... on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing - A UK Socialist's blog

… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Gaza civil defense warns heavy rains, strong winds threaten nearly 950,000 displaced Palestinians
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Palestinians living in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood struggle to maintain daily life under difficult conditions as the ongoing Israeli policy and attacks cause widespread destruction, while cold weather and heavy rainfall flood and damage tents, forcing residents to seek alternative shelter solutions despite limited resources, in Gaza City, Palestine, on March 29, 2026. [Saeed M. M. T. Jaras – Anadolu Agency]
Gaza’s Civil Defense warned Thursday that heavy rainfall and strong winds expected Friday could endanger displaced Palestinians living in tents and temporary shelters, as well as families staying in damaged buildings at risk of collapse, Anadolu reports.
The warning comes as nearly 950,000 displaced Palestinians live in areas exposed to moderate or high flood risks, according to UN figures.
In a statement, the Palestinian Civil Defense Directorate urged residents to take preventive measures to avoid potential dangers associated with the weather system expected to affect the enclave Friday.
It particularly warned displaced people living in tents and temporary shelters, as well as families residing in homes damaged by Israeli bombardment, of the risk of partial building collapses due to heavy rain and strong winds.
The directorate advised residents to firmly secure plastic coverings and tent pegs, build earthen barriers around tents, dig channels to drain rainwater and keep belongings elevated above ground level.
It also warned against living in structurally damaged buildings or pitching tents nearby, urging residents to move to safer locations.
The agency appealed to humanitarian and community organizations to urgently provide safe shelter for displaced families and strengthen protection against severe weather conditions.
READ: Hamas urges mediators to pressure Israel to implement Gaza agreement
The warning comes as Gaza faces a worsening shelter crisis following widespread destruction of residential neighborhoods during Israel’s military offensive, forcing Palestinians into tents, temporary shelters and damaged buildings.
According to figures released by Gaza’s government media office in August 2026, more than 2.15 million displaced Palestinians are living across the enclave, including approximately 867,000 in deteriorating tents and more than 1 million in shelter centers.
On Oct. 15, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that approximately 950,000 displaced Palestinians were living in locations exposed to moderate or high flood risks.
Of those, more than 400,000 face high flood risks, while approximately 44,000 Palestinians are staying in more than 2,300 structurally unsafe buildings, the UN agency said.
OCHA also reported that 294,250 families require shelter assistance ahead of the rainy season.
Displaced Palestinians face the risk of rainwater flooding their tents or strong winds tearing them apart, while low-lying areas remain vulnerable to flash floods amid damaged drainage systems and shortages of emergency response equipment.
The humanitarian crisis has been compounded by widespread destruction caused by Israel’s military offensive in Gaza since October 2023.
Israeli restrictions on the entry of shelter materials and equipment needed to rehabilitate damaged infrastructure also remain in place despite a ceasefire agreement that took effect on Oct. 10, 2025.
READ: UN: 950,000 displaced people in Gaza face flood risks this winter
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Strait of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister. He asks who could possibly object to the IDF starving people to death, conducting forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing all Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He says they’ve got a genocide to do for Israel and to stop objecting
Ed Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.
6 November 2026
Trump’s “Memorandum of Surrender”: The art of the deal meets the fact of defeat
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Streets and squares reflect a sense of normalization in Tehran, Iran on June 18, 2026. [Fatemeh Bahrami – Anadolu Agency]
by Junaid S. Ahmad
Donald Trump is not negotiating with Iran. He is negotiating with the humiliation of having failed to break it.
Beneath the ceasefires, memoranda, podium theatrics and sanctimonious appeals to “stability” lies a fact Washington cannot admit: the United States entered this confrontation expecting submission and emerged confronting its own limits.
It wanted Iran isolated, disarmed and politically obedient. It wanted its deterrence shattered, its regional influence dismantled and its sovereignty reduced to a flag, an anthem and nothing more. It failed.
Iran endured the pressure, preserved its strategic leverage and forced the most powerful empire on earth to negotiate with the country it had promised to bring to its knees.
That is not an American victory. It is the management of an American defeat.
Real diplomacy begins when both sides recognize that the other possesses interests, rights, red lines and power. Trump’s version begins from imperial theology: Washington has interests; Israel has rights; everyone else has obligations.
American coercion is called deterrence. Israeli aggression is called self-defence. Iranian resistance is called escalation.
Sovereignty is sacred when invoked by an American client and intolerable when asserted by an American enemy.
This is the fraud now being sold as peace in the Gulf: a ceasefire presented as capitulation, an interim agreement marketed as surrender and a renewed campaign of pressure repackaged as de-escalation.
Trump did not win the confrontation. He failed to produce the result he promised. Iran was not bombed into obedience. Its government did not collapse. Its strategic position was not erased. Its enemies discovered, once again, that destruction is not control and military superiority is not political mastery.
For an empire addicted to command, the inability to compel surrender is defeat.
READ: Trump says US likely to take control of Hormuz, expects other countries to contribute financially
Trump’s response is therefore not to honor the agreement, but to hollow it out. Accept the document. Rewrite its meaning. Violate its logic. Impose new demands. Then accuse Iran of sabotaging peace. It is diplomacy by battering ram.
The Strait of Hormuz is where this revisionism becomes geography. The attempt to reroute shipping through Omani waters is not a neutral administrative adjustment. It is an effort to strip Iran of the leverage that forced Washington to negotiate at all.
“Freedom of navigation” is merely the varnish.
The real demand is that Iran tolerate a hostile military order on its doorstep, surrender its principal strategic pressure point and accept that its sovereignty exists only when it is politically useless.
Iran may possess rights, provided it never exercises them. It may retain leverage, provided Washington decides when it may be used. It may remain sovereign, provided it behaves as a subordinate. This is not peace. It is coercion translated into diplomatic jargon.
The method is familiar: provoke, retaliate, moralize, escalate. Strangle the adversary economically. Threaten it militarily. Exhaust it politically. Then present concessions extracted under duress as the triumph of moderation.
Washington calls this “managed escalation.” The phrase is obscene. There is nothing managed about pushing an entire region toward catastrophe and congratulating oneself for controlling the speed. Nor does the strategy stop at Hormuz.
In Lebanon, the American-Israeli project is to transform Israeli security doctrine into Lebanese national destiny: isolate Iran, constrain Hezbollah and call the resulting submission “sovereignty.”
In Syria, fragmentation remains useful because a sovereign, territorially coherent state would obstruct the endless manufacture of pressure points. A wounded country is easier to penetrate, divide and punish.
The region is never allowed to heal because its wounds remain profitable. Different countries. Different instruments. The same imperial objective: reverse the political reality produced by war and reconstruct the appearance of American-Israeli supremacy after its material limits have been exposed. Israel’s role is not secondary. It is central, relentless and poisonous.
Its political machinery in Washington treats any durable Iranian power as an intolerable violation of the regional hierarchy. It does not seek security in any reciprocal sense. It seeks permanent superiority: Iran contained, Lebanon vulnerable, Syria fractured and the Gulf militarized without end.
Restraint may occasionally serve American interests. Permanent confrontation serves the Israeli project.
Trump is the ideal salesman for this arrangement because his greatest political talent is not victory, but the theatrical conversion of failure into triumph.
He needs a camera, a slogan and a captive press corps. If the battlefield will not produce surrender, the press conference must counterfeit it. A document is signed. Trump declares victory. The media repeats the phrase. The coercion resumes. The performance becomes the policy.
READ: Iran says won’t allow US to ‘interfere’ in Strait of Hormuz management
But Iran has already achieved what Washington was determined to prevent: it survived, preserved deterrence and forced the empire to confront the limits of its power.
That is a strategic victory. Not because Iran escaped damage. Not because the confrontation was costless. But because the central American objective — submission — was denied.
Iran did not merely resist an attack. It exposed the distance between imperial spectacle and imperial capacity. It demonstrated that the United States and Israel can devastate, sanction and threaten, but cannot automatically dictate the political outcome. That is the defeat Trump is trying to disguise.
Tehran must therefore treat any agreement not as a gift from Washington, but as a battlefield whose terms remain contested. An agreement that binds only Iran while leaving the United States free to reinterpret, pressure and punish is not diplomacy. It is an ultimatum disguised as diplomacy.
Restraint without reciprocity is not prudence. It is permission. Permission to rewrite the terms. Permission to escalate without cost. Permission to demand surrender after promising peace.
The central question is not whether Trump can stage another ceremony. It is whether the United States can tear up every agreement that fails to produce obedience.
Peace cannot be built on coerced submission and renamed stability. Victory cannot be manufactured at a podium while the balance of power says otherwise.
Trump wants Iran to surrender the leverage that defeated his strategy so he can announce that he won. Iran’s task is to deny him the fiction. To preserve its rights, consolidate its gains and make clear that the empire’s declaration is not reality. It is merely an empire issuing orders to history — and discovering, once again, that history does not obey.
OPINION: Pepe, Pakistan, and the last of the great foreign correspondents
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Strait of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister. He asks who could possibly object to the IDF starving people to death, conducting forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing all Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He says they’ve got a genocide to do for Israel and to stop objecting
Ed Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.
6 November 2026
France on strike: 1,500 walkouts and 250 marches for a different future
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/france-strike-1500-walkouts-and-250-marches-different-future
Protesters during a demonstration for higher wages and in support of the high school protest movement in Paris, November 5, 2026
Hundreds of thousands took to the streets of France today [5 Nov] as unions mounted a massive wave of strikes against government cuts, falling living standards and attacks on public services — piling pressure on Macron’s embattled government
WALKOUTS and mass demonstrations swept France today as the five main union federations organised over 1,500 strikes hitting most sectors of the economy and over 250 marches.
A third of the country’s schools were closed and work stopped at oil refineries and nuclear plants. Transport ground to a halt in many regions, and hundreds of thousands marched against the government despite last-minute police instructions rerouting many of the planned demonstrations.
The CGT, CFDT, FO, Unsa and FSU union federations issued a joint statement calling for political change.
“Fuel, food products, rent, gas, electricity… everything’s going up except wages and pensions,” it said.
“Anger is immense. The situation in this country is fragile. The pressing social and environmental challenges must be addressed without delay.”
CGT leader Sophie Binet said: “Nothing will stop us — the only thing that will end the mobilisation is a response to our demands. The longer you wait,” she warned the government, “the higher the price will be.”
Union demands include a rise to both the minimum wage and wages across the public sector, the abandonment of the government’s attempt to force through €54 billion (£45bn) in cuts, higher taxes on the rich and corporations and more money for public services.
“This day of strike action has a dual purpose — to obtain wage increases and to counter a budget that makes workers, those in precarious situations and retirees pay the price for policies in favour of the ultra-rich and large companies,” said the CGT’s Thomas Vacheron.
The government has promised to abolish the controversial Parcoursup university admission system in one of several partial concessions to demands, but its default response is still repression.
Riot police charged marchers on the huge Paris demo early in the afternoon, with footage showing them seizing banners and knocking protesters to the ground.
…
Continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/france-strike-1500-walkouts-and-250-marches-different-future
France erupts as 1.6 million strike back at Macron
6 November 2026
After Blue Tsunami, Progressives Say ‘This Is a Mandate to Deliver Big Change’
Article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
US Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) and others react during an election night watch party on November 3, 2026 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Joel Angel Juarez/Getty Images)
“From coast to coast, Americans are demanding a country that works for all of us, not just corrupt politicians and billionaires.”
Progressive lawmakers and advocacy organizations said Wednesday in the aftermath of Democrats’ historic midterm victory that the party has a mandate to use its majorities in the US House and Senate to advance an ambitious legislative agenda and deliver the kind of transformative change that voters demanded at ballot boxes across the country.
Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, called the midterm results “a mandate to deliver big change,” emphasizing that the real work has just begun.
RECOMMENDED…
Not Counting on Blue Tsunami Predictions, Progressives Go Big for Final ‘Get Out the Vote’ Push
‘Officially a Green Wave Too’: Climate and Eco Champions Triumph in Historic Midterms
“Deliver on the big change people are demanding,” Casar wrote in a message to his fellow Democrats. “End the war. Stop ICE’s reign of terror. Root out corruption. Raise wages. Stop price gouging. Get money out of politics. Strengthen unions.”
“No complacency,” he added.
Top Democrats signaled in the immediate aftermath of the party’s midterm rout of President Donald Trump’s Republican Party that they would not hesitate to begin investigating alleged corruption—a major issue for voters, according to exit polls—and other wrongdoing by the White House and its allies.
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who is in line to become speaker in the new Congress, said Wednesday that his caucus would also work to “make significant and decisive progress on addressing the affordability crisis”—though legislative efforts could by stymied by Trump’s veto power.
Progressives—bouyed by victories in key races across the country—implored Democrats to use every bit of power that voters gave them to pursue bold change and lay the groundwork for retaking the White House in 2028, warning against a return to the status quo politics that delivered the country into the grasp of Trump and the GOP in the first place.
“Use every committee, hearing, and budget negotiation. Follow the contracts and conflicts of interest. Put executives and administration officials under oath,” Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of the advocacy group Our Revolution, said in a statement Wednesday. “Fight for concrete gains and make Trump answer for what he blocks. We know we won’t win everything at once. People need to see Democrats using every bit of power they have to fight for them.”
Geevarghese also called on Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to step aside as leader of the Senate Democratic caucus, arguing that the fight ahead “requires leadership ready to meet the moment.”
“The blue wave was powered by a progressive wave. We are the center of gravity in this party, and we intend to drive the agenda. People deserve a new New Deal: a $25 living wage, stronger unions, affordable housing, taxes on billionaires and a sustained fight for Medicare for All,” said Geevarghese. “If Democrats retreat into caution and fail to improve people’s lives, they will rebuild the distrust Trump exploited. The people organized for change. We organized to win. Now we organize to make Democrats deliver.”
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani also weighed in on the implications of Tuesday’s election results, saying at a press conference that “what last night told us is that Americans are tired of being told that their needs are unrealistic, by politicians who have been bought by the wealthiest people in the country.”
“This country has elected a new generation of leadership, a generation with a mandate to lower the cost of living, to build not bomb, to never betray the working people who entrusted them with power,” said Mamdani. “And I hear often that the politics that we’re fighting for here in New York City are not possible outside of city limits. And what last night showed us is that working people are the majority, whether we are speaking of Austin or Ann Arbor or Astoria. It is time to put those same people first in our politics.”
Article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
5 November 2026
Lawsuit Targets Secretive Musk-Led Pentagon Panel Over ‘Enormous Potential Conflicts of Interest’
Article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
A meeting of the Pentagon’s Project Meridian was pictured on October 1, 2026 in Washington, DC.
(Photo: US Department of Defense/X.com)
“The federal government should not be outsourcing its vision on ‘the future of warfare’ to a panel dominated by individuals that stand to profit from it.”
A coalition of government watchdog organizations sued the US Department of Defense on Monday over a recently announced initiative known as Project Meridian, a Pentagon advisory committee headed by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Anduril Industries cofounder Palmer Luckey—billionaires whose companies benefit extensively from federal contracts.
The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that Project Meridian violates the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which “requires that any federal advisory committee that includes non-governmental members be created by a charter, have a defined structure and purpose, make its records and meetings open to the public, and be fairly balanced in its membership.”
RECOMMENDED…
Companies Backed by Trump Sons Have Scored Over $6 Billion in Pentagon Contracts: Analysis
Report Details How Trump Has Handed Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card to Wall Street and Big Tech
In his memorandum ordering the creation of Project Meridian, Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth set a deadline of January 28, 2027 for the panel to deliver recommendations to the US Defense Department on how to “map the trajectory of future warfare” and help the country “maintain global dominance.”
Project Meridian has held at least two meetings at the Pentagon, which has not disclosed the specific contents of the gatherings or released a list of attendees. Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich is helping Musk and Luckey spearhead the advisory panel, coordinated by the MITRE Corporation—whose board previously included the GOP’s nominee for US Senate in Michigan, Mike Rogers.
“Despite its ongoing operations and imminent final report,” the new lawsuit reads, “defendants have failed to comply with FACA’s procedural and substantive requirements for new federal advisory committees, including FACA transparency requirements that disallow Project Meridian’s closed-door operations.”
“Compounding the problem, Project Meridian’s private-sector membership raises precisely the type of conflict-of-interest concerns that FACA was designed to address,” the lawsuit continues. “Announced members include Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey, both leaders and stakeholders of major defense contractors with substantial financial interests in the outcome of Project Meridian’s recommendations. Other members likewise have direct financial stakes in Project Meridian’s findings or are dedicated to aggressive military action.”
The lawsuit was filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Public Citizen, and the Project on Government Oversight. The groups urged the federal court to “hold unlawful, vacate, and set aside Secretary Hegseth’s September 30 memorandum establishing Project Meridian,” “enjoin defendants from allowing Project Meridian to continue its work until defendants bring it into compliance with FACA,” and bar the Pentagon from “accepting or acting upon any recommendations by Project Meridian while it is acting outside the law.”
Donald Sherman, CREW’s president, said in a statement on Monday that the Pentagon is “legally barred from getting advice in secret, by defense contractors with enormous potential conflicts of interest.”
“But that’s exactly what Project Meridian is doing—soliciting private counsel from contractors about military capacity including the president’s largest political benefactor,” said Sherman. “The Federal Advisory Committee Act sets clear requirements about transparency and avoiding conflicts of interest, and Project Meridian must either comply or stop operating.”
Musk’s SpaceX has secured more than $8 billion in Pentagon contracts in 2026 alone.
Anduril Industries, Luckey’s firm, is known for building autonomous drones. The company won a $2 billion US Navy contract last month, days after Hegseth announced Project Meridian.
“Project Meridian would outsource design of grand military strategy to two extremist Pentagon contractors, Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey,” Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, said Monday. “Very predictably, they will recommend more spending, much more spending, on more AI-enabled weaponry. That would simultaneously make the world more dangerous and starve funding for domestic and human needs.”
“The law demands balance on advisory committees, precisely to prevent connected insiders like Musk and Luckey from writing policy at the expense of the public,” Weissman added.
Article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering.
5 November 2026