8/27/2024

francis ford coppola - disgusting for years

 this:


Francis Ford Coppola told Rolling Stone that he didn’t want Megalopolis to be looked upon as “some woke Hollywood production,” which is why the cast includes a few controversial actors.

Megalopolis features a sprawling ensemble cast, which includes Jon Voight, noted for his conservative views and being a staunch supporter of Donald Trump, as well as Shia LaBeouf, who has been accused of sexual assault. “What I didn’t want to happen is that we’re deemed some woke Hollywood production that’s simply lecturing viewers,” Coppola said. “The cast features people who were canceled at one point or another. There were people who are archconservatives and others who are extremely politically progressive. But we were all working on one film together. That was interesting, I thought.“

b.s. he did it because he's scum of the earth trash and always has been.  

i'm not a dumb bimbo like gloria steinem.  woody allen was convicted of nothing when she 'wrote' 1 of her many bad books. 'moving beyond words.'  in it, she attacks woody while praising francis.

director and writer woody has created a ton of amazing roles for women.  diane keaton, cate blanchett?  both won academy awards for best actress in woody's films. dianne wiest won 2 best supporting actress academy awards for woody allen films (two more actresses also won in the best supporting category for performances in woody allen's films).

gloria looked like a bimbo idiot with her stupid slam on woody as 'a feminist' for his films.  

diane keaton was also in francis' 'the godfather' films - and did nothing until the 3rd one.  typical for francis films.  they were supporting actresses.  'peggy sue got married' changes things but he did not initiate that project.  jonathan demme did.  then the studio hired penny marshall.  she left the project.  francis, whose career was in the toilet by then, directed it. and directed it poorly.  that should have been a good film.  kathleen turner really tries in it.  but he's not interested in peggy sue.  2 years after gloria wrote to praise him, it was already known that he had treated winona ryder hideously on the set of 'dracula.'  'rolling stone' had done a lengthy story on it.  and he's been that way, over the years, with a lot of women.  a lot.

he's not been better with men.  matt damon?  he thought matt was too effete.  maybe matt is.  but matt was the only reason 'the rainmaker' was getting made.  to try to get a performance out of him he bellowed 'bigger' over and over on the set and finally told matt to unzip his pants, pull it out and stroke it during a major speech to the jury.

matt was stupid enough to do that.

francis is in trouble currently - let's leave the 90s and skip to this year - because he harassed multiple women on the set of this film:

Anonymous crew members described Coppola's on-set conduct as unprofessional. On February 14, 2023, a "celebratory Studio 54-esque club scene" was filmed at the Tabernacle, a concert hall in Atlanta, for which 150–200 extras were assembled, with some being cleared for "topless nudity" or to be "scantily clad".[64] Crew members alleged that, during the shoot, Coppola pulled women to sit on his lap and kissed female extras to "get them in the mood". In response, executive producer Darren Demetre said, "Francis walked around the set to establish the spirit of the scene by giving kind hugs and kisses on the cheek to the cast and background players. It was his way to help inspire and establish the club atmosphere ... I was never aware of any complaints of harassment or ill behaviour during the course of the project."[10] When asked about the accusations, Coppola said, "My mother told me that if you make an advance toward a woman, it means you disrespect her, and the girls I had crushes on, I certainly didn't disrespect them." He also referred to a photo of a girl he kissed on the cheek that her father had taken, adding, "I knew her when she was nine. I'm not touchy-feely. I'm too shy."[65]

Videos of the encounters at the Tabernacle surfaced in July 2024, with sources telling Variety that Coppola had often inadvertently inserted himself into frame while interacting with extras and had announced on a microphone after multiple takes, "Sorry, if I come up to you and kiss you. Just know it's solely for my pleasure." Another source mentioned that, "Because Coppola funded it there was no HR department to keep things in check." Intimacy coordinators were not on set when the scene was shot and bystanders were reportedly told by senior crew members that they were not authorized to share recordings of the encounters because of non-disclosure agreements.[64] Days later, extras in the videos spoke out. Rayna Menz denounced the accusations against Coppola of inappropriate behavior, stating, "He did nothing to make me or for that matter anyone on set feel uncomfortable."[66] Meanwhile, Lauren Pagone said, "I was in shock. I didn't expect him to kiss and hug me like that. I was caught off guard," and expressed frustration with Menz' statement: "You can't speak for anyone but yourself. My experience was different." Another crew member alleged that Coppola kissed multiple women after calling "cut" for a different scene involving a New Year's Eve party that ended with kisses: "The women that I saw being kissed did not see him coming. He just basically grabbed them and planted the kiss on them without any kind of consent."[67] In response, Coppola said, "The young women I kissed on the cheek, in regards to the New Year's scene, they were young women I knew", accusing those The Guardian reporters, reportedly the same ones who provided quotes to The Hollywood Reporter about Coppola's crew being fired or resigned, of making up those fake news right before the Cannes premiere to "damage" Megalopolis because he doesn't follow Hollywood's modern rules.[32]


he is scum.  that's why he hired the people he did.  his film is a critical bomb and has an outlandish shooting budget of $120 million.

let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'


Tuesday, August 27, 2024.  As things worsen in Gaza, it's time to admit that the ICC has done and is doing nothing.



Yesterday, Human Rights Watch issued an important report:

Israeli forces have arbitrarily detained Palestinian healthcare workers in Gaza since hostilities began in October 2023, deported them to detention facilities in Israel, and allegedly tortured and ill-treated them, Human Rights Watch said today. The detention of healthcare workers in the context of the Israeli military’s repeated attacks on hospitals in Gaza has contributed to the catastrophic degradation of the besieged territory’s healthcare system.

Released doctors, nurses and paramedics described to Human Rights Watch their mistreatment in Israeli custody, including humiliation, beatings, forced stress positions, prolonged cuffing and blindfolding, and denial of medical care. They also reported torture, including rape and sexual abuse by Israeli forces, denial of medical care, and poor detention conditions for the general detainee population. 

“The Israeli government’s mistreatment of Palestinian healthcare workers has continued in the shadows and needs to immediately stop,” said Balkees Jarrah, acting Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The torture and other ill-treatment of doctors, nurses, and paramedics should be thoroughly investigated and appropriately punished, including by the International Criminal Court (ICC).”

From March to June 2024, Human Rights Watch interviewed eight Palestinian healthcare workers who were taken by the Israeli military from Gaza between November and December 2023 and detained without charge for between seven days and five months. Six were detained at work following Israeli sieges of hospitals or during hospital evacuations that they said had been coordinated with the Israeli military. None of the healthcare workers said they were ever informed of the reason for their detention or charged with an offense. Human Rights Watch also spoke with seven people who witnessed Israeli soldiers detaining healthcare workers carrying out their duties. 

Human Rights Watch sent a letter to the Israeli military and Israeli Prison Services with the preliminary findings on August 13 but has not received a response.

All the healthcare workers interviewed provided similar accounts of mistreatment in Israeli custody. After being in Gaza, they were deported to detention facilities in Israel, including the Sde Teiman military base in the Negev desert and Ashkelon prison, or, forcibly transferred to the Anatot military base near East Jerusalem and the Ofer detention facility, in the occupied West Bank. All said that they were stripped, beaten, and blindfolded and handcuffed, for many weeks on end, and pressured to confess to being members of the Hamas movement with various threats of indefinite detention, rape, and killing their families in Gaza. 

A surgeon said he was “wearing scrubs and Crocs” when Israeli forces detained him during their siege of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, Gaza, in December. “We were 50 healthcare workers, including nurses and doctors,” he said. “The soldier on the microphone ordered men and boys over 15 years old to evacuate the hospital.... When they took us out of the hospital, they told us to undress and stay in our underwear.” 

One paramedic said that at the Sde Teiman detention facility he was suspended from a chain attached to handcuffs, electroshocked, denied medical care for broken ribs caused by beatings, and administered what he believed was a psychoactive drug before interrogations. “It was so degrading, it was unbelievable,” he said. “I was helping people as a paramedic, I never expected something like this.” 

Healthcare workers also reported being punished in detention for moving or speaking, and collectively punished if other detainees spoke. “Sometimes if one spoke, they [soldiers] punished the whole warehouse [at Naqab prison], collectively,” one healthcare worker said.

The Gaza Health Ministry reported that Israeli forces have detained at least 310 Palestinian healthcare workers since October 7. Healthcare Workers Watch-Palestine, a nongovernmental organization, documented 259 detentions of healthcare workers and collected 31 accounts describing torture and other abuses by Israeli authorities, including the use of stress positions, deprivation of adequate food and water, threats of sexual violence and rape, and degrading treatment. Healthcare Workers Watch-Palestine helped Human Rights Watch interview released healthcare workers. 

The prolonged arbitrary detention and mistreatment of healthcare workers has exacerbated the health crisis in Gaza, Human Rights Watch said. Since October, over 92,000 people in Gaza have been wounded, functional hospitals have fewer than 1,500 inpatient beds, and yet the Israeli authorities have allowed only 35 percent of nearly 14,000 people who requested medical evacuations to leave Gaza, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on August 5. 

The healthcare workers’ accounts are consistent with independent reports, including by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Israeli news media, and rights groups, documenting dozens of detainee accounts of incommunicado detention, beatings, sexual violence, forced confessions, electrocution, and other torture and abuses of Palestinians in Israeli detention.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on June 3 that the Israeli military was conducting criminal investigations into the deaths of 48 Palestinians in Israeli detention facilities since October 7. These include Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, a surgeon and head of orthopedics at al-Shifa Hospital, and Dr. Eyad al-Rantisi, the director of a women’s health center at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia.  

Common article 3 to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, applicable to hostilities between Israel and the Palestinian armed groups, provides that “[p]ersons taking no active part in the hostilities … shall in all circumstances be treated humanely.” “Cruel treatment and torture” and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment” are prohibited at all times. Those wounded and sick “shall be … cared for.” 

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, applicable to occupied territories, prohibits individual forcible transfers within the occupied territory as well as deportations of civilians from occupied territory to the occupying power’s territory, regardless of the motive. Serious violations of Common article 3 and article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention committed with criminal intent are war crimes

Human Rights Watch has found that Israeli authorities for decades have failed to provide credible accountability for torture and other abuses against Palestinian detainees. According to official Israeli statistics, between 2019 and 2022, 1,830 complaints of abuse were opened against Israeli Prison Services officers, with none resulting in a criminal conviction. Israeli authorities have not allowed independent humanitarian agencies access to Palestinian detainees since the start of hostilities. 

Governments should support international justice efforts to address Israeli abuses against Palestinian detainees and hold those responsible to account. The United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and other countries should press Israel to end its abusive detention practices, which form one aspect of systematic oppression underlying Israeli authorities’ crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution against Palestinians.

The ICC is considering arrest warrant applications against senior Israeli officials for grave international crimes and should ensure that its investigation addresses abuses against Palestinian detainees. Israel’s allies should press the government to urgently allow independent monitoring of detention facilities.

“The torture of Palestinian healthcare workers is a window into the much larger issue of the Israeli government’s treatment of detainees generally,” Jarrah said. “Governments should publicly call on the Israeli authorities to release unlawfully detained healthcare workers and end the cruel mistreatment and nightmarish conditions for all detained Palestinians.”

Humiliation, Ill-treatment, and Torture

The healthcare workers interviewed all reported humiliation, ill-treatment, and torture, including being stripped and beaten, with prolonged painful stress positions, near-constant cuffing, and blindfolding. Some said they were threatened with sexual violence and by attack dogs. 

Abuses During Deportation, Detention

All eight men reported being forced to strip publicly immediately after being taken into custody and remain kneeling for extended periods, exposed to the cold, and at various times throughout their detention. Photographs and videos that Israeli soldiers shared online and that Reuters verified show Palestinian detainees unclothed or in underwear. Publishing such images online is an outrage on personal dignity and posted sexualized images are a form of sexual violence, which are war crimes.

“We were forced to strip in the street and remain in our boxers, one by one,” said Osama Tashtash, 28, a doctor at the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia who was arrested in early December at his home nearby. “For an hour and a half, we were on our knees.” He said that during that period, he and other detainees were exposed to danger from Israeli military operations in the area. He said shrapnel fell on them as Israeli soldiers threw grenades at nearby houses and set them on fire.

Dr. Khalid Hamoudeh, 34, was arrested on the morning of December 12 at Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia. A photograph circulated late that evening by the Israeli broadcaster Channel 12 shows Dr. Hamoudeh shirtless alongside four other men he identified as fellow healthcare workers. The photograph shows the men standing in a row in front of an Israeli soldier holding a light panel, illuminating the detainees. 

Dr. Hamoudeh said they were photographed, then designated for release or detention. Behind them the photograph shows hundreds of men sitting in a large pit with at least 18 Israeli soldiers guarding them. A detailed analysis by the investigative TechJournalist identified several detainees with their hands tied behind their back, including Dr. Hamoudeh.

The image, whose site was identified first by the open-source researcher FDov on X, formerly known as Twitter, and later confirmed by Human Rights Watch, was taken approximately half a kilometer northeast of the hospital. Dr. Hamoudeh said that about 50 healthcare workers sitting together separately from internally displaced people. He said he was told to undress and stay in his underwear and was then blindfolded. 

The healthcare workers described beatings and physical abuse after being detained, including being punched, kicked with steel-toed boots, slapped, and beaten with assault-rifle butts by Israeli soldiers. 

Eyad Abed, 50, a surgeon at the Indonesian Hospital who was detained during a coordinated evacuation of the hospital in November, said:

Every minute we were beaten. I mean all over the body, on sensitive areas between the legs, the chest, the back. We were kicked all over the body and the face. They used the front of their boots which had a metal tip, then their weapons. They had lighters: one soldier tried to burn me but burned the person next to me. I told them I’m a doctor, but they didn’t care.

Abed said that he had broken ribs and a broken tailbone as a result of the physical assault by Israeli soldiers during his arrest and detention, which two months later still had not healed. 

An ambulance driver who asked not to be named said while he was being held with dozens of other men in large a metal “cage” near the Israel-Gaza border fence, he saw guards beat to death two men, one of whom he recognized, with metal bars.

The healthcare workers all described ill-treatment during their deportation from Gaza to detention facilities in Israel, including beatings, sitting in prolonged painful stress positions while blindfolded and cuffed by the hands and feet, being “stacked above each other like sheep,”  pepper sprayed, and denied water. 

Abuses in Detention Facilities

The healthcare workers said that Israeli authorities abused detainees at detention facilities inside Israel. Four said that when they arrived at detention facilities, the authorities forced them to wear adult diapers and denied them access to toilets.

The ambulance driver, who was detained for five months, was first transferred to a prison in Ashkelon, where guards interrogated him daily for a week, during which time they bound him in his underwear to a chair for between 10 and 15 hours a day in a room with a blasting air conditioner. He said he had been badly beaten and that sitting caused extreme pain in his spine. He said the authorities denied him access to a toilet, forcing him to urinate on himself, and refused to provide him any food or water. He was then transferred to the Ofer military detention facility in the Occupied West Bank, where at night, the guards threw cold water on him and on his mattress. 

A paramedic, Walid Khalili, 36, said that when soldiers removed his blindfold at the Sde Teiman facility, he saw he was in a large building “like a warehouse,” with chains hanging from the ceiling. Dozens of detainees in diapers were suspended from the ceiling, with the chains attached to their square metal handcuffs. He said that personnel at the facility then suspended him from a chain, so his feet were not touching the ground, dressed him in a garment and a headband that were attached to wires, and shocked him with electricity. 

Two doctors held at Sde Teiman said that other detainees came to them to seek care for wounds inflicted by Israeli authorities. When detainees “lifted their shirts, I saw signs of abuse and physical beatings,” one doctor said. The other said, “I saw [men] who had cigarette burns on their arms, it was very clear. One had a dog bite on his stomach.” 

As punishment for moving or speaking, detainees would be forced to stand, sometimes for hours, with their cuffed hands held above their head or fixed to a fence, detainees said. Detainees could hear the screams of other detainees being beaten nearby. One said that after he asked a question, an Israeli officer forced his fingers through a chain-link fence, he “told me to shut up and not say a word,” and pressed downward on the detainee’s fingers for several minutes, causing severe pain until the detainee could no longer feel his fingers. 

Three healthcare workers reported soldiers using military dogs to intimidate detainees. “They would threaten to shoot us and start loading their weapons,” one doctor said. “This felt like horror. They brought in military dogs. I screamed, that was the worst moment in my life, because I was still cuffed and blindfolded, not seeing where the dogs are coming from.” Another doctor said dogs were brought in late at night to wake and terrify detainees. 

Threats and Acts of Sexual Abuse

Three healthcare workers said that Israeli authorities threatened them with sexual assault. Khader Abu Nada, 30, a nurse at Beit Hanoun hospital in northern Gaza, said that when he denied any Hamas affiliation during his first interrogation at a military base in Gaza, the commander threatened to rape him with an “electric stick.” When Abu Nada continued to deny any Hamas affiliation, soldiers beat him until he was bleeding from his nose, hands, and mouth. 

Abu Nada said the commander then asked him where his mother was and threatened to bring her from the checkpoint where he was arrested and strip her in front of everyone. “When I heard this, I was psychologically broken. I felt humiliated,” he said. He said he was threatened with rape again prior to his release.

A detained paramedic who was transferred to al-Naqab prison after 20 days in Sde Teiman, said that a man who was visibly “bleeding from his bottom” was brought in and placed next to him. The man told the paramedic that before he was placed in detention, “three soldiers took turns raping him with an M16 [assault rifle]. No one else knew, but he told me as a paramedic. He was terrified.” In addition, a doctor said while he was detained in a military base, a detainee, “in his late 30s, crying hard … told me he was sexually assaulted during the strip search.”

Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Conditions

All the healthcare workers described horrific conditions in detention. Abed, the surgeon, said the food was “horrible” and inadequate, and that he lost 22 kilograms during a month and a half in detention. The bathrooms were “not even fit for animals.” The mattresses and blankets were thin, and the cold nights were “unbearable.” In the cells, water for toilets and for drinking was only available for one hour a day, with a “disgusting” stench emanating from the non-flushable toilets. “They gave us a bag for the garbage.  We used to fill it with water and drink from it later. It smelled horrible but we had no choice,” Abed said.

For detainees’ meals at Sde Teiman, soldiers “emptied tuna cans into a garbage bag and gave it to me,” said Dr. Khalid Hamoudeh, whom soldiers ordered to distribute food to detainees. “One time I saw a soldier spit in the bag. Many [detainees] were starving and telling me they were hungry.” A nurse detained at Anatot said, “We got two meals [a day]. It was terrible food. I would just drink water, there were no fruits, not even apples. They gave us food just to survive the day.”

Khalili, the paramedic, said that at one point when he was detained in Sde Teiman, an Israeli news crew arrived, and a detainee who understood Hebrew told him that a prison official told the journalists, falsely, that the detainees were members of a unit of Hamas’s armed wing responsible for the October 7 attacks. The next day, the paramedic said, soldiers brought food and set it in front of the detainees, ordered them not to eat it, took photographs, then took the food away.

Prolonged Cuffing and Blindfolding

The healthcare workers said that they were cuffed almost constantly throughout their detention. They said Israeli authorities often ignored detainees who complained about the tightness of their cuffs or tightened their cuffs as punishment for complaining. In a public letter, an Israeli doctor working in the military field hospital at Sde Teiman wrote that in a single week, “two prisoners had their legs amputated due to handcuff injuries, which unfortunately is a routine event.” 

Abu Nada, the nurse, said he was arrested at the Kuwaiti Roundabout in Gaza on November 22 while evacuating from the north with his family. Soldiers ordered him to strip, cuffed and blindfolded him, then took him for questioning. He said his first interrogation ended with an Israeli military commander punching him in the face and kicking him all over his body, then ordering another soldier to tighten his cuffs and drag him to an open field, where he waited on his knees for an hour.

“My wrists hurt so much, they felt paralyzed and numb. I cried so much, I couldn’t take the pain,” Abu Nada said. When he asked a soldier to loosen his cuffs, he said the soldier repeatedly kicked his head instead. “I told him, ‘Kill me I can’t take it anymore, kill me already.’” Israeli soldiers ignored or beat him in response to his multiple requests to loosen his handcuffs.

Abu Nada said his wrists later turned black, and he feared his mistreatment may have caused permanent damage: “I still feel pain in my hands. My hands are weak, and I have no strength to hold or carry anything. Also, there’s still pain from my shoulders all the way to my fingertips. I have severe neck pain from the pressure on my head when they kept pushing our heads down.”

As Physicians for Human Rights Israel has reported, prolonged physical restraint causes intense pain and can result in permanent nerve damage that interferes with using the hands and in extreme cases can lead to death. 

The healthcare workers also all reported prolonged, near-constant blindfolding. According to Physicians for Human Rights Israel, “blindfolding can, even with short-term use, induce visual hallucinations in healthy individuals. Over extended periods, prolonged use of blindfolds can contribute to the onset of anxiety disorders, depression, substance abuse, and PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) in the medium to long term.”


There's a little more but that gives you the gist, click here to read in full.  At COMMON DREAMS, Brett Wilkins covers the report and writes:


  "The Israeli government's mistreatment of Palestinian healthcare workers has continued in the shadows and needs to immediately stop," HRW acting Middle East director Balkees Jarrah said in a statement. "The torture and other ill-treatment of doctors, nurses, and paramedics should be thoroughly investigated and appropriately punished, including by the International Criminal Court (ICC)."

"The torture of Palestinian healthcare workers is a window into the much larger issue of the Israeli government's treatment of detainees generally," Jarrah added. "Governments should publicly call on the Israeli authorities to release unlawfully detained healthcare workers and end the cruel mistreatment and nightmarish conditions for all detained Palestinians."

[. . .]

Meanwhile at the ICC -- which is also located in The Hague  -- Prosecutor Karim Khan is pushing the tribunal to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders, at least one of whom, former political chief Ismail Haniyeh, has been assassinated by Israel. 

Why is anyone urging the ICC?  

They got a huge outpouring of respect and praise when they did the little that they did months and months ago.  And nothing has come from it.  

REUTERS noted Saturday:

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court stressed the court had jurisdiction to investigate Israeli nationals and asked judges to urgently decide on arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister, Yoav Gallant.

In court filings made public Friday, prosecutor Karim Khan urged judges weighing the arrest warrants sought against Israeli officials and Hamas leaders to not delay. "Any unjustified delay in these proceedings detrimentally affects the rights of victims," he said.


Khan has to ask and urge.  He works for the ICC.  The rest of us don't.  The ICC has been inactive and derelict in their duties.  You don't beg that kind of agency.  You protest, you shame it, you make sure that the judges see that you're on to their inaction and that the ICC is becoming nothing in the eyes of the world.  Maybe then they'll take some action.  Maybe they won't -- but if they don't, it'll be after we've exposed them as the useless body they are becoming.

It is almost September.  And the paperwork for arrest warrants was originally filed in May.  And the iCC has refused to respond to that paperwork.   It's been almost four months.  Is there anything else as prominent and ongoing taking place on the world state as Gaza?  Is there any excuse for going even one month without responding?

There's not.  There's never been.  Let's all wake up and grasp that the ICC judges are doing nothing and that this is not a mistake on their part, this is the actual choice of (non) action that they have chosen.


Meanwhile, Wafaa Shurafa and Samy Magdy (AP) report, "One of Gaza’s last functioning hospitals has been emptying out in recent days as Israel has ordered the evacuation of nearby areas and signaled a possible ground operation in a town that has been largely spared throughout the war, officials said Monday."  It's al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in deir al-Balah.  ABC NEWS adds, "Out of the 650 patients in Al-Aqsa Hospital, only 100 remain in the hospital that are being treated, the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health said."   ALJAZEERA notes:

The director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya says Israel wants to “destroy the health sector” by preventing fuel from reaching the Strip.

Giving an update on the situation at the hospital, he said most people who arrive wounded by Israeli attacks die due to poor conditions and lack of medical services.

He also said Gaza is facing a “germ war” and demanded the institution of a vaccination programme.

Earlier this month, the Health Ministry in Gaza reported that it detected the first polio case in the besieged enclave after United Nations officials called for a pause in the fighting to enable a vaccination campaign for children against the virus.


Picking up on that thread, Maya Davis (CNN) explains:

After six sewage samples taken in Gaza in late June tested positive for poliovirus, World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that it was “just a matter of time” before the disease reached thousands of Palestinian children.

At the time of his warning in late July, cases of acute flaccid paralysis, a symptom of poliovirus infection, had been flagged in the area where the samples were taken. Just week’s later, Gaza’s first polio case in 25 years was confirmed in an unvaccinated 10-month-old.

Now more than 1.2 million oral polio vaccines have arrived in the Gaza Strip, with millions more expected in coming days. The aim is to vaccinate about 640,000 children under the age of 10 with two doses each.     


But a cease-fire or a pause passed off as a 'cease-fire' is needed for the doses to be given.  And there's still no pause in sight.  

THE NATIONAL reports on the shrinking space in Gaza in the video below.



Gaza remains under assault. Day 325 of  the assault in the wave that began in October.  Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion.  The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction.  But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets:  How to justify it?  Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence."   CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund."  ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them."  NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza."  The slaughter continues.  It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service.  THE NATIONAL notes, "Gaza death toll rises to 40,476, with 93,647 wounded."   Early on, Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) pointed out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide."    Months ago, United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of of acute food insecurity or worse."   Months ago,  AP  noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing."  February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home."  February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted:

  



April 11th, Sharon Zhang (TRUTHOUT) reported, "In addition to the over 34,000 Palestinians who have been counted as killed in Israel’s genocidal assault so far, there are 13,000 Palestinians in Gaza who are missing, a humanitarian aid group has estimated, either buried in rubble or mass graves or disappeared into Israeli prisons.  In a report released Thursday, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that the estimate is based on initial reports and that the actual number of people missing is likely even higher."


Let's move quickly to the US presidential election.  Marjorie Cohen has an important interview with Lauren Miller Karalunas at TRUTHOUT  and this the intro:
 

After the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump and his allies denied that Joe Biden had won. To this day, election deniers refuse to accept that Trump lost the election. Efforts to thwart Biden from becoming president, including the Trump-inspired insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, were ubiquitous. Trump’s supporters filed dozens of lawsuits to stop the certification of Biden’s win, none of which was successful.

One of the tactics the election deniers used was the refusal of local officials to certify the results of the 2020 election, based on the false claim that there was widespread voter fraud. 

Fortunately, safeguards built into state laws held, and they prevented Trump from stealing the election from Biden.

During the 2022 midterm elections, “several rogue local officials” in multiple states “refused or threatened to refuse to certify valid election results based on false claims of widespread fraud. All of these efforts were unsuccessful,” Lauren Miller Karalunas, counsel in the Brennan Center’s democracy program, told Truthout.

In this interview, Miller Karalunas explains the mandatory duty of election officials to certify the results. She details what would happen if the 2024 election results are not certified by the constitutional cut-off date, the legal remedies available to protect certification of the results of the election, and whether the strategies of the election deniers to undermine the outcome could be successful.


Yesterday, Thom Hartman spoke with investigative journalist Greg Palast about former candidate and forever fool Robert F. Kennedy Jr.



You can read Greg's account here.




The following sites updated: