Over 22,500 Palestinians have suffered 'life-changing injuries' in Gaza: WHO [_link]

— State of Palestine (@Palestine_UN) September 13, 2024

The plight of Gaza's disabled | DW News - 14 Aug 2014 |

The Gaza Strip already has a disproportionately high number of disabled people. Now, the war has left hundreds more maimed and in need of support, says Guillaume Zerr of Handicap International.

'Sapere aude'

For the past four months, the Great March of Return demonstrations in Gaza, Palestine, have been met with lethal force by the Israeli army. While the numbers of protesters and casualties have now decreased, the violence is not over - fresh gunshot wounds occur every week.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been at the forefront of the emergency response since the start, providing both surgical and post-operative care.

'Sapere aude'

Artificial limbs change lives for wounded Gaza protesters | Al Arabiya - 9 April 2019 |

The World Health Organization said 6,872 Gazans suffered gunshot wounds, mostly to the limbs, in the past year of protests.

With funding from the European Union, the WHO is helping Palestinians set up a limb reconstruction unit in Nasser hospital in southern Gaza. It is expected to open as early as next month.

"This center is focused around restoring people's lives, preventing amputations, and making sure that they are able to move again," Sara Halimah, WHO trauma manager, said.

Halimah said each of the patients will need up to two years of treatment.

La guerre en Ukraine vue par Dominique de Villepin - #QuelleEpoque 04 février | Feb 12, 2023 |

Léa Salamé a reçu l'ancien Premier ministre Dominique de Villepin, pour évoquer avec lui la guerre en Ukraine, la livraison d'armes et la tournée européenne de Volodymyr Zelensky.

'Sapere aude'

I have harsh criticism for Brussels and expansion with immense risks and little benefit. Pushing Ukraine down the throat of the European Union at the behest of NATO and U.S. aggression towards the Russian Federation was a major flaw and puts the whole EU Project at risk. Corruption throughout the EU is at unprecedented level, this includes the EU Commission and EU Parliament. A supertanker with no steering in the control room. The outside political force from Washington DC and the Pentagon is based on MAGA and destruction of the EU as global competitor.

Keeping Russia tied to Europe and accept an sovereign Ukraine but as a non-NATO member would have prevented this destructive war on NATO's Eastern Frontier. No plan, no vision and people talking to believers already on a collision course of war. Wars to not solve problems, tough diplomacy and serving interests o all sides offers a chance for peace.

The war on terror by Bush-Cheney joined at the roots by Sharon-Netanyahu has produced another war in the greater Middle East with no prospect of peace ☮️ ... just forever war. Taiwan in the Pacific is another short-term hotspot. The NWO designed by Washington DC outside international law and the United Nations is all bluster and no context. Feeding the warmachine and the Military Industrial Complex ... western intelligence leading and corrumpering politicians.

Interesting ... put the sentence in the search engine ... the censorship algorithm by Google delivered zero hits 🤬

Another search engine delivered plenty of links ... 😖 critical thinking is passé. Waiting for universal AI 🤕

'Sapere aude'

The world weeps while the military industrial complex keeps winning | Responsible Statecraft - Feb. 2024 |

Don't let anyone tell you that the machine is starved -- it's close to a trillion dollar payday

2023 was a year marked by devastating conflicts from Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine to Hamas's horrific terror attacks on Israel, from that country's indiscriminate mass slaughter in Gaza to a devastating civil war in Sudan. And there's a distinct risk of even worse to come this year. Still, there was one clear winner in this avalanche of violence, suffering, and war: the U.S. military-industrial complex.

[...]

After all, today, a billion dollars is less than a rounding error at the Pentagon. The department's budget is now hundreds of billions of dollars more than at the height of the Vietnam War and over twice what it was when President Eisenhower warned of the "unwarranted influence" wielded by what he called "the military-industrial complex."

To offer just a few comparisons: annual spending on the costly, dysfunctional F-35 combat aircraft alone is greater than the entire budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2020, Lockheed Martin's contracts with the Pentagon were worth more than the budgets of the State Department and the Agency for International Development (USAID) combined, and its arms-related revenues continue to rival the government's entire investment in diplomacy.

One $13 billion aircraft carrier costs more than the annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency. Overall, more than half of the discretionary budget Congress approves every year -- basically everything the federal government spends other than on mandatory programs like Medicare and Social Security -- goes to the Pentagon.

It would, I suppose, be one thing if such huge expenditures were truly needed to protect the country or make the world a safer place. However, they have more to do with pork-barrel politics and a misguided "cover the globe" military strategy than a careful consideration of what might be needed for actual "defense."

"The Military Industrial Complex Is Killing Us All": Here's another version of the article @isamarianas + I published with larger, better resolution original graphics like this one. [_link] pic.twitter.com/L414QbYl8q

— David Vine (@davidsvine) June 6, 2024

But the MIC is more complicated and insidious than that. In what's effectively a system of legalized bribery, campaign donations regularly help boost Pentagon budgets and ensure the awarding of yet more lucrative contracts, often benefiting a small number of contractors in a congressional district or state. Such contractors make their case with the help of a virtual army of more than 900 Washington-based lobbyists. Many of them are former Pentagon officials, or former members of Congress or congressional staffers, hired through a "revolving door" that takes advantage of their ability to lobby former colleagues. Such contractors also donate to think tanks and university centers willing to support increased Pentagon spending, weapons programs, and a hyper-militarized foreign policy. Ads are another way to push weapons programs on elected officials.

Such weapons makers also spread their manufacturing among as many Congressional districts as possible, allowing senators and representatives to claim credit for jobs created. MIC jobs, in turn, often create cycles of dependency in low-income communities that have few other economic drivers, effectively buying the support of locals.

For 10 years, Pope Francis outlasts the conservative resistance

Francis' vision of the global Catholic Church as a "field hospital," where the Eucharist is understood as medicine for the sick instead of a prize for the perfect, challenged conservative political visions of the church as a combatant in the culture wars that were utilized by the Republican Party in the United States and embraced by populist-nationalist leaders in Europe and South America.

Bishops North America more conservative than Rome ... Raymond Leo Burke

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Il Papa annuncia 21 nuovi cardinali: volto della "universalità della Chiesa"

Among those named by history's first Latin American pope were the heads of several major dioceses and archdioceses in South America.

They are the archbishop of Santiago del Estero, Argentina, Vicente Bokalic Iglic; the archbishop of Porto Alegre, Brazil, Jaime Spengler; the archbishop of Santiago, Chile, Fernando Natalio Chomali Garib; the archbishop of Guayaquil, Ecuador, Luis Gerardo Cabrera Herrera; and the archbishop of Lima, Peru, Carlos Gustavo Castillo Mattasoglio.

That stands in sharp contrast to the lone new cardinal from North America: the archbishop of Toronto, Francis Leo.

Showing the universality of the church around the world, Francis also tapped the archbishop of Tehran, Iran, Monsignor Dominique Joseph Mathieu, and the bishop of Bogor, Indonesia, Monsignor Paskalis Bruno Syukor. They both belong to the Franciscan religious order and are two of the four new Franciscan cardinals.

Iran is one of the least Catholic countries in the world. The recently renamed Latin Catholic Archdiocese of Tehran-Isfahan has six parishes and around 2,000 Catholics.

In addition to Syukor, Asia gets two more cardinals in Monsignor Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi, the archbishop of Tokyo; and Monsignor Pablo Virgilio Sinogco David, the bishop of Kalookan, Philippines.

Aside from Asia the other region where the church is growing is Africa, which got two new cardinals: the archbishop of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Monsignor Ignace Bessi Dogbo, and the bishop of Algiers, Algeria, Monsignor Jean-Paul Vesco.