Linkage

Quick question, hotshot: Which political party in the U. S. is more likely to believe gender is fluid? If you think it’s the Democrats, the guys more closely associated with LGBTQ+ rights, you’d be incorrect. More and more, Republicans are claiming that gender identity is not just fluid but so incredibly fragile that even hearing about the possibility of non-cis identities existing poses a serious risk to children.

Case in point: J. D. Vance and Marco Rubio, two whole adult male senators, who apparently believe that by asking a test question about gender on the U. S. census the government might infect teens with the notion that trans existence is possible, thereby destabilizing their entire reality… or something.

The reality is that Gaza has not experienced a day free of Israeli occupation since 1967. All that Israel did 18 years ago when it pulled out its Jewish settlers, was to run the occupation more remotely, exploiting new developments in weapons and surveillance technologies.

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Another deceit is the impression Blinken is intentionally creating that the US is preparing for a confrontation with Israel over Gaza’s future.

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But the suggestion that Israel and Washington are not on the same page is pure trickery. The “row” is entirely confected, designed to make it look like the Biden administration, in pushing for negotiations, is taking the Palestinians’ side against Israel. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The pretence is a boon to both sides. The US wants to look like one day – after all Gaza’s homes are destroyed and its people ethnically cleansed – it will drag Netanyahu to the negotiating table kicking and screaming. 

An embattled Netanyahu, meanwhile, is able to score popularity points with the Israeli right by posturing defiantly against the Biden administration. 

It is pure theatre. The confrontation will never materialise. The US “vision” is nothing more than make-believe.

The Jewish Israeli activists I interviewed for this story invariably noted that their troubles paled in comparison to the punishment their government was inflicting on Palestinians—in Gaza, certainly, and in the occupied West Bank, but also inside Israel. While Jewish activists are targeted by right-wing mobs with what appears to be the tacit approval of the government, Palestinians experience the full force of the government’s repressive apparatus.

The current crackdown on speech, which involves arrests, police interrogations, and so-called warning talks conducted by the Shabak, the security services, is largely carried out by a task force established earlier this year by the national-security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, to identify cases of incitement to terrorism on social media. Before he was a minister, Ben-Gvir was a far-right activist. In 2007, a Jerusalem court convicted him of incitement to racism for carrying signs and posters with statements such as “Expel the Arab enemy.” Hassan Jabareen, who heads Adalah, a Palestinian-run legal center, told me, “Ben-Gvir’s job is to protect my safety, and he is known as the most racist official in the history of Israel.” Jabareen added, “We are aware that Israeli Jewish society is passing a very, very hard time. But this emergency time is happening under one of the most racist governments in the history of this country.”

The response to our letters also states that Labour’s position must be “in line with Britain’s global allies, namely the United States of America and the European Union”. In this regard, it behooves us to remind you that it is the job of His Majesty’s Opposition to hold the government of the United Kingdom to account, not to follow policy lines of foreign governments.

The legal obligations of the UK government should not be in doubt. Common articIe 1 of the four Geneva Conventions requires states parties “to respect and to ensure respect” for the conventions. We would also like to remind you that the United Kingdom has ratified the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. As confirmed by the International Council of Justice in 2020, all states have an obligation to prevent acts of genocide, irrespective of where they occur. In light of the mounting and compelling evidence of genocide, as affirmed by UN experts and scholars of genocide, the United Kingdom can adhere to its obligations under the Genocide Convention by calling for an immediate ceasefire, an end to the siege and an end to the forced displacement of Palestinians.

There was a time when such weapons sales at least sparked talk of “the merchants of death” or of “war profiteers.” Now, however, is distinctly not that time, given the treatment of the industry by the mainstream media and the Washington establishment, as well as the nature of current conflicts. Mind you, the American arms industry already dominates the international market in a staggering fashion, controlling 45% of all such sales globally, a gap only likely to grow more extreme in the rush to further arm allies in Europe and the Middle East in the context of the ongoing wars in those regions.

In his nationally televised address about the Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine wars, President Biden described the American arms industry in remarkably glowing terms, noting that, “just as in World War II, today patriotic American workers are building the arsenal of democracy and serving the cause of freedom.” From a political and messaging perspective, the president cleverly focused on the workers involved in producing such weaponry rather than the giant corporations that profit from arming Israel, Ukraine, and other nations at war. But profit they do and, even more strikingly, much of the revenues that flow to those firms is pocketed as staggering executive salaries and stock buybacks that only boost shareholder earnings further.

Michael Fotheringham, the director of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, says the number of corporate landlords is increasing and should “in theory’” offer more stability to tenants.

“Institutional investors behave slightly differently [to small-scale investors], in that they’re more focused on rental yield and the longer term, and therefore tend to be more friendly to longer leases,” he says. “And because they’re often partners in the development of sites, [the buildings are] often higher quality.”

But because corporate landlords are “regulated exactly as well as small-scale investors”, there is no more protection for renters that would ensure “a guarantee of good behaviour”, Fotheringham says.

The executive director of advocacy organisation Better Renting, Joel Dignam, says Victoria should pull itself into line with the ACT and expand its rental protections to also ban no-grounds evictions after the first 12 months of a lease.

“[Forcing people out of a rental is] really hard to justify for a corporate landlord,” Dignam says. “They’re clearly not moving in, they’re not selling the property.”

Israeli security cabinet member and Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter (Likud) was asked in a news interview on Saturday whether the images of northern Gaza Strip residents evacuating south on the IDF’s orders are comparable to images of the Nakba. He replied: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba. From an operational point of view, there is no way to wage a war – as the IDF seeks to do in Gaza – with masses between the tanks and the soldiers.”

When asked again whether this was the “Gaza Nakba”, Dichter – a member of the security cabinet and former Shin Bet director – said “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”

 

The situation is particularly dire for people on low incomes, with a single person on jobseeker having to spend at least 78% of their income to rent a one-bedroom apartment in any capital city. In Sydney, a one-bedroom apartment would on average cost 137% of their $22,100 annual income, making it the least affordable place in the country.

A single pensioner would need to spend 50% of their income to rent in all capitals except Adelaide and Hobart and at least 32% of their income in regional areas.

Last November, however, Trevaunance Cove turned brown with sewage. Lifeguards described the stench as "unbearable". The utility company responsible — South West Water — said heavy rains forced it to release the sewage and storm runoff to avoid the local filtration system becoming overwhelmed.

But the pollution event was no one-off. Two months prior, discharge alerts were in place at more than 100 beaches around the country, and in 2021, there were more than 370,000 such releases of raw sewage by water utilities across the United Kingdom. That year, another company, Southern Water, was fined a record 90 million pounds ($170 million) for dumping 21 billion litres of untreated sewage into protected marine areas off the southern coast of England.

Rivers and lakes have also been used as dump sites; there are credible reports that untreated sewage is spilled into natural waterways every two-and-a-half minutes. As temperatures across the UK have risen, there has been a growing backlash against the government's inability to fix the problem.

At the heart of the scandal is a decision taken in 1989 to sell off the country's water and sewerage industry.

Staffers from more than two dozen Democratic offices say they are receiving an unprecedented number of calls and emails demanding for members to support a cease-fire — an onslaught for which their caucus was wholly unprepared.

Following the Oct. 7 terror attacks on Israel by Hamas militants, up to three weeks passed ― and the death toll from Israel’s retaliatory strikes reached the thousands ― before many offices even formulated an official response. “Let it go to voicemail” was the prevailing guidance in several offices, one staffer said.

The yawning mismatch between voters’ and members’ sentiments on this issue strikes many staffers as outrageous.

“This building is not listening,” said one Democratic aide. “I’ve never seen such a disconnect between where voters and constituents are and where Congress is, and that’s saying something because there’s always a disconnect.”