#humanitarian aid on verge of collapse

[news4dzhozhar]

[fiercynn]

Despite numerous protests from the Palestinian side, the Paris Agreements signed in 1994 continue to constitute the framework for the main economic agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, including the Gaza Strip. Israel controls the customs regime, thus there is no import duty on goods imported from Israel to the occupied territories, while there is on goods imported from abroad. International aid organizations are required to provide humanitarian aid in the most efficient way possible. They must purchase the cheapest food available to aid the greatest number of people within their budget. Though food is cheaper in Jordan and Egypt, food imports from Jordan and Egypt to the occupied Palestinian territory are taxed. The taxes, in principle, go to the PA coffers, but this cannot be a consideration for the aid organizations. Instead, they are required to purchase most of the goods they distribute from Israeli companies, unless importation from another country, including import taxes, will still be cheaper than the price in Israel. Additionally, Israeli security regulations require aid organizations to use Israeli transportation companies and vehicles, since Palestinian companies are not allowed to enter Israel to pick up goods from airports or sea-ports. Even more significant is the fact that the Palestinians do not have their own currency or central bank: financial assistance must be given in New Israeli Shekels. The foreign currency remains in the Bank of Israel, and Israeli commercial banks collect numerous service charges along the way. What this means, in fact, is that Israel exports the occupation: as long as the international community is willing to contribute financially to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Israeli companies continue to supply them with goods and services and receive payment in foreign currency. [x]

- shir hever for +972 magazine on march 2, 2018

[catdotjpeg]

Starvation and hunger are spreading among half a million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, as they facing rainy, cold weather and insufficient food due to the ongoing Israeli aggression since October.  Some Palestinian families used whatever ingredients they had to feed their children, such as grinding fodder, which is hay or straw normally fed to cattle, to bake bread.

“People need to make bread; sometimes they manage to make it [using fodder] and sometimes not. We are living a famine,” a Palestinian in Gaza told Al-Jazeera Arabic.

“We live in a polluted condition. There is no fresh water, no food, no drink, no flour. This flour you see here was made from livestock fodder,” he said, showing a sack of fodder that contained insects and needed palming before being crushed. UNRWA said on Tuesday that 570,000 Palestinians in Gaza are now facing “catastrophic hunger.”

“Intense fighting, access denials & restrictions + communications blackouts are hampering UNRWA’s ability to safely & effectively deliver aid,” the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said. “As risk of famine grows, UN calls for a critical increase in humanitarian access,” it added. UNRWA worries were reiterated by the World Food Programme (WFP), which believes that numerous areas of Gaza are on the verge of being plunged into famine pockets as Israeli bombardment and siege never eased for over three months, except for the ten-day truce in November. “This is why we’re seeing people becoming more desperate and being impatient to wait for food distributions, because it’s very sporadic,” the WFP spokesperson Abeer Etefa said. Both UNRWA and WFP are struggling to deliver sufficient aid and food supplies inside the Gaza Strip. UNRWA said it managed, alongside its partners, to deliver protein-based, flour, dairy items, and high-energy biscuits to 320,000 families in January, which still leave thousands of other Palestinians without food in Gaza.

Palestinians in Gaza have been blocked by the Israeli military from accessing the agricultural fields to the east of the Gaza Strip since October, a significant portion of which have been leveled and destroyed. This has added to the lack of sufficient food and to starvation in Gaza for 2.3 million Palestinians, the majority of whom are now displaced.

“The humanitarian situation in Gaza is still catastrophic. As winter sets in, people are struggling without proper shelters, food, water and warm clothes,” ActionAid UK appealed in a petition.

“The health system has collapsed in Gaza and outbreak of disease such as diarrhoea and acute respiratory infections threatens more lives,” it added.

-- From "‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 110: Israeli forces encircle Khan Younis as Gazans risk famine" by Mustafa Abu Sneineh for Mondoweiss, 24 Jan 2024

[argyrocratie]

(...)

"On January 2nd, the WHO announced that there are currently 424,639 cases of infectious diseases in Gaza. Since such official counts only represent those who were able to make it to a clinic or hospital, experts assume that the true rates are much higher. A half million infectious disease cases would still have overwhelmed Gaza’s healthcare system before October 7th, though many would have been treatable with food, water, and medical care. But today, amid an ongoing assault that has destroyed 27 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals, as well as the very foundations of the enclave’s public health—in the form of food, water, and shelter—epidemics are likely to mean mass death. “You don’t need overt bloodshed to cause significant violence that ends people’s lives,” Asi told Jewish Currents. “Many people will die unnecessary deaths due to deprivation.”

This concern has a firm historical basis: In most wars, including in Iraq, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Yemen, and Darfur, far more people die of disease and starvation than through direct military assault. Indeed, according to public health scholar Barry Levy, indirect health-related deaths—which are seldom discussed when reporting the death toll of a war—can outnumber direct deaths by more than 15 to 1. In Gaza, such deaths are likely to keep increasing even if there is a ceasefire. Public health scholar Devi Sridhar recently estimated that, barring a dramatic shift which includes a resuscitation of the health system, half a million people—a quarter of Gaza’s population—could die from preventable health causes in the coming year.

(...)

The current health emergency in Gaza builds on the ruinous effects of years of Israeli restrictions on the Strip’s health system. As Asi told the Foundation for Middle East Peace on November 14th, “we’ve heard increasingly . . . that Gaza’s health system has collapsed. But in reality, Gaza’s health system has been on the verge of collapse essentially for 16 years.” Over that time, Israel has kept Gaza under a tightly controlled blockade, restricting access not only to medical equipment and medications, but also to food and water. Documents show that at one point, Israel even calculated the minimum caloric intake needed for survival; these restrictions have rendered 63% of Gaza’s population food insecure and left 30,000 children under the age of five severely malnourished. Similarly, 96% of Gaza’s water was already unsuitable for drinking before October 7th, causing a quarter of the enclave’s illnesses. As of 2018, waterborne illnesses were the leading cause of death for children in Gaza.

Israel’s newly intensified siege is exacerbating these vulnerabilities. In recent weeks, between 100 and 120 aid trucks have been entering Gaza each day, an 80% decrease from the pre-October 7th number. This chokehold on humanitarian supplies has led to calamitous shortages of basic necessities. For instance, according to the independent Famine Review Committee, 80% of the Palestinians in Gaza have reached the two most extreme levels of its food insecurity classification system—“emergency” and “catastrophe”—with half of the population at risk of starvation. Water shortages are also rampant in Gaza, and with the lack of fuel severely curtailing wastewater treatment and solid waste management, clean drinking water is impossible to find. As a result, people are drinking and cooking with unclean water, some digging wells to access water contaminated by sewage and solid waste build up, and others resorting to drinking seawater, where over 100,000 cubic meters of waste is discharged daily.

This growing sanitation crisis is compounded by constant Israeli bombardment, which has released toxic substances into the air and resulted in high numbers of unburied dead bodies in the streets and under rubble. Bombings and forced evacuations have also caused massive overcrowding. Since October 7th, Israel has displaced 90% of Gazans from their homes, pushing them into smaller and smaller areas and creating breeding grounds for disease.

(...)

Public health experts, including in Israel, say Gaza’s health disaster could also reverberate back in Israel. In 2018, Shira Efron, a co-author of a report on the enclave’s water and sewage crisis, warned that waterborne diseases will not “stay on the other side of the fence.” Israeli officials themselves have noted the danger of water pollution from Gaza; indeed, sewage from the Strip has already spread illness and polluted beaches in Israel, in addition to forcing the closure of a desalination plant in Ashkelon.

Such concerns have come to the fore again since the start of the recent war on Gaza. Already, Israeli soldiers are facing drug-resistant infections from bacteria in Gaza. An Israeli soldier recently died from a fungal infection, likely contracted due to sewage; the army also reported an outbreak of gastrointestinal illnesses, with some cases involving shigella—a bacteria that causes dysentery. Experts say soldiers are likely to bring such diseases into Israel in the coming weeks. As Nadav Davidovitch told Mako, “at the end of the day, we endanger ourselves when we don’t take into account the humanitarian side of civilians in Gaza.” Israeli public health experts have become particularly vocal in response to Eiland’s advocacy for the spread of disease, writing in a Haaretz op-ed that pandemics “do not know borders” and that diseases in Gaza will “spread without disruption and lead to sustained outbreaks among the civilian population” in Israel as well.

But not even the possibility of negative health consequences for Israelis has changed Israel’s instrumental approach to health in Gaza. Instead, the Israeli government has continued to treat disease merely as a tactical problem—one that needs to be managed to keep the war going. Indeed, on November 17th, an unnamed government source explained Israel’s decision to let limited amounts of fuel into Gaza as “minimal support for sewage, sanitation and water systems in order to prevent the outbreak of epidemics,” which could harm the war effort. Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s current war cabinet, was likewise quick to note that letting in fuel “is not a question of changing strategy, but of providing a specific response that serves the continued fighting of the IDF.” Historically, disease has sometimes proven militarily decisive: Hitler’s army lost to British forces in North Africa in part because of sickness; smallpox led to the defeat of George Washington’s army in the Battle of Quebec; Napoleon’s army was defeated in Russia because of typhus. It is these military outcomes Israel seems most keen to prevent, with Netanyahu even explaining that preventing soldiers from getting sick was important because “any breakdown, from disease to water contamination, could halt the fighting.”

These statements, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem noted, are “astounding in their honesty: The Prime Minister and the Defense Minister admit, in front of cameras, that Israel is deliberately manufacturing a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. If Israel wills it, the crisis will be solved. If it does not, it will continue.”

(...)

Public health experts have noted that Israel’s decision to create unlivable conditions in Gaza falls under the definition of genocide, which includes not just direct military violence but also “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.”

Every public health expert with whom I spoke agreed that a ceasefire is the first step towards addressing the health crisis in Gaza, “so that the hospitals will go back to functioning, so that aid—food, water, sanitary items, medicine—can reach everyone,” as Aseel Aburass from Physicians for Human Rights-Israel told Jewish Currents. But, as Asi noted, a ceasefire would only address the most explicit forms of violence, and the indirect toll of the war is likely to keep growing even if the bombs stop falling. “We have now reached the point where a ceasefire in one minute would not end the suffering of many for weeks, if not months,” Asi said. Fighting infectious disease, public health experts agree, requires allowing in food, medicine, and vaccines; building houses to shelter Gaza’s nearly two million displaced people; and investing in infrastructure—water treatment, sewage systems, and power grids.

But all this requires the political will to save lives in Gaza—something Israel and its international allies sorely lack. “If the world is able to tolerate this amount of Palestinian death by direct bombardment, it will be much more able to tolerate future reports of how many Palestians died from diseases,” Omar told Jewish Currents. “If you can burn people with phosphorus bombs, then of course you can crowd them together and let diseases do the rest. Who will cry now? What is a red line?”

[thenewsart]

U.S. Ready to Back U.N. Resolution to Allow More Aid Into Gaza

Health authorities in Gaza say that about 20,000 people, most of them women and children, have been killed in Israel’s campaign, and the U.N. has warned of a humanitarian disaster as the territory’s civic and health care infrastructure collapses. U.N. officials said this month that nearly 60 percent of people in Gaza were on the verge of starvation, and they issued a new warning on Thursday that…

[thefree-online]

‘People are starving’: WFP says humanitarian operation in Gaza ‘collapsing’

Top UN official says recent seven-day truce showed that humanitarian aid can be delivered if conditions allow. from thefreeonline on 10th Dec 2023 by Al Jazeera/ Agencies Palestinians crowd together as they wait for food distribution in Rafah in southern Gaza [Hatem Ali/AP] The World Food Programme (WFP) says its ability to supply basic necessities to the people in Gaza is on the verge…

[darnellafrica]

Sudan 🇸🇩 Civil War Is Making The Nation Unlivable

This is really bad, as there is no sign that the civil war will end in Sudan 🇸🇩. The biggest losers in this conflict are the civilian population, whose plight lacks global media attention due to wars & rumors of wars elsewhere.

UNITED NATIONS — Almost seven months of war between Sudan’s military and a powerful paramilitary group have left a wave of destruction with over half the population in need of humanitarian aid and raised fears of a repeat of the deadly ethnic conflict in Darfur 20 years ago.
“What is happening is verging on pure evil,” the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in the African nation said Friday. […]

[Clementine Nkweta-Salami, the resident U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Sudan] said the decimated health sector — with more than 70% of health facilities in conflict areas out of service — was extremely worrying giving outbreaks of cholera, dengue, malaria and measles; reports of escalating violence against civilians; and fighting spreading to Sudan’s breadbasket. […]

The U.N. is targeting about 12 million people for aid — about half those in need. But its appeal for $2.6 billion for the 2023 humanitarian response in Sudan is just over a third funded, and Nkweta-Salami urged donors to provide additional money. (Washington Post)

Usually, regional & world powers would intervene. However, most Western world powers are preoccupied with other emergencies around the globe (i.e., the Ukraine 🇺🇦 defensive war against Russia 🇷🇺 war, the United States 🇺🇸 prep war against China 🇨🇳 over Taiwan 🇹🇼, & Israel 🇮🇱 versus Hamas terrorists, etcetera).

As far as neighboring nations go, the African countries bordering Sudan 🇸🇩 are currently experience troubles of their own:

Egypt 🇪🇬 is dealing with a food crisis & battling terrorists in the Sinai Peninsula

Libya 🇱🇾 is still recovering from the dam collapse, plus more security issues

Chad 🇹🇩 is…well, Chad 🇹🇩.

The Central African Republic 🇨🇫 is fighting a civil war against a frenemy rebel alliance, with assistance from Russia 🇷🇺 & Rwanda 🇷🇼 (it’s a stalemate right now)

South Sudan 🇸🇸 is experiencing similar issues with it’s northern neighbor (if not worse)

Ethiopia 🇪🇹 just ended one internal conflict which incidentally triggered another one

Eritrea 🇪🇷 (who ironically is the most stable of the bunch) is not interested in intervening (diplomatically or militarily) in the Sudan 🇸🇩 civil war.

While a diplomatic solution is preferable, without some military intervention, the conflict in Sudan 🇸🇩 will likely spark another refugee crisis, with millions of people fleeing the country to escape famine & war.

Sudan 🇸🇩 is currently suspended from the African Union (so no help will arrive from that organization), so unless help arrives from beyond the region, Sudan’s 🇸🇩 situation will likely further deteriorate.

[christinamac1]

UN Agency Warns Humanitarian Operations in Gaza on Verge of Total Collapse

October 23, 2023  https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/23/un-agency-warns-humanitarian-operations-in-gaza-on-verge-of-total-collapse/ “Without fuel, there will be no water, no functioning hospitals and bakeries,” said the UNRWA. “Without fuel, aid will not reach those in desperate need. Without fuel, there will be no humanitarian assistance.” By Jon Queally / Common Dreams The U.N. agency…

[razorblogz]

'Famine-like conditions': 13 die in South Sudan, says agency 

Years of civil war, famine, floods and a collapsing economy have taken their toll on South Sudan since the world's newest country gained its independence in 2011.

JUBA (South Sudan): Famine-like conditions in South Sudan’s southeast have left 13 people dead due to lack of food and water, an aid agency has said.

Hundreds more from the country’s minority Jie community are on the verge of starvation in the northwestern region of Kapoeta in Eastern Equatorial state, the Humanitarian Development Consortium said Wednesday.

Thousands of Jie people have been surviving on wild fruits for food with no sustainable water supply as all attempts to drill boreholes in the areas where they live have failed due to low water levels, the aid agency said.

In the past, the Jie community had migrated to the Boma area of South Sudan’s Greater Pibor state in search of water, but it led to violence.

Years of civil war, famine, floods and a collapsing economy have taken their toll on South Sudan since the world’s newest country gained its independence in 2011.

A “recent upsurge in numbers” of hungry people has created a “worrying situation,” the agency’s executive director William Ngabonziza said.

The “situation was horrible” with more than 5,000 people currently in a camp located some 75 kilometers from the county headquarters, Emmanuel Epony, a commissioner of Kapoeta North County, told the Associated Press.

The community has suffered for the last three years and confirmed that 10 elderly people and three children had died recently after going for days without food, Chief Peduin Anthony of the Chumai Boma said.

“I’m not sure how we’re going to survive now that the wild fruits are almost finished,” an elderly woman, Dapai Lolup, told the aid consortium, adding that the wild fruit is bitter and causes diarrhea and stomach pain, especially in children.

Livestock which are the main source of livelihood have also died in the region.

Famine was formally declared in parts of South Sudan in early 2017.The UN in 2022 warned that up to 1.7 million people are at risk of starvation in South Sudan.

Nearly 2 million people have also been displaced in floods that have been ongoing for four years now during the rainy season.

[mariacallous]

Diplomats are racing against time to negotiate a full extension of the Black Sea Grain Initiative before it expires on Saturday, a major test for the rare wartime agreement that helped stabilize global food prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

For now, diplomats negotiating the agreement appear to have averted the worst-case scenario—Russia’s complete withdrawal. Despite repeated threats that it would suspend its participation, Moscow has offered to extend it for a 60-day period, just half of the 120-day duration secured in the previous extension. Russian officials are framing this plan as a done deal. But Ukraine, Turkey, and the United Nations have all pushed back against the shortened period and pressed Moscow to stick to the deal’s original term of 120 days, although the language of the deal allowed parties to “modify” it.

A collapse or interruption of the grain deal could have far-reaching consequences beyond Europe, as humanitarian officials brace for food shortages in conflict-ridden areas such as East Africa grappling with prolonged droughts and possible famine. Ukraine accounts for approximately 10 percent of the world’s wheat exports, 40 percent of its sunflower oil supply, and 20 percent of its corn exports, all of which were throttled after Russia invaded Ukraine more than a year ago.

“It is absolutely critical that the U.N. renews the Black Sea grain deal,” said Shashwat Saraf, the regional emergency director for East Africa at the International Rescue Committee aid group. “Somalia is on the verge of famine and is facing an unprecedented drought, and Kenya and Ethiopia have incredibly alarming hunger statistics. Without a grain deal renewal, Somalia is likely to reach famine faster, and Kenya and Ethiopia will continue to suffer.”

After a major diplomatic breakthrough in July 2022, the U.N.-brokered deal enabled 24 million tons of grain blockaded in Ukraine’s Black Sea ports to reach the global market, easing pressures on the world’s most vulnerable import-dependent countries. About three-quarters of Ukraine’s agricultural exports cross the Black Sea—and half of those leave ports protected under the grain deal. After skyrocketing by almost 60 percent in the wake of Russia’s invasion, wheat prices have largely returned to prewar levels.

Saraf and others are pushing for a prolonged grain deal extension of 12 months to reduce uncertainty and price pressures in food markets, but Russia’s diplomatic posturing shows that’s a far-flung prospect.

Russia likely pushed a 60-day extension “because it realizes the geopolitical and economic and humanitarian consequences of refusing to renew the deal,” said Chris Barrett, an agricultural economist at Cornell University. “It doesn’t want the bad PR, but it’s trying hard to scupper it, so it is trying to severely constrain how much Ukraine can really export to the rest of the world.”

For Ukraine, half a loaf could really be less than half. Shortening the length of the deal to 60 days can limit the kinds of contracts that can be honored and complicate ongoing issues with inspection delays, thereby limiting the volumes of grain that can leave the Black Sea. Since there is always uncertainty when deals expire, shipping tends to slow in the week before a renewal is signed, which further lowers actual export volumes.

When it comes to extending the deal, “the longer the better,” said Joseph Glauber, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute and former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Russia has long attempted to upend the agreement in a bid to gain more political leverage over the United Nations and Western powers backing Ukraine, repeatedly threatening to end its involvement and at one point even briefly withdrawing from the deal in October, when it was last up for renewal. The biggest sticking point in this round of negotiations is Russia’s food and fertilizer exports. While Western sanctions exclude Russian agricultural products, Moscow says the sanctions have hampered those exports by targeting Russian insurers and payment companies.

“Russia is using its participation in the Black Sea Grain Initiative to try and get concessions in other areas,” said Caitlin Welsh, the director of the Global Food Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s using this as leverage.”

“Russia wants to have its cake and eat it, too,” she added. “It wants to be able to invade a major agricultural producer, cause disruption in global agricultural markets, and also not experience any disruptions itself.”

Russia’s position hinges on “progress toward the normalization of our agricultural exports, including bank payments, transport logistics, insurance, unfreezing of financial activities, and the supply of ammonia through the Togliatti-Odessa pipeline,” said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin. Ammonia is a key input in fertilizer production.

Experts and Western officials accuse Russia of negotiating in bad faith by trying to shorten the deal while easing its own sanctions pressure. “Russia has used the grain deal as a bargaining chip to hold over the heads of Ukrainians but also international negotiators,” said Jonathan Katz, a scholar at the German Marshall Fund think tank and former U.S. Agency for International Development official.

The negotiations are taking place against the backdrop of spiking tensions between Russia, Ukraine, and Western powers in the Black Sea, on the periphery of the deadly battlefields across eastern Ukraine. On Tuesday, a Russian jet intercepted and collided with a U.S. surveillance drone, forcing it to crash into the Black Sea and alarming American officials.

At the same time, Moscow is also wary of alienating countries that are among the most vulnerable to spiking food and fertilizer prices. A month before the original deal was crafted, Senegalese President and African Union Chairman Macky Sall met with Russian President Vladimir Putin to urge the release of Ukrainian grain exports. This month, Russian Ambassador to Malawi Nikolai Krasilnikov also pledged to ship 20,000 tons of fertilizer to Malawi and 260,000 tons of fertilizer to other countries in Africa, while expressing his hopes that those countries would oppose Western sanctions against Russia.

“[Russia] clearly cares about its self-interest, and it needs allies,” Barrett said. “And those allies are disproportionately grains-importing and oilseeds-importing countries that need Ukrainian commodities as much as they need Russian commodities.”

Katz said that even if concessions are made and a deal is struck for a renewal of the export scheme, Putin shouldn’t get any accolades. “Russia doesn’t deserve a medal for creating a war, carrying out war crimes, and causing global instability that caused this food crisis in the first place.”

[metamatar]

this is nominally about bds and you do have the answer for why. but when you brought up the esims it reminded me about this piece on how most aid to palestine tends to profit israel thru fees and checks and requirements to buy said aid from israel.

i've asked about this a few times now but not since before al-aqsa flood, so: what's the vibe on vpn services which have servers in israel? you can't realistically "boycott" them unless you boycott all big vpns, and i think the benefits of having a vpn outweigh the benefits of boycotting every single vpn service with israeli servers, but i do wonder if the israeli economy meaningfully benefits from people having servers in israel anyway. ig they'd be paying bills to israeli companies and paying for israeli internet? but like esims for gaza is also probably paying israeli telecom companies right? so it's not something that's completely verboten under bds?

if vpn services having israeli servers meaningfully benefits the israeli economy, what even is the viability of a campaign for them to divest? considering we'd be campaigning against every popular international vpn company when a lot of ppl in the bds movement probably don't even use vpns or care about them?

i guess that probably points to vpn companies not being a strategic target right? idk, it's just something that's been nagging me for years since i tried looking into a vpn service to buy that A. i trusted to not give my data to the government and B. didn't have servers in israel lol. i know there are also some vpn services that only have their vpn servers in one country that isnt israel, ig i might look into those if it starts bothering me too much, im just used to the vpn services that offer servers in dozens of countries

[whatevergreen]

"NGOs operating in Haiti warn that the chaos engulfing the country has become so total and the social fabric so torn that the country is on the verge of collapse, as discussions continue at the UN security council on how to restore order.

Haitians are currently facing a series of overlapping crises that are becoming deadlier by the day as heavily armed gangs continue to blockade the country’s principal port and fuel terminal.

The country is also experiencing its worst hunger in history as a deadly outbreak of cholera spreads and armed gangs increasingly targeting women and children with sexual violence as a form of warfare.

“In 20 years of working in Haiti, we have never seen something like this,” said Fiammetta Cappellini, country representative for the Avsi Foundation. “Violence is everywhere and touches everybody. The most vulnerable people are literally struggling to survive as humanitarian aid is failing to reach people.”"

On the verge? It has collapsed, months ago. If the majority of the population was white, would Haiti have been left to fall into this state?

There's a youtube series posted in September by the Indigo Traveller which gives an idea of the state of the country:

Of course, there's still rich people, living in gated compounds while the majority suffer extreme poverty and chaos:

[zalimaaa]

Over 24 million Yemenis require urgent humanitarian assistance. This conflict has resulted in economic collapse. 10 million Yemenis are on the verge of famine and more than 17 million are without adequate access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene. Yemen is on the verge of extinction now that there's been an outbreak of COVID19. Yemen needs our help to end its suffering

*if this petition gets to 100,000 signatures, it will be considered for a debate in parliament. only british citizens and uk residents can sign, but please share it anyway*

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

Gaza’s health system is on the verge of collapse, Israeli defense officials warned last week. Their report echoed an international aid agency’s findings that Gaza hospitals are severely short of doctors, especially specialists, and lack 60 percent of necessary medications, including basics like painkillers and antibiotics. Entire hospital departments have closed due to the inability to offer treatment, and patients with cancer, diabetes or renal failure are simply being sent home.

You might think this situation would prompt at least one of the Palestinians’ two rival governments to take action. But you’d be wrong.

Subscribe to The JNS Daily Syndicate by email and never miss our top stories

The Palestinian Authority, which repeatedly proclaims itself the sole legitimate government of both the West Bank and Gaza and is recognized as such internationally, receives billions in international aid to provide for humanitarian needs in both places. It ostensibly budgets 150 million shekels a year ($41.3 million) for medical supplies for Gaza. But it hasn’t paid this money in months.

Yet this same P.A. has no trouble finding $330 million a year to pay salaries to jailed terrorists. Evidently, paying terrorists is more important to it than its people’s health.

Nevertheless, the P.A.’s behavior pales beside that of Gaza’s real governing authority, Hamas. Two weeks ago, Hamas discussed the humanitarian problem with foreign officials, who then presented its ideas to Israeli officials. The organization proposed three possible scenarios, Haaretz reported. But none of them involved Hamas lifting a finger to help the people it governs.

Indeed, Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar “made clear that under any of these scenarios, Hamas would not disarm,” wrote reporter Yaniv Kubovich. In other words, it won’t divert any of the hundreds of millions of dollars a year it spends on its own military to ease Gazans’ humanitarian plight.

And it’s not as if the organization couldn’t afford to do so. As Haaretz reported this week, aside from about 130 million shekels a year that Hamas raises through taxes in Gaza, Qatar alone has given Gaza $1 billion over the last seven years, including $200 million last year. And unlike the billions Gaza receives from other international donors, part of the Qatari money—16 percent, or $160 million—has gone directly to Hamas for its own use and that of other terrorist groups in Gaza.

That’s almost four times what the P.A. spent annually on medical supplies for Gaza back when it was still financing Gaza’s health system. Thus the Qatari money alone could have solved the entire medical crisis had Hamas so chosen.

[xtruss]

The ‘Global Revolution of Dignity' Hurts Human Dignity

— Xin Ping | July 05, 2022

Unmasking the superpower: Where the Ukraine crisis started Illustration: Xu Zihe/Global Times

"All Human Beings are Born Free and Equal in Dignity and Rights."

This is Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But in a recent speech by Administrator Samantha Power of USAID, she seemed to assume that people's yearning for dignity needs to be awakened by the United States. If she cares to revisit history, she would find that the so-called revolution of dignity is nothing new. It was chanted by the US before it found its way into Ukraine, Afghanistan and Latin America.

"Revolution of dignity" was used to describe the street protests incited by the US in Ukraine in 2014 that ousted the then president. Regrettably, what ensued was not dignity, but instability and poverty. Eight years later, in the same country, human tragedies repeat themselves. UN Women recently noted that "women and minorities are facing immense hardship in health, safety and access to food as a result of the Ukraine crisis." Up to 5,000 children have already been unaccounted for according to the Ukrainian authorities. Vulnerability plus the urgent need for money has created a breeding ground for sexual exploitation. UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that "for predators and human traffickers," women and children are the targets, especially when they cannot speak neighboring countries' languages or don't have people they trust to protect their safety.

Human dignity in Ukraine is in dire strait. Yet, America's first lady's visit to Ukraine was nothing more than a photo op, and US humanitarian assistance to Ukraine seems so modest comparing to billions in military aid. Even worse, when the smoke of war is yet to clear in Ukraine, the US is having second thoughts about how much more it should continue to assist. There is no doubt that the US will eventually leave behind a mess the same as it was created, if not worse; and innocent civilians will continue to live in plight with no human dignity.

Afghanistan is another place where human dignity is degraded. In 2021, the US withdrew all its troops from Afghanistan, in a manner as arbitrary as how it went uninvited 20 years ago. Back then, president Bush claimed that "Our coalition has liberated Afghanistan and restored fundamental human rights and freedoms... to all the people of Afghanistan." Even when the US was pulling out, President Biden still pledged to "continue to support the Afghan people."

But it is the US who shattered the dignity of Afghan people, when it bombed homes into shambles and tore families apart. The two-decade war left over 70,000 Afghan civilians killed, more than 60,000 injured and 11 million displaced. Nearly 33,000 children died, and 3.5 million lost access to education. Ten civilians including two toddlers aged only two were directly killed by US drones. In a most horrific video, two Afghans who were deluded about a better life in America fell from a US aircraft when it hastily took off from Kabul airport. In neither case was any US personnel held accountable.

When human lives hardly matter to the US, there is no human dignity to speak of. The war has cost Afghanistan $60 million on a daily average, destroying almost all its industries. About 72 percent of the Afghan people are living below the poverty line. Only 5 percent of the population have enough food to eat. But the US chose to freeze the Afghan central bank's assets of $7 billion, pushing Afghanistan's financial system to the verge of collapse and leaving more Afghans unemployed. This is how the US defends human dignity: to create turmoil and poverty with a war, and then worsen humanitarian situation with illegal sanctions.

"Love thy neighbor." But that's not the motto of the US when it so casually hurts the interests of Latin American countries to maximize its own profits. On Cuba, the US has imposed the harshest sanctions for more than 60 years, costing Cuba hundreds of billions of dollars. Those wooed by the ideals of freedom and dignity who rushed to the US border would only find the doors shut and their dreams crushed. In early June, tens of thousands of Central American migrants were violently expelled and inhumanely treated at the US southern border. In 2021, a US border guard on horseback whipped a migrant on his head. In just nine days, the US expelled nearly 4,000 Haitian migrants, including hundreds of families with children. Latin America is "so far from God, so close to the US."

The US keeps talking about dignity, but what it does is just the opposite. Maybe its true purpose is to sustain its dominance and supremacy by depriving others of dignity. Administrator Power said that "we should extend a broader revolution of dignity to people seeking to be free." But true dignity can only be realized when the world is free of US hegemony and hypocrisy.

— The author is a commentator on international affairs, writing regularly for CGTN, Global Times, Xinhua News Agency, etc.

[newstfionline]

A humanitarian crisis in Venezuela? Nothing to see here, government says

By Rachelle Krygier and Anthony Faiola, Washington Post, October 13, 2018

CARACAS, Venezuela--In the world according to the Venezuelan government, state food programs are stocking empty supermarket shelves. An exodus of starving citizens to other countries is “fake news.” And claims of a dire health crisis are part of a global plot to lay the groundwork for a U.S. invasion.

“Venezuela is the victim of world media attacks designed to construct a supposed humanitarian crisis so as to justify a military intervention,” President Nicolás Maduro told the U.N. General Assembly last month. He insisted that there is no crisis.

The nation of 31 million is descending into chaos--a situation so desperate that HIV and cancer patients are going without treatment and parents are surrendering their hungry children to orphanages. But the government is doubling down on efforts to portray an alternative reality. For Venezuelans, each day brings a new barrage of propaganda on state media depicting a country that few of them recognize.

There may be a calculated logic to the official denials. Humanitarian crises have been cited in the past to justify military action, including incursions in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Fueled in part by the Trump administration and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), as well as some Latin American diplomats and politicians, talk appears to be growing of a possible outside military solution to Venezuela’s plight.

“It’s immoral what they’re doing--denying the crisis,” said David Smilde, a Venezuela expert at Tulane University. “But from their point of view, they have a huge motivation to not admit the extent of the crisis and therefore offer a compelling argument for military intervention.”

On a recent morning, Venezolana de Televisión, a state broadcaster, aired images of an idyllic communal farm providing plentiful jobs for contented workers. “We are very happy here,” an elderly man said. “I’m proud and grateful for this collective farm.”

A few days earlier, state TV had shown Margaud Godoy, the pro-Maduro governor of the state of Cojedes, cheerfully discussing shipments of subsidized meat to supermarkets. In grocery stores across the country, meat of any kind has been nearly impossible to find for weeks. Yet the camera shot showed juicy beef being cut for distribution.

At a large supermarket in eastern Caracas, shoppers begged to differ. The meat counter had no beef or chicken, and a section for pork was half-empty.

“If they’re supplying someone with meat, it’s themselves, not the people,” said Agustin Diaz, a 34-year-old mechanic.

Many Venezuelan children returned to school in September with worn uniforms and holes in their shoes, some of them underweight because of the food shortages. Yet state channels showed footage of children in impeccable clothing, merrily returning to class. The reports also failed to mention a severe funding shortfall that appears set to force the closure of hundreds of schools nationwide.

“With energy we go back to school, happy to see our friends,” a narrator said.

Aid groups estimate that 1.6 million to 2 million Venezuelans will leave the country this year to escape hyperinflation and the scarcity of food and medicine. Those numbers are on top of the 1.5 million who left between 2014 and 2017.

But early in September, the government’s communications minister, Jorge Rodríguez, and his sister, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, called an international news conference to unveil what they said was evidence that the migrant and humanitarian crises were a hoax.

The communications minister said the fact that more tweets are circulating about a “humanitarian crisis” in Venezuela than about one in Syria, where there is an outright war, pointed to an organized “fake news” campaign. He also suggested that Venezuela’s socialist system remains an enviable draw for myriad people in the region.

“If there’s a humanitarian crisis here, then why are 5 million Colombians still living here? Are they masochists?” Rodríguez said.

Maduro has suggested, meanwhile, that the flows of migrants out of Venezuela are no larger than in past years. And if they are, he says, it’s only because Venezuelans are being tricked into leaving--or else are setting off to try their luck elsewhere with pockets stuffed with cash.

“The fabricated migrant crisis is proving to be a lie,” Maduro said last month.

For two decades, backers of Venezuela’s “Bolivarian Revolution”--the brainchild of President Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013--talked up its empowerment of the poor through welfare programs and leftist labor laws. But since Maduro, Chávez’s anointed successor, took office, the already shaky economy has spiraled into a seemingly bottomless crisis. Experts attribute the crash to a toxic mix of failed socialist policies, corruption, mismanagement and lower oil prices--the last a disaster for a country with the world’s largest proven oil reserves.

In his most vulnerable moments, Maduro has appeared to recognize his mistakes. In August, he announced new economic policies designed to fix “past errors.” He has conceded that the state oil company, ­PDVSA, has been on the verge of collapse and has jailed officials he said were responsible.

But he has never fully admitted the scope of the country’s social, health or migrant crises, and the government has rejected humanitarian aid from charities and nongovernmental organizations, insisting that it is not needed.

At the same time, the free press has been largely squelched, with private channels and news websites censored by a media-regulating body, Conatel. At least a dozen heads of news outlets have been exiled or charged with crimes since 2015. Six websites have been shut down and six newspapers have stopped publishing this year, according to the independent Caracas-based Press and Society Institute.

That has left state media and self-censored outlets as the primary purveyors of information for the 50 percent of the country without access to the Internet.

For Venezuelans, the propaganda can seem surreal.

Nelsy Cruz, 76, a resident of a working-class neighborhood 24 miles east of Caracas, glanced at state TV reports as she tidied her living room.

Cruz urgently needs knee replacement surgery, which she says has been delayed for months because hospitals lack the means to treat her. She pointed to her protruding cheekbones and said she had to take in her pants after losing more than 10 pounds this year from lack of food. As the cheery images flickered on the screen, she said it was as if the government is trying to convince Venezuelans that they all live in “paradise.”

“Maduro denies things that we see every day,” she said. “The government simply keeps lying to us. Blatantly.”