cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/43916323

Gaza’s water “comes from wells with salt water unfit for consumption. They have water treatment plants, Israel should hit those plants. When the entire world says we have gone insane and this is a humanitarian disaster — we will say, it’s not an end, it’s a means.” That was the opinion of Giora Eiland, adviser to the defense minister and former head of the Israeli National Security Council, writing in Yedioth Ahronoth on October 9, 2023.⁠[1]

Already by November, the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights warned that “around 70% of the population in Gaza is drinking salinised and contaminated water.”⁠[2] By July 2024, Oxfam reported that “people in Gaza have had only 4.74 litres of water per person per day” since the start of Israel’s offensive,[3] well below the World Health Organization’s minimum needed for survival in a humanitarian emergency.⁠[4]

Israel's control over life’s most essential resource did not arise overnight. After occupying Gaza and the West Bank in 1967, it quickly established a system to extract water for its own use while restricting Palestinian access. For decades, this policy forced the indigenous population into dependence and precarity, while Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories — illegal under international law⁠[5] — enjoyed “privileged access to water.”⁠[6]

Read the rest of the piece on SourcedPress. Every fact-checking thread is public, and every source document is provided.

https://sourced.press/a/water-and-occupation

Donald Trump will inevitably claim Monday’s temporary truce in the US-China trade war as a victory, but financial markets seem to have read it for what it is – a capitulation.

Stocks were up and bond yields were higher after the US treasury secretary Scott Bessent’s early morning press conference in Geneva, where he has been holding talks with China.
As with the UK “trade deal” last week, the US is not reverting to the status quo before Trump arrived in the White House.

Instead, tariffs on Chinese goods will be cut from 145% to 30% – initially for a 90-day period. In return, China has cut its own tariffs on US imports to 10%, from the 125% it had imposed in retaliation against the White House.

That still marks a big shift in the terms of trade between the two countries since before Trump came to power, but falls far short of what was in effect a trade embargo.

Instead, the statement hailed “the importance of a sustainable, long-term and mutually beneficial economic and trade relationship”. The language was rather different to Trump’s Liberation Day speech, about the US being “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far”.

In other words, the president has caved. He may have been swayed by market wobbles but it seems more plausible that dire warnings from retailers about empty shelves – backed up by data showing shipments into US ports collapsing – may have strengthened the hands of trade moderates in the administration.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/29994139

May 12, 2025 at 2:58 pm

"“For over two months, #Israel has enforced a total siege, blocking food, water, medicine and aid, while thousands of trucks filled with life-saving supplies ready for swift distribution, are waiting at the border, metres away, blocked from entering.”

He added that families are “wasting away from hunger”, while children are “malnourished” and “too weak to cry” as entire communities are surviving “without food or clean water”. #Oxfam’s field teams reported that in one displacement camp, only five of 500 families had any flour left to make bread."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/29992807

By MEE staff
Published date: 11 May 2025 21:07 BST

"In a statement issued on Sunday, senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya announced the move following direct contact between the group and the United States in recent days. He said the decision came amid mediation efforts led by Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey.

“The movement affirms its readiness to immediately start intensive negotiations and make serious efforts to reach a final agreement to end the war, exchange prisoners in an agreed-upon manner,” al-Hayya said."

Pope Leo XIV on Monday called for the release of imprisoned journalists and affirmed the “precious gift of free speech and the press” in an audience with some of the 6,000 journalists who descended on Rome to cover his election as the first American pontiff.

Very roughly, the plan to get rid of fossil fuels looks like:

• Generate electricity without burning stuff
• electrify everything we can
• Stop doing the few things we can't electrify

So this is a big deal in terms of getting where we need to go.

This post uses a gift link which may have a view count limit. If it runs out, there is an archived copy of the article

“April 2025 has marked another historic milestone. For the second time this year, we have recorded the lowest number of murders in over two decades,” Dr Kevin Blake, the police commissioner, said in a statement.

According to Blake, compared to the same period last year, between January and April, there has been an 18% decline in overall major crimes, and murders are down by 37%.

But the human rights group Jamaican for Justice (JFJ) has raised concerns about a corresponding “significant and alarming increase” in fatal police shootings in the same period.

According to Jamaica’s police complaints authority, the Independent Commission of Investigations (Indecom), 111 people were fatally shot by security forces between January and April 2025, compared 44 in the same period last year – a 152% increase.

Israel has asked judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) to withdraw arrest warrants against its prime minister and defence minister while the ICC reviews Israeli challenges to its jurisdiction over the conduct of the Gaza war.

Documents published on the ICC website late on Sunday also show Israel has asked the court to order the prosecution to suspend its investigation into alleged atrocity crimes in the Palestinian Territories.

Argentina's Supreme Court discovered dozens of boxes filled with Nazi material dating from World War II, including photos and postcards, among its archives in its basement.

Argentina's Supreme Court has found dozens of boxes filled with Nazi material among its archives in its basement.

The 83 boxes hold documents including postcards, photographs and notebooks, as well as propaganda material, the court said on Sunday.

Court employees discovered the material by chance while preparing for the creation of a museum.

"Upon opening one of the boxes, we identified material intended to consolidate and propagate Adolf Hitler's ideology in Argentina during the Second World War," the court said.

Jets could continue to fly following an atomic blast under special insurance policies being drawn up to address the possibility of conflicts escalating in Ukraine and Kashmir.

https://archive.ph/2qtgO

Dozens of boxes of Nazi material confiscated by Argentinean authorities during World War II were recently rediscovered in the Supreme Court's basement, the court said on Sunday.

"Upon opening one of the boxes, we identified material intended to consolidate and propagate Adolf Hitler's ideology in Argentina during the Second World War," the court said.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/29974707

[Bias alert - #NYT usually favors Israel]

https://archive.ph/wip/z7KSM

By Adam Rasgon and Aaron Boxerman
Reporting from Jerusalem
May 11, 2025

Length: 1:39:20

Immigrants, populism, border fences, electoral autocracy.

If you are interested about how and why Hungary is as it is, this is a documentary just released by Partizán, the most viewed Hungarian news outlet independent from the Hungarian government.

The subtitles are not autogenerated but hand-made by the news outlet.

The outlet has a decidedly leftist slant even by European standards, but are considered mainstream in Hungary.