scam. It was an experiment in the fast-growing field of anti-poverty policy known as guaranteed income.
In July, 100 new mothers in Washington Heights, Harlem and Inwood began receiving free money from a program called the Bridge Project: a $16 million effort, funded by a foundation started by a venture capitalist and his wife, to measure the effect of regular, unconditional stipends on low-income families.
Much of the money is going toward basic baby supplies. But interviews with four women in the program turned up many examples of the surprises and challenges life can throw at a new mother.
One woman bought a special highchair for her son, who shows signs of cerebral palsy. Another has been saving money for an expected battle with her landlord. A mother of two on West 145th Street is finding the regular infusion to be a lifesaver when food stamps run out.
Bridge Project money let Matos, 18, quit her minimum wage job and prepare for nursing school. Without it, “I would have to keep working while I’m going to school,” said Matos, who lives in Inwood with her mother, brother and 9-month-old daughter.
In April, the program will add 500 expecting mothers and expand into East Harlem, the South Bronx and the Central Bronx. The expansion comes after Congress did not reach an agreement on extending the federal child tax credit, which was giving families up to $300 monthly per child.
New Yorkers may be familiar with the concept of guaranteed income through the presidential and mayoral candidacies of Andrew Yang, who last year lofted a billion-dollar proposal to give $2,000 annually to the poorest half-million city residents, without making clear how he’d pay for it.
The nonprofit that runs the Bridge Project, the Monarch Foundation, said it hoped to partner with New York’s new mayor, Eric Adams but has not approached him yet. (During the campaign, Adams derided Yang’s idea as “monopoly money.”)
The central idea of the guaranteed income movement is that the most effective treatment for poverty is to simply give people money and let them decide what to do with it, rather than impose the rules, limitations and bureaucratic hoops that come with most safety net programs.
“You’re talking about giving somebody money and letting them apply it to the highest-need area of life: keeping the heat on, contacting family in Venezuela, taking an Uber to the hospital, getting an unlimited MetroCard,” said Megha Agarwal, the foundation’s executive director.
The Bridge Project’s mission also dovetails with growing evidence that money invested in a child’s first few years yields long-term benefits in academic success, adult earnings and health.
The Bridge Project families, whose household incomes average $14,500 — below the federal poverty line — are roughly half Black and half Hispanic; about 20% of the mothers are living in the country without legal permission. More than 70% had less than $100 in savings.
For the first 100 families in the project, half get $500 per month and half get $1,000 per month, for three years. The families in the second phase are receiving $1,000 monthly for 18 months, then $500 monthly for 18 months. A control group of families receives no money.
The families will be surveyed to track their economic and housing stability, their physical and mental health, and their children’s developmental progress.
Some Bridge Project families also receive government money. About 5% get monthly Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and some receive the annual federal and state earned income tax credit, the Monarch Foundation said. While Bridge Project money affects some families’ benefits, including food stamps, the project said that everyone in the program is seeing a net gain overall.
Guaranteed income shot to national prominence in 2018 when the city of Stockton, California, decided to give $500 monthly to 125 families in poorer neighborhoods.
Today, more than 35 guaranteed income pilot projects are underway, in at least 17 states, distributing more than $25 million a year to over 7,000 families, according to the Economic Security Project, which advocates for direct cash programs.
The Stockton project found that people in the study who received money found full-time employment at twice the rate of those who did not. They were also less depressed and anxious, slept better and had better physical health.
This year, Los Angeles and Chicago are beginning the two biggest publicly funded guaranteed income pilots to date. Chicago will pay 5,000 families $500 per month; Los Angeles will pay 3,000 families $1,000 per month.
In New York, the nation’s biggest city, though, guaranteed income has had little presence. A project led by neuroscientists, Baby’s First Years, is giving $333 monthly to mothers in four cities, including 114 in New York, and measuring its effect on the development of a child’s brain. And in 2020, when Yang ran for president, a nonprofit he founded gave $1,000 apiece to 1,000 Bronx families.
There is plenty of need, though. More than 1 in 4 Black children in New York City live in poverty, as do nearly 1 in 3 Hispanic children, according to the Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York City.
The Bridge Project sprang from Nido de Esperanza, a nonprofit that helps low-income mothers in Washington Heights, and was founded by Holly Fogle, the wife of a venture capitalist, Jeff Lieberman. The couple also run the Monarch Foundation.
Early in the pandemic, Fogle said, Nido’s offices were flooded with desperate calls. “I had moms calling saying, ‘We have no diapers, no cash, no formula for this baby and we’re scared to leave our apartment,’” she recalled.
Nido distributed $150,000 in aid to 100 families, and Fogle, a onetime finance major, became a believer in what she called the “return on investment” of direct aid.
For Maureen Gardner, 35, the Bridge Project came along when she was six months pregnant, not working and had just learned that the woman she had been subletting her Harlem apartment from apparently had been pocketing her $1,500 rent checks.
“When I called the management office they were like, ‘We don’t know who you are, we don’t know who this lady is,’” Gardner said. She was told she owed thousands in back rent.
Because she receives food stamps for her and her son, Garrett, who was born in September, and has not been paying rent while her tenancy remains disputed, Gardner has been able to save nearly $5,000 from her Bridge Project payments.
“When it is time to leave, I’ll have the money to leave,” she said.
She also made a purchase that some would view as a luxury but that Gardner sees as a way to protect her and Garrett’s health: a $430 washing machine that lets her avoid her building’s laundry room, where many tenants do not wear masks. “My baby doesn’t even have shots,” she said.
Like the other three women interviewed for this article, Gardner said that her child’s father contributed money sporadically and that she could not count on his consistent support.
For Matos, the Bridge Project gave her the luxury of time. She quit her job as a program aide at the Harlem Children’s Zone in October to prepare to start nursing school next week.
Amy Castro, a co-director of the Center for Guaranteed Income Research at the University of Pennsylvania, said that “time scarcity” kept many poor families mired in poverty.
“If you’re struggling to make ends meet and you’re knitting together two or three part-time jobs,” she said, “you don’t have time to plan for the future or even to think.”
A 35-year-old immigrant from Nigeria who gave her name only as Sue because she is living in this country without legal permission said that $500 monthly from the Bridge Project lets her buy snacks for her 3-year-old son, who does not like the lunches at his preschool. “I don’t want him to be on an empty stomach every day,” she said.
Sue, who works part time at a beauty supply store and receives some financial support from an aunt, gets $459 in food stamps for her son and 9-month-old daughter, but her food stamp card falls short.
“That’s where I have the backup with the Bridge money,” she said.
Guaranteed income is hardly a panacea in a city as expensive as New York.
“An additional $500 or $1,000 is not going to get you out of homelessness in New York City,” Castro said, “but it might prevent you from hitting that bottom.”
It has had that effect for Daniela Gutierrez. Before the pandemic, Gutierrez, 28, scraped by working jobs in three different boroughs — at a Chipotle in Manhattan, as a tutor at a library in the Bronx and in the enrollment office of Queens College.
Soon the library closed and Chipotle slashed her hours. Then she got pregnant. Her rent was $1,044 and she was taking home about $1,000 a month.
“I was actually looking for shelters before I got a reply from the Bridge Project,” she said.
After her son, Jeremiah, was born in June, it was quickly apparent that he could not move normally. Doctors told Gutierrez he might have a form of cerebral palsy.
Gutierrez is working her Queens College job remotely, which lets her take breaks to massage Jeremiah to help relieve the muscle spasms that rack his body. But she is bracing for the day when she will have to return to the office and find a way to pay for child care.
“I need to find a place that would care for him the same way I do,” she said.
Gutierrez was under the impression that the Bridge Project money was for only a year. “I have six months left, and that rushes by really fast,” she said. “It’s just a stressful, stressful situation.”
A few hours later, the Bridge Project confirmed that the payments were for three years.
“I think I’m going to be sleeping worry-free for the first time in a while,” Gutierrez said.
said renewables are now cheaper as well as safer than nuclear energy
(AFP/ALEX HALADA)
Austria intends to lead the opposition to Europe labelling
nuclear power as 'green' energy
(AFP/JOHN MACDOUGALL)
Zwentendorf now serves as a training facility for international
nuclear engineers
(AFP/JOE KLAMAR)
Julia ZAPPEI with Denise HRUBY in Zwentendorf, Austria Tue, January 18, 2022,
As the EU moves to label energy from nuclear power and natural gas as "green" investments, Austria is gearing up to fight this, including with a legal complaint.
The European Commission is consulting with member states and European lawmakers until Friday on its plans.
A final text could be published by end of the month and would become EU law effective from 2023 if a majority of member states or the EU Parliament fail to oppose it.
"Neither of these two forms of energy is sustainable and therefore has no place in the taxonomy regulation," Environment Minister Leonore Gewessler told AFP in an interview this week in her eighth-floor office overlooking the Danube canal that flows through central Vienna.
"If the Commission continues to work with this proposal and implements it then it is clear that we will take legal action," the Green politician added. - 'Strong arguments' -
The 44-year-old said Austria had "very, very strong arguments" why energy from nuclear power and natural gas should not be labelled as green and as such she had "great confidence" a complaint at the EU Court of Justice (ECJ) could succeed.
"The question of waste disposal (from nuclear energy) has not been solved for decades... It's as if we give our children a backpack and say 'you will solve it one day,'" she said.
She also noted natural gas produces significant greenhouse emissions.
Austria -- which since 2020 has been governed by its first conservative-Green coalition -- is also lobbying other member states, including Germany, to oppose the commission's proposal.
So far, Luxemburg has indicated it would support a legal complaint, Gewessler said.
"Whatever is labelled green, whatever is labelled sustainable must also actually contain green and sustainable investments," she said, adding renewable energy was "cheaper, more readily available and a safer and better alternative to nuclear energy".
In 2020, the ECJ threw out an appeal by Austria to find British government subsidies for the nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point in breach of the bloc's state aid rules.
- Ghost plant -
Austria itself has only one nuclear power plant at Zwentendorf on the banks of the Danube river about an hour's drive from Vienna -- and that one was never used.
The Alpine nation of nine million people has been fiercely anti-nuclear, starting with an unprecedented vote by its population in 1978 that prevented the plant -- meant to be the first of several -- from providing a watt of power.
Today its massive concrete chimney rises against the grey winter sky.
Zwentendorf lay idle for several decades before it was taken over by Austrian energy company EVN, which maintains it as a training facility for international nuclear engineers.
The switchboards are now covered in glass to protect the buttons from "souvenir hunters", according to EVN spokesman Stefan Zach, while a clock installed for a film shoot is eternally set at five to twelve.
The plant finally began producing electricity in 2009 -- by installing solar panels.
Austria itself targets that all electricity should come from renewable resources by 2030. More than three-quarters already comes from renewable sources.
"Austria is rich in renewable energy... We now have a very high proportion of wind and solar power plants in Austria," Zach told AFP as he walks through the plant's eerily quiet remnants.
"In Austria, nuclear energy is not an option," Zach said, even though he noted electricity imports still include nuclear energy.
deh-jza/rl
New Zealand navy ships head to tsunami-hit Tonga with water and supplies
Two New Zealand navy vessels will arrive in Tonga on Friday, carrying much-needed water and other supplies for the Pacific island nation reeling from a volcanic eruption and tsunami, and largely cut off from the outside world
Hundreds of homes in Tonga's smaller outer islands have been destroyed, and at least three people were killed after Saturday's huge eruption triggered tsunami waves, which rolled over the islands causing what the government has called an unprecedented disaster.
With its airport smothered under a layer of volcanic ash and communications badly hampered by the severing of an undersea cable, information on the scale of the devastation has mostly come from reconnaissance aircraft.
"For the people of Tonga, we're heading their way now with a whole lot of water," Simon Griffiths, captain of the HMNZS Aotearoa, said in a release.
Griffiths said his ship was carrying 250,000 litres of water, and had the capacity to produce another 70,000 litres a day, along with other supplies.
New Zealand's foreign ministry said the Tongan government has approved the arrival of Aotearoa and the HMNZS Wellington in the COVID-free nation, where concerns about a potential coronavirus outbreak are likely to complicate relief efforts.
Tonga has said its water supplies have been contaminated by ash from the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano, which erupted with a blast heard 2,300 km (1,430 miles) away in New Zealand. It also sent tsunami waves across the Pacific Ocean.
James Garvin, chief scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said the force of the eruption was estimated to be equivalent to five to 10 megatons of TNT, an explosive force more than 500 times the nuclear bomb dropped by the United States on Hiroshima, Japan, at the end of World War Two.
The Red Cross said its teams in Tonga were distributing drinking water across the islands where salt water from the tsunami and volcanic ash were "polluting the clean drinking water sources of tens of thousands of people".
Other countries and agencies including the United Nations are drawing up plans to send aid.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said it would send help, including water and food, when the archipelago's main Fua'amotu International Airport reopens. It was not damaged but was covered in ash, which is being cleared manually,
"We thought that it would be operational yesterday, but it hasn't been fully cleared yet because more ash has been falling," Fiji-based U.N. co-ordinator Jonathan Veitch said on Wednesday.
Pacific neighbour Fiji will send defence engineers on Australia's HMAS Adelaide, which is due to set sail from Brisbane for Tonga on Friday, a Fiji military spokesman told a briefing in Suva.
A second New Zealand Defence P3 Orion surveillance flight will fly over Tonga on Wednesday to assess damage, the foreign ministry said. Clean-up
Waves reaching up to 15 metres hit the outer Ha'apia island group, destroying all of the houses on the island of Mango, as well as the west coast of Tonga's main island, Tongatapu, the prime minister's office said.
On the west coast of Tongatapu, residents were being moved to evacuation centres as 56 houses were destroyed or seriously damaged on that coast.
New Zealand said power has now been restored, and clean-up and damage assessments were going on and Tongan authorities were distributing relief supplies.
Australia and New Zealand have promised immediate financial assistance. The U.S. Agency for International Development approved $100,000 in immediate assistance to support people affected by volcanic eruptions and tsunami waves.
Tongan Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni has met the heads of diplomatic missions to discuss aid, the office said.
Tonga is still largely offline after the volcano severed the sole undersea fibre-optics communication cable.
International mobile phone network provider Digicel has set up an interim system on Tongatapu using the University of South Pacific's satellite dish, the New Zealand foreign ministry said.
That would allow a 2G connection to be established but the connection is patchy and amounts to about 10% of usual capacity,
U.S. cable company SubCom has advised it will take at least four weeks for Tonga's cable be repaired, it added. Remote aid
Tongan communities abroad have posted images from families on Facebook, giving a glimpse of the devastation, with homes reduced to rubble, fallen trees, cracked roads and sidewalks and everything coated with grey ash.
Aid agencies, including the United Nations, are preparing to get relief supplies to Tonga at a distance to avoid introducing the coronavirus, Veitch said.
Tonga is one of the few countries that is COVID-19 free and an outbreak there would disastrous, he said.
"We believe that we will be able to send flights with supplies. We're not sure that we can send flights with personnel and the reason for this is that Tonga has a very strict COVID-free policy," Veitch told a briefing.
"They've been very cautious about opening their borders like many Pacific islands, and that's because of the history of disease outbreaks in the Pacific which has wiped out societies here."
(REUTERS)
New Zealand prepares to send planes, ssupplies to tsunami-hit Tonga
New Zealand is ready to assist Tonga in its recovery from the massive undersea volcanic eruption and tsunami that occurred on January 15, senior government officials said on Tuesday.
“Following the successful surveillance and reconnaissance flight of a New Zealand P-3K2 Orion on Monday, imagery and details have been sent to relevant authorities in Tonga, to aid in decisions about what support is most needed,” Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta said in a statement.
“However, images show ashfall on the Nuku’alofa airport runway that must be cleared before a C-130 Hercules flight with humanitarian assistance can land,” Xinhua news agency quoted Mahuta as saying.
In the meantime, two Royal New Zealand Navy ships will depart New Zealand on Tuesday, she said, adding that communication issues caused by the eruption have made this disaster response particularly challenging.
New Zealand has taken the decision for both navy vessels HMNZS Wellington and HMNZS Aotearoa to sail so they can respond quickly if called upon by the Tongan government, she said.
“HMNZS Wellington will be carrying hydrographic survey and diving teams, as well as an SH-2G(I) Seasprite helicopter. HMNZS Aotearoa will carry bulk water supplies and humanitarian and disaster relief stores,” said Defence Minister Peeni Henare.
“Water is among the highest priorities for Tonga at this stage and HMNZS Aotearoa can carry 250,000 litres, and produce 70,000 litres per day through a desalination plant,” Henare said.
The survey and diving teams are able to show changes to the seabed in the shipping channels and ports. They will also assess wharf infrastructure to assure the future delivery of aid and support from the sea, he said, adding that the journey for both ships will take three days and they will return to New Zealand if not required.
A C-130 Hercules aircraft is on standby to deliver humanitarian aid and disaster relief stores including collapsible water containers, generators and hygiene kits for families once the airport runway is cleared, according to the New Zealand Defense Force.
Other deployments are possible in the next few days, subject to Tongan government requests and permissions, and Covid-19 border rules, Mahuta said.
Tonga is currently free of Covid-19 and operates strict border controls to keep the virus out.
All current support is being delivered in a contactless way. Officials are in discussions around long-term options for support, she added.
The New Zealand government has also allocated a further NZ$500,000 in humanitarian assistance, taking its initial funding total to NZ$1 million.
Tsunami waves hit Tonga on January 15. The tsunami followed a series of violent eruptions from underwater Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano, 65 km north of the country’s main island Tongatapu.
New Zealand has pledged to provide support for Tonga following the volcanic eruption that sent tsunami waves crashing onto the Pacific island.
Israeli police demolish Palestinian family's home after lengthy standoff
Lawahez Jabari and Patrick Smith and Paul Goldman
JERUSALEM — Israeli police demolished a Palestinian family's East Jerusalem home Wednesday after a high-profile standoff which saw family members take to the roof in protest.
An "eviction order of illegal buildings" was carried out in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, Israel Police said in a statement, adding that the land will be used to build a school for children with special needs.
The family's lawyer said that the demolition was illegal.
Mahmoud Salhiyeh, 50, who lived in the house with his wife and children, alongside a another house where his sister and her five children lived, took to the roof Monday and was threatening to burn the house down by igniting a gas canister, rather than hand it over to the authorities.
"I will blow myself up, with the house, with the children, with everything," he told NBC News by phone as he stood on the roof with others Monday. He eventually came down.
An excavator came to raze the property to the ground early Wednesday. NBC News saw personal items such as children's books and school bags, family photos, clothes and shoes strewn in the rubble. Israel security forces at the scene prevented the family from retrieving anything.
Police said the eviction was been approved by multiple courts, including the Jerusalem District Court, and that the order was first issued in 2017.
"Members of the family living in the illegal buildings were given countless opportunities to hand over the land with consent, but unfortunately they refused to do so, even after meetings and repeated dialogue attempts by the Jerusalem municipality," a police spokesperson said in a statement.
Download the NBC News app for breaking news and politics
The Municipality of Jerusalem says 18 classrooms, 6 kindergartens, sports fields and leisure facilities are set to be built on the land and that the school will be open to local Arab community. The authority accused the family of building illegally on the land.
However, Waleed Abu Tayeh, the Salhiyah family's lawyer, said the order was unlawful and went beyond what had been agreed in court.
"Mahmood was willing to evict his home, but they demolished his house even though they have an eviction order, not a demolition one. This is illegal," he said in a statement Wednesday.
Tayeh also said that the authorities demolished Mahmoud Salhiyeh's sister's house, which was not covered by the order.
However, Fleur Hassan Nahoum, the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, said the order was for both eviction and demolition. She added the police action on Salhiyeh’s sister's house was consistent with the court's order.
NBC News has contacted Israel Police and the Jerusalem Municipality about these claims.
Dozens of longtime Palestinian residents in Sheikh Jarrah are battling efforts by Jewish settlers to evict them from their homes in an area that has been a frequent site of unrest in recent years.
The Salhiyah family say they purchased the property before 1967, when Israel captured east Jerusalem, while the state has argued in court that the family does not have rights to the property.
Israel captured east Jerusalem, along with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. It later annexed the eastern half of the city — home to most of Jerusalem’s Palestinian population — in a move unrecognized by most of the international community. The Palestinians seek east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.
Lawahez Jabari reported from Jerusalem and Patrick Smith from London.
Israel police demolish Palestinian home in east Jerusalem eviction
Israeli police demolished the home of a Palestinian family and arrested at least 18 people as they carried out a controversial eviction order in the sensitive east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah early Wednesday.
The looming eviction of other families from Sheikh Jarrah in May last year fuelled an 11-day war between Israel and armed Palestinian factions in Gaza.
Before dawn, Israeli officers went to the home of the Salhiya family, who were first served with an eviction notice in 2017.
Jerusalem authorities have said the land will be used to build a school for children with special needs, but the eviction is likely to raise tension in a neighbourhood that has become a symbol of Palestinian opposition to Israeli occupation.
Jerusalem deputy mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum has said the dispute surrounding the Salhiya home is "totally different" from the events in May, when Palestinians risked being forced to hand over plots of land to Jewish settlers.
Israeli police said they had "completed the execution of an eviction order of illegal buildings built on grounds designated for a school for children with special needs".
"Members of the family living in the illegal buildings were given countless opportunities to hand over the land with consent," a police statement said.
A bulldozer raked through rubble hours after the home was destroyed.
A police spokesman told AFP 18 family members and supporters were arrested for "violating a court order, violent fortification and disturbing public order," but no clashes took place during the eviction.
When police arrived to carry out the order on Monday, Salhiya family members went up to the building's roof with gas canisters, threatening to set the contents and themselves alight if they were forced out of their home.
Police had eventually backed off, but returned early Wednesday amid heavy rainfall in Jerusalem.
Salhiya family lawyer Walid Abu-Tayeh told AFP police had arrested 20 people during the operation, six of them Israeli citizens, with the latter being released, adding that "the Arab detainees were assaulted."
He also confirmed reports that the Palestinian father Mahmud Salhiya is married to an Israeli Jew, named Meital.
In an audio recording distributed to local Arab-language media, Meital, who speaks Arabic, said the family was woken early Wednesday by the sound of loud booms and police had cut the electricity.
"They took me out of the house with my daughter and children who were crying and arrested my husband and all the young men," she said.
- 'Two-time refugees' -
Deputy mayor Hassan-Nahoum said Tuesday the plot that the Salhiya family claim as theirs belonged to private Palestinian owners who then sold it to the city, which allocated it for classrooms for special needs Palestinian children.
A delegation of European diplomats visited the site during the standoff. "In occupied territory, evictions are a violation of international humanitarian law," the head of the European Union's mission to the Palestinian territories, Sven Kuehn von Burgsdorff, told AFP.
Human Rights Watch Israel and Palestine director Omar Shakir called the eviction "cruel" and stressed that the Salhiya family had previously been forced from their west Jerusalem home during Israel's creation in 1948.
Wednesday's eviction made them "two-time refugees", he said.
Hundreds of Palestinians face eviction from homes in Sheikh Jarrah and other east Jerusalem neighbourhoods. Circumstances surrounding the eviction threats vary.
In some cases, Jewish Israelis have lodged legal claims to plots they say were illegally taken during the war that accompanied Israel's creation in 1948.
Israeli law allows Jewish Israelis to file such claims, but no equivalent law exists for Palestinians who lost land during the conflict.
Palestinians facing eviction say their homes were legally purchased from Jordanian authorities who controlled east Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967.
Israel captured east Jerusalem in the Six-Day War of 1967 and later annexed it in a move not recognised by the international community.
More than 200,000 Jewish settlers have since moved into the city's eastern sector, fuelling tensions with Palestinians, who claim it as the capital of their future state.
mk-jjm/bs/kir
AFP
Israel dispossesses Palestinians from their home so that it can build them a school
Israel gets away with whatever ethnic cleansing it can get away with until the resistance becomes too loud. They it delays and uses other methods towards the same end.
OMER BAR-LEV, ISRAEL’S MINISTER FOR PUBLIC SECURITY, VISITS A BORDER POLICE TRAINING FACILITY THAT INCLUDES A MOCKUP OF A PALESTINIAN URBAN NEIGHBORHOOD. FROM BAR-LEV VIDEO POSTED JANUARY 7, 2022. SCREENSHOT.
Yesterday’s much-publicized standoff in the east-Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah was yet another eviction attempt. Mahmoud Salhiya and members of his family stood on the roof with gas canisters, threatening to blow the place up if their forcible removal was carried out.
For now, the move has been temporarily averted. As the Jerusalem municipality said:
In coordination with the Israel Police, it was decided to postpone the eviction with the goal of allowing the Salahiya family to move out on their own.
Once again, the world was watching (although the international community once again seemed to be incapacitated, reduced to “bearing witness”). The British Consulate in East Jerusalem tweeted that Consul-General Diane Corner, whose office is located just opposite the Salhiya home, had joined other diplomats to “bear witness to the ongoing eviction”, as reported by Reuters. The consulate said that such evictions in occupied territory, in all but the most exceptional circumstances, were against international humanitarian law, and urged the Israeli government to “cease such practices which only serve to increase tensions on the ground”.
This follows a familiar pattern: Israel gets away with whatever ethnic cleansing it can get away with, until the resistance, international critique or condemnation become loud enough for it to delay and use other methods towards the same end.
But this eviction is actually different. While the many other evictions in Sheikh Jarrah are done by settler organizations which claim “Jewish ownership” of lands from before 1948 (a privilege which Palestinians are not afforded), this eviction is based on the pretext of the municipality having to build educational facilities at that location. The plot where the Salhiya house is located is being claimed by Israel as “absentee property” for public use.
As Oren Ziv and Yuval Abrahami report in +972 Magazine, there is are other public plots– but Jews get priority!
[T]here are alternative locations for the establishment of educational institutions in the neighborhood, which do not involve the eviction of Palestinian families. There is, for example, an empty lot on nearby Pierre Van Paassen Street, which is set out in the masterplan as being for public buildings. However, in an unusual move, the municipality decided to give up this land and hand it over, without compensation, to the ultra-Orthodox organization Ohr Somayach, which plans to establish a yeshiva and dormitories for students.
The gushing goodwill that is afforded Jewish settlers by the Jewish State is just not there for Palestinians.
That cynical policy was coupled by one of the most cynical tweets that could be imagined, by the Laborite Israeli Internal Security Minister Omer Bar-Lev. He said that Palestinians can’t both demand education and not expect to be dispossessed:
You can’t hold the stick at both ends by both demanding that the [Jerusalem] municipality take action on welfare for Arab residents and oppose the building of educational establishments for their welfare
For those who feel foreign to the idiom of the stick, it’s akin to saying “have their cake and eat it”. It’s not just misleading. It’s malicious.
Mahmoud Salhiya spoke truth from his rooftop:
They can build five schools here and my house will remain.
Salhiya shouts it from the rooftops, but Bar-Lev (which in Hebrew means “has a heart”) is not only deaf, but also heartless. Even though he’s a Laborite (and supposedly on the left side of Israeli politics). Well of course they can build five, ten and twenty schools without dispossessing Palestinians. But that was never really the point. The point is Judaization of Palestinian lands.
“This is a particularly cynical act by the municipality”, said Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at the NGO Ir Amim (cited by +972). He continued:
The municipality is threatening to evacuate the Salhiyeh family, while at the same time giving up another plot of land and gifting it to a yeshiva. The municipality is succeeding in making even the obligation to provide education to the Palestinian population into part of the mechanism of dispossession and Judaization.
Haaretz journalist Nir Hasson says he cannot remember any other case in which a family was evicted for the purpose of building a school (thread here), though Israel has been dispossessing Palestinians for all kinds of pretexts. Recently, the standoffs in the Naqab (Negev) have been about Israel’s parastatal organ Jewish National Fund planting forests on Bedouin farmlands.
Now they are using schools as pretext for dispossession. And if you want to both have a home and a school, then tough luck, you should be so happy with just one of the two, because if you want both, you’re just trying to “hold the stick at both ends”, like the Laborite minister says.
Israel condemned for eviction of Palestinian family in Sheikh Jarrah
January 18, 2022 A view of the demolition site in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem on 17 January 2022. [Mostafa Alkharouf - Anadolu Agency]
January 18, 2022
Israel has been condemned by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for the eviction of a Palestinian family in Sheikh Jarrah, Al Watan Voice has reported.
An official statement from the president's office described the attempted eviction of the Salehiyah family from their home in Sheikh Jarrah as "forced expulsion" which is a "flagrant violation" of international and humanitarian law. "As such, international intervention is needed urgently to protect the Palestinian people and to rein-in Israel and its criminal policies."
Israeli occupation forces placed a cordon around the house of Mahmoud Salehiyah in Sheikh Jarrah early on Monday morning. The family were told to leave so that the house could be demolished.
Salehiyah climbed onto the roof of the house and refused to move. After 10 hours, with the family still in their home, reported Safa, the Israeli forces withdrew from the area.
The Salehiyah family was originally expelled from their house in the West Jerusalem neighbourhood of Ein Karem in 1948 during the Zionist ethnic cleansing of the village. They bought a new house in the 1950s in Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, about a decade before Israel occupied and annexed — illegally — the area. Now, the Israeli-run Jerusalem Municipality is trying to expel them yet again.
The office of the PA president said that the Israeli escalation against Palestinian homes in occupied Jerusalem coincides with the state's policy to build a new settlement for "illegal Jewish settlers". It called for the US to put an end to the Israeli escalation; hailed resilience of the Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah; and thanked EU representatives and other diplomats who visited Sheikh Jarrah in solidarity with its residents.
Diplomats slam Israel over attempts to expel Palestinian family from Sheikh Jarra
The EU's delegation to the Palestinian people tweeted that it's '[i]mperative to deescalate the situation and seek a peaceful solution'.
The Salahia family is made up of seven adults and five children [Mucahit Aydemir/Anadolu Agency/Getty]
Diplomats and global institutions have slammed Israel over its continued attempts to expel Palestinians living in occupied East Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood.
It comes as Israel on Tuesday released one 22-year-old Palestinian man who was detained on Monday amid Tel Aviv's efforts to take his family's home, under the pretext of "constructing a school".
The Palestinian man, identified as Abdullah Ikermawi, who belongs to the Salahia family, was conditioned to pay a 500 shekel ($160) fine and ordered to stay away from the house for three days, according to Palestine's official Wafa news agency.
"The occupation forces arrested my son Abdullah yesterday [Monday], just for filming the occupation security's siege of our Sheikh Jarrah house and their attack against us and attempt to remove us from our home," his mother, Amal Salahia, said.
Though the Salahia family, made up of seven adults and five children, have not yet been forced out of their house, Israel knocked down a plant nursery they own.
"The eviction, should it be completed, would leave five children with nowhere to live in the middle of a winter cold snap – this cannot be allowed to happen," Norwegian Refugee Council Palestine chief Caroline Ort noted on Monday.
Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, the European Union's most-senior official in Jerusalem, and other diplomats looked on as Israel worked to try and force the Salahias out that day.
The EU's delegation to the Palestinian people tweeted: "Imperative to deescalate the situation and seek a peaceful resolution.
"Evictions/demolitions are illegal under international law and significantly undermine the prospects for peace as well as fuel tensions on the ground."
The UK's consul general in Jerusalem, Diane Corner, also "b[ore] witness" to what was happening, according to the consulate.
It added: "Evictions in Occupied Territory are against international humanitarian law in all but the most exceptional circumstances.
"The United Kingdom urges the Government of Israel to cease such practices which only serve to increase tensions on the group."
Neighbouring Jordan slammed Israel's actions, according to Wafa.
The foreign ministry said: "The evictions and displacement of Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem are a flagrant violation of international law and international humanitarian law.
"Israel, as the occupying power in East Jerusalem, is mandated by international law to protect Palestinians' rights to their homes."
It also argued demolitions, expulsions and other Israeli actions "undermine the changes of realising a just and comprehensive peace founded on the two-state solution".
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation also hit out at Israel on Tuesday, situating what has happened as part of a wider effort at removing Palestinians and urging global actors to work to stop Israel's abuses in Jerusalem, Wafa said.
Amnesty warns over 'sportswashing' at Beijing Olympics
China is hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics (AFP/Leo RAMIREZ)
Wed, January 19, 2022, 3:45 AM·3 min read
Amnesty International warned on Wednesday that the international community must not allow China to use the Winter Olympics in Beijing as a "sportswashing opportunity" and must avoid being "complicit in a propaganda exercise".
The organisation fears China will use the Games to distract from alleged human rights violations against Uyghur Muslims and in Hong Kong, arguing that the situation in the country is worse now than when it hosted the Summer Olympics in 2008.
Amnesty's China researcher, Alkan Akad, said: "The Beijing Winter Olympics must not be allowed to pass as a mere sportswashing opportunity for the Chinese authorities and the international community must not become complicit in a propaganda exercise.
"The world must heed the lessons of the Beijing 2008 Games, when Chinese government promises of human rights improvements never materialised.
"Amid the severe restrictions in place at Beijing 2022, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) must do better at keeping its promise to protect athletes' right to voice their opinions -- and above all to ensure it is not complicit in any violations of athletes' rights."
The United States, Australia, Canada and Britain have announced they will not send official representation to the Olympics, with the US citing "the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights violations".
Nevertheless, athletes from those countries will still participate in the event, which starts on February 4.
Amnesty's UK chief executive Sacha Deshmukh said Britain's diplomatic boycott of the Games, announced last month, had to be the start of efforts to turn up the pressure on China, not the end.
"China is hoping for sportswashing gold and it's vital that every effort is made to counteract that," Deshmukh said.
- Get tough -
The Amnesty report comes after US lawmakers on Tuesday called on the UN human rights chief to release a report on Xinjiang, where Washington accuses China of perpetrating a genocide against minority Uyghur Muslims, before the start of the Olympics.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, the former Chilean president, has been asking Beijing for "meaningful and unhindered access" to Xinjiang for years, but no such visit has so far been made possible.
In mid-December, a spokesman for the high commissioner had indicated that a report could however be published in "a few weeks".
But human rights defenders are calling on the United Nations to get tough. Several rights organisations have accused China of having locked up at least a million Muslims in Xinjiang.
Beijing denies the figure and describes the camps as "vocational training centres" to support employment and fight religious extremism.
Amnesty also criticised the IOC's handling of the case of tennis player Peng Shuai.
The athlete's wellbeing has become a major source of concern since she disappeared from public view after she alleged on social media that she was sexually assaulted by a senior member of the Chinese government.
The IOC came under pressure to exert its influence and engage the Chinese authorities over Peng, and has held video calls with her which, it says, establish that she is safe and well.
But Amnesty's Akad said the body had accepted assurances "without corroborating whether she experienced any limitations to her freedom of expression, freedom of movement and right to privacy".
jw/phz/imm
Hong Kong experts defend decision to euthanize hamsters, other animals with COVID-19
Jan. 19 (UPI) -- Despite opposition and outrage from animal lovers and activists, experts in Hong Kong are defending their decision to euthanize hundreds of hamsters and other small animals after several tested positive for COVID-19 at a local pet shop.
Authorities said Tuesday that they would euthanize about 2,000 hamsters and other small animals after nearly a dozen hamsters imported from the Netherlands were found to be carrying traces of the coronavirus -- and multiple people linked to the pet shop also tested positive.
Although many health experts say it's unlikely that animals can pass COVID-19 on to humans, Hong Kong officials say they made the move because it's in the interest of public health.
Hong Kong respiratory disease expert David Hui said on Wednesday that, despite a lack of evidence, the chances of the virus spreading from hamsters to humans is "very high."
"The shopkeepers have to take care of the hamsters and clean their cages. There are many ways in which they could get infected," he said, according to the Hong Kong Free Press.
"There's no way to test each [hamster] individually. From a public health perspective, you have to euthanize the whole batch."
Animal lovers and activists reacted to the euthanization order with anger, and gathered thousands of signatures on a petition in a bid to stop the government from killing the animals.
Hong Kong's Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals told The Straits Times that it's shocked over the government's decision and is working to find an alternative solution to euthanasia.
"This is not mercy killing. This is murder," pet owner and actor Shafin Azim said, according to the Times. "Find a better way -- close the shop for a while, wear full protective gear before feeding, test them again.
"Are we culling the humans who are actually spreading this?"
Hong Kong govt's hamster culling over Covid-19 ignites fury of pet (ANIMAL) lovers
The kill order came a day after a sales employee at Little Boss was reported to be infected with the Delta variant.
HONG KONG - The mass culling of thousands of hamsters in the city over links to a coronavirus cluster has ignited the fury of pet lovers and anti-cruelty groups, with an online petition gaining traction.
The authorities made the firm decision in the hope of cutting off Covid-19 transmission from Little Boss, a Causeway Bay pet shop where at least three people have tested positive, leading to fears of greater spread of the virus.
An online petition to stop the mass cull was created and garnered tens of thousands of signatures.
The government's move was heartbreaking for housewife Ashley Lee's two school-going daughters, who have been keeping a hamster since 2020.
"I have really mixed feelings about this issue right now. I can't really say culling is the best option for these little animals," she said, adding that her children have drawn up a plan to keep their pet safe.
"They said visitors are not allowed to touch our hamster any more and they're going to check if the visitors have been vaccinated or not."
Pet owner Shafin Azim, 40, who used to have hamsters and now cats, was shocked and livid.
In a Facebook post, the actor, who has two cats, said: "This is not mercy killing. This is murder. Find a better way - close the shop for a while, wear full protective gear before feeding, test them again.
"Are we culling the humans who are actually spreading this?"
Health officials, who defended the move, said the decision was necessary as the hamsters can excrete the virus and infect other pets and humans.
A worker from Hong Kong's Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department inside the Little Boss pet store on Jan 18, 2022. PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
Respiratory medicine expert Leung Chi Chiu told The Straits Times that the Delta variant in the pet shop worker had a genomic sequence never seen before in Hong Kong.
Her frequent occupational exposure to a heavily infected horde of hamsters could lead to the "first reported case of what is likely hamster-to-human transmission", Dr Leung said.
He noted that hamsters, like chickens, are raised in herds and pose a hazard not only to those exposed occupationally but also pet owners. So once a human is infected, it could lead to rapid dissemination.
"Testing cannot exclude infection in incubation period, as well as low or intermittent viral shedding. Culling is therefore needed not only to protect the pet owners but also to prevent outbreak in our community," added Dr Leung.
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) said it was shocked and concerned over the decision, "which did not take animal welfare and human-animal bond into consideration".
"The SPCA hopes the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) won't take any drastic action before reviewing its approach. The SPCA will liaise with AFCD through different channels and discuss alternative approaches," it said.
Officials have ordered all pet shops in the city selling hamsters to shutter temporarily and appealed to families who have bought a hamster from the Little Boss pet store since Dec 22 to hand over their pet for euthanasia.
This has sparked concern from pet lovers that some people will start abandoning their pets, particularly hamsters.
The SPCA urged pet owners not to panic or abandon their pets, and to maintain strict personal hygiene.
Hong Kong officials have been scrambling to stop the spread of Omicron, which is the dominant coronavirus strain in the city, as untraceable cases in the community started popping up in the last three weeks.
Their worries have been compounded on Wednesday as clusters emerged in schools and elsewhere.
Hong Kong added 16 new cases on Wednesday, with seven of them local. This brings the total to more than 12,800 Covid-19 cases and 213 deaths.
Heartbreak as Hong Kong pet owners give up hamsters for Covid cull
AFP -
Time was running out for Pudding.
The hamster, a new addition to the Hau family, was to be given up to Hong Kong authorities for culling after rodents in a pet shop tested positive for coronavirus -- leaving Pudding's 10-year-old owner wailing in grief.
People queue to drop off their hamsters at a government facility in Hong Kong
"I don't want to, I don't want to," the boy cried, his head buried in his hands as he crouched next to Pudding's pink cage, according to a video shown to AFP by his father.
Hong Kong has ordered 1,000 animals in a pet shop to be culled along with another 1,000 hamsters in other shops across the city
But the older Hau, who would only provide his last name, said he was worried about his elderly family members who live in the same household.
"I have no choice -- the government made it sound so serious," he told AFP, shortly before entering a government-run animal management centre to submit Pudding.
He was among a steady trickle of Hong Kong pet owners arriving outside the facility on Wednesday afternoon to give up their unsuspecting furry friends.
Hong Kong on Tuesday ordered 1,000 animals in a pet shop to be culled, along with another 1,000 hamsters in other shops across the city.
Authorities also urged owners to turn in any hamsters purchased after December 22 to be put down.
The decision comes after the discovery of Covid-positive hamsters in the store. Authorities said an employee had contracted the Delta variant -- now rare in the territory -- and they ordered the cull as a "precautionary measure". - 'Process my emotions' -
Like mainland China, Hong Kong adheres to a staunch "zero-Covid" policy, intolerant of even the merest appearance of the virus in the population of more than seven million.
But the government's latest target appears especially harsh, and swift rebukes from outraged animal lovers have pinged across social media pages.
Authorities remove hamsters from a pet shop in Hong Kong after an employee and a customer handling hamsters tested positive for coronavirus. The city will cull hundreds of the animals after some were found to have Covid, officials said Tuesday, as the city tries to maintain its strict "zero-Covid" strategy.
"Now it has come to this."
He and his wife had gifted "Marshmallow" -- a grey twitchy-nosed hamster scurrying through plastic tubes -- to their five-year-old son.
"It feels like I'm ending a life," Tsui said, adding that he did not dare break the news of Marshmallow's fate to his son.
"I need to process my own emotions before I know what to say to my kid."
He added he was disappointed the government did not offer alternatives, such as teaching people how to properly quarantine their pets. - 'Save as many as we can' -
Hong Kong's hamster hunt has led activists and animal lovers to fret over pets being dumped on the streets en masse for fear of contracting the virus.
Cheung, 32, is part of an online community of Hong Kong hamster owners who have volunteered to foster any abandoned due to the policy.
"It's devastating. I couldn't sleep last night, because I really love small animals," he told AFP, providing only his last name over fears about criticising the government's policy.
Hong Kong already has a problem with overwhelmed first-time pet owners deserting their furry companions, and Cheung said the numbers are likely to spike after the policy.
His own two-year-old hamster, Ring, is safe for now, and may soon be joined by others.
"We want to save as many as we can," he said.
hol/dhc/axn
Stop the Government from Wrongfully Euthanising Little Boss’ Small Pets
23,721 have signed. Let’s get to 25,000!
Soren LEE started this petition to Hong Kong SPCA and
Over 2000 pets at risk for euthanasia.
Over 2000 lives on the brink of being lost.
On 18th of January, 2022, upon a staff member from Little Boss transmitting COVID-19, a hamster tested positive for the illness. The government has now decided that their optimal solution to this is to test all of the animals in the shop at the time and all of the pets that were purchased before December 22nd, and euthanise them whether or not they test positive.
Every pet owner knows that their pet’s lives are just as important as their own, yet the Hong Kong government fails to see that they, the very upholders of law, are on the dangerous path to the murders of many lives that are barely any different to ours. They fail to recognise that the lives of animals are not subjects for their selfish development, and that the act of testing the pets for scientific research and euthanising them regardless of whether they test positive or not is heartless and cruel. Just like humans, these pets could be quarantined and isolated rather than killed off mercilessly, yet authorities insisted on trading over 2000 lives for the sake of “public health needs”.
Therefore, we are asking you to lend a hand by signing this petition to support this cause. A pet is an owner’s best friend, and due to the government’s orders, thousands of people could unjustifiably lose their dearest companions. With your help, we can successfully convince the government that their decision is unjust and brutal, and you could help save dozens of animals in loving homes and happy lives.
