"What is the message we are sending Palestinians if we cannot unite behind a call to halt the relentless bombardment of Gaza?" Deputy UAE U.N. Ambassador Mohamed Abushahab asked the council. "Indeed, what is the message we are sending civilians across the world who may find themselves in similar situations?"
[âŠ]
Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Robert Wood told the council that the draft resolution was a rushed, imbalanced text "that was divorced from reality, that would not move the needle forward on the ground in any concrete way."
"We do not support this resolution's call for an unsustainable ceasefire that will only plant the seeds for the next war," said Wood.
The U.S. had offered substantial amendments to the draft, including a condemnation of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks that Israel says killed 1,200 people and in which 240 people were taken hostage.
Britain's U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward said her country abstained because there was no condemnation of Hamas.
"Israel needs to be able to address the threat posed by Hamas and it needs to do so in a manner that abides by international humanitarian law so that such an attack can never be carried out again," she told the council.
Linkage
Things Katy is reading.
US blocks UN Security Council demand for humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza
in ReutersThe crisis of human collective decision-making in a social media world
Public lecture on 21 November 2023 by Prof Carl Bergstrom from The University of Washington. This lecture was part of the AIMOS 2023 conference (http://aimosconference.com/).
TinEye Reverse Image Search
When we started TinEye, we had a simple vision: help users search using images. Today, we are delivering image search solutions to a wide range of businesses where image search is mission critical.
The worldâs 280 million electric bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars
in The ConversationThe electric transport revolution is a great chance to rethink how we move through our cities â and whether we even need a car at all.
Cars, after all, often have only one occupant. Youâre expending a lot of energy to transport yourself.
By contrast, electric mopeds and bikes use a lot less energy to transport one or two people. Theyâre also a lot cheaper to buy and run than electric cars.
If you commute on an e-bike 20km a day, five days a week, your charging cost would be about $20 â annually.
Sanders Votes No on Giving Israel Aid to Continue 'Inhumane War' on Gaza
in Common DreamsSen. Bernie Sanders was the lone member of the Senate Democratic caucus to oppose advancing a $110.5 billion supplemental foreign aid measure on Wednesday, expressing opposition to the bill's unconditional military assistance for the Israeli government.
"I voted NO on the foreign aid supplemental bill today for one reason," Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement. "I do not believe that we should give the right-wing extremist Netanyahu government an additional $10.1 billion with no strings attached to continue their inhumane war against the Palestinian people."
"Israel has the absolute right to defend itself against the Hamas terrorists who attacked them on October 7," Sanders added. "They do not have the legal or moral right to kill thousands of innocent Palestinian men, women, and children."
I Am a Trans Texan
in Texas ObserverâYou have to go the way your blood beats,â James Baldwin said in an interview. âIf you donât live the only life you have, you wonât live some other life, you wonât live any life at all.â Belatedly, Iâm coming to grips with this. My attempts to cope with gender dissonance have consumed much of my life, taking hours away from each day, isolating me from loved ones, alienating me from my body, leading to bouts of depression, ideations of suicide, and alcohol abuse. It doesnât go away. In middle age, Iâm forced to recognize that nothing short of being who I am will resolve my profound inner conflict. The word âtransitionâ is terrifying but, however catastrophic the process of coming out may be, Iâll not be much good to those I love if Iâm burned out, incapacitated, or dead.
Knowledge is power. If I had simply known more, I would have been spared some suffering. The idea that Iâve been converted by the âgender cultâ is preposterous. My starting point was my own experience, going back years before I could even articulate it. I simply was what I now call âtransgender.â My brain and flesh and bones told me so. And peace could never be mine until I had uncovered its nature and found a way to live with it.
The many bills trying to prevent youth from learning about trans identity trouble me deeply. They seek to condemn another generation to the deathly dysphoria that has burdened me in the belief that people like me are misbegotten or perverted, and that state-imposed ignorance can prevent children from turning out like us.
Braverman has her âRivers of Bloodâ moment
in The London EconomicShe said: âPrevious attempts have failed because they did not address the root cause of the problem: expansive human rights laws flowing from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), replicated in Labourâs Human Rights Act, are being interpreted elastically by courts domestic and foreign to literally prevent our Rwanda plan from getting off the ground.
âAnd this problem relates to so much more than just illegal arrivals. From my time as home secretary, I can say that the same human rights framework is producing insanities that the public would scarcely believe.
âForeign terrorists we canât deport â because of their human rights. Terrorists that we have to let back in â because of their human rights. Foreign rapists and paedophiles who should have been removed but are released back into the community only to reoffend â because of their human rights.â
New BBC chair is co-author of Boris Johnsonâs controversial race report
in The IndependentVeteran TV executive Samir Shah, the co-author of Boris Johnsonâs controversial race report, has been named the new chairman of the BBC.
The role was vacated by Richard Sharp in a cloud of controversy earlier this year, when the ex-Goldman Sachs banker quit after failing to declare his link to an ÂŁ800,000 loan made to Mr Johnson.
[âŠ]
The new chairman is best-known for his role co-authoring a much-criticised 2021 race report that dismissed the idea that Britain was institutionally racist.
Mr Shah strongly defended the findings of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report â and claimed the response of the ârace lobbyâ had failed to understand it.
He argued that âclass, poverty, family circumstance and geographyâ played as big a role as race in life outcomes.
Mr Shah also said there was âno doubtâ that racial disparity still existed â but insisted that racism was ânot sweepingâ and was âdiminishingâ in the UK today.
Commissioned in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, the report found that institutional racism doesnât exist. Some commissioners later claimed officials at No 10 helped rewrite the conclusion of the report.
Of Time And The Web
Ours is a fast-moving industry. We measure our work in tickets, sprints, and projects. But that can make it hard to see the bigger picture sometimes. In this talk weâll attempt to pull back and measure our progress in terms of decades. We might even attempt to gaze into the futureâŠ
Drupal at Your Fingertips
This book is a quick reference for developers creating Drupal sites. While working on such sites during my career, I have gathered a large collection of notes and code which I use for my reference. I hope it will be useful for you, too.