Tag Archives: invasion

The facts about the Israeli attack on al-Shifa hospital are out – and DAMNING

Useless: the incubators at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza are now without power, due to the Israeli assault – and babies are dying. The IDF invaders don’t care a jot.

Israel’s excuse for attacking and shutting down the largest and most important provider of medical care for the population of Gaza has been shredded into tatters, leaving that country guilty of a flagrant – unforgivable – war crime. Or so it seems to This Writer.

Let’s look at the evidence, starting with a bit of context. This is from Consortium News – to which I was pointed by award-winning (and impeccably-credentialed) UK journalist John Pilger:

The Israeli claim that Shifa hospital was providing such a cover for an Hamas military presence there is in fact the longest running theme in Israeli war propaganda on Gaza, dating back nearly 15 years to the first days of the Gaza war of January 2009.

That was when Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel’s domestic intelligence service Shin Bet, told Amos Harel of Haaretz newspaper that “many” senior Hamas officials were “believed” to be hiding in the “basements” of Shifa hospital, and that the Israelis knew all about those underground levels of the hospital, because they had originally been been built by the Egyptians before 1967 and extensively refurbished by the Israelis themselves in the mid-1980s.

Diskin also explained to Harel that Hamas was confident that it wouldn’t be attacked, because of the patients on the upper floors.

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Apart from the fact that Israel’s intelligence service had admitted that it only suspected Hamas’ military presence under the hospital rather than having actual knowledge, Harel was, however, honest enough to report that his Palestinian contacts were telling him senior Hamas leaders never stayed in the same location but constantly moved from one location to another — a revelation that obviously made far more sense than the claim that those same senior Hamas officials were hanging out in a basement that was obviously well known to the Israelis.

But Hamas’ tunnels outside Shifa could obviously be used for the same function of command of military operations without having to bother with Shifa hospital.

So the drumbeat of Israeli concern about the alleged Hamas command bunker underneath Shifa appears to have been a phony issue from the start, aimed merely at bringing pressure to bear on the medical system, namely to close down Shifa as the largest, most modern and most effective hospitals in Gaza to create the maximum amount of suffering to the people of Gaza.

The article also states:

An attack on a hospital is normally considered a clear violation of the rules of war. The Israeli Defense Forces is justifying it by claiming that Shifa has long served as civilian medical  cover for the command center of the entire Hamas war operations and weapons storage.

That IDF claim has been cited constantly in Israeli propaganda as an argument that Shifa — and other hospitals in Gaza — should not be accorded the normal legal hospital immunity from attack.

Right. So: if no Hamas command centre and weapons store was discovered at the hospital, Israel’s attack on it must be a war crime.

What’s the situation there now?

The following refers to the Biden administration in the United States giving its support to the Israeli al-Shifa invasion – reported in Consortium News as follows:

CNN reported Monday night that “the Biden administration has now signaled that it supports the Israeli position, as National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan declared on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday: ‘You can see even from open-source reporting that Hamas does use hospitals, along with a lot of other civilian facilities, for command-and-control, for storing weapons, for housing its fighters.’”

Those Sullivan remarks were an obvious green light for the IDF to press on for complete evacuation of the hospital.

The problem with that “open source reporting” is that it is never anything more than unsupported claims based on mere supposition.

If you’re not convinced by any of the above, then the BBC’s Verify team has examined the evidence – and has also found Israel’s evidence wanting:

The verdict seems clear: there is no evidence that al-Shifa was ever used as a base for terrorist operations by Hamas and any equipment that has been used by Israeli forces to indicate the same was brought there by them.

Where are Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak to tell us Israel has the right to defend itself by depriving Gazan citizens of medical care and, ultimately, their lives?


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Suella Braverman rants about a migrant ‘invasion’

UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman delivered a statement about an attack on a concentration camp for people who have entered the UK by illegal means, on October 31.

She then had her posterior handed to her by Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who tackled her on the Conservative government’s failure to handle the issue in any meaningful way, and Braverman’s own failures to follow the rules affecting government ministers.

This provoked Braverman into one of the far-right rants for which she is becoming justly famous.

It begins around three minutes before the end of the clip, but please do watch Yvette Cooper’s speech because it really is worthwhile.

Here’s the clip:

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#BBC uses military parade as #Ukraine ‘invasion’ footage. #Propaganda?

Following on from an article This Site has literally just published, pointing out that calls to censor Russia Today as a state-sponsored propaganda unit make no sense when the BBC is unhindered, here’s Skwawkbox:

The BBC has been caught presenting video of a military parade fly-by as footage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Full Fact confirmed that the video broadcast on the Breakfast programme yesterday as showing the invasion was in fact 2020 footage of a fly-past as part of a parade in May 2020.

The BBC claimed the footage was ‘used once briefly in error’ and that it had spoken to staff about the importance of checking what they are showing.

It’s very difficult to use old footage “in error” as it has to be specially ordered from the BBC archive.

Skwawkbox points out that the BBC was caught using this dodge before – swapping old footage of Boris Johnson laying a Remembrance Day wreath for current images in which he insulted veterans by laying it upside-down in 2019. The BBC did apologise for this – although it did not admit doing it to cover up the insult.

In a similar vein, the BBC has been running articles on false images purporting to be of the Russia-Ukraine conflict while in fact being archive footage or images from video games – here’s one – but there has been no article acknowledging its own use of such material (at the time of writing).

Source: BBC uses military parade as Ukraine ‘invasion’ footage – but their excuse is ‘near-impossible’ – SKWAWKBOX

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#Ukraine: #BorisJohnson wanted a #war; now he’s got it. What is he going to do?

Pointing the finger: Vladimir Putin is blaming Ukraine, Nato and the west for backing him into a corner from which he considers his only option to be invading Ukraine. It’s a point well-made.

The unthinkable has happened, then.

Faced with Western determination to put Nato troops on Ukraine’s border with Russia – in territory that is currently disputed, with three regions trying to break away  – Vladimir Putin has launched an invasion.

Clearly Boris Johnson’s sanctions have caused the Russian president no concern at all. In fact, the measures against a tiny number of Russian banks and billionaires have given the so-called oligarchs who have donated to Johnson’s Conservatives a chance to withdraw their cash, making the UK more vulnerable to attack from Russia, if any response to the invasion is made.

And Russia has stated that it will respond instantly if any other nation tries to interfere.

The UK is absolutely unprepared for such a response. Johnson and Tory governments preceding him have reduced our conventional military capability to a fraction of what it once was. He can’t send troops to Ukraine and expect to win.

If Johnson takes the nuclear option, it’s the end for all of us. He is stupid enough to do it (if Joe Biden lets him, and I have no doubt that Biden would authorise it if his military-industrial backers told him to).

Johnson has said Putin has taken a path of “bloodshed and destruction”, saying it is a “catastrophe for our continent” – and he’s not wrong in that. But has he stopped for a moment to consider the effect of his own jingoism, sabre-rattling and provocation?

Putin made it clear that he feared encirclement by Nato forces and Johnson, Biden and Nato ignored those fears, claiming that Putin was the aggressor.

As a result, Putin can say that he was forced into this invasion in order to defend the people of his country.

To provide a comparison with nature, when you’ve backed a wild animal into a corner and it is baring its fangs at you, you don’t scream at it. It will have no choice but to attack you.

Don’t get me wrong. Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine is unacceptable. But he is absolutely not the only one to blame for it.

Here in the UK, we have leaders who are not only corrupt and criminal; they are also stupid.

They will be delighted to risk millions of deaths across Europe and in this country, simply to take attention away from themselves.

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Are supporters of Mike’s libel accusers invading his privacy to threaten him?

Here’s a strange thing. I’ve started receiving emails from someone claiming to have infected my computer with a virus.

That’s all I know as I found them in my junk mailbox and didn’t open them. I deleted them instead.

Presumably there’s a threat to do some kind of harm to my system, or to publish secrets that I don’t want people to know, if I don’t cough up some cash. There’s always a threat of some kind involved in these things.

As I say, I deleted the messages so I don’t know what it was. It’s my policy, for reasons that should be obvious.

But then I thought: “Why now?”

We know that supporters of the two TV personalities who are alleging libel against me are skilled in tracking down people they want to target.

Those people, their relatives and friends, employers, and the heads of academic institutions where some are studying have been contacted with malicious messages. That fact is one aspect of my case.

I heard tonight that one person lost their job because of the lies these people peddle.

That revelation made me question whether the emails I had received might have been sent by supporters of my opponents, with the intention – at the very least – of knocking me off-balance; re-directing my concentration away from the case.

I wonder if those responsible will take this any further.

I wonder, also, if right-thinking people are prepared to accept that supporters of my opponents are invading the privacy of strangers in order to harm them.

Are you?

If not, I’ve got a remedy: Support my crowdfunding appeal so I can defend myself against the false claims levelled against me.

I cannot win this case on my own and the amount raised so far – while impressive – isn’t enough to see a court case through to its conclusion.

Think of it this way: If you say something these people don’t like, you could be next on their list.

And that is not a welcome thought!

If you have already contributed, please don’t feel pressured into doing so again unless you genuinely have the spare cash to justify it. If you haven’t – and you can – please do.

And please share information about the appeal, along with this message.

You can do this several ways:

  1. Email five friends who may be sympathetic, and encourage them to donate.
  2. Share the campaign on Facebook: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/
  3. Tweet the campaign link to your followers.

Too few people know about this! We need to make the world aware of what’s happening here.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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Internet surveillance plan will extend – not create – a communications ‘police state’

Nobody should be looking forward to having Big Brother watching us through our monitors, but he’s already reading our mail and listening to our phone calls.

Government monitoring of our mail and phone messages has been going on for years, and Theresa May’s plan to monitor every UK citizen’s online activity is merely an extension of this.

It’s still an unwarranted invasion of our privacy, but when has any government ever let that stop it?

According to the BBC, the current government’s plans mean service providers will have to store details of internet use in the UK for a year, to allow police and intelligence services to access it.

It will include for the first time details of messages sent on social media, webmail, voice calls over the internet and gaming in addition to emails and phone calls.

The data includes the time, duration, originator and recipient of a communication and the location of the device from which it is made.

Hold on, did I say “for the first time” details of messages on social media?

What about the police who called on a female disability activist last week, in her home at midnight, in relation to comments she’d posted on Facebook about the Department for Work and Pensions’ cuts?

According to her account on the Pride’s Purge blog, “They told me they had come to investigate criminal activity that I was involved in on Facebook… They said complaints had been made about posts I’d made on Facebook about the Jobcentre.”

(All right, I know what you’re going to say – those posts were publicly-accessible. The point is that the police are already using social media to target people – in this case, an innocent woman)

According to Peter Fahy, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, the planned legislation is “absolutely vital” in “proving associations” between criminals, and it was often possible to penetrate the top of a criminal gang by linking “foot soldiers” to those running operations.

Is this in the same way the police were able to use the postal service to target terrorist gangs? Because I’ve got a story about that.

It concerns a young man who was enjoying a play-by-mail game with other like-minded people. A war game, as it happens. They all had codenames, and made their moves by writing letters and putting them in the post (this was, clearly, before the internet).

One day, said young fellow arrived home from work (or wherever) to find his street cordoned off and a ring of armed police around it.

“What’s going on?” he asked a burly uniformed man who was armed to the teeth.

“Oh you can’t come through,” he was told. “We’ve identified a terrorist group in one of these houses and we have to get them out.”

“But I live on this street,” said our hero, innocently. “Which house is it?”

The constable told him.

“But that’s my house!” he said.

And suddenly all the guns were pointing at him.

They had reacted to a message he had sent, innocently, as part of the game. They’d had no reason to open the letter, but had done it anyway and, despite the fact that it was perfectly clear that it was part of a game, over-reacted.

What was the message?

“Ajax to Achilles: Bomb Liverpool!”

Expect further cock-ups of similar nature, pretty much as soon as the current proposals become law.