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)
Sunday, August 25, 2024
The Museum of London chooses a pooping pigeon for its logo – a symbol of duality, defiance and immigration
Philip Howell, Professor of Geography, University of Cambridge Fri, 23 August 2024
As the Museum of London relocates from London Wall to the old Smithfield Market site, it has reverted to its old name, the London Museum, and chosen a brand new logo – a pooping pigeon.
The new design features a white porcelain pigeon trailed by a golden “splat”. It’s a choice that the museum’s director Sharon Ament interprets as a metaphor for London: “The pigeon and splat speak to a historic place full of dualities, a place where the grit and the glitter have existed side by side for millennia.”
In a blog post, the museum explains that the pigeon was chosen because it has remained for a thousand years “an impartial and humble observer of London life”, watching over the changing city and ultimately becoming a London icon itself.
Brand identity wise, this is a bold choice. It’s fair to say that it has generated some bafflement: a few have called the choice crude, embarrassing and a waste of money. Some of these reactions clearly consider the pigeon not just irrelevant and insignificant, but also repellent.
This is all very understandable. Arguably our least favourite feathered friend (besides, perhaps, the antisocial seagull), the urban pigeon has long been established in the UK as a public nuisance.
Pigeon excrement is the obvious problem, given that a single pigeon drops around 11kg of excrement per year. A flock of 80 pigeons (and pigeons do like to congregate) will create nearly a tonne of droppings in the same period. Buildings and public sculptures suffer a loss of dignity when caked with pigeon poo. But more importantly, diseases associated with pigeon droppings include the fungal lung infections cryptococcosis and histoplasmosis, and the infectious disease psittacosis, tellingly known as ornithosis.
So it is no surprise that pigeons have come to be regarded worldwide as thoroughly unwelcome pests – “rats with wings” as coined by New York City Parks commissioner, Thomas Hoving in the 1960s.
In cities all over the world, pigeons have been actively discouraged by spikes, netting and other low-cost deterrents that act as “defensive” or (perhaps more honestly) “hostile” architecture. The message is clear: pigeons aren’t welcome here.
The war on pigeons feels like hubris, however. Pigeons continue to find places to roost, even on gleaming new developments. Their seagull rivals come to snack on the corpses of pigeons trapped in anti-bird netting. Crows and magpies have learnt to make nests from anti-bird spikes. Nature finds a way, even in cities designed to deter it.
There is a case to be made for appreciating the ingenuity not just of clever corvids and crafty gulls, but the resilience and opportunism of the urban pigeon too. As the Museum of London points out, the pigeon has been around for a long time, the descendant of domesticated doves imported after the Norman Conquest. Escaping from dovecotes, these birds followed their rock dove instincts, but swapped sea cliffs for the city’s eaves, lintels and architraves.
They are indeed an admirable example of the urban wildlife that nature enthusiasts and urban ecologists have begun to celebrate. As Ament rightly points out: “We share our city with others, including millions of animals. Pigeons are all over London and so are we.”
Implicit in the anti-pigeon line is the fact that the pigeon is, like many people, too easily portrayed as out of place. Urban pigeons are, for the sociologist Colin Jerolmack: “explicit trespassers on spaces that we’ve decided are supposed to be for humans only”. That makes them vulnerable, but in the same ways that some kinds of people become vulnerable.
It has been recognised that antipathy towards urban animals turns alarmingly quickly into mistreatment of human beings, such as rough sleepers who suffer from the use of “defensive architecture” to police them out of city centres: a decent society wouldn’t treat people as pests.
More troubling still is the crackdown on unwanted migrants. I have written elsewhere that the histories of pigeons have become strangely entangled with the histories of Caribbean migration to London and the UK. There is an uncomfortable parallel between the fortunes of pigeons and people, both once welcomed and even celebrated, but increasingly vilified, all the way up to the creation of “hostile environments”. In the words of blogger Tim Hamlett, pigeons are “another group of immigrants we don’t like”.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Colombian artist Iván Argote has been commissioned to install a 16ft tall hyperrealistic sculpture of a pigeon on New York’s High Line public park. The point of this gigantic pigeon perched unnervingly above Manhattan’s west side? Argote is keen to remind us that we are all in some sense immigrants, and we shouldn’t be too quick to say who gets to stay, and who gets to be deported (or worse).
As High Line art director and chief curator Cecilia Alemani puts it: “It’s a sculpture that talks about many other quite profound issues such as the relationship between the human world and the animal world, and ideas of immigration and who has the right to be the guest in New York city.”
I am all in favour of the London Museum and its pooping pigeon, then. The controversial rebrand directs our attention to the long history of London, the stories of its many different communities and their routes to the capital, but also to the contribution of its less loved residents, even the ones with wings. These humble birds could do with a PR boost. In the appealing words of a friend to pigeons in my hometown of Nottingham: “Every dove deserves love.”
Philip Howell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Scots Nurse tells of treating war-injured child patients during Gaza Strip deployment
Nurse Kathleen Shields saw children who were left ‘skeletal’ due to malnutrition. Tents are crammed together as displaced Palestinians camp on the beach (Abdel Kareen Hana/AP)
A Scottish nurse who worked in the Gaza Strip has described treating patients with amputations and burns from the ongoing war there, as well as seeing children left “skeletal” from malnutrition.
Children’s nurse Kathleen Shields, from Kirkcaldy, went to Gaza earlier this year with the charity UK-Med.
The charity, funded by the Foreign Office, runs two hospitals in Al Mawasi and Deir El Balah which have treated thousands of patients since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.
Ms Shields, 31, said she hopes to return for another Gaza deployment but her family often worry because of the “horrific” images on television. Children’s nurse Kathleen Shields was deployed to Gaza earlier this year with Manchester-based frontline medical charity UK-Med (FCDO)
She said: “When I first arrived, I was drafted in to supporting Palestinian medics operating the Wadi Gaza clinic, near the north of Gaza, which was really eye-opening because at that time the north had been the hardest hit with bombing.
“The clinic was situated at the top of a hill and it was impossible not to notice the devastation for miles around. You knew you were in a war zone and just thought, ‘Wow, this is real’.
“I’d never experienced anything like missiles flying overhead before.
“The first time I was scared asking ‘Are we going to be OK?’ and the more experienced staff reassured me, ‘Don’t worry, if we’re hearing it like this, it means it’s not going to hit us’.”
She added: “I felt in awe of the Palestinian staff and felt incredibly lucky to be working with people who were so committed to helping and caring for others no matter what difficulties they had to overcome.” Children’s nurse Kathleen Shields was deployed to Gaza earlier this year with Manchester-based frontline medical charity UK-Med (FCDO)
Ms Shields, who now works in paediatrics in Manchester, spent three weeks in the Gaza Strip, with much of her time spent setting up the field hospital in Al Mawasi.
She said: “Once we got the emergency department and wards set up, we started receiving patients transferred to us from other hospitals which were over-run.
“I am a children’s nurse, but you do whatever you can to help and initially a lot of our admitted patients were adults.
“It was eye-opening to suddenly be seeing people with war injuries.
“One of the first patients we received had had both of his legs amputated above his knee. Children’s nurse Kathleen Shields was deployed to Gaza earlier this year with Manchester-based frontline medical charity UK-Med (FCDO)
“There were burns victims, particularly children having accidents in tents where cooking is so much harder.
“One of the saddest things you came across was lots of babies and children suffering malnutrition and literally starving almost to death.
“Just tiny skeletal little things.”
The nurse added: “I remember one case quite vividly, a child with a burn injury to his arm who needed the dressing changed.
“We blew up some medical gloves like balloons and drew faces on them and his parents were so appreciative of the fact that for a short while their son was laughing and being a child again.”
During a visit to Gaza last month, Foreign Secretary David Lammy announced a further £5.5 million for UK-Med to fund their work in Gaza.
UK patients going private to escape referrals ‘black hole’, say GPs
Jon Ungoed-Thomas Sun, 25 August 2024
THE GUARDIAN Reception desk at an NHS hospital in England. Delays in outpatients appointments mean more patients are paying for private care. Photograph: Lankowsky/Alamy
Patients are increasingly turning to private healthcare to escape a referrals “black hole”, GPs have warned, as the NHS struggles with a shortfall of available appointments.
The most recent figures show GP practices make about 400,000 referrals a month to outpatient clinics that are fully booked. Some patients will be able to choose an alternative provider, some will be booked at a later date, but many end up being bounced back to their local surgery.
Dr Dean Eggitt, a Doncaster GP and chief executive of the city’s local medical committee, said: “I think the NHS has collapsed because it is no longer providing universal care. I will say to a patient, ‘I can refer you, but it’s not going to get sorted for a year and I can just help you cope.’”
Eggitt said he discussed with patients the options of care in the private sector, with many choosing to pay for some of their care. Analysis published by the Nuffield Trust in May revealed a 30% increase in people paying for hospital care across the UK since the pandemic.
GPs typically refer patients to outpatient clinics using the NHS e-referral service, which can also be used by the patient to book a suitable appointment. The most recent figures, for July, show there were more than one million appointments booked in England, but 407,173 cases in which no slots were available.Interactive
The number of unavailable slots has risen by 78% since July 2018, when the comparable figure was 227,937. There were severe shortages of appointments in orthopaedics, cardiology and diagnostic imaging.
NHS England has warned the lack of available appointments “creates a significant amount of avoidable administrative work and can cause patient safety issues”. Providers are contractually required to ensure that sufficient appointments are available for first outpatient appointments.
GPs are struggling with patients who become increasingly unwell because they cannot get NHS appointments. They are also concerned about patients who are being systematically rejected for appointments.
Dr Ellen Welch, a GP in Carlisle and vice-chair of the Doctors’ Association UK, a professional association, said: “Patients may be waiting years to see a specialty team about a problem and they return to see us again and again for their care in general practice.
“We have found referrals have been repeatedly rejected by hospital teams – very often for bureaucratic reasons.”
GPs across the country have warned they consider there is now effectively “rationing” of referrals to outpatient clinics.
Prof Kamila Hawthorne, chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said the latest figures for unavailable slots were concerning. She said: “GPs are highly trained to refer appropriately and when necessary, so that patients get the specialist care they need. While we recognise that secondary care is under enormous pressure, it’s essential that GP referrals are taken seriously and not rejected without a very good reason.”
Healthwatch England, which gathers the views of health and social care users in England, warned last year that an online survey had found one in five patients referred for specialist care had fallen into a “black hole”, and were bounced back to their general practice.
This included patients whose appointments were cancelled, or who were referred to the wrong service, were removed from the waiting list or did not hear anything further about the referral.
Helen Hughes, chief executive of the charity Patient Safety Learning, said there were concerns about the safety of patients unable to get timely specialist care. She said: “Patients waiting for care need to be monitored and reprioritised as their level of need is likely to change as they wait.”
NHS England said some patients might be rejected for appointments when there were more suitable care options, but this only occurred for about 2% of referrals.
An NHS spokesperson said: “While NHS staff work hard to deliver tens of millions of outpatient appointments every year, it is clear there is more to do to provide more timely care for those who need it.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We inherited a broken NHS and it is unacceptable that so many people are waiting longer than needed for care.
“We know that waiting lists are too high, and it is one of the reasons the health secretary ordered a full independent investigation into the state of the NHS to lay bare the scale of the problem.”
Infected blood authority can now start making compensation payments to victims
More than 30,000 people who received NHS treatment between the 1970s and early 1990s were infected with contaminated blood, and contracted viruses.
Protesters demanding justice over one of the biggest scandals in NHS history. / PA
ITV News 19 hours ago
Ministers have given a body set up in the wake of the NHS infected blood scandal the power to start making compensation payments to patients.
The Cabinet Office published a lengthy policy paper on Friday including details on criteria which must be met for the first payouts.
The paper confirmed the Government expects the Infected Blood Compensation Authority (IBCA) to begin making payments by the end of 2024.
Payments to affected persons, including spouses, civil partners and long-term cohabitants of victims signed up for compensation, will begin in 2025.
The regulations set out patients or their representatives can receive compensation if they satisfy the IBCA they contracted hepatitis C, chronic hepatitis B, or HIV as a result of NHS or armed forces’ infected blood.
Paymaster General Nick Thomas-Symonds said he was “incredibly proud” to have signed the documents, which empower the IBCA to start awarding payments to victims.
Susan Lee, of The Hepatitis C Trust has welcomed the news, but warned of differing compensation depending on which disease a patient ended up contracting.
“We are still examining the information released today and awaiting further detail, but remain concerned by the disparities in proposed compensation for people who were given hepatitis C, hepatitis B and HIV,” she said.
“It is vital that the Government does not underestimate the catastrophic and wide-ranging impacts that hepatitis can have on people’s lives.”
More than 30,000 people who received NHS treatment between the 1970s and early 1990s were infected with contaminated blood, and contracted viruses.
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If patients received infected blood treatment and a diagnosis of hepatitis C between January 1 1952 and September 1 1991, chronic hepatitis B between January 1 1952 and December 1 1972, or HIV between January 1 1982 and November 1 1985, they “will be eligible for compensation on the basis that treatment during those dates is more likely to have resulted in transmission”.
There is no cut-off date for eligibility for compensation around when a person became infected.
However, evidence requirements will be higher for people infected after screening was introduced for the conditions in 1972, 1985 and 1991 respectively.
Payouts may also apply to people who contracted diseases from a victim through sexual contact in a long-term relationship, birth, or accidental needle stick injuries, but not if a patient contracted them through sharing needles while taking drugs.
According to an explainer, patients may choose to take compensation as a lump sum or in instalments over five, 10 or 25 years, with future payments uprated in line with inflation.
The Government would pay a lump sum to personal representatives of eligible infected patients, if they die before receiving their full entitlement.
The overall payment will be made up of a series of awards, including an injury impact award which “compensates for past and future physical and mental injury and emotional distress and injury to feelings”, a social impact award for stigma and social isolation, and the autonomy award which takes into account how infected blood may have affected patients’ private and family life.
The Government has also confirmed financial loss and care cost compensation awards.
Some patients may face deductions, for example, if they received compensation awards made by a court or tribunal.
The Cabinet Office’s policy paper reads: “The Government hopes that the scheme will enable victims of infected blood to receive due compensation without the need to go through a court or tribunal process to seek redress.”
Advertiser boycott on X leads to revenue collapse causing headache for Elon Musk
“How do you make the case for advertising on a platform like that?”
Elon Musk’s woes have increased after it was revealed that an advertiser boycott of social media platform X has led to a collapse in revenues.
X, formerly Twitter, has come in for some heavy criticism in recent weeks after allowing misinformation to be spread freely following the horrific attacks in Southport, in which three young girls were killed in the attack that took place during a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.
The misinformation played a significant role in far-right riots in towns and cities across the UK, while Musk has also welcomed back the likes of far-right figures and groups such as Tommy Robinson and Britain First on the platform.
City A.M. reports that ‘whereas pre-Musk Twitter was once a good avenue for brands to insert themselves into the biggest conversations, its unregulated nature has made it hard to convince his clients to part way with money on the site’.
“The great salespeople have left, the verification system is a mess, half your followers are now sexbots, the most interesting people have moved somewhere else, the people still there are posting less, and your timeline is just and endless stream of misery”, said Alex Wilson, a senior strategist at London agency Pitch.
He added: “How do you make the case for advertising on a platform like that?”
Figures reported in October last year, that monthly U.S. ad revenue at social media platform X has declined at least 55% year-over-year each month since billionaire Elon Musk bought the company.
The advertising boycotts may be catching up with Musk, with Fortune reporting earlier this month: “The last publicly available figures prior to Musk’s acquisition, from Q2 of 2022, had revenue at $661 million. After you account for inflation, revenue has actually collapsed by 84%, in today’s dollars.” Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
Nigel Farage is off to the US again for second time in seven weeks since becoming Clacton MP
The Mirror reveals that ‘Farage is jetting off to the US for the second time in barely a month where he is set to trouser a five-figure sum’.
While Nigel Farage’s constituents in Clacton complain that they have barely seen their newly elected MP, Farage is jetting off to the U.S. again for a second time in seven weeks.
The Reform UK leader has come in for some heavy criticism in recent weeks since becoming Clacton’s MP for his lack of commitment to his constituents, with many complaining that casework is going unanswered while he visits the U.S. and makes media appearances.
The Mirror reveals that ‘Farage is jetting off to the US for the second time in barely a month where he is set to trouser a five-figure sum’.
The paper adds: “Farage is the keynote speaker at Saturday’s “Keep Arizona Free Summit” in Scottdale, Arizona. The Clacton MP and Reform UK leader has already been paid an upfront deposit of nearly £12,000 for the speech.”
It comes after it was revealed that the arch Brexiteer is the UK’s highest-earning MP, having made almost £1.2 million a year from his nightly show on GB News, as well as penning a column for The Telegraph and from other media appearances.
Farage has defended his latest lucrative speaking gig by saying that the event was booked over a year ago and that he wasn’t the ‘sort of person to let people down’.
Within weeks of being elected to office, Farage flew off to the U.S. to show solidarity with Donald Trump after an assassination attempt on the Republican.
Carla Lewis, 43, a support worker and mother of four who lives in Clacton, told the Mirror: “I have emailed him twice. Once it was about the problems within the area, social housing, lack of jobs, poor education, mental health, violent crime which often goes unreported.
“The second time was about how the election affected my family. I was threatened and my children had racism towards them. I have had no response. I have not seen him here once since he did his campaign.” Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
Trade unions react with fury as college reject viable plan to save the Glasgow Trade Union Education Centre
Trade unions have vowed to step up the campaign to save the threatened City of Glasgow College Trade Union Education Centre after an alternative business plan for the Centre submitted over the summer by the Scottish TUC and college staff was rejected by college bosses.
The Centre has been in operation in one form or another for over 30 years and has helped educate thousands of trade union reps, shop stewards and members who work in many different fields of the Scottish economy.
In May, college managers announced that the centre was earmarked for closure, claiming it was financially unsustainable. Staff at the Centre disputed this and have since worked with the STUC to submit an alternative plan which would see the Centre continue and thrive.
Over the summer staff, students and unions have been left in limbo as college bosses considered the proposal but the plan has not been accepted.
A spokesperson for the Campaign to Save The Glasgow Trade Union Education Centre said: “Over the summer we have been inundated by unions seeking to book courses at the College but we have been blocked by senior management from enrolling students. There is no educational or financial reason for closing the Centre. With his actions, the College Principal, Paul Little, has shown his true colours. He is an anti-trade union Principal who will do anything he can to undermine the trade union movement.
“The proposal submitted by the STUC showed how the Centre is sustainable. We know unions want to take up places on courses and we know there is an appetite for more in the future. This decision makes no sense whatsoever.
“Let us say very clearly today: we are not going away. The campaign will continue and we will now turn our focus onto Holyrood and the political leaders who to date have not lifted a finger to prevent this disaster from happening.”
Roz Foyer General Secretary of the STUC said:“The STUC has written today to the Principal and the Cabinet Secretary outlining our concerns at the lack of progress in our discussions with the college.
“We have presented a viable plan which would generate a surplus for the Centre and which will provide the foundation to consolidate the future of the Trade Union Centre and help sustain it for many years to come.
“We remain committed to continuing discussions with the College but that process must be based on a genuine engagement which recognises the intensive work we have undertaken to prove the viability of the Centre.
“We are grateful that Trade Union education continues to be partly funded by the Scottish Government as a key strand of its commitment to the Fair Work agenda. We hope they will help the City of Glasgow College to see sense in the days ahead.”
Biden Taps 'Literal Arms Dealer' Mira Resnick for Top Israel Policy Post
"Genocide Joe's swan song is to institutionally entrench our support for Israel and make it as difficult as possible to disentangle it," lamented one observer.
U.S. State Department official Mira Resnick speaks during an official visit to Medellín, Colombia on July 13, 2023. (Photo: U.S. State Department)
Peace advocates on Friday voiced alarm over the Biden administration's selection of a senior official who has worked to speed the shipment of U.S. arms to Israel as the State Department's point person on Israel-Palestine policy.
HuffPostreported that Mira Resnick, the deputy assistant secretary of state for regional security in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, has been tapped to oversee Washington's handling of issues related to Israel and Palestine. In her current role, Resnick's office supervises around $40 billion in annual U.S. arms transfers.
Using a critical nickname for U.S. President Joe Biden, journalist and podcast host Emma Vigelandsaid on social media Friday, "Genocide Joe's swan song is to institutionally entrench our support for Israel and make it as difficult as possible to disentangle it, which the old fool views as romantic and righteous."
Over the past 10-plus months, the Biden administration has approved more than 100 arms sales to Israel worth billions of dollars. Earlier this month, the administration greenlighted a new $20 billion arms package for Israel.
The announcement of the package—which includes dozens of F-15 fighter jets, tens of thousands of 120mm mortar shells, over 32,700 tank shells, and 30 advanced missiles—came just days after Israeli forces used at least one U.S. bomb in an airstrike on a Gaza school where forcibly displaced Palestinians were sheltering, killing more than 100 people including women and children.
As criticism mounted over Israel's assault and siege on Gaza—which has left more than 144,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and has flattened most of the coastal enclave while stoking deadly famine and the spread of preventable diseases including polio—Resnick helped expedite the flow of U.S. arms to the key Middle Eastern ally.
She also worked with the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan wants to arrest for alleged war crimes including "extermination," to allow private citizens to donate equipment to the Israel Defense Forces.
Annelle Sheline, a former State Department official who resigned earlier this year over Biden's support for Israel amid a war for which the key ally is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice, told HuffPost that Resnick's appointment "reflects a doubling down on the administration's determination to continue to provide unconditional material support for Israel's genocidal campaign against civilians in Gaza."
American University of Beirut history professor Zeead Yaghi decried the Biden administration's appointment of "a literal arms dealer."
Last month, the Biden administration ended a two-month pause on the shipment of 500-pound bombs to Israel despite the frequent use of U.S.-supplied weapons by Israeli forces to commit alleged war crimes and genocide in Gaza. Biden has suspended transfers of 500- and 2,000-pound bombs manufactured by aerospace giant Boeing over fears the devastating munitions would be used in airstrikes on Rafah, the southern Gaza city where more than a million Palestinians had sought refuge.
Israel has dropped at least hundreds of 2,000-pound bombs—which the U.S. military avoids using in civilian areas because they can destroy entire city blocks—on Gaza, including in an October 31 attack on the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp that killed more than 120 civilians.
The U.S. is by far Israel's biggest arms supplier, providing around 70% of Israeli arms imports, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Tlaib Says She Is 'Ashamed of Our Country Looking Away' as Gaza Faces Polio Crisis
"We don't want your thoughts and prayers. We need action," said Rep. Rashida Tlaib.
A medical team from the Palestine Red Crescent Society administers polio vaccines to children at Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza on August 22, 2024. (Photo: Hani Alshaer/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the lone Palestinian American in the U.S. Congress, said Friday that she is "so saddened and ashamed of our country looking away and pretending they are trying to stop this madness" after the World Health Organization confirmed that a 10-month-old child in Gaza was paralyzed by polio.
"The first case of polio in more than 25 years, but no one will care because the baby is Palestinian," Tlaib (D-Mich.) lamented. "We don't want your thoughts and prayers. We need action."
Tlaib's comments came hours after U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris closed out the Democratic National Convention with a speech that acknowledged the "heartbreaking" suffering in Gaza without clearly identifying the perpetrators—the far-right Israeli government and its main arms supplier, the United States—or pledging to break with President Joe Biden's unwavering support for Israel.
"Vice President Harris has said that she supports a cease-fire in Gaza," Abbas Alawieh, co-founder of the Uncommitted National Movement, said in a statement Friday. "But a cease-fire cannot happen as long as the U.S. continues supplying the bombs used to kill people we love.
The Biden administration has continued to transfer lethal weaponry to the Israeli military even amid overwhelming evidence that the country's forces are using the arms to commit atrocities in Gaza, wiping out entire families and civilian infrastructure. Israel's blockade, meanwhile, is suffocating the enclave's population, forcing children to search rotting garbage for food as famine takes hold across the territory.
Last month, the already dire humanitarian emergency became even more grave after health officials detected poliovirus in sewage samples at several locations in southern and central Gaza.
On August 16, Gaza's health ministry confirmed that an unvaccinated 10-month-child in Deir al-Balah contracted polio; the World Health Organization said earlier this week that the child was partially paralyzed by the disease, for which there is no known cure.
A coalition of aid agencies and medical professionals warned Tuesday that "without immediate action, an entire generation is at risk of infection, and hundreds of children face paralysis by a highly communicable disease that can be prevented with a simple vaccine."
Over the past 48 hours, Israeli attacks have killed at least 69 Gazans and wounded 212 more, according to the enclave's health ministry.
Al Jazeerareported Saturday that "a woman and a young girl are among those killed in Israel's latest attack on the Bureij refugee camp."
"Their bodies, along with other children wounded by the assault, have been rushed to al-Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp," the outlet added. "Footage from the hospital, verified by Al Jazeera's fact-checking agency Sanad, shows several bloodied children receiving treatment, while a man weeps over the body of a deceased child."
UN Pleads for Gaza Cease-Fire to Administer Polio Vaccines. Israel Is Refusing
At the medical front in Gaza, the war to save the children is going very badly. It will be lost without a cease-fire.
Palestinian children carrying empty containers walk near stagnant wastewater in central Gaza on July 19, 2024. (Photo: Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images)
Julian Borger at The Guardian reports that the first verified case of type 2 poliovirus in 25 years in Gaza, in a baby, has resulted in the paralysis of the infant. It is only the first of many if the UN is not allowed to administer vaccines to 650,000 children in the Strip, which will definitely require a cease-fire. The Israeli authorities are refusing to consider this step.
There is no cure for polio once it is contracted. Its victims can be paralyzed or can die.
Without a cease-fire, UNICEF points out, you cannot get the families to line up their children to receive the vaccine by mouth. Some 95% of the infants in Gaza need to have the vaccine administered to prevent an outbreak, and they need two doses. Without a cease-fire, the aid workers cannot even safely move around to make arrangements for giving out the doses. The aid organizations want to use Deir al-Balah to store and distribute the vaccines, but the Israeli army has just once again ordered everyone out of it and has invaded it, risking destroying the remaining medical infrastructure there. Some 250,000 Palestinians have once again been expelled from their shelters since the beginning of August.
UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini warned regarding Gaza, “Delaying a humanitarian pause will increase the risk of spread among children.” He suggested that some Israeli children could suffer from an epidemic, as well, but of course Israeli children have largely been vaccinated continually. Palestinian children had also been almost entirely vaccinated up until the Israeli total war on Gaza was implemented last fall.
UNICEF wrote of another war, Ukraine, “UNICEF helps vaccinate over 400 million children globally against polio every year, to eradicate polio worldwide. In Ukraine, UNICEF works to secure uninterrupted availability of life-saving vaccines for children and adults and to maintain high routine immunization coverage. As the war and subsequent displacement continues, gaps in immunization coverage put children’s health at risk.”
Although children in Ukraine are also at risk from polio outbreaks, the human toll of that war pales in comparison to Gaza. Some 2,000 children have been killed as a result of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s total war on the Gaza population has blown over 15,000 children to smithereens.
Whereas Putin’s Russia has been massively sanctioned for its illegal occupation and warfare in Ukraine by the US and most NATO countries, Israel’s government, which illegally occupied Gaza in 1967 and which has shown a reckless disregard for civilian life that may amount to genocide, has been given tens of billions of dollars by the Biden administration.
Type 2 polio vaccinations are substantially down over the past ten months, since the population and the aid workers have been constantly expelled from a succession of supposed safe zones by the Israeli military, medical facilities have been destroyed, and medicine deliveries have been made difficult or impossible by the bombings, artillery barrages, machine gun fire, drone strikes, lack of fuel and general chaos deliberately inflicted on the entire population by monstrously permissive Israeli rules of engagement — which entirely disregard the value of civilian, noncombatant life.
“Gaza Polio,” by Juan Cole, Digital, Dream / Dreamland v. 3 / Clip2Comic, 2024
Although Israeli authorities are allowing the delivery of the refrigerated trucks necessary for the vaccines, as well as the vaccine doses themselves, through the Kerem Shalom crossing, the aid workers are pointing out that these steps do no good at all unless there is a cease-fire that allows the aid workers to move around and give the vaccines to the children. Borger quotes Lazzarini as saying, “It is not enough to bring the vaccines into Gaza and protect the cold chain. To have an impact, the vaccines must end up in the mouths of every child under the age of 10.”
UNICEF points out that “The world has made tremendous progress against polio in the past three decades, vaccinating over 2.5 billion children and reducing cases by 99 percent. But this progress is fragile, and we cannot afford to lose focus. Millions of children are still missing out on routine vaccinations because of pandemic disruptions, conflict, climate disasters, and displacement.”
It quotes Yuliia Dovjanych, Head Doctor at the ‘Dbayu’ medical centre “Infectious diseases do not disappear during the war. The fight against them is our ‘medical front’ where we must remain resilient. Therefore, we must continue to get vaccinated, take care of our health and the health of our children!” Some 11,520 civilians have been killed in the Ukraine war, whereas over 40,000 people have been killed in Gaza, a majority of them women and children.
At the medical front in Gaza, the war to save the children is going very badly. It will be lost without a cease-fire.
Isn't It Moronic: America Is Ready For A Better Story
Comrade Kamala Harris marches to victory Screenshot from MAGA parody video
Their unconscionable silence onGazastill festers. But the lofty, boisterous, eloquent DNC was still both gratifying and revealing of the chasm between Democrats and the mean-spirited, blundering MAGA world of "that hateful man," a dystopian pit where family love is "weird," Coach Walz is a Chinese spy - TiananmenTim! - J.D. Vance is a cringey horror and a blithering felon calls "Comrade Kamala" a moron. "What kind of America do we want?" asks a Harris ad. Not their dark, daft, cruel, reptilian one, thanks.
The joyful good will of this week's convention was perhaps most evident in their jubilant roll call, which stood in sharp contrast to the GOP's funereal, fear-mongering, consistently cruel event. Along with the multitude of grinning women of color, some of its highlights: Spike Lee front and center in New York's do-the-right-thing delegation, raucous Georgia delegates voting "in the spirit of (the much-missed John Lewis') good trouble," and Tennessee's beaming, rousing pastor, state rep and social justice advocate Justin Pearson declaring, "The movement for justice rooted in love is strong in Tennessee," where women, kids, those pushed down "will be lifted up," and "we believe justice will roll down like water, and righteousness like an ever-running stream."
There was also powerful rhetoric from two Obamas. Almost exactly 20 years after a soaring keynote in which he praised his parents' “faith in the possibilities of this nation - in no other country on earth is my story even possible," Barack echoed America's "central story, that we are all created equal...connected as one people." In a newly eyes-wide-open change, he also decried "a 78-year-old billionaire who hasn’t stopped whining...who sees power as a means to his end (to) put 'other' people in their place - an act that has gotten pretty stale." He made a dick joke, then got serious: "We do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos. We have seen that movie before, and we all know the sequel is usually worse. America is ready for a better story."
A fiery Michelle likewise both cited the belief that "you do unto others, you love thy neighbor," and blasted an entitled grifter who "demeans and cheapens our politics (by) demonizing others," which "only makes us small." “No one has a monopoly on what it means to be an American. No one,” she said. "Most of us will never be afforded (the) grace of failing forward...If we bankrupt a business (or) choke in a crisis, we don't have the luxury of whining or cheating others...We don't get to change the rules so we always win. We put our heads down. We get to work. In America, we do something." In a great, wry, final taunt, she mused of the man who spent years maligning her, "Who’s going to tell him the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs’?”
Other Dems piled on to decry what Charlie Pierce calls "a vulgar talking yam," the voice of "an unappeasable vengeance in the land." SNL's Kenan Thompson hauled in the massive Project 205 to warn against "a document that could kill a small animal and democracy at the same time." Oprah Winfrey described a neighborly, non-MAGA country where, "When a house is on fire, we don’t ask about the owner’s race or religion (or) wonder who their partner is. We just try to do the best we can to save them, and if the place (belongs) to a childless cat lady, we try to get the cat out too.” Hakeem Jeffries likened Trump to an old boyfriend you broke up with who won't go away: "Bro, we broke up with you for a reason." Pete Buttigieg called for an uplifting politics, but "darkness is what they are selling."
We need no further proof than the latest, lowest insanity being sent out into the world by an ever-uglier, wackier Trump: A video parody of Alanis Morisette's song Ironic, from Nazi pro-trump "Dilly Meme Team," starring Kamala Harris and titled Moronic. LOL. Get it?!? It features a swirling montage of...something. There are images of black guys in jail, Hunter Biden, Hunter and Joe, with Obama in charge. They are all awash in scary red fists, a hammer and sickle, a statue of Stalin, and marching/dancing Kamala is just like him, but more of a ho. They are accompanied by lyrics: "It's like jail/full of black inmates/no free ride/she will incarcerate/and she never thought/just giggles....Isn't it moronic? Don't you think/ a little too moronic?" Yes.
And so it goes. Trump is still weird, ugly, dangerous, idiotically wildly ill-informed: He persists in arguing tariffs, charges on imported goods, are paid by countries producing them: “It’s a tax on a country that’s ripping us off and stealing our jobs." Glumly speaking to a handful of silent, stony cops in Michigan, purportedly about crime, he claimed, "You can't walk across the street to get a loaf of bread, you get shot, you get mugged, you get raped, whatever it may be. You've seen it, I've seen it." In his fever dreams. Democrats "just have it out for the police, nobody knows why," he said of prosecutor and A.G. Harris' "pro-crime, anti-police record." He added, "She repeatedly wants to defund police, and you know it never goes away when you're a defunder...That's where her spirit is."
In a middle-of-the-night post, he blasted "highly overrated Jewish governor" Josh Shapiro, who refuses to acknowledge "I am the best friend that Israel and the Jewish people ever had" (and) it's not even close." (He is also 12 years old.) He claimed five people were killed at DNC protests. He says "we're very close to a third world war." He babbles "every American was safer under President Trump (when) I sat behind that beautiful Resolute desk." But Biden is copying him: "Guys are copying me. They thought the words were beautiful. Republicans were copying me because they happened to be right. Any of you guys want to copy me." Also, he's hosting a J6 Awards Gala next month at one of his crappy golf courses to honor the "peaceful J6 hostages."
Meanwhile, House goon James Comer, having finished trying to impeach Biden and issuing a long report that found no crimes, has moved on to smear America's Dad, corn-dog booster and Minnesota Nice teacher and coach Tim Walz as a Manchurian-Candidate-type Chinese agent who is maybe being "groomed" - More grooming! We're gonna be so neat! - to give China "a foothold in our government" because at 25 Walz taught in China for a year and later led students on multiple trips there. Comer told the FBI the House is investigating Walz' "extensive engagement" with China which "raises questions" about his decision-making, especially given he might have "ideology": "This is a guy that really has embraced China’s view of the world" - like it's the government's job to help people out of poverty - and "this is serious business!"
Comer gets pretty much everything wrong - "If you look at his background, especially when he ran for attorney general," he says of Walz, who never did 'cause he's not a lawyer - but the witless, paranoid "usual suspects" chimed in anyway. Tom Cotton: Walz "owes the American people an explanation." Marco Rubio: This is how Beijing "grooms future American leaders (to) allow China to steal our jobs & flood America with drugs.” Ron Johnson thinks it's "very strange" the Walz' married on June 4 - which nobody ever does - the anniversary of Tiananmen Square. In fact, Walz has been a vocal critic of Chinese human rights abuses. But when he met with the Dalai Lama, he says they mostly "talked about humility, patience and compassion. I try to embody these values every day in my work."
J.D. Vance, of course, not so much. After the stirring speeches of Obamas et al, there was the wooden fake hillbilly in North Carolina trying to make a speech to a handful of zealots without putting his foot in what turns out to be a consistently Nazi mouth. Utilizing all his political savvy, he called North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un fat - ""Let's just say he doesn't miss a whole lotta meals," smirked the chubby white boy - to tell what he inexplicably seemed to think was an endearing story about Orange Cheato making a snide remark to Jong Un. "Trump stands there, and insults him," he smiles to unexpected silence. "So it means something to have a president who's not afraid to go into hostile territory, tell some jokes and actually engage in diplomacy." Umm.
Rushing through more baffled silence, he yammered about criticism of Trump's tweets with an incomprehensible segue: "Mean tweets and world peace has a pretty nice ring to it." Then he launched into babbling sycophancy - "This is a lifetime opportunity to re-elect a man who's proven he's too big for the deep state bureaucracy, he's too tough for the tyrants all over the world, he was too strong even for an assassin's bullet" - and conspiracy: "They (sic) couldn't beat him at the ballot box, so they tried to bankrupt him," when "they" failed they tried to impeach him (failed), tried to put him in prison (ditto) "and they even tried to kill him." Per Julia Louis-Dreyfus at the DNC, "they" were probably highly intelligent, capable women, aka "a coven of semi-menstruating witches."
In Wisconsin, Vance made sure to smear both Tim Walz and Chicago, which he called "the murder capital of America thanks to very failed Democrat leadership," though it's not and has a lower murder rate than both Cleveland and Cincinnati in Vance's own state. His "little theory" about the DNC being held in Chicago: "Tim Walz has been going around saying that he served in war, so (now) he could actually accurately say that he visited a combat zone." Among many others, former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has his icky number: "A nice thing about not being mayor anymore is I don't care who hears me tell this clown to STFU." She joins the TikToker who held a J.D. Vance mock make-up tutorial "because who says gender-affirming care is only for the left?"
After a painful, pointlessly hostile "joke" aimed at reporters - To deli owner: "You have any food you really don’t like? We’ll take some and feed it to the journalists on the plane" - he did it again Thursday at a Georgia presser. "If it's a fake news anchor, I'd appreciate y'all just letting them ask their question," he "joked" to a small crowd. "It's okay, we can run them out of town after." The event ended with a blaring, baffling Guns 'N Roses Live and Let Die: "When you got a job to do you got to do it well." Then the hillbilly man of the people went to a donut shop and made an excruciating effort to have a normal chat with workers that consisted of asking each one, "How long have you worked here?" and each time dully responding, "OK." Live and let die indeed.
Back at the DNC, the weirdness and darkness lifted with the acceptance speech of plain-speaking, savvy coach and "son of the Nebraska plains" Tim Walz. In his pep talk - "It’s the fourth quarter, we’re on offense, and we’ve got the ball" - he said "neighbor" 7 times, "school" 8 times, "freedom" 9 times. He touted free school lunches: "While other states were banning books from their schools, we were banishing kids’ hunger from ours." He opened up about his and his wife Gwen's gratitude for access to IVF treatments after years of struggling to start a family "because this is a big part of what this election is about - freedom." A longtime hunter, he boasted he's "a better shot than most Republicans in Congress, and I've got the trophies to prove it."
His grinning, beefy former state championship football team came out to cheer for him; one member praised Coach Walz as the kind of guy who'd pull you out of a snowbank, which he knew because Walz once pulled him out of a snowbank. When he finished speaking, Walz walked off stage to one of his favorite songs, Neil Young's Rockin‘ in the Free World. (Young personally allowed the campaign to use the song; when the Trump campaign had earlier used it, Young sued them.) Before he left the stage, in the evening's most memorable coda, he looked straight at his family in the audience and declared, with shining eyes, "Hope, Gus and Gwen, you are my entire world, and I love you." His tearful son Gus, overcome with love, stood up and shouted, "That's my dad!"
To the normal world, it was a deeply moving moment, a familial coming together of a father and son who clearly, deeply love each other. But to the malevolent denizens of the party of alleged Christian, family values, it was "pathetic," "embarrassing," "weird" to see Walz' "stupid crying son" and “blubbering bitch boy" honor his father. "You raised your kid to be a puffy beta male," sneered MAGA goon Mike Crispi. "Does Barron Trump cry? Nope...That's the types (sic) of values I want leading this country." From radio host Jay Weber: "If the Walzs represent today's American man, this country is screwed." And from (single, childless) Ann Coulter, who once griped about having to watch 9/11 widows "marinate in their exquisite personal agony," "Talk about weird..."
Talk about monstrous. Some backed down, slightly, once they learned the Walz' had openly talked about Gus being neurodivergent, with a non-verbal learning disorder, anxiety and ADHD, conditions they call his "secret power," which "millions of Americans also have." But it was too late for the monsters to even remotely redeem themselves. "I can see why a child loving their parents would feel foreign to you," Rick Wilson told Coulter, musing she "will die alone, and forensic pathologists will discover her withered corpse is nothing but Marlboro reds and box wine." Added a Jesuit priest, "90% of the Christian life is: Don’t be mean." Even God joined in: "Thou shalt not say a single goddamn unkind word about Gus Waltz." And so did, memorably, profanely, TikToker "Rubyshoo."
Many of the DNC speeches, it was gladly noted, sought to reclaim "the roots of American democracy," with its symbols and its hopeful theme of rising from humble beginnings, working through darkness and coming into light. At one after-party, Haitian-born rapper Wyclef Jean played a ripping Star Spangled Banner like Hendrix at Woodstock before proclaiming, "I’m the best of the American dream." Part of that recovery meant taking on a tattered "patriotic" mantle the right-wing has long and wrongly claimed for itself. "Fighting the climate crisis is patriotic," declared Maxwell Frost, Generation Z’s first Congressman. "And unlike Donald Trump, our patriotism is more than some damn slogan on a hat. It's about giving a damn about the people who live in this country."
Often, the rage at Trump and the devastation he wrought was palpable. Al Sharpton on a grifter intent only on "making himself richer and sowing division to get that done": "In November, we’re gonna show him when Blacks do their jobs." "Harris understands what our military is for - to defend us from foreign enemies," said former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. "It is not to threaten Americans, and it sure as hell isn't to put immigrants in camps." Soon, said an impassioned Yusef Salaam, one of the exonerated Central Park Five and now a New York Council member, "We will finally say goodbye to that hateful man." He went on, "We will say what I said after 7 long years of wrongful incarceration: Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last."
"The character of the people we put into leadership will determine what that government does," said Harris in her acceptance speech. Trump "is an unserious man," she noted, but the consequences of giving him power are deadly serious: "Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails." She went on to highlight "what's happening in our country because of Donald Trump," and what could lie ahead. He and his allies would limit access to birth control, ban medication abortion, enact a nationwide abortion ban with or without Congressional approval. "And get this, get this," she said. "He plans to create a national anti-abortion coordinator and force states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions. Simply put - they are out of their minds."
With his odds shrinking, that's truer than ever. After Harris' speech, he called Fox to jabber about her fictional misdeeds, so rattled he kept hitting his beeping phone buttons. Asked about his strategy to win back voters drawn to her, he sputtered, "She’s not having success. I’m having success." Pundits say Harris and Walz will likely continue to rise in the polls. They are looking and sounding good, not least in a fabulous, Jeffrey-Wright-narrated, prosecutor-vs-felon-themed ad featuring Beyoncé's thunderousFreedom; she gave them permission but sent Trump a cease-and-desist letter. "Are you ready to make your voice heard?" asks Harris in the soaring ad. "When we fight, we win." If she can summon the critical strength to stop killing and maiming children in Gaza, we will.
