Apologies to Denise who e-mailed the public account (common_ills@yahoo.com) about her favorite singer. Each week, on Saturday,we highlight female musicians. We highlight many, Every week will include Diana Ross (a friend who does not get nearly enough attention -- where's her honorary Academy Award -- starring in three films in the 70s, the first African-American woman to serve as an Academy Awards host, nominated for Best Actress for LADY SINGS THE BLUES and she's repeatedly performed on the Academy Awards) and Cher (who can tick me but I still love her).
For the most part, I can put up any female artist. There are three that are problematic.
Two are alive and total bitches. And they'll never be up here.
Natalie Cole and Aretha Franklin were great ladies and I was lucky to know them both. They had a serious feud. That was between them.
The two women that I'm not naming? We're not talking feud, we're talking hatred. They hate other women artists. They have repeatedly gone out of their way to trash female artists (including friends of mine -- and, yes, Diana's on the list of women that they've trashed) to the press. And it gets back to everyone when you do that. They'll call me or someone else for a comment and we'll all be playing a round of telephone letting everyone else know that X and Z have trashed another woman again.
X and Z really don't have careers in that they couldn't make it on their own -- they hail from groups. And they have a lot of anger and a lot of hatred for other women. They often won't go on the record with their name so it will appear in print as something like "A recording artist who asked not to be named . . ." They're bitches and they're hateful bitches.
And they don't get posted here.
The third one that's problematic for me is dead -- Donna Summer.
I was hoping that the HBO documentary could have provided peace. It should have not have been her daughters' responsibility to get honest for Donna.
But they did. Applause to them.
And I thought I could highlight Donna as a result.
But her most vocal fans are idiots. I'm not in the damn mood. I don't know what your damn problem is but, Twinks, stop lying for her.
"Oh, I always liked her and that was so unfair the lies that were told."
They weren't lies you self-loathing idiots.
She said it.
In fact, she said many anti-gay things.
There's a liar online who pretends he was in Florida when the thing was almost said but not said and he can swear to it. And he's cited over and over even though he clearly was not where he says he was -- dates don't line up.
Donna said many anti-gay things. I knew Donna. I could take her with the drugs. Couldn't take the homophobia. It was apparently always present according to people like Giorgio Moroder who worked with her early on.
I knew her right before it kicked in and she became openly homophobic.
It ruined our friendship. Boo-hoo.
Donna had a great voice and was an innovator and a legend. And I'm fine with highlighting her if we're honest.
But I'm not highlighting someone we're going to lie about.
Yes, she said AIDS was a punishment from God. She said many more things, but, yes, she said it. I know it. She knew it. Most of the music industry knew it in real time.
I saw a new lie that's popped up to defend her -- saw it this week for the first time.
'It's a lie! And she sued NEW YORK MAGAZINE for printing it! And she won!'
Liberace sued THE DAILY MIRROR for implying he was gay and he won. So I'm not sure that Donna winning would have proven anything.
However . . .
She didn't win. Both sides agreed not to go forward with the case. It never went to court. We'll come back to why it was dropped.
But Donna didn't win. Like Liberace, she and her team attacked the article and said it caused harm and distress and pretended it was the reason her awful MISTAKEN IDENTITY album bombed.
The album was a flop and it was a flop because of the crap that it was -- very bad reviews -- and because of the way she destroyed her own career.
ALL SYSTEMS GO had already flopped. But it was a noble flop. She sounded great on that album. She followed it up with ANOTHER PLACE IN TIME which also flopped and that wasn't a noble flop. She worked with a cookie-cutter production team that tried to make her sound -- and she let them -- like any other faceless artist on their assembly line. There's not one decent vocal performance on that album. She doesn't get to soar once. She rides the vocal range on the title track to ALL SYSTEMS GO and other songs on that album, but ANOTHER PLACE IN TIME is a piece of crap that wasn't arranged for her voice and that isn't a Donna Summer album. Her fans had already fled but everyone grasped that the payola hit "This Time I Know It's For Real" was garbage and beneath Donna's singing talents.
There was also her heavily publicized country album -- country music -- which fortunately never materialized -- but I believe she started sporting that ugly blond wig when trying to talk that up -- the same ugly blond wig she wore on the cover of MISTAKEN IDENTITY.
And self-loathing Twinks, grasp that she also ran from the title Queen of Disco.
She ran her audience off.
But, here's the other thing about that lawsuit? Get your facts right. It was not the first mainstream magazine -- NEW YORK -- to print what Donna said about AIDS. ROLLING STONE had already printed it twice -- the second time when the British group Bronski Beat was calling her out for her statement. There were many others as well over the years.
But that's not what Donna sued them for.
This is the sort of thing that just makes me want to scream, throw this laptop at the wall and never, ever get online again.
This lying, this stupidity, this whoring.
When I'm dead, if you hear someone calling me a bitch, don't have a hissy fit. I can be a real bitch. I've said here forever and a day that I'm not a nice person. And that's okay.
Donna did what she did. And you can lie to yourself all you want but you look ridiculous when you do.
Donna did not sue NEW YORK over the AIDS comment she made in the early 80s.
She sued over Paul Jabara.
MISTAKEN IDENTITY was supposed to have included his song "We Are Gonna Win." Paul co-wrote many hit songs such as the theme to THE MAIN EVENT and Donna's "Last Dance."
Donna did not include it on MISTAKEN IDENTITY. People were outraged and furious by that -- people in the industry -- and they spoke to NEW YORK.
Donna lied and said in response that the song was "seven years old" -- her excuse -- and that's why it wasn't on the album.
Now the song was sought out by Donna and recorded seven years prior, that much is true. It's also true that she asked him for a song because she was trying to do an apology for her AIDS remark.
(As I've noted in Ava and my "TV: The four stories of LOVE TO LOVE YOU, DONNA SUMMER ," I told Donna it wasn't going away until she apologized.)
And she recorded it.
But just like she couldn't get honest about what she'd said in the 80s, she wasn't honest in her public remarks or court room filings.
It is correct that she recorded it in 1984. She'd realized with the response to CATS WITHOUT CLAWS (tepid) and to her amazing vocal on "There Goes My Baby" that her career was in trouble and that she'd lost fans as a result of the AIDS remark. Which is why she asked Paul specifically to write her an anthem that she could present to the LGBTQ+ community as a sign that she embraced them still (she meant "now").
But where she was lying?
She re-recorded the song and did so for the MISTAKEN IDENTITY project. And she knew Paul was struggling with AIDS when she re-recorded it. He would die about a year and a week after MISTAKEN IDENTITY was released.
So she's a liar. Or was. And it's a shame she didn't get honest before she died.
What the idiot fan boys don't seem to grasp is that AIDS comment took place after BAD GIRLS.
Donna found Jesus. Silly me, I hadn't caught the Amber alert when he apparently went missing. But Donna found him and she wanted to be sure everyone knew how close she and Jesus were because, apparently, Jesus had asked her to stand in judgment on everyone.
The little liars and fools have no idea that Donna repeatedly spoke about how she would be giving up popular music, how she would be doing gospel records (Christian contemporary but she generally said "gospel" -- no gospel label wanted hre), how she was taking this song and that song out of her performances and how she intended to take even more out. This, by the way, is when Donna's touring starts collapsing. No one wants to hear her garbage songs like "He's A Rebel" (not the Crystals' classic, this was one of her 'gospel' songs -- sample lyric "Ooh he's a rebel, written up in the Lambs book of life") or "Forgive Me" (sample lyric "As you prayed for those who crucified you"). If you're paying your hard earned money to see Donna Summer in concert, you're wanting to hear her moan and groan through "Love To Love You Baby." And you're disturbed that not only did she not sing that song but that she's telling the Christian contemporary music press that she's about to drop "Hot Stuff" from her act as well.
She was also saying, from the stage, "not Adam and Steve" and other homophobic remarks. In the documentary, her own sister talks about this on camera.
So I'm just not in the mood for some underfed and under-educated twinks to go all over the internet with their damn lies.
Donna sued NEW YORK and then dropped the suit over what they published about how she was supposed to have included Paul's song on the album, how it was supposed to be seen as her apology for her AIDS remark from years prior. That's what she sued for. And NEW YORK found out that, yes, she did record the song in 1984 but, oops, she also re-recorded it for MISTAKEN IDENTITY. ATLANTIC RECORDS provided them with a studio recording. I don't think Donna got any money out of the lawsuit but I know she agreed to settle when she found out that her public lies and her lies in court documents were going to be exposed or she could walk away from the lawsuit.
And I thought the documentary would have stopped all the lies from little twinks who so hate themselves that they will bend over backwards to act as though Donna was never homophobic.
Are you exhausted from the above? Me too. We're probably not going to have much on Gaza.
But back to Denise and her e-mail. When I read your e-mail, Denise, my plan was to immediately post and to start with a song from your artist -- YA, for short -- and explain that the first time I heard that song, I had to know who the songwriter was because it's such a great song.
And then I started to type.
And stopped.
The songwriter's a loud mouth -- and a closet case. Don't you love these women who say, "I haven't had a boyfriend since 1992 because I'm so busy with my work." No, you haven't had a beard since 1992 and the whole industry knows you are a lesbian and thinks that there's nothing wrong with that but wonders why you can't come out after all of these years. It's pathetic.
But I was still going to highlight YA and do so with a song that the unnamed songwriter wrote. But the Spidey senses started tingling and said check out big mouth's Twitter feed first. As I feared, she's a genocide junkie. Yep, it's all over her Twitter feed (as well as a photo of her standing to next to -- and hugging -- a homophobe). She hates Palestinians and is actively cheering on genocide. Well . . . as actively as anyone with both feet in the closet can.
So, no,
YA is someone who's been highlighted at this site, Denise. In fact, your pick of her sixth best song, if you'll use the search button at the left hand side of this site, you'll see that we have highlighted it at least once.
It's not been during the Saturday music posts that start up with the pandemic. The reason we post every day even holidays is because when this site started a reader e-mailed that she would be alone for the holidays and was wondering if we would be posting? Because of that we did. Nothing worse than being alone on the holidays. With the pandemic, we were all suffering and it seemed like it was something we could do here -- highlight great music -- that might make someone's day a little better.
But we have highlighted YA here. She was a strong singer and I think her third album was something she could really be proud of. It's still a strong album today and we will highlight her -- in fact, we'll go with your number one pick -- next Saturday.
Donna is on the no list because people are lying and I'm not going to pimp lies. If I post her -- and hopefully I will be able to before the site goes dark -- it'll be because "Dinner With Gershwin" is an amazing song or "On My Honor" or whatever. But while liars are pretending she didn't say the AIDS remark and that she didn't go through a very public and very homophobic phase, I'm not noting her.
As for the two hateful bitches? I will never note them here. Well, maybe if they die, I'll note them in some way. Maybe you'll see their obit on TV and pop over here and see a video of "Ding Dong The Wicked Witch Is Dead."
And to be really clear, that's why I noted Aretha and Natalie, not everyone gets along. And that's fine. But the two I'm talking about hate everyone -- including each other -- and insult every woman, rip them apart.
Aretha and Natalie had a problem, a personal one (and I sided with Aretha on that, then and now). It wasn't the end of the world. But a female singer who thinks she's going to rip apart every other singer and wants to mainly do so through reporters who will quote her and let her go unnamed?
No, those two bitches will never be highlighted here.
Let's move over to a DEMOCRACY NOW! segment earlier this week.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
We end today’s show with the first military and intelligence officer to publicly resign over the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza. Jewish American Army Major Harrison Mann resigned from his role at the Defense Intelligence Agency after a 13-year career. The DIA is essentially the Pentagon’s CIA.
In a letter explaining his resignation he posted online last month, Mann wrote, quote, “This office does not only inform policy. It facilitates, and, at times, directly executes policy … and the policy that has never been far from my mind for the past six months is the nearly unqualified support for the government of Israel, which has enabled and empowered the killing and starvation of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians. As we were recently reminded, this unconditional support also encourages reckless escalation that risks wider war,” he wrote.
Mann submitted his resignation November 1st, just over three weeks into Israel’s assault on Gaza. His separation from the military became effective last week. Harrison Mann joins us now from Washington, D.C.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Harrison, if you can go back to November and talk about what drove you to decide to separate from the U.S. military? You’re a U.S. Army major who worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency. And explain exactly what your role was and what the DIA does.
HARRISON MANN: Yes, and thank you for having me.
So, just in terms of what I was seeing, what drove my decision back in October is, even in the first weeks after October 7th with the start of the Israeli air campaign on Gaza, it was really clear that they were prepared to inflict huge numbers of civilian casualties, which they did and which your — you know, a trend your last guest described in really heartbreaking detail. So, there was a very high tolerance and willingness to inflict civilian casualties, which we already saw. We already saw the autoimmune response from U.S. and Israeli adversaries or Iranian proxies in the region, with, I think, the first Houthi attacks starting in mid-October.
And really, beyond those risks and the humanitarian cost, it was really clear, both at the national level and from what I was hearing from the senior leadership in my community, that our support for Israel was going to be really unshakable and unconditional, no matter how many people they killed and how they conducted the war. And my job at the time was assistant to the director of, basically, the Middle East and Africa office for the agency, who is also the official who oversaw the Israel crisis response, so I was very well placed to understand some of the higher-level discussions happening about the war and about U.S. support to the war. And that really left me feeling hopeless that we were going to condition or moderate our aid or our support in any way.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, and, Harrison Mann, I’m wondering if you could talk about, from the perspective of what the Defense Intelligence Agency, the kind of information it was collecting even before the events of October 7th and this new war. To your knowledge, has there ever been a situation like Gaza, where, basically, people were in an open-air prison, where the Israelis essentially controlled all ingress and egress from the territory and were able to cut off any kind of contact with the outside world whenever they wanted to?
HARRISON MANN: Yeah, I mean, there’s certainly been other conflicts, including in our region, where other forces did some level of siege or cut off access to the population they were attacking. And I think the Saudi-led coalition’s war in Yemen against the Houthis, which, until recently, had wound down, was probably the next closest example of a man-made humanitarian crisis cutting off the entry of food and medication while bombing the population.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms of what were the — why you decided specifically in the first few weeks, as the conflict began, to resign? What were the main reasons that you felt you had to resign?
HARRISON MANN: I mean, fundamentally, I understood that every day that I was going to go into the office, I was going to be contributing to the Israeli campaign. That was something that DOD was supporting. It was something that DIA was supporting. And I think it’s open that we have a very close intelligence relationship with Israel. And so I was tangentially involved in that. And I kind of got more and more discouraged and hopeless that we were going to stop, U.S. was going to stop, its support. And I understood early on, and was unfortunately validated in this, that nobody was going to come tell me to stop. Nobody at any level in my chain of command, even people who I think were sympathetic to what was happening to the Palestinians, was going to ask me or anybody I worked with to reconsider the support that we were facilitating.
AMY GOODMAN: Harrison Mann, you’re an American Jew, as well as an Army major working at the DIA. How did your Jewish background influence your decision?
HARRISON MANN: My Jewish background, you know, influenced both my service and my decision to leave. I have a very distinct memory of several years ago going to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Israel on a trip that was actually sponsored and hosted by the IDF. And you go through that museum, and you see all these sights of the Holocaust victims. And then, at the end, there’s this giant blowup photo, that I think is still there, showing a lot of U.S. Army soldiers interspersed with Holocaust camp survivors, and they’re attending a service led by a U.S. Army rabbi after their camp has been liberated. And that, I think, seeing that photo, which I hadn’t seen before, was like one of my proudest moments of my service, understanding that I got to wear the same uniform and be in the same army as the men who liberated that camp.
And today, seeing photos of charred bodies and burnt corpses and starved, emaciated children that are from, you know, 2023, 2024, not the '40s, it's impossible not to make that connection. And I guess it forced me to realize that that’s what I was contributing to in the same uniform, instead of saving those people. And so, I think the situations are not perfectly analogous, but the moral logic was very clear to me, because I’m Jewish.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about more recent events, like this weekend, and as your role as a DIA officer, if you could explain what’s really going on here, talking about the role of U.S. intelligence support in Israel’s war on Gaza. This is national security adviser Jake Sullivan speaking on CNN from Paris.
JAKE SULLIVAN: The United States has been providing support to Israel for several months in its efforts to help identify the locations of hostages in Gaza and to support efforts to try to secure their rescue or recovery. I’m not going to get into the specific operational or intelligence-related matters associated with that, because we need to protect those. I can only just say that we have generally provided support to the IDF so that we can try to get all of the hostages home, including the American hostages who are still being held.
DANA BASH: So, I understand that intelligence, U.S. intelligence, assisted. But will you say anything about U.S. personnel, U.S. weapons?
JAKE SULLIVAN: Well, the one thing I can say is that there were no U.S. forces, no U.S. boots on the ground involved in this operation. We did not participate militarily in this operation.
AMY GOODMAN: So, no boots on the ground, Jake Sullivan says to Dana Bash of CNN. He’s talking about this weekend, when more than 270 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli military operation that freed four Israeli hostages in Nuseirat, in Gaza. Israeli intelligence officials told The New York Times — this is in an article today — that U.S. military officials in Israel provided some of the intelligence about the hostages rescued on Saturday. According to the Times, the Pentagon and the CIA have been providing information collected from drone flights over Gaza, communications intercepts and other sources about the potential location of hostages. While Israel has its own intelligence, the United States and Britain have been able to provide intelligence from the air and cyberspace that Israel cannot collect on its own, The New York Times reports. So, Harrison Mann, talk more about this and what kind of support was, it looks like, provided this weekend. And then go more generally into, well, President Biden more recently said he’s approving a billion dollars more of just outright weapons to Israel.
HARRISON MANN: Yeah, I think the operation this weekend is a kind of unusually public example of the value of intelligence support that the U.S. provides to Israel, which is — you know, we’ve had a long-standing and very strong relationship, and usually it’s not discussed. But I think this weekend we saw how intel support, even if it’s for a goal that I think is nominally, you know, quite — something that’s difficult to dispute, which is rescuing hostages, can nonetheless contribute to operations that kill what looks like a very large number of civilians. And I think it’s also indicative of the value of the intel support that we give Israel. And I just highlight that because that’s the area that I worked in or adjacent to, and it’s another form of valuable support that we give Israel that helps them prosecute this war. And it’s another less discussed form of leverage that we also have over the Israeli government.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Harrison Mann, I’m wondering, your moral concerns about what was going on in Gaza, to what extent you shared it with other fellow military or defense intelligence people, and what advice you would have to those in the military or the intelligence community that are still grappling with their ethical concerns.
HARRISON MANN: So, for the first months after I initiated my resignation process, which did not actually conclude until last week, I was really kind of afraid. I didn’t feel comfortable talking about this with anybody, because nobody else was discussing it. And it felt like it was way outside of our norms and outside of what would be culturally acceptable where I worked. But in April, when I finally shared my resignation — my resignation letter with my office, I got really overwhelmingly positive and supportive feedback from the people that I worked with, and I discovered that there were a lot of people who felt pretty much the same way that I did and also felt like they could not openly discuss their concerns. And since I’ve publicized my letter, more people from both my office and elsewhere in the Department of Defense and the military have also reached out.
And, you know, my number one piece of advice, or kind of tough love here, is understanding, again, that nobody is going to tell you to stop. I do not think we are near an end to this conflict, and so you are nowhere near the end of being finally told that you can stop participating in it. And so, understanding that, you then have to realize that moderating your level of support and participation is a choice, the same way that going to work tomorrow and continuing to support the Israeli campaign is a choice.
And I know that what I did is not feasible for a lot of people. I understand that. I know other folks in our line of work who have asked for a transfer or who have asked their supervisor, “Hey, I’m going to keep doing all of the portfolios you give me, but find somebody else for Israel.” I think another possibly effective option is asking for an assurance, in writing, that what you’re doing is both legal and consistent with your organization’s ethical standards and values statements. That’s something I wish I had done, which I think would have given some people pause, because we’re asking each other, we’re asking our subordinates, to do a lot of these things and contribute to this conflict, without really pausing to think about the ethical dimension. And that’s something I’m guilty of, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Harrison Mann, we have —
HARRISON MANN: And just finally — sorry. Go ahead.
AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead. Go ahead.
HARRISON MANN: I would just finally say, if you can’t do that, just start talking about it, and letting somebody that you work with know that they’re not alone might be incredibly valuable in and of itself.
AMY GOODMAN: We just have 10 seconds. What effect did the protests have on you? Do they make it inside?
HARRISON MANN: The campus protests?
AMY GOODMAN: Yes.
HARRISON MANN: It was further indication about whether or not I was on the right side of history and, you know, how I’d be able to look back at this years from now, which is what helped drive my decision not to be part of this.
AMY GOODMAN: Harrison Mann, Jewish American U.S. Army major, recently resigned from the Defense Intelligence Agency over the Biden administration’s policy in Gaza.
That does it for our show. To see others who have resigned, our interviews, go to democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
Mike Prysner (EMPIRE FILES) reports:
On June 4 Major Harrison Mann went public that he resigned from his position in the Defense Intelligence Agency, as well as from the Army, in protest of the Gaza genocide, saying “I’m confident saying it’s certainly some measure of ethnic cleansing.” Highly inconvenient for the Pentagon, given Maj. Mann is a decorated officer, is Jewish, is a Middle East expert, and is willing to go on mainstream news shows to say his piece.
While Mann got the most coverage, he’s not the only one to take public action. On March 31, Senior Airman Larry Hebert took 40 days leave from his unit based in Spain and used it to wage a hunger strike in front of the White House, holding a sign reading “Active Duty Airman Refuses To Eat While Gaza Starves.”
On June 7, he dropped his paperwork filing for a Conscientious Objector discharge. When I spoke with him after filing, he told me:
One key value they teach us in the Air Force is ‘Integrity First.’ They explain this as doing the right thing when nobody’s watching. Today, I feel like many of us are doing the wrong thing while everyone is watching.
Filing CO status publicly is quite rare, as most opt to do it quietly to avoid reprisal. But Senior Airman Hebert is not alone in doing this.
On June 5, Senior Airman Juan Bettancourt, who is in the same unit as Aaron Bushnell, publicly announced via social media he too made the decision to file as a conscientious objector over the genocide, while backing an Appeal For Redress (which allows active-duty troops to petition Congress with their grievances).
His turning point was at Bushnell’s official memorial service on Lackland Air Force Base. He left a small Palestinian flag on the vigil table, the only reference at the entire ceremony to Bushnell’s cause. He told me:
I was moved by Aaron’s final message and his determination to shake us out of our comfortable lives and draw our eyes towards the atrocities happening in Gaza.
I believe it is unconscionable to expect military personnel to comply with genocide in blatant disregard for domestic, humanitarian and international laws.
It is highly significant for a US-backed operation to draw such resistance from within the ranks: the dramatic action of Bushnell, the high-profile resignation of Maj. Mann, two simultaneous public Conscientious Objector campaigns with scores of others following suit in secret.
Many others have decided to end their military careers, and join the pro-Palestine movement while they ride out the remainder of their contracts or find ways to get discharged medically.
Yvonne Murray (RTE) has an important question:
It has been nearly a week since the UN Security Council voted for a ceasefire to end the war in Gaza.
With 14 votes in favour and a Russian abstention, it was an overwhelming endorsement by the UN’s most powerful body of the three-phase peace plan that US President Joe Biden put forward at the end of May.
So, where's the peace?
Very good question. Where is the peace?
This assault has been going on now for over eight months. This is outrageous. An ongoing genocide is taking place and it's outrageous. ALJAZEERA notes:
The Palestinian refugee agency of the United Nations (UNRWA) must be allowed to work unhindered in Gaza, Group of Seven (G7) leaders say as the wealthy nations wrapped up day two of their annual summit in Italy.
“We agree it is critical that UNRWA and other UN organisations and agencies’ distribution networks be fully able to deliver aid to those who need it most, fulfilling their mandate effectively,” G7 nations said in their final communique.
And the best the Israeli government can come up with is 'a tactical pause'? [The much covered pause contains no real details other than opening and closing hours and it comes from a government that's lied non-stop so we won't jump in that story -- that non-story -- until we see someting in play and how it actually works.] That is unacceptable and the world should make that clear. Australia's ABC NEWS observes, "Despite growing international pressure for a ceasefire, an agreement to halt the fighting still appears distant more than eight months since the war began." ALJAZEERA notes, "The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) says more than 50,000 children in the Gaza Strip require immediate medical treatment for acute malnutrition." And EURO NEWS notes, "UN agencies say over one million people in Gaza could experience the highest level of starvation by mid-July." and
When an NBC News video crew visited Gaza last month, the Israelis had been attacking Rafah. The crew shot footage of what appeared to be destroyed U.N. vehicles. It also found footage of a family in northern Gaza using grass and wild greens to make soup.
“Instead of flour, we ate the rabbit feed and the hay meant for cows,” one little girl told NBC News, when asked to explain what life was like in northern Gaza before she and her family fled to Rafah.
Today. Nathan Morley (VATICAN NEWS) reports:
Reports carried on WAFA, the Palestinian news agency, suggest 19 Palestinians, including women, children and a baby, were killed and scores of others wounded in Israeli air strikes targeting homes in eastern Gaza City.
Other reports put the death toll at 28, but the figures are not confirmed.
Elsewhere, as Gaza endures a blistering heatwave, footage posted on the internet shows Israeli bulldozers demolishing damaged homes near Rafah.
The scenes on the ground in Gaza are horrifying.
The United Nations is reporting that more than 330,000 tons of solid waste is piling up in and out of populated areas of the Gaza Strip, creating a huge health hazard. Much of it is now literally boiling in temperatures which have exceeded 40C this week.
Gaza remains under assault. Day 253 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. Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide." The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher. 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 acute food insecurity or worse." THE NATIONAL notes, "The Gaza Health Ministry on Saturday said 37,296 Palestinians have been killed and 85,197 injured in Israeli attacks since October 7.
The toll includes 30 people killed and 95 other injured in the 24 hours to noon on Saturday, the ministry said.." 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:
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