Bernie Sanders DESTROYS Netanyahu’s ‘antisemitism’ lies

from thefreeonline on 28th April 2024 info- Agencies/Home News

It is “not anti-Semitic” to criticize the Israeli government’s policies, the US senator has insisted

US Senator Bernie Sanders has hit back at remarks made by the prime minister of Israel, that pro-Palestinian protests at US universities were being overrun by antisemitism on a scale comparable to the rise of Nazism in Germany.

“No, Mr Netanyahu, it is not antisemitic or pro-Hamas to point out that, in a little over six months, your extremist government has killed over 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 78,000,” Sanders said, stressing that 70% of these were women and children.

US police arrested more than 80 protesters on Wednesday in a crackdown on the pro-Palestine demonstrations taking place at dozens of universities across the country. Students have been demanding that Washington cease all funding for the Israeli military and “stop giving them any more money to continue this genocide,” referring to the ongoing Israeli offensive against Hamas militants in Gaza.

In a video posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Friday, Sanders, the progressive senator from Vermont – who is Jewish – accused Netanyahu of insulting “the intelligence of the American people” by using antisemitism to distract attention from the policies of his “extremist and racist government” in the military offensive in Gaza.

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NATO Begins Deploying Troops in Ukraine

Stephen Bryen NATO is starting to deploy combat troops to Ukraine.  They are in uniform and mostly are concentrated in the western part of the country, although in some cases they are close to the actual fighting in the east.  Soldiers from Poland, France, the UK, Finland and other NATO members are arriving in larger numbers.  […]

NATO Begins Deploying Troops in Ukraine

Israeli Oppression in Gaza Continues: ‘Israel’ committed New massacre in the Nuseirat Camp

April 27, 2024 Live News – Middle East – News – Palestine – Top ‘Israel’ has once again committed a new massacre in the Nuseirat Camp in Gaza. Early this morning, eight Palestinians, including women and children, were killed, and dozens were injured due to Israeli bombings of two residential homes. The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) aircraft targeted a house in the al-Sultan […]

Israeli Oppression in Gaza Continues: ‘Israel’ committed New massacre in the Nuseirat Camp

Palestine Solidarity Information, Analysis, Local Actions and Events for the week of April 28th

It has been more than 6 months since the Israeli government began their most recent assault on Gaza and the West Bank. The retaliation for the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel, has escalated to what the international community has called genocide, therefore, GRIID will be providing weekly links to information and analysis that we […]

Palestine Solidarity Information, Analysis, Local Actions and Events for the week of April 28th

‘Unprecedented’: How bird flu became an animal pandemic

from thefreeonline on by India Bourke, at ‘TheExtinctionChronicles and BBC.future

(Credit: Ben Wallis)

Bird flu is decimating wildlife around the world and is now spreading in cows. In the handful of human cases seen so far it has been extremely deadly.

The tips of Lineke Begeman’s fingers are still numb from a gruelling mission. In March, the veterinary pathologist was part of an international expedition to Antarctica’s Northern Weddell Sea, studying the spread of High Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), the virus that has now encircled the globe, causing the disease known as bird flu. 

Cutting into the frozen bodies of wild birds that the team collected, Begeman was able to help establish whether they had died from the disease. The conditions were harsh and the location remote, far from her usual base at the Erasmus Medical Centre in the Netherlands. But systematic monitoring like this could provide a vital warning for the rest of the world.

“If we don’t study the extent of its spread now, then we can’t let people know what the consequences are of having let it slip through our fingers when it began,” Begeman tells BBC Future Planet. “I imagine the virus as an explorer going through the world, to new places and bird species, and we’re following it along.”

Relatively few people have caught the virus so far, but it has had a high mortality rate in those that do: more than 50% of people known to become infected have died.

Antonio AlcamíAn expedition to the Antarctic’s Northern Weddell Sea has systematically studied bird flu’s spread in this remote, wildlife-rich region (Credit: Antonio Alcamí)

Moreover, the impact on animals has already been devastating. Since it was first identified, the H5 strain of avian influenza and its variants have led to the slaughter of over half a billion farmed birds. Wild-bird deaths are estimated in the millionswith around 600,000 in South America since 2023 alone – and both numbers potentially far higher due to the difficulties of monitoring. At least 26 species of mammals have also been infected.

In Antarctica’s Northern Weddell Sea, Begeman and her colleagues sampled around 120 carcasses from different species, including several Antarctic fur seals. The virus was detected at four of the 10 sites they visited.

It was not the first time bird flu had been detected on this remote continent. That first case was a month prior, in February 2024. But theirs was the first confirmation from this particular region, and the first time, Begeman believes, that a multidisciplinary team had set out to systematically determine its Antarctic spread.

Matteo LervolinoMillions of wild birds are estimated to have died from the spread of high pathogenic avian influenza (Credit: Matteo Lervolino)

“The moment we found the first evidence of that destructive serial killer virus amidst such a bird-rich, pristine area, we realised what disaster is about to happen and it became sickening indeed,” says Begeman.

Already the worst bird flu outbreak in wildlife on record, scientists like Begeman are now racing to track its journey – and so better understand how its further spread among humans might be stopped.

Where does bird flu come from? 

China’s southern Guangdong region is a mosaic of lakes, rivers and wetlands. These watery habitats are well suited to aquatic birds, who are natural hosts for low pathogenic avian flu. And it was here, in 1996, that a farmed goose became the world’s first bird to be diagnosed with a new, highly pathogenic strain of the virus, known as H5N1. 

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Worse Than You Can Imagine |  West plotted with Israel to Starve 2.3m in Gaza! – Craig Murray

from thefreeonline on by Craig Murray

Governments cannot take big decisions extremely quickly except in the most extreme of circumstances. There are mechanisms in all states that consider policy decisions, weigh them up, involve the various departments of the state whose activities are affected by that decision, and arrive at a conclusion, though not necessarily a good one.

The decision to stop aid funding to UNRWA was not taken by numerous Western states in a single day.

In the UK, several different government ministries had to coordinate. Even within only a single ministry, the FCDO, views would have to be coordinated through written submissions and interdepartmental meetings between the departments dealing with the Middle East, with the United Nations, with the United States, with Europe and then of course between the diplomatic and development wings of the ministry.

That process would include seeking the views of British Ambassadors to Tel Aviv, Doha, Cairo, Riyadh, Istanbul and Washington and to the United Nations in Geneva and in New York.

It is not necessarily a lengthy process but it is not a day’s work, and nor would it need to be. There was no practical impact to making the announcement of cutting UNRWA funding a day sooner or a day later.

Consider that the parallel process had to be completed in the United States, in Canada, in Germany, in Australia and in all the other Western powers that contributed to starvation in Gaza by cutting aid to UNRWA.

All of these countries had to go through their procedures, and it could only be by prior coordination – weeks in advance – between these states that they announced all on the same day the destruction of the life support system for Palestinians, then in absolute need.

And then consider that we now know for certain that the Israelis had produced no evidence whatsoever of UNRWA complicity in Hamas resistance, on which these decisions in all those states were allegedly based.

I have no doubt at all that the Western political elite, paid tools of the zionist machine, are complicit in the genocide of Palestinians and ethnic cleansing of Gaza at a much deeper level than the people have yet understood. The refusal by Starmer and Sunak to contemplate ending arms sales and military support to Israel is not due to inertia or concern for the arms industry. It is that they actively support the destruction of the Palestinians.

This sent the clearest signal in response that the Western powers would not be stopped from the genocide by international law or institutions.

Continue reading “Worse Than You Can Imagine |  West plotted with Israel to Starve 2.3m in Gaza! – Craig Murray”

Los BRICS y su Nuevo Banco de Desarrollo

¿Ofrecen los BRICS y su Nuevo Banco de Desarrollo alternativas al Banco Mundial, al FMI y a las políticas promovidas por las potencias imperialistas tradicionales? Por Eric Toussaint | 26/04/2024 | Economía En los últimos años el rechazo legítimo a las políticas promovidas por las potencias imperialistas tradicionales (América del Norte, Europa Occidental y Japón) seguido de los anuncios realizados por los BRICS (Brasil, Rusia, India, China, Sudáfrica) han despertado un gran interés y la expectativa de grandes cambios, incluida la creación de una moneda común para cuestionar el dólar como moneda dominante.[…]

Los BRICS y su Nuevo Banco de Desarrollo