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Author: Arthur Chesterfield-Evans

26/11/2023

What is Israel’s End-Game?

25 November 2023

It is hard to see an end to the Palestinian conflict.

Zionists believe that God gave the Jews the historic land of Palestine, and this idea has been supported by some Christians who took the Old Testament literally.

After WW2, the Zionists did terrorist attacks on the war-weary British who let them return to Palestine. In 1948 they ‘Declared the State of Israel’ when they were about a third of the population, killed a village of Palestinians, which made the others flee. They then said that no land title prior to the State of Israel existed and all land titles had to be re-registered and all unoccupied land belonged to the State. They have then declined to register Palestinian-owned land, so they can give away farms in the West Bank or even unoccupied houses in Jerusalem. Settlers, especially from Eastern Europe, are willing to fight to retain land that they are given on the West Bank.

In Jerusalem, the Palestinians had the menial jobs, which made it hard to pay the high rents there, and more recently Sri Lankans or others are given the jobs, so the Palestinians have to go to Ramullah to find work, which does not pay as well, so they have trouble paying their Jerusalem rent. If they move out or do not visit much, as checked up on by their electricity, water or phone location records, their houses are ‘unoccupied’ and given away. The bottom line of all this is the Palestinians being gradually squeezed out of the West Bank and Jerusalem. If they ever leave Israel they may not be permitted to return.

The settlements on the West Bank are now in a pattern on the high ground linked by roads so that the Israeli military can support any settlers troubled by the Palestinian farmers, now defined as terrorists, who try to defend their land. In Jerusalem, Jews own the West side and now take houses in Palestinian East Jerusalem, house by house.

As all this has gone on incrementally for years, Israel has pretended that it has a ‘two state’ solution, as it put the 700,000 settlers in the area that could or would have been Palestine. In other words it was happy to pretend that there was a ‘two state solution’ as they systematically made it impossible.

Hamas recognised that this was a nonsense. They won the elections in Gaza because the Palestinian Authority was corrupted by land deals. Israel bullied Jordan and Egypt into compliance then started making wider friendships with Qatar, Dubai and Saudi Arabia and started to talk about ‘regional solutions’ to the Palestinian problem. It looked like the ‘solution’ for them was to go as refugees to anywhere but Israel. This is why Hamas struck. Naturally everyone is upset about this, but no one suggests what they might have done as an alternative. Perhaps just attack an Israeli military base?

Now Israel has struck back. It is hard to see that flattening Gaza is a rational response. Netanyahu, being personally corrupt, has retained power by sharing it with evermore dodgy coalition partners, from the fanatical Zionists to the fanatical Right wing. He has also tried to undermine the judiciary to avoid personal corruption charges. Now the much-vaunted Israeli spy network has been caught off guard, probably because they relied on AI tracking of Palestinian communications networks, which Hamas, sensibly enough, decided not to use. Netanyahu, who was in trouble already and will now be blamed for the Hamas success has hit back to be the strong man. But simply flattening a city with all its civilians may be revenge, but it is not a solution. He has flattened the Northern half of Gaza, while telling the citizens to move to the South, but cut off all food, water and medical supplies. Now he is bombing the South as well.

Where to from here? Israel seems more bent on revenge than having any rational policy. The other possibility is that they will make Gaza unlivable, and force the US and UIN to allow the Gazans into Egypt as refugees, which will start as temporary and become permanent as Israel does not rebuild Gaza, or let them return to Israel. Israel will be pariahs, but they are already, and the refugees will be someone else’s problem. Numerically there are as many Palestinians as Jews and even if the Gaza population were moved, the West Bank Palestinians would remain.

The other alternatives are:

The ‘Two State solution, with Israel either moving its 700,000 settlers from the West Bank, or getting them to live with the Palestinians sharing the land that they once owned or
Israel grants equal rights to Palestinians within Israel, admits it was an apartheid state and has a reconciliation process based on the South African model.

In that the ‘Two State Solution’ and the ‘Apartheid reconciliation’ model both look absolutely impossible with the bloodshed, killing and bitterness that has been rekindled as never before, it is very hard to see a solution. Yet there are still those who want Israel forced into a ‘Two State solution’ by sanctions, as seen below:

Two solutions for the “Question of Palestine”

25/11/2023

Argentinian Populist Wins Election

25 November 2023

I visited Argentina, Uruguay and Chile for 4 weeks over Christmas 2018-9.

Argentina was a pleasant, orderly, developed country. The people were friendly, and you could sit in cafes in town squares where flamenco dancers performed, supported by tips from the enthusiastic locals and tourists. The main part of Buenos Aires had been built, modelled on Paris around 1900, when Argentina was relatively rich because of beef prices. As commodities fell in price relative to manufactured goods, their economy has suffered. But the fine buildings in the centre of the city remain. They have alternated between leftist governments that nationalise and take resources from the foreigners and right wing governments, usually supported by the US, who privatise and encourage foreign investment, then use repression to control the people.

The government, when we were there was middle of the road, but having trouble controlling inflation, which was at around 40%. From a visitors point of view, things were cheap, a meal for two with wine less than half what it would have been in a Sydney pub. We did not feel unsafe.

Because of the concerns with the inflation problem, there were worries about democracy in the future, given the history of right-wing coups in many South American countries.

There had been a military coup in 1975, which seems to have been US-facilitated and the military junta had been in power from 1976 to 1983. Approximately 30,000 people who had been arrested ‘disappeared’. They were part of a wider ‘Operation Condor’ to persecute and eliminate political, social, trade-union and student activists from Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil by the right-wing governments in those countries. The US CIA provided the database so was well aware of what was happening.

Even now, every Thursday at 1pm the mothers and sisters of ‘The Disappeared’ dress in white and walk in pairs around a statue in Plaza de Mayo outside the Parliament. The women had started protesting in 1977, but anything more than two people walking together was termed a crowd’ and thus illegal. Of those who perpetrated this atrocity only one soldier actually told the tale of what happened. Some of the disappeared had simply been shot in mass graves, but others went to the Naval training headquarters in Buenos Aires where they were kept in the attic and tortured in the basement. Some were released, but others were drugged with thiopentone, loaded into trucks, then planes and dumped into the Atlantic Ocean. Some were made to call their families with a gun at their heads and say that they could not talk, but they were happy in a new life in Paris or some other unlikely tale.

Survivors described how they had a hood over their head at all times and could only see their feet. They described the steps and the colour of the walls, and where the phone was that they had to speak on and the lift next to the phone. Later, the government came, took out the lift and the phone and painted the walls of the Naval training centre a different colour, so that the building would not match the descriptions of the inmates. Naturally there were no plans of the building changes available. The area was a museum when we were there and there was a small research area, still trying to identify individuals and what had happened to them. They were worried that the government would defund them and close their museum.

Now a far-Right populist, Javier Milei, has won the election, promising to abolish the Central Bank, change the currency to the US dollar, privatise everything and make guns freely available. He denies climate change and the crimes of the previous military junta. He has been congratulated by Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, the recently defeated populist from Brazil. He also wants to re-take the Malvinas aka the Falklands. There is little hope of this simplistic nonsense improving anything in Argentina. The worry is not only that the ‘Museum to the Disappeared’ will disappear, but that it will all happen again.

www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/20/argentina-presidential-election-far-right-libertarian-javier-milei-wins-after-rival-concedes

23/11/2023

Apartheid Education Buses

23 November 2023

I live near a turning circle in a good area of Sydney. There is a Bus Stop there and the government bus there has an ad with a picture of a forlorn looking schoolgirl saying that she cannot have a decent education, so would I donate to The Smith Family so she can.

As the ad displays there, 8 shiny new buses take private school children from the turning circle to 8 different private schools.

It seems that our governments are happy to subsidise ‘choice’ so that they do not have to fund a fair go and we are happy to tolerate an apartheid education system.

www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/23/australia-100-wealthiest-schools-earnings-income-data-education-department?utm_term=655e79e42ab1fedfc11542549409ff2e&utm_campaign=AustralianPolitics&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=aupolitics_email

23/11/2023

Climate Change- a Depressing Update

23 November 2023

In Australia the Labor government struggles mightily to get legislation through to allow Woodside to pipe carbon dioxide to East Timor’s territorial waters for supposed CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) to allow them to develop a new gas field. East Timor is not a signatory to the Paris Accord- convenient eh? Supposedly the carbon dioxide will be pumped into a reservoir that used to have gas, but Woodside has a track record of not meeting its CCS targets; if you think CCS is a real thing and not a cop-out farce.

Evidence suggests that the world is on target for a 3 degrees temperature rise, which may make human life unsustainable in its present form. Petrostates are installing lights at beaches so that people can go for a night swim to cool off because it is too hot in the daytime!

The graphs below show world energy consumption tripling since 2000 and continuing that upward trajectory. If one considers that the production of energy by a human is about a kilowatt a day, one realises that the amount of energy consumed now per person is many times that, and far higher in developed countries, the situation is unsustainable. The invention of the steam engine in 1690 and the internal combustion engine in 1872 and the use of fossil fuels, which has resulted in the energy and carbon dioxide stored as carbon over tens of thousands of years being released in a century. It is ridiculous to think that reforestation can capture this amount of carbon as the total area of forests in the world is still declining.

COP28 (the 28th Conference of the Parties) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), will start on 30 November in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), chaired by Sultan Al Jaber, the CEO of the UAE state oil company ADNOC. How much good is this likely to do?

COP-out: Why the petrostate-hosted climate talkfest will fail

23/11/2023

Myanmar- some hope in Rebel Victories.

23 November 2023

Three groups in northern Myanmar have joined together in Operation 1027, after the day they launched their offensive (27 October). They have been very successful against the hated military dictatorship. The question is whether this will be the beginning of the end for the junta, who have been helped a great deal by the Chinese, presumably for economic concessions. But the Chinese may not be happy with the regime, as it has tolerated a ‘scam industry’ near the Chinese border, and it may also be that the Chinese are not sure that the junta have enough control of the country to allow a rail line to be built to a port on the Myanmar coast, which the Chinese want to use to export via the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean without needing to go around the Malay peninsula.

It is speculated that the Chinese have given tacit support to the rebels, and if this is the case the junta will have more trouble.

I visited Myanmar in 2017 when Aung San Suu Kyi was theoretically in power, but with the unpopular military junta still really in control. (There are a number of posts on my website, chesterfieldevans.com if you search ‘Myanmar’).

There was a coup in 2021 and Aung Sang Su Kyi was forced from her figurehead power and charged with treason because she had a few walkie talkies to talk to her staff, which were made ‘illegal’ because the junta could not eavesdrop on them. There was some resistance to the coup and unarmed people were shot, but it has led to more organised resistance.

Myanmar is a very divided country so there are different ethnic groups and armies resisting with varying success in different parts of the country. Not much news of this has been in the mainstream media here, until this rebel success. The military are universally feared and hated, which was evident even to the most casual tourist. They are not done yet, but if they lose Chinese support and the people believe that they can be overthrown, they will be.

https://thediplomat.com/2023/10/operation-1027-a-turning-point-for-myanmars-resistance-struggle/

18/11/2023

Israel is Developing East Mediterranean Gas fields without Palestinian ownership

18 November 2023

One of the interesting stories that has had little attention is that Israel is developing a major new gas field in the Eastern Mediterranean and selling the gas to Egypt. Naturally, this is off the coast of Gaza, but as Gaza is technically part of Israel and Palestine still does not technically exist as a country, it is not sharing the wealth with the Palestinians.

There have been demonstrations in Jordan, but the Western media has not even mentioned the gas field as far as I have seen.

www.newarab.com/analysis/palestinians-denied-drilling-rights-mediterranean-gas-fields?fbclid=IwAR28q511gNLgvm02ScTZcMRlRNH3eciM2BS7_ProcX8b7sKdUMQ1vm4aGM8

18/11/2023

How Much Exercise Should You Do?

17 November 2023

It has been shown that exercise lessens mortality and lengthens life by lessening the chance of cancer and cardiovascular diseases like heart attacks and strokes.

So the question has become ’How much exercise do you have to do; how long and how hard?’

New research has been done in 2 major studies, and an editorial that evaluates them.

In a study by Stamatakis in the European Heart Journal, the amount of Vigorous Physical Activity (VPA) was measured for a week in 71,893 UK Biobank middle-aged adults using a wrist-worn accelerometer. Their mortality was compared after 5 years and was:

No exercise 4.2%,

1-10 mins of exercise/week 2.1%

10-30 mins 1.8%

30-60 mins 1.5%

over 60 mins 1.1%

What is remarkable about this is how little vigorous physical activity is needed to halve mortality!

There was also a linear relationship between the frequency of exercise and mortality.

In other words, the more often you exercise the better, with 27 times a week having the lowest mortality, but only short bursts are needed.

A similar study by Demsey on 88,412 middle aged UK Biobank adults showed that a higher amount of Physical Activity Energy Expended (PAEE) was associated with a lower mortality after 6.8 years.

If this energy expenditure was made up of more Moderate to Vigorous Physical Activity (MVPA) there was an additional benefit. Cardiovascular disease rates were 14% lower when MVRA was 10-20% of PAEE.

The bottom line is that exercise is good and incorporating a little in your day will benefit you.

Vigorous exercise can probably be equated with being short of breath, so walking up a hill or steps briskly rather than strolling is better. Obviously any sort of sport that involves some period of exertion is good if you are able to do it. If you have done no exercise for a while or have very poor fitness, just increase it slowly – walk a bit faster initially and build up from there.

It is good to know that every bit helps!

Here are the studies:

https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/43/46/4801/6771381

https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/43/46/4789/6770665

https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/43/46/4815/6774597

17/11/2023

FB Post to School Students 4 Climate

17 November 2023

School students had a strike today and marched to Tanya Plibersek’s office to demand more action on climate. I posted this to their Facebook page ‘School Students 4 Climate’

I note your slogan ‘Take back the power’. This is good and very important.. While 2 political parties can both be bought by vested interests we will never have the power. The Swiss constitution has citizens able to get a petition and overturn any government decision at quarterly referenda. They have 3 levels of government like us, but any level can be overturned. Politicians are part-time and limited to 2 terms so they cannot climb at party hierarchy, and they keep their original jobs while they are in Parliament and go back to them when their term expires. They also have a number of political parties so the government never has an absolute majority and has to debate and negotiate over every bill. The Swiss model was suggested in 1898, but Aust. went with the US/UK model. The Swiss model gives power to the people. We should work towards it as a better model. When Winston Churchill wrote the German constitution after WW2 he made certain that no single political party could ever have an absolute majority. Look at how polarised the US and UK are and we are going the same way. We must get power back to the people, not the political parties. To get the power back we need a change to the Australian Constitution. It is a long-term project. Can the schoolkids do it?

17/11/2023

Loneliness is a Major Public Health Issue

17 November 2023

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared that loneliness is a major public health issue. The COVID isolation worsened the situation, but at least drew attention to it. Declining family size, the stress on the individual, and the ability to live alone have worsened the long-term trend to loneliness.

The Japanese have recognised this for some time, but have not mastered the problem. In Australia it seems only to get attention when some old person is discovered dead for months when the smell emanates from their flat or their electricity is cut off. In the younger age groups, suicide may be the first and last sign.

From a medical point of view, I have quite a lot of patients that have long-term painful problems that cannot be resolved and render them unable to work. They are often financially embarrassed also, a fact that they often try to hide. They are recognised as depressed but people are reluctant to acknowledge that medications do not help much. This week I had a patient who asked if the insurer would pay for a companion dog, as he could not really afford to feed it. We discussed dog sources and sizes. My guess is that workers compensation insurers will be willing to pay for tablets that don’t work as they are a ‘medical expense’, but not a little dog that may be a more practical solution.

An article in the Guardian surprised me that loneliness is a bigger problem in Africa than in Western countries. I had assumed that the strong family ties and interdependency would make it a worse problem in Western rather than African societies.

What is needed is governments to recognise that there is a value in the relationships between people. It used to be called ‘social capital’, but the term seems to have fallen out of favour. We could encourage ‘Meet Your Neighbour Day’, street Christmas parties and other activities that encourage interpersonal contact beyond the social media apps. Both civic and domestic architecture could give more thought to encouraging human to human contact.

www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/nov/16/who-declares-loneliness-a-global-public-health-concern

10/11/2023

A Legal Test Case on Freedom of Speech

10 November 2023

Freedom of speech is much-praised, but with the rise of social media, which allows unusual or non-mainstream opinion holders to meet and amplify their voices, there have been discussions of the need for censorship of opinions likely to be detrimental to society as a whole.

This censorship voice was amplified by some significant events:

The FBI alleges that the Russians interfered in the 2016 US election via social media to sabotage Hilary Clinton and helped Donald Trump to win.

The myth that the 2020 US election was stolen and that Trump won was perpetuated by some, even by Fox News, which was scared of losing its audience (and the ad revenue it derived from them) if it did not give credence to the theory. This helped the assault on the Capitol, which made the US look like a tin-pot dictatorship.

The COVID epidemic, which initially had no cure, led to a number of conspiracy theories, largely spread by social media which significantly reduced acceptance of the vaccines, particularly in the USA.

This has led to calls for social media to be responsible for the posts that they transmit. Algorithms were devised to shut down certain opinions and there are groups tasked to do this. One such group is Newsguard, which tried to stop articles on Ukraine from a left-oriented alternative news site, Consortium News. If a news organisation is classified as fake news, its credibility is undermined and it is not transmitted by media platforms. Its circulation and revenue suffers accordingly.

Consortium News is small and its chief editor is a very experienced ex-Wall St News journalist, Joe Lauria. They sued Newsguard for defamation, then discovered that Newsguard had a contract with the US government to shut down sites that were not conducive to its interest. Effectively the US government had a privatised censorship agent working for it.

Ironically it is the US Democrats who are mainly in favour of censorship, largely because of the events described above, whereas the right-wing Republicans are more for freedom of speech, never mind the consequences. So most of the support for the left-wing Consortium News is coming from the right-wing Republicans. There is quite a lot of interest in the case, as it will determine how censorship is done.

It might be noted that Newsguard also put a warning label on Wikileaks.

Consortium News Sues NewsGuard, US Government For Alleged Defamation