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  1. CW: Aussie terrorist destinations need some timely revisions

    I need to finish these emails… constructive feedback welcome… but I'm not looking for s heated debate.

    THE LONG RANT VERSION…

    Dear (Australian MPs or senators),

    We need to revoke the permissions we have given Israel to wage a #war of total obliteration in #Gaza.

    Thus #Australia should remove the political wing of Hamas from our designated #terrorist entity list. If we designate any related entity as terrorist, it should only include the divisions of the organisation that were directly involved in attacks on #civilians in Israel.

    I don't like Hamas - I disagree with them on almost every issue - but the leadership of #Palestine should be chosen by Palestinians. Israeli or foreign imposed regimes will only exacerbate #violence.

    Hamas is a political party, their militant wing is the Al-Qassam Brigades. Their relationship is roughly analogous to #SinnFein and the #IRA. The militant wing is the only division that is directly involved in attacks on Israel.

    The rest of Hamas is a #civilian government. They were overdue for an election, but they have been in long term talks with the #Fatah opposition party to re-establish democracy in Palestine.

    Designating the entire Hamas-led #government as terrorist lets the #IDF claim everything in #Gaza is a valid #military target. Including hospitals, police, banks, and every other facet of civilian rule. Even aid distribution efforts from Gaza's internal police force are being labelled "terrorist activity" by the IDF.

    By designating the entirety of Gaza's governing party as terrorist Australia are effectively giving permission to the IDF to destroy everything in Gaza. Because everything is "Hamas infrastructure".

    In in addition to the possibility of genocide (deemed "plausible" by the International Court of Justice) even the disingenuously alleged goals of this war - the total destruction of Hamas - will make the world less safe, and INCREASE the risk of #terrorism

    If Australia's goal in shunning those listed entities is to reduce terrorism then including Hamas is unwarranted and possibly counter productive. In addition to the #undemocratic aspect of shunning an entire major political party based on the demands of outsiders.

    Israel's current plan to completely exterminate the Hamas government is going to massively increase the real risk of #terrorism

    The IDF are doing almost exactly what the #USA did (with Australian support despite massive public outcry) in #Iraq to the #Iraqi Ba'athist party. That disastrous attempt to completely dismantle a government and impose one from the outside ended up contributing to the rise of #ISIS

    The IDF are using our excessively broad #terror designation (and others - by supposedly #democratic countries) to justify fighting the war in ways that would never usually be acceptable. They are looting millions of dollars "to stop it getting to Hamas" - #looting is a #WarCrime - they are systematically killing police officers who are not engaged in any offensive action against Israel, and they are trying to completely obliterate any #Palestinian civilian control of the Gaza Strip.

    Arguably Australia should remove the special “terrorist” designation from #AlQassam military wing of Hamas as well. We can maintain normal measures (such as financial sanctions), like we would for any other violent organised crime network or a normal foreign military that has committed war crimes.But this giving them a special “terrorist” label, is acting like an endorsement of the IDF throwing out the rule book when fighting in Gaza.

    The IDF have no intention of merely overthrowing Hamas or #demilitarising Gaza. They plan to execute nearly 40,000 suspected members of Hamas' militant wing, and the IDF are clearly willing to wipe out their entire families in the process. When the IDF talk about #HumanShields what this often means is the IDF barely bother trying to target actual combatants, they routinely kill their opponents by bombing family homes. Having a family is not “using human shields” it is simply being human!

    Australia cannot claim to be unaware of the IDF using this strategy. The IDF killed two of our citizens this way in #Lebanon last year, Ali and Ibrahim Bazzi. Fighting for #Hezbollah is illegal under Australian law, and I am not saying we should change that, but summary execution for Ali's suspected involvement is in no way a #proportionate or morally acceptable penalty, especially when it directly causes the death of his brother Ibrahim in the process. Ibrahim was also an Australian citizen from #Sydney and he was due home shortly after he was killed, Ibrahim was not even suspected of fighting for Hezbollah.

    We should not accept this total disregard for justice and morality. We ignored the summary execution of an Australian while he was at home with his family, meaning even Ali was NOT a #combatant, and now, predictably, it escalated to #Australian aid workers being murdered in Gaza.

    We should hold Israel accountable for their violence. But ending the special terrorism designation of Hamas in Palestine and demanding justice for our citizens who were killed in Lebanon.

    Sincerely,

    (full name)

    #auspol #auspol2024

    cc @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]

  2. CW: CW - politics + war + genocide

    🧵2

    Simply juxtaposing #Yemen with #SouthAfrica seems like a safer bet than trying to explain the middle?

    The attempt to explain being that #AnsarAllah do seem to be fairly objectionable but also seem to kinda have a point, but even that mild way of starting it seems fraut?

    But it seems like a disturbing proposition of our leadership think the #Houthis are a bigger problem right now than the IDF?

    So maybe I need to be more persuade?

    It's probably too late now? It's not like they're gonna drag those eleven bastards home?

    I should have done more sooner but that wouldn't have helped either? Thousands of Aussies protested Iraq invasion but we got dragged in anyway because John promised George?

    #democracy is a sham? If we ever picked a government I actually liked the "defenders of democracy" would probably #RegimeChange it?

    cc-ing my other mastadon profiles @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]

    #seppos #yanks #YanksGoHome #USA #UK #AUKUS #GiantGuam #PineGap #Maralinga #EmuSprings #auspol #auspol2024 #nakba2023 #palestine_genocide

  3. Gaza Ministry of Health looks like they might be are UNDER reporting war deaths.

    Gaza's war death stats look somewhat like Russian #COVID data, which is to say, they look suspicious, but they definitely DON'T look like an over count.

    🔗 thelancet.com/journals/lancet/ 🔗 the Lancet article this data is from

    It zig zags up, looking like real world data, then on about 27 October 2023 it simultaneously drops AND shows possible under-dispersion (a statistical term meaning the number per day is suspiciously consistent). It looks a bit like when #Russia were refusing to report more than 800 COVID deaths per day, but it' isn't quite as severe.

    🔗 ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/ 🔗 "Underdispersion: A statistical anomaly in reported Covid data" Dmitry Kobak

    This is unfortunately unlikely to be a real reduction because, despite reported war deaths in the general population halving, deaths of UN Workers increase.

    It is possible the Government of Gaza are deliberately under-reporting deaths, exactly like Russia were during the pandemic. (Realistically if you started - or massively escalated - a war, and
    got tens of thousands of people massacred by a much-better-armed enemy, you might not fully admit to how bad things were getting?)

    But in this case I think it's more likely that deaths per day have exceeded Gaza's capacity to report them. Despite the constant accusations, the numbers Gaza's MOH are releasing are not just an estimate, they are only the named identified dead, they exclude anyone trapped under rubble and possibly those who ended up buried in mass graves (mild "citation needed" but I've heard that from moderately reliable sources and I'll believe it till I see a more reliable source refute it).

    But it doesn't just hit a ceiling, something very suddenly goes wrong with their data reporting on 27 October 2023 (+/- 2 days) … I've not yet found what this corresponds to, but it might be around the time the #IDF ground invasion of Gaza began?

    (cc my other profiles @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] for the notifications)

    #data #statistics #PublicHealth #PublicHealthData #Lancet #TheLancet

    #Gaza #GazaGenocide #GazaMassacre #GazaMOH

    #Russia799 #враньё799 #враньё #799враньё #CovidRussia #Covid19ru #UNRWA

    #فلسطین #فلسطين #غزة #حرب

  4. 🧵1

    Please rate or write some #twitter #CommunityNotes on this #climate denial rubbish from #OneNation senator #MalcolmRoberts

    #CommunityNotes :birdsite: twitter.com/i/birdwatch/t/1559 Link goes directly to the community notes, which are currently all stuck on "Needs more ratings - Not shown on Twitter"

    #Tweet :birdsite: twitter.com/MRobertsQLD/status Link goes to Mal's tweet in the usual twitter interface.

    I am not sure if the ratings count if you have not signed up for #CommunityNotes or have not been accepted yet … but it is worth a try?

    And you can sign up via the "join" button on that page.

    If the first link doesn't work (or you don't trust my links) you can also sign up for #CommunityNotes via the link in the pinned tweet on their official page :birdsite: twitter.com/CommunityNotes

    Unfortunately there seems to be a long waiting list.

    You can follow the @CommunityNotes twitter page Mastodon via a few different mirror bots. These are unofficial mirrors, they don't send any comments or likes back to twitter. But a lot of instance admins block these twitter mirror bots because they create too much traffic, or cause confusion by being mistaken for profiles of people who are also here on Mastodon.

    #TwitterCommunityNotes

    cc other mes @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]

  5. @aetiology

    does anyone know of a good #phylogenetic paper that shows 2009, 1977, and 1918 flu?

    i found one that shows #1977flu looking sus … but i want the full picture of #H1N1

    #1918flu #2009flu

    cc other mes @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]

  6. CW: COVID deaths vs excess deaths (CW is just to reduce clutter)

    @skua

    yeah, that was one of them, why no link?

    Most of the things are things I've tweeted twitter.com/evolving_string … but i tweet a lot of things.

    #Modi is an evil lying … see above? and the #Bulldoze (CM of UP) is possibly worse.

    @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]