I don’t care if there was an entire army hold up there, there are rules to war that Israel has violated each one. They are willing and wantonly killing civilians. Plus they are trying to sabotage the peace plans. I am very glad Biden is not running because he is allowing Israel to get away with this. Hugs. Scottie
Hi everyone. Thanks to Ali for correcting my post to include the link. Ali you really are grand. The total is not up to 100 dead. Hugs. Scottie
Israeli airstrike on a Gaza school used as a shelter kills at least 80, Palestinian officials say
At the link about there are pictures and videos of the devatation and the shock of the people including the kids. Hugs. Scottie
BY WAFAA SHURAFA AND SAMY MAGDY
Updated 6:13 PM EDT, August 10, 2024
An Israeli airstrike hit a school-turned-shelter in Gaza early Saturday, killing at least 80 people and wounding nearly 50 others, Palestinian health authorities said, in one of the deadliest attacks of the 10-month Israel-Hamas war. A witness said it struck during prayers at a mosque in the building.
It was the latest of what the U.N. human rights office called “systematic attacks on schools” by Israel, with at least 21 since July 4 leaving hundreds dead, including women and children.
“For many, schools are the last resort to find some shelter,” it said after Saturday’s attack.
The Israeli military acknowledged it targeted the Tabeen school in central Gaza City, saying it hit a Hamas command center in a mosque in its compound and killed 19 Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters. Izzat al-Rishq, a top Hamas official, denied there were militants in the school.
Israel’s military also disputed the toll, saying the “precise munitions” used “cannot cause the amount of damage that is being reported” by the Hamas-run government. It said the steps it took to limit the risk to civilians included the use of a “small warhead,” aerial surveillance and intelligence information.
Walls were blown out on the ground level of the large building. Concrete chunks and twisted metal lay on the blood-soaked floor. Bodies, some in bloodstained shrouds, were placed shoulder to shoulder in makeshift graves, making room for more.
Fadel Naeem, director of the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, told The Associated Press that it received 70 bodies along with the body parts of at least 10 others. Gaza’s Health Ministry said that another 47 people were wounded.
“We received some of the most serious injuries we encountered during the war,” he said, with many wounded having limbs amputated and some with severe burns.
The strike hit without warning before sunrise as people prayed, according to witness Abu Anas.
“There were people praying, there were people washing and there were people upstairs sleeping, including children, women and old people,” he said, prayer beads in hand. “The missile fell on them without warning. The first missile, and the second. We recovered them as body parts.”
Three missiles ripped through the two-story building — the first floor housed the mosque, and the second level had a school — where about 6,000 displaced people were taking shelter, said Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesperson for the Civil Defense first responders, who operate under the Hamas-run government.
Many of the casualties were women and children, he said.
A camera operator working for the AP said a missile appeared to have penetrated the floor of the classrooms to the mosque below and exploded.
The U.N. previously said that as of July 6, 477 out of 564 schools in Gaza had been directly hit or damaged in the war, adding that Israel has a duty under international law to provide safe shelter for the displaced.
“There’s no justification for these massacres,” European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement posted on X, referring to strikes on schools. U.K. Foreign Minister David Lammy said that he was “appalled.” France’s foreign ministry called the recent number of civilian victims in Israeli strikes on schools “intolerable.”
The U.S. said it was deeply concerned about reports of civilians killed.
“Far too many civilians continue to be killed and wounded,” U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett said in a statement.
Israel has blamed civilian deaths in Gaza on Hamas, saying the group endangers people by using schools and residential neighborhoods as bases for operations. The U.N. human rights office acknowledged that colocating combatants with civilians is a violation of international humanitarian law, but that Israel must also comply with the law’s principles of precaution and proportionality.
Egypt, which borders Gaza, said that the strike on the school showed that Israel had no intention of reaching a cease-fire deal. Neighboring Jordan condemned the attack as a “blatant violation” of international law. Qatar demanded an international investigation, calling it a “heinous crime” against civilians.
Vice President Kamala Harris, speaking to reporters traveling with her in Phoenix, Arizona, on Saturday, said of the Israeli strike in Gaza: “Yet again, far too many civilians have been killed.”
“Israel has a right to go after the terrorists that are Hamas,” she said. “But as I have said many, many times they also have, I believe, an important responsibility to avoid civilian casualties.”
Pressed on the fact that such comments have done little to lower the numbers of civilians in Gaza killed in recent months, Harris said, “First and foremost — and the president and I have been working on this around the clock — we need to get the hostages out.”
“We need a hostage deal and we need a cease-fire,” she said. “And I can’t stress that strongly enough. It needs get to done. The deal needs to get done and it needs to get done now.”
Late on Friday, two separate airstrikes in central Gaza killed at least 13 people, including three children and seven women, hospital authorities said. An AP journalist counted the bodies at the al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah.
One strike hit a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing seven people, all but one of them women, hospital officials said. Another hit a house in Deir al-Balah, killing six, including a woman and her three children, the hospital said.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 39,790 Palestinians and wounded more than 92,000 others, according to the Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians in its tally. The war was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in which militants from Gaza stormed into southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and abducting 250 others.
Families of hostages demonstrated again Saturday night in Tel Aviv seeking a cease-fire deal to bring loved ones home.
More than 1.9 million of Gaza’s prewar population of 2.3 million have been driven from their homes, fleeing repeatedly across the territory to escape offensives. Most are crowded into tent camps in an area of about 50 square kilometers (19 square miles) on the Gaza coast with few basic services or supplies.
In the occupied West Bank, dozens of people gathered in Ramallah to protest the latest Israeli strike on a school.
“The message that must be sent to the world, a numb world, a world that is not moving, is ‘how long will the war continue?’” asked one, Muin Barghouti.
___
Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Will Weissert in Washington contributed.
The subject of South African pass laws makes me think of the GOP’s Agenda 47, and Project 2025…
August 9, 1943 Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian conscientious objector who reported for induction but refused to serve in the army of the Third Reich, was executed by guillotine at Brandenburg-Gorden prison. An American, Gordon Zahn, wrote about Jägerstätter while researching the subject of German Roman Catholics’ response to Hitler. Zahn’s book, In Solitary Witness, influenced Daniel Ellsberg’s decision to stand against the Vietnam War by bringing the previously secret Pentagon Papers to public attention.Against the Stream by Erna Putz, the story of the courage of Franz Jägerstätter: https://www.c3.hu/~bocs/jager-a.htm August 9, 1945 The second atomic bomb, “Fatman,” was dropped on the arms-manufacturing and key port city of Nagasaki. The plan to drop a second bomb was to test a different design rather than one of military necessity. The Hiroshima weapon was a gun type, the Nagasaki weapon an implosion type, and the War Department wanted to know which was the more effective design.Responsibility for the timing of the second bombing had been delegated by President Harry Truman before the Hiroshima attack to Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, the commander of the 509th Composite Group on Tinian, one of the Northern Mariana Islands in the western Pacific. Scheduled for August 11 against Kokura, the raid was moved forward to avoid a five-day period of bad weather forecast to begin on August 10. English translation of leaflet air-dropped over Japan after the first bomb [excerpt]:“We are in possession of the most destructive explosive ever devised by man. A single one of our newly developed atomic bombs is actually the equivalent in explosive power to what 2000 of our giant B-29s can carry on a single mission. This awful fact is one for you to ponder and we solemnly assure you it is grimly accurate.”Of the 195,000 population of the city (many of its children had been evacuated due to bombing in the days just prior), 39,000 died and 25,000 were injured, and 40% of all residences were damaged or destroyed.“What on earth has happened?” said my mother, holding her baby tightly in her arms. “Is it the end of the world?” Sachiko Yamaguchi (nine years old at the time of the bombing).Hear an eyewitness account of this terrrible eventPhotographic exhibit of the aftermath August 9, 1956 20,000 women demonstrated against the pass laws in Pretoria, South Africa. Pass laws required that Africans carry identity documents with them at all times. These books had to contain stamps providing official proof the person in question had permission to be in a particular town at a given time. Initially, only men were forced to carry these books, but soon the law also compelled women to carry the documents. August 9, 1966 Two hundred people sat in at the New York City offices of Dow Chemical Company to protest the widespread use in Vietnam of Dow’s flammable defoliant Napalm. Napalm in use in Vietnam Read more about Dow Chemical and the use of napalm: https://thevietnamwar.info/napalm-vietnam-war/
August 9, 1987 Hundreds were arrested in an all-day blockade of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Golden, Colorado. Protests at Rocky Flats had been going on for some years.
In the days leading up to the announcement of Kamala Harris’ VP pick, progressives argued that the sitting veep needed to choose a running mate who would excite the Democrats’ more liberal voters, rather than chasing centrists. Others insisted that picking a vice presidential candidate is merely a game of electoral math, and that Harris should choose an inoffensive candidate who can also help the ticket win a key swing state — the same logic behind the selection of former Virginia governor Tim Kaine as Hillary Clinton’s potential VP in 2016.
On Tuesday, all sides got their wish granted.
By now, you are likely already aware that Harris has chosen Minnesota governor Tim Walz, who was once viewed as a longshot in the veepstakes behind buzzier picks like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. But many of those selections, while better known to the general public, would have brought with them specific liabilities.
Choosing Kelly, a former astronaut, would have permitted Republicans to call a special election to fill his Senate seat, thus imperiling the Democrats’ control of the Senate. While Shapiro could have helped Democrats secure Pennsylvania, his office has been rocked by several scandals in the past week, including the unearthing of an op-ed he penned in college in which he said Palestinians were “too battle-minded” for self-governance. As Attorney General in 2018, when his office was tasked with reviewing the controversial decision to rule the 2011 death of Philadelphia resident Ellen Greenberg a suicide rather than a homicide, Shapiro’s office declined to change the ruling. Beshear, hailing from a red state that Republicans won by 25 points in 2020, brings little electoral map benefit.
Walz, although previously unknown to most Americans, brings several advantages to the ticket. Polls have indicated throughout the year that Minnesota is a potential surprise swing state pickup for the GOP in November, despite having gone blue since 1972: Although President Joe Biden won the state by seven points in 2020, challenger Donald Trump had been within spitting distance in Minnesota polling throughout the year. An April survey showed Biden up just two points, and four in June, likely just outside the poll’s margin of error. While Biden is no longer the nominee, a major part of Harris’ task early in the race has been rebuilding her predecessor’s pallid polling, especially in the Midwest and the Sun Belt, which are considered key for victory in November.
But the selection of Walz is not merely a defensive move: He also brings with him a solid record on LGBTQ+ equality. Walz was one of the earliest governors to sign a bill making his state a sanctuary for gender-affirming care. Authored by state Rep. Leigh Finke (D), the legislation orders courts not to comply with out-of-state prosecutions against individuals who flee to Minnesota to access treatments like puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, or surgery. Even before Finke’s bill passed the legislature, Walz issued an executive order in May 2023 to strengthen protections for trans health care in his state, saying in a statement that all Minnesotans should “grow up feeling safe, valued, protected, celebrated, and free to exist as their authentic versions of themselves.”
With neighboring states like Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota all restricting trans youth health care, Minnesota’s refuge law has made the state a hub for trans health care. Dozens of individuals and families have reportedly moved to Minnesota permanently to escape anti-LGBTQ+ policies in their previous states, and that number will likely increase as more state-level restrictions are enacted. To date, 26 states limit doctors from providing some or all gender-affirming treatments to minors, most recently New Hampshire.
But Walz is actually a longtime ally to the LGBTQ+ community on several key issues, dating back to even before his tenure as governor. As a U.S. House representative, he joined a coalition of veterans in 2012 to speak out in opposition to a proposed constitutional amendment that would define marriage equality exclusively as a union of one man and one woman. “At this point it’s become very clear that limiting the rights of a subsect of the population, whether they are veterans or not, is simply unconstitutional,” he said at the time. “I think we can do better.” His years as a member of the armed forces also motivated his opposition to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the now-defunct policy barring gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members from being open about their identities. “Always the issue for me was if you met the standards and did your job, your personal business was your personal business,” he remarked after DADT’s 2013 repeal.
Walz was ahead of the curve on several key LGBTQ+ rights issues, including the federal codification of the freedom to marry. He announced his support for the Respect for Marriage Act, which effectively declares marriage equality the law of the land, back in 2011 — more than a decade before Biden would have the opportunity to sign the contemporary iteration of that legislation. He was a key vote in favor of a law recognizing sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes under federal hate crime legalization and backed early versions of the Equality Act, an inclusive LGBTQ+ nondiscrimination bill that has yet to meet approval in the U.S. Senate despite passing the House twice.
Outside of his political career, Walz was the advisor of Mankato West High School’s first ever Gay-Straight Alliance. As a football coach and geography teacher at the greater Minneapolis district, having his support was actually instrumental in getting the club greenlit. “It really needed to be the football coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married,” Walz told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in 2018.
As governor of Minnesota, Walz has signed legislation making the state a refuge for trans youth.
Many of the other veep contenders have also proven themselves allies to the LGBTQ+community, including Beshear, who last year vetoed one of the nation’s worst laws targeting trans youth. (Republicans enacted the omnibus legislation, however, over his veto.) In opposing the regulations, Beshear said that “all children are children of God.” “I heard from children that believe this bill is picking on them, and asking — in many ways — why?” he remarked at the time. “I told them that I was going to show them that there is at least one person in Frankfort that cares for all of our children in the commonwealth, no matter what.”
With 90 days left to go until the presidential election, Harris’ veep pick was an opportunity to indicate what her priorities would be in the White House and contrast herself with the extreme policies being pushed by her Republican opponents. If elected, Trump has vowed to gut federal protections for LGBTQ+ students and ban the federal government from supporting the “concept of sex and gender transition at any age.” His running mate, J.D. Vance, has authored legislation to jail doctors who treat trans youth. With Walz on the ticket, the difference is especially stark.
New laws may make it easier to pursue far-right activist over alleged role in spreading disinformation
(I think they are here, because of our Constitution. However, it’d be good to see this sort of activity controlled, and people safer. -A)
Images of Tommy Robinson using his phone while sunbathing in Cyprus as a Rotherham hotel housing asylum seekers was set alight have prompted outrage among those long concerned about his ability to inspire far-right action, even from a distance.
Yet while he has long seemed able to operate with impunity, events may finally be catching up with the man who first rose to prominence in 2009 as the de facto leader of the now defunct English Defence League (EDL).
Far from being powerless to pursue Robinson, new legislation means the authorities may be able to move more easily against those who share damaging information online that they know to be untrue.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is already known to be among those who are being looked at by police for their alleged role in disseminating disinformation.
A former director of public prosecutions, Ken Macdonald KC, spelled out on Monday how he believed investigators would want to quickly identify individuals who are involved in “online organisation, online incitement and online conspiracies”.
“I think prosecutors will want to have a strategy to identify people who may have been involved in inciting and encouraging these events, and they will want to arrest them and build cases against them. These are, in one sense, the most important people,” Lord Macdonald told BBC Radio 4’s World at One.
While Robinson has been abroad since 28 July, when he fled the UK on the eve of a high court hearing over contempt of court proceedings, he has maintained a near constant commentary on events in the UK since the fatal stabbings of three young girls in Southport on 29 July, sharing claims that police have described as false.
While he has long been a prolific user of multiple social media platforms – benefiting in particular from the return of his X account after Elon Musk bought Twitter – going after him for his online output is not clear-cut.
Dominic Grieve, a former attorney general for England and Wales, told the Guardian: “It is an offence to incite violence on the grounds of race, belief or sexual orientation, and there is incitement to hatred. But it’s a grey area between the right to criticise and incitement to hatred and is a very difficult area to police.
“Quite simply, that’s why it is possible for people to play around with that area. Either you clamp down on it, in which case legitimate freedom of speech gets eliminated and breeds undesirable problems of its own, or you live with it and challenge those views through debate.”
Recent changes in the law open up other possibilities. Since January, an amendment to the Online Safety Act 2023 allows for the prosecution of those who convey information that they know to be false and “if the person intended the message, or the information in it, to cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience”.
Ashley Fairbrother, a senior prosecutor at the law firm Edmonds Marshall McMahon, said: “This now makes the circulation of damaging and false information online into an offence in its own right.” (snip-More)
The call to action comes as the issue has intensified in recent years, affecting students to public figures like Taylor Swift and AOC.
Originally published by The 19th Republished with their republish link.
“This is an issue that affects everybody — from celebrities to high school girls.”
That’s how Jen Klein, director of the White House Gender Policy Council, describes the pervasiveness of image-based sexual abuse, a problem that artificial intelligence (AI) has intensified in recent years, touching everyone from students to public figures like Taylor Swift and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
In May, the Biden-Harris administration announced a call to action to curb such abuse, which disproportionately targets girls, women and LGBTQ+ people. Stopping these images, whether real or AI-generated, from being circulated and monetized requires not just the government to act, but tech companies to as well, according to the White House.
“We’re inviting technology companies and civil society to consider what steps they can take to prevent image-based sexual abuse, and there’s really a spectrum of actors who we hope will get involved in addressing the problem,” Klein said. “So that can be anything from the payment processors, to mobile app stores, to mobile app and operating system developers, cloud providers, search engines, etc. They all have a particular part of the sort of ecosystem in which this problem happens.”
Responding to the White House’s call to action, the Center for Democracy & Technology, the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative and the National Network to End Domestic Violence announced in June that they would form a working group to counteract the circulation and monetization of image-based sexual abuse. In late July, Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, removed 63,000 accounts linked to the “sextortion” of children and teens.
While older forms of this abuse include the leaking of intimate photos without the consent of all parties, the AI version includes face swapping, whereby the head of one individual is placed on another person’s naked body, Klein said. Both Swift and Ocasio-Cortez have been victims of this kind of sexual abuse. In March, Ocasio-Cortez introduced the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (DEFIANCE) Act of 2024. The legislation provides recourse for people, more than 90 percent of whom are women, who have had their likenesses used in intimate “digital forgery.” The Senate passed the DEFIANCE Act on July 23.
Such images have also garnered repeated headlines this year after spreading at schools. The White House’s appeal to tech companies follows the Biden-Harris administration’s recent updates to Title IX, the law that bars educational institutions that receive federal funds from engaging in sex discrimination. Under the new regulations that took effect Thursday, sex-based harassment includes sexually explicit deepfake images if they create a hostile school environment.
“We respectfully urge the Department of Education to issue guidance delineating Title IX procedures and protocols specifically tailored to addressing digital sexual harassment within educational institutions,” the letter states. “This guidance should provide clear direction on how schools can effectively handle cases of digital sexual harassment including support mechanisms for victims, investigation procedures, research and referrals, and prevention strategies.”
The Biden-Harris administration’s effort to prevent the proliferation of explicit deepfake images coincides with states taking action.
“There’s a patchwork of laws across the country, and there are 20 states that have passed laws penalizing the dissemination of nonconsensual AI-generated pornographic material,” Klein said. “But there’s a lot of work to be done, both at the state level and at the federal level to really make that work a whole quilt to continue the process.”
“It was pretty tricky because of the various First Amendment arguments that get raised,” he said. “The bill, to be honest, got watered down more than I wanted as it went through the process. But it has since been copied in other states, and then frankly, made stronger in other states.”
Berman decided to file legislation to prohibit child sex abuse deepfakes when the California District Attorneys Association informed his office that they’re increasingly catching people who are creating, disseminating or possessing such images.
“Their interpretation of California law currently is that it is not specifically illegal, because it doesn’t involve an image of an actual child — because AI takes thousands of images of real children and then spits out this artificial image,” Berman said. “So they said, ‘We need to close this loophole in California law and make sure that the law explicitly states that child sexual abuse material, even if it’s created by artificial intelligence, is illegal. I was shocked that people were even using AI to create this type of content, and then I found out just how pervasive it is, especially on the dark web. It’s terrifying.”
Possessing or distributing such images online may result in perpetrators sexually exploiting minors offline, making it all the more important to address AI-generated versions of this content before it spirals out of control and becomes a huge problem for the nation’s young people, Berman said.
Multiple schools in California have been rocked by deepfake scandals, often related to images created by students of their peers. In March, a Calabasas High School student accused her onetime friend of disseminating actual and AI-generated nudes of her to their peers. That same month, a Beverly Hills middle school expelled five students for allegedly circulating AI-generated nudes of their classmates.
Such incidents are one reason Berman believes students need to be taught to use AI responsibly. “AB 2876 will equip students with the skills and the training that they need to both harness the benefits of AI, but also to mitigate the dangers and the ethical considerations of using artificial intelligence,” he said.
The legislation has been ordered to a third reading, the bill’s final phase before it leaves the state assembly and moves to the senate. Meanwhile, his bill to prohibit child sex abuse deepfakes, AB 1831, has been referred to the suspense file, meaning that the bill’s potential fiscal impacts to the state are being reviewed. The legislation would take effect January 1 if enacted.
“It’d be great if Congress can pass some federal standards on this,” Berman said. “It’s always an ideal when it comes to legislation that really applies to every state and to kids in every state.”
Pending national legislation addressing the issue includes The SHIELD Act and The Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act (KOSA), which the Senate passed July 30, although it still awaits a vote in the House of Representatives. The former would make the non-consensual sharing of intimate images a federal offense, while the latter would require social media companies to take steps to prevent children and teens from being sexually exploited online, among other measures. KOSA, however, has sparked fears that lawmakers could use it to censor content they dislike, particularly LGBTQ+ content, under the guise of protecting children. Civil liberties groups like the ACLU said that the bill raises privacy concerns, may limit youth’s access to important online resources and could silence needed conversations.
Evan Greer, director at Fight for the Future, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on digital rights, objected to KOSA’s Senate passage in a statement. “We need legislation that addresses the harm of Big Tech and still lets young people fight for the type of world that they actually want to grow up in,” she said.
AI-generated image-based sexual abuse also affects college students, according to Tracey Vitchers, executive director of It’s On Us, a nonprofit that addresses college sexual assault. She called it an emerging issue on college campuses.
“It really started with the emergence of nonconsensual image-sharing involving an individual sharing a private photo with someone that they thought they could trust,” she said. “We are now starting to see this challenge come forward with AI and deepfakes, and unfortunately, many schools are not equipped to investigate gender-based harassment and violence that occurs as a result of deepfakes.”
Vitchers appreciates that the new Title IX regulations touch on the issue, but said that colleges need more guidance from the Department of Education about how to respond to these incidents, and students need more prevention education.
“It’s something that we have begun discussing with some of our partners, particularly those in the online dating space,” Vitchers said. “We are hearing that fear, among particularly young women on campus, about someone who can just take a picture of you from Instagram and use AI to superimpose it onto porn. Then it gets circulated and it feels impossible to get it removed from the internet.”
Some tech companies have already offered their support to the White House’s effort to stop image-based sexual abuse, Klein said, but she would like to hear from others. Although state and national lawmakers are working to enact legislation and regulations, Klein said that the Biden-Harris administration is calling on tech companies to intervene because they can take action now.
“Given the scale that image-based abuse has been rapidly proliferating with the advent of generative AI, we need to do this while we continue to work toward longer-term solutions,” she said.
Scottie's Playtime 