Linkage

The list of recipients includes party leader Keir Starmer, his deputy Angela Rayner, shadow foreign secretary David Lammy, and even the former vice-chair of Labour Friends of Palestine, Lisa Nandy, who is now shadow international development minister.

These donations were provided by Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), a pro-Israel lobby group which takes MPs on “fact-finding” missions to the region, and Sir Trevor Chinn, a multi-millionaire business tycoon and long-time pro-Israel lobbyist.

More than half of Starmer’s shadow cabinet are listed as parliamentary supporters or officers of LFI.

Amid the flurry of misinformation and misleading online content about the Israel-Hamas war that’s circulating on social media, these images, too, are being used without disclosure of whether they are real or not.

A handful of small online news outlets, blogs and newsletters have featured “Conflict between Israel and Palestine generative AI” without marking it as the product of generative AI. It’s not clear whether these publications are aware it is a fake image.

The course has long been in the crosshairs of the Sydney lord mayor, Clover Moore, and also the former NSW premier Bob Carr, who argued it occupied prime land in the city centre that could be used by a wider range of people.

A discussion paper will be released year early next as part of a consultation process about the future of the course, but the government’s preferred option is for the new park to be established on the western boundary and part of the section north of Dacey Avenue, which it says will maximise access for residents of Green Square, Zetland and Waterloo.

The government said the Green Square urban renewal area had 33,000 residents and was expected to become one of the most densely populated areas in Australia, with 80,000 people living within 2km of Moore Park by 2040.

Rents have rocketed and property prices are hot, but the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has changed the way it looks at the market and a key analysis panel that examines housing issues has not met for more than a year.

The Housing Market Discussion Group brought together internal experts to share insights on household budgets, the lending markets and the stability of our financial system.

It hasn't met since September 8 2022.

Documents sought through the Freedom of Information (FOI) process reveal the most recent meeting of the group — also known as the Domestic Housing Community Meeting — was one day after the central bank hiked interest rates for a fifth time.

Australia appears to be on the cusp of an eighth COVID-19 wave, with an increase in cases across the country. 

Victoria's acting chief health officer has suggested all Melburnians consider donning masks again as community transmission surges, while NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant says case numbers will likely rise in the lead-up to Christmas.

Her firm’s research, she argued, showed it was clear that it was not the highest skyscraper-dominated areas nor sprawling, car-dependent greenfield developments where people were most content but somewhere in between; neighbourhoods with multiple local centres, parks, green streets and a mix of apartment buildings from three to 12 storeys, terraces, townhouses and some larger stand-alone homes, too.

“Everything they’re asking for us is all good stuff – there’s nothing crazy. We want green, walkable, compact and well-maintained neighbourhoods,” she said.

The complaint, filed earlier today by Attorney General Brian Schwalb, focuses on the multifamily landlords' use of software from Texas-based firm RealPage, which suggests rental prices based on a pricing algorithm. Key to those models, according to the suit, is the data fed in from the landlords and the pressure RealPage puts on them to stick to the code-derived rental rates.

"RealPage and the defendant landlords illegally colluded to artificially raise rents by participating in a centralized, anticompetitive scheme, causing District residents to pay millions of dollars above fair market prices,” Schwalb said in a release tied to the complaint.

As researchers both specialising on Palestine, we've taken a keen interest in what they've been saying. And on the side of Israel's apologists, we’ve seen two main narratives at work.

Both are deeply flawed. The first ignores all context to portray Israel as the undeniable victim of a brutish neighbour. The second draws selectively on context to portray Hamas and Israel as more or less equal adversaries tragically unable to come to an accord. This narrative, designed to appeal to moderates and confound pro-Palestinian messaging, argues that everyone has blood on their hands in this endless cycle of violence – meaning no easy condemnation of Israel is possible.

[…] 

When the capacity of one side to exert violence over the other is so overwhelmingly disproportionate, surely even to the most moderate of moderates, something rings discordant here.

Advocates for homeless people refer to the planters as “hostile architecture” meant to push the homeless population out of sight. The strategy is far from new: For years, frustrated residents and business owners in San Francisco, and even the city itself, have turned to architecture to prevent encampments on the street — things like planters, boulders or rocky pavement, windowsill spikes, curved or slanted or segmented benches, or even loud music or sprinklers meant to prevent the unhoused from sleeping, sitting or setting up camp in certain public spaces. 

Starmer, like Biden, insists that “Israel has the right to defend itself”. On the specific matter of international law, this is not a legal right. Israel, an aggressor because of its two-decade-long siege/blockade of Gaza, cannot claim “self-defense” to justify its violence against armed resistance to this illegal siege/blockade. When a Nazi claimed that Germany attacked Russia in “self-defense” during WW2, a judge at the Nuremberg Tribunal said:

“One of the most amazing phenomena of this case which does not lack in startling features is the manner in which the aggressive war conducted by Germany against Russia has been treated by the defense as if it were the other way around. …If it is assumed that some of the resistance units in Russia or members of the population did commit acts that were in themselves unlawful under the rules of war, it would still have to be shown that these acts were not in legitimate defense against wrongs perpetrated upon them by the invader. Under International Law, as in Domestic Law, there can be no reprisal against reprisal. The assassin who is being repulsed by his intended victim may not slay him and then, in turn, plead self-defense”. (Trial of Otto Ohlendorf and others, Military Tribunal II-A, April 8, 1948)