Israeli Genocide Continues With Another Gaza Massacre

112 Palestinians killed and 760 injured while surrounding an aide lorry in Gaza City this morning and immediately the Hamas and Israeli propaganda machines swung into effect, Hamas saying that they had been shot by the Israeli Defence Force while the Israeli's claimed the drivers of aid trucks were to blame as a truck ploughed into them as they surrounded the aid trucks and looted them.
Then the Gaza Health Ministry reported receiving bodies and severely wounded people with multiple gun shot wounds at their medical facilities, a claim backed up by the head of the hospital's ambulance service who said that they had used carts when they had no ambulances to spare to transport the tens of people to hospitals.
Eye witnesses spoke of the IDF opening fire on the crowd with machine guns from a checkpoint 70m away and it was then that the lorries began to move which led the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority to say that there had been 'an ugly massacre conducted by the Israeli occupation army' and the UN aid chief, Martin Griffiths, saying he was appalled'.
Joe Biden said reports of Israeli firing on unarmed Palestinians would complicate any ceasefire deal which he had hoped could be in place by Monday meanwhile during a congressional hearing, US defence secretary Lloyd Austin was asked how many Palestinian women and children had been killed by Israel since 7 October to which he replied: 'Over 25,000' and to the next question of how many precision guided munitions had been provided to Israel since the start of its war in Gaza, said 'Approximately 21,000'.
The White House has described the reports of 112 people killed in Gaza while waiting to receive humanitarian aid as a 'serious incident' and that they mourn the loss of innocent life and recognise the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, where innocent Palestinians are just trying to feed their families which flies in the face of providing them with 21,000 munitions because what did they think they was going to do with them?
The International Court of Justice have already said what Israel is doing in Palestine fulfills the criteria for a genocide, i would argue that what they have been doing to them for the past 60 years fulfills it also but my question would be what are you going to do about it because from where i am sitting Israel is just carrying on their murderous genocide anyway.
The ICJ must now refer Israel to the United Nations Security Council and pass a resolution to take action including economic and trade sanctions, arms embargoes, travel bans and Benjamin Netanyahu and his abhorrent Government can have no place to hide and avoid arrest for war crimes.

How's That Brexit Working Our For Ya?

Not a day goes by without the UK Government mentioning illegal immigration coming across the English Channel on small boats, but that's because they want you to look over there and not over here where the number of legal immigration has skyrocketed by 250% since 2022.
The Office of National Statistics today revealed that 616,000 work visas were issued in 2023
to fill holes in British care homes with Health and Social Care the largest recipients with 146,477
and with preferential status removed from people coming from the European Union courtesy of Brexit, East Asians and West and Southern Africans are the primary source of healthcare workers.
More than 18,000 came from India, with 7,000 from Bangladesh and Pakistan, 18,000 from Nigeria, 15,000 from Zimbabwe and 10,000 from Ghana.
It was barely hidden that the main driver behind many people's vote for Brexit was to stop immigration and 'kick out the foreigners' which was a huge own goal 'as the Europeans quite rightly told us to stuff our jobs and went elsewhere leaving our Hospital's and Care homes woefully understaffed.
Brexit will be the gift which keeps on giving until one of our political parties have the will to offer us a route back into Europe and not just for the foreign workers we so dearly need but the access to the World's largest single market which hit our GDP by 4% when we carelessly removed ourselves.

Today Is...Leap Day

It is also the day i complete my Post Everyday For A Year Challenge so that's me making room in my cupboard for a years supplies of Beanies Coffee but it was just my luck that the year had an extra day.
Due to the World inconveniently taking 365.242 days or or 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes and 56 seconds to go around the Sun it makes our calendars go on the fritz so we have to add an extra day to the year every 4 years and to most people today is the extra day but it isn't as simple as just tacking a 29th Day onto February.
If we didn’t account for this extra time, the seasons would begin to drift. This would be annoying if not devastating, because over a period of about 700 years our summers, which we’ve come to expect in June in the northern hemisphere, would begin to occur in December and who wants to eat turkey in their swimming trunks.
So by adding an extra day every four years, our calendar years stay correctly adjusted but hang on, by adding a leap day every four years, we actually make the calendar longer by over 44 minutes. Over time, these extra 44 minutes would also cause the seasons to drift in our calendar and its back to wearing our Bikini's at Christmas so for this reason, not every four years is a leap year. 
Complicatedly the rule is that if the year is divisible by 100 and not divisible by 400, leap year is skipped but all you need to know is that thanks to today, our seasons will always occur when we expect them to occur, oh and today isn't that extra day, that was on the 24th.
Yep, to make things even more convoluted, the day that is added to a leap year is 24th February. The extra 24th February means that the original 24th February becomes the 25th February and all the other days get pushed down a date until 29th February.

Journalists In Gaza

Since October 7th, only one Journalist has been allowed into Gaza and the journalist from CNN was only allowed to stay for two hours, was not allowed out of her vehicle and was only allowed to travel directly to, and back, from the UAE field Hospital, couldn’t talk to any Palestinians and was accompanied by Israeli representatives at all times.
The only journalists working in Gaza are the ones who were there when the attacks began and although it's difficult to get absolutely accurate statistics, it is estimated over 90 journalists have been killed in Gaza in the past 124 days since the Israeli offensive began with many more injured.
In the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attacks, all foreign journalists had access via the Israeli army to many of the worst-hit Israeli border communities, obviously to show the World the horrors inflicted on them by Hamas but with the exception of the single CNN reporter, not one foreign journalist has been allowed into Gaza, not even embedded into the Israeli army as seems to have become the norm in recent times.
I have heard from Israeli supporters that the details which do come out of Gaza, courtesy of the brave journalists trapped inside, are not independent or 'real' Journalists but are just reporting Hamas propaganda but every media outlet has been trying to gain access to Gaza but have been denied by Israel, citing the Journalists safety concerns.
Media organisations have sent letters to the Israeli's and even took them to the Israeli High Court, arguing they would take responsibility for their own safety but they refuse to allow access and the BBC's Jeremy Bowen, reporting from Jerusalem has said: 'There's no foreign correspondent worth their salt who doesn't want that access - to evaluate the situation first-hand. Why aren't we getting it? I can only surmise that Israel is not allowing reporters to work freely inside Gaza, because their soldiers are doing things they do not want us to see.'
The Israel military like to describe themselves as the most moral army in the world but until journalists are allowed to see for themselves, and with the news that is getting out seeming to make a mockery of that statement, we can only speculate that the Israeli's concern is that journalists will uncover evidence that backs up those allegations of war crimes and genocide.
What are we to deduce otherwise?

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Today Is...Rare Disease Day

According to the NHS website, rare diseases are the ones that impact very few people out of the general population and most don't even have proper treatment and they give a brief the top 10 rarest known. 
The most rarest is RPI Deficiency which is considered to be the rarest disease in the world. Ribose-5-Phosphate Isomerase (RPI), is a crucial enzyme in a metabolic process in the human body which causes muscle stiffness, seizures and a reduction of white matter in the brain. There has only ever been one case and that was in 1984 and since then there have been no cases.
Field’s disease has only ever affected two people and they were twin sisters who suffered a degeneration of their muscles and weakening of the body. Medical experts are still researching the condition.
Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome (HGPS) affects 1 in 20 million people and causes premature ageing and makes even 2-year-olds look aged and weak. There is no current cure for HGPS at the moment.
Methemoglobemin is a form of haemoglobin that makes our blood, skin, lips and nails turn blue in color. It can be inherited but MetHb usually happens when people use certain medications or recreational drugs or exposure to certain chemicals.
Aquagenic Urticaria is a Water Allergy where a person’s skin turns red and itchy after overexposure to water. People suffering from this condition can also be allergic to snow, sweat, and rain.
Foreign Accent Syndrome causes a person to speak in a different accent from their natural one and the main cause of Foreign Accent Syndrome is a brain injury.
Lesch–Nyhan Syndrome is a male only neurological disability which causes people to behave aggressively and harm themselves through head hitting and hand biting due to too much Uric Acid in the body and affects 1 in 3 million men.
Kuru Disease is named as it only affects the Kuru tribe in Papua New Guinea who consume the tissues of their loved ones after their death including the Brain which causes the transmission of prion- an infectious protein.
Harlequin is a disease which makes skin looks like fish scales and makes the body incapable of maintain proper temperature. There is no known cure.
Stone Man’s Disease transforms a person’s muscle tissues into bones.

Today Is...National Pokémon Day

Pokémon is a Japanese media franchise consisting of video games, animated series and films, a trading card game and has a target audience of children aged 5 to 12.
That is, just to make sure it is understood, it is aimed at children aged 5 to 12 which could make all those adults running around my local park holding out their mobile phones and excitedly shouting 'I got a Jigglypuff' a bit strange but then they may consider me a bit strange for sitting their quietly reading my book so fairs fair.
I have to admit i don't know much about Pokémon having never seen the cartoon or film and could probably name about 15 off the top of my head but i do remember an incident where one episode of the cartoon sparked off epileptic seizures in thousands of viewers and the series was suspended until someone decided, oh well, and started showing it again.
The fad for collecting pocket monsters to fight against each other did die down until 2016 when Pokémon Go was introduced which used augmented reality so you could run around cities and capture certain Pokémon and interrupt ladies peacefully reading their books chasing Squirtles and Bulbasaurs or any of the other 1017 officially registered on the National Pokedex (who knew there was such a thing?).
According to Wikipedia the best type of Pokémon to capture are the steel types but you should avoid bothering to go after the bug types who by all accounts are a bit rubbish but what about the Jigglypuff?
Apparently it's special power is the ability to send people to sleep whenever it starts singing making it the Coldplay of the Pokémon World.

Today Is...Galileo Banned From Teaching Earth Orbit's The Sun

Galileo was the first man to use a telescope to look into space and discover the mountains and the craters on the moon and all the stars in the Milky Way and other cool stuff.
Of course the Church was not fans of Astronomy because they saw it as threat to the rubbish that they had been pushing and the people found it enormously disorientating because one moment they thought they were sitting still on a ball of rock with everything going around them but it turned out they were hurtling through space with them going around everything else.
With his telescope he discovered that Jupiter had several moons which really upset the Pope as there were only supposed to be seven heavenly bodies, the Sun, the moon and five planets so the church forced him to recant or be executed.
On this day in 1616, the Catholic Church began the inquisition and Galileo was on trial for holding the belief that the Earth revolved around the Sun, which was deemed heretical by the Church.
Galileo refused to accept Church orthodoxy that the Sun moved around the Earth and was an absolute fact of scripture that could not be disputed, arguing instead that the Earth was not the centre of the universe so rather than weigh up the evidence, the Church banned him from teaching or defending the view.
Obviously he told them where to get off because in 1633 the Church found him guilty of heresy and condemned him to house arrest for the rest of his life.
In 1992, after a 13 year investigation, the Roman Catholic Church admitted it had been wrong to condemn Galileo for promoting the Copernican astronomical theory.
It took 359 years for the Church to catch up with science which makes you wonder just where we would be if the Church was not replaced by science as the source of our knowledge and kept believing that the universe revolved around them, literally.

Israel Ban At The Eurovision Song Contest

I am not for banning nations from events which have nothing to do with politics, i would prefer they keep politics out of things such as sporting events but the Olympics and Paralympics, FIFA, Formula One, World Athletics and The International Tennis Federation decided to ban Russian and Belarus from their sports after the invasion of Ukraine and then the Eurovision's executive supervisor, Martin Österdahl, decided to ban Russia and then tied himself up in knots to explain why.
The Eurovision Song Contest has always prided itself on being apolitical, it's raison d'être was to unite Europe after World War 2 and  which led to some very convoluted verbal somersaults to explain the Russian ban, Österdahl saying that the decision was not political but was reflecting the sentiment of Europe and standing up for democracy because the Eurovision shows the values of solidarity, reaching out and uniting through music.   
Maybe something was lost in translation from Swedish to English but regardless, the genie is now out the bottle and there are calls for Israel, currently pursuing genocide against it's neighbour, to be booted out and join Russia on the sidelines.
Israel's president, Isaac Herzog, is putting pressure on the Eurovision organisers not to tell his country that their services are not required this year what with the mass slaughter of 30,000 civilians and everything, but the organisers may have found a get out by not banning Israel itself but the Israeli song, October Rain, as being 'too political'.   
Israel’s culture and sports minister, Miki Zohar, called the prospect 'scandalous' and called on the European Broadcasting Union to: 'act professionally and neutrally, and not to let politics affect art' which makes a change from just reaching for the usual antisemitism foghorn but Israel could avoid the embarrassment of being dumped alongside Russia by withdrawing themselves from the contest anyway.
I am no fan of Israel and what it has been doing over the past 60 years but i am all in favour of allowing Israel to compete because as the UK found out when we went around dropping bombs on people in the Middle East, Europeans have no fear of blowing a big fat raspberry and handing out nul points to nations going around massacring people so let them sing and don't deny us Europeans the opportunity to reflect the sentiment of Europe.

Come To Labour You Unracist Tories

It really can't be easy being a right winger in Britain, i don't mean the centre right or people who considered themselves centre right because the Conservative Party have moved so far to the right that parties that were considered fringe or extreme, are finding themselves very much at home in the Party of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.
In the past week alone we have had Senior MP Lee Anderson have the Conservative whip removed for racist comments about London's Muslim Mayor, former Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, said that Islamists, extremists and antisemites are in charge now and the deluded Liz Truss has been peddling nonsense about being removed from Office by the 'Deep State' and just smiled when the host hailed the far-right racist figure Tommy Robinson as 'a hero'.
The thinking is that the Conservatives have had to move further to the right to try and recapture the 10% of former party voters who are now behind the likes of the far right UKIP and Reform Parties which puts them in bed with the sort of people David Cameron called 'fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists' but as the polls show Labour between 12%-20% ahead and an election soon, they must figure that what they gain by tying themselves to the loonies and racists will make up for the losses from those they leave behind in the centre.
As i said above, it really can't be easy being a right winger in Britain at the moment, unless you are a frothing at the mouth knuckle dragging racist then you are spoilt for choice but otherwise, where would you go?
Obviously we would have to first wash you down in disinfectant and get you to hand in your Maggie Thatcher mug if you wanted to join the Labour Party but that is a small price to pay to not be associated with who was once called the Nasty Party but are now the Nastily Racist Party.