“Socialism, this is the direction, this is the path to save the planet, I don’t have the least doubt. Capitalism is the road to hell, to the destruction of the world.”
Hugo Chávez
This quote was delivered by the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez during his speech at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in December 2009. Chávez argued that capitalism is inherently destructive to the environment and that socialist systems are the only way to save the planet.
“You know, fish are sensitive, they have personalities, [and] they hurt when they’re wounded.
Dr. Sylvia Earle
Who is Dr Sylvia Earle?
Sylvia Alice Earle is an American marine biologist, explorer, author, and lecturer. She has been a National Geographic explorer-in-residence since 1998.
Read more:
wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Earle
More information:
You’ll Never Go Fishing After Reading This
Fishing is damaging to animals, the environment, and your health. We’re convinced that after you read this article, you’ll want to toss your rod and reel in the nearest dumpster.
Read More:
peta.org/living/entertainment/youll-never-go-fishing-after-reading-this
“Genocide is the responsibility of the the entire world.”
Who was Ann Clywyd
Ann Clwyd Roberts March 1937 – 21 July 2023) was a Welsh Labour politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Cynon Valley for 35 years, from 1984 until 2019. Although she had intended to stand down in 2015, she was re-elected in that year’s general election and in 2017 before standing down in 2019. Clwyd is the longest-serving female MP for a Welsh constituency.
Read More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Clwyd
SPEAK UP FOR GAZA! – “Your silence gives consent.” Plato
Ways to Speak out
You can speak out for Gaza in a number of ways, by participating in peaceful protests, vigils, marches and rallies, writing letters to government officials, signing petitions, displaying posters and amplifying the voices of people of Gaza through social media and community events. Share information and personal stories from Gazan’s by following journalists and activists on platforms such as such as Twitter, Facebook, Bluesky and so on. Make sure all information is from trusted sources such as Amnesty International for example. Most all of us can do something even if we cannot attend protests. All such actions help to grow public pressure for a ceasefire and much needed humanitarian aid and the cessation of arms supplies to Israel while fostering solidarity with those affected by this seemingly unstoppable nightmare few of us can really begin to imagine. You can also support humanitarian efforts by donating to reputable organizations such as Oxfam, UNICEF, The Red Cross to name but a few, which provide essential aid like food, water, medical supplies, and shelter.
Most of us may not fully understand the complexity of the situation, all we see are helpless people massacred with impunity. Helpless children’s lives brutally cut short, many left disabled, starving, going without health care and medicine. People killed day after day, injury inflicted by constant bombardment, many lying underneath the rubble of their ruined homes. All this while the governments’ of the world stand silent even providing genocidal Israel with weapons, such as the UK and US who are the worst culprits. Many of us feel at a loss to comprehend the huge amount of relentless suffering the Palestinians have endured, not only since October 2023 but for decades previously. The truth of the matter is that the Palestinian people have suffered under Israeli occupation and policies for over fifty years, since Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip which began in June 1967 following the Six-Day War. It’s time for justice for Palestine. Its’ time for peace for Palestine. It’s time for Palestine to be free. It’s time to Stand with Palestine.
Actions to take
Toolkit: Responding to the Crisis Unfolding in Gaza
While this is Amnesty International Australia there are many ideas and information that will be useful for anyone wishing to support Palestine
amnesty.org.au/toolkit-gaza-genocide/
Oxfam
HOW YOU CAN HELP GAZA: MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD
Over 2 million people in Gaza are suffering the unimaginable consequences of war.
An immediate and lasting ceasefire is the only humanitarian action that now matters.
Here are some ways you can stand in solidarity and make your voice heard:
https://www.oxfam.org.uk/oxfam-in-action/oxfam-blog/how-you-can-help-gaza-make-your-voice-heard/
Lots of actions to take, sign petitions, email your MP , sign a letter to stop UK arms sales and download and display a ceasefire poster, donate and more… Please take as many of these actions as you can – at the very least please sign the petition.
This is the UK Oxfam however there are many ideas and information that will be useful for anyone wishing to support Palestine. Free posters for you to download.
Amnesty International U.S.
Take the 7-Day Challenge to Help Stop Starvation in Gaza:
https://www.amnestyusa.org/toolkits/take-the-7-day-challenge-to-help-stop-starvation-in-gaza/
This is the US Amnesty International’s website. Again many of the ideas can be adapted to use by Internationally.
Palestine Solidarity Campaign
“Our campaigns are only strong because of people across the country and around the world working together for change. There are many different ways for you to get involved in the campaign for freedom, equality, and justice for Palestine.”
https://palestinecampaign.org/
6 ways you can support Palestinians in Gaza
https://afsc.org/news/6-ways-you-can-support-palestinians-gaza
Useful Links
x.com/Timesofgaza
Latest news updates and top stories from occupied Palestine.
x.com/GazaMartyrs
The martyrs of Gaza are not just numbers; each martyr has a story and will be documented here.
“How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?”
Bertrand Russell
Who as Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual. He had influence on mathematics, logic, set …
wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell
Here is an explanation concerning the context:
Bertrand Russell’s question, “How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?” was part of a statement composed on January 31, 1970. His statement, which was directed to the International Conference of Parliamentarians meeting in Cairo, expressed his profound moral outrage at the ongoing suffering of the Palestinian people, which he attributed to the creation of the State of Israel and the subsequent displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. He argued that the denial of the Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their homeland was the core injustice fueling the conflict, emphasizing that no people would accept such mass expulsion and that a just settlement required the return of refugees to their homes.
Here is the full statement, January 31, 1970 :
“The latest phase of the undeclared war in the Middle East is based upon a profound miscalculation. The bombing raids deep into Egyptian territory will not persuade the civilian population to surrender, but will stiffen their resolve to resist. This is the lesson of all aerial bombardment. The Vietnamese who have endured years of American bombing have responded not by capitulation, but by shooting down more enemy aircraft. In 1940 my own fellow-countrymen resisted Hitler’s bombing raids with an unprecedent unity and determination. For this reason, the present Israeli attacks will fail in their essential purpose, but at the same time they must be condemned vigorously throughout the world.
The development of the crisis in the Middle East is both dangerous and instructive. For over twenty years Israel has expanded by force of arms. After every stage in this expansion Israel has appealed to ‘reason’ and has suggested ‘negotiations’. This is the traditional role of the imperial power, because it wishes to consolidate with the least difficulty what it has taken already by violence. Every new conquest becomes the new basis of the proposed negotiation from strength, which ignores the injustice of the previous aggression.
The aggression committed by Israel must be condemned, not only because no state has the right to annex foreign territory, but because every expansion is also an experiment to discover how much more aggression the world will tolerate.
The refugees who surround Palestine in their hundreds of thousands were described recently by the Washington journalist I.F. Stone as ‘the moral milestone around the neck of world Jewry’. Many of the refugees are now well into the third decade of their precarious existence in temporary settlements. The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was ‘given’ by a foreign Power to another people for the creation of a new State. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers have increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?
It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East.
We are frequently told that we must sympathize with Israel because of the suffering of the Jews in Europe at the hands of the Nazis. I see in this suggestion no reason to perpetuate the suffering. What Israel is doing today can not be condoned, and to invoke the horrors of the past to justify those of the present is gross hypocrisy. Not only does Israel condemn a vast number of refugees to misery; not only are many Arabs under occupation condemned to military rule; but also Israel condemns the Arab nations, only recently emerging from colonial status, to continuing impoverishment as military demands take precedence over national development.
All who want to see an end to bloodshed in the Middle East must ensure that any settlement does not contain the seeds of future conflict. Justice requires that the first step towards a settlement must be an Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied in June 1967. A new world campaign is needed to help bring justice to the long-suffering people of the Middle East.”
Indeed how much longer is the world going to stand by and watch the suffering of the people of Palestine and do nothing! Not only do the nations of the world do nothing but countries such as the UK and USA continue to supply the weapons for the Israelis to continue their genocidal onslaught emboldened by the lack of positive action by world’s nations.
The above quote has as much meaning today concerning the situation regrading the world’s response to the horror that has been inflicted on Palestinians, including genocide, consisting of the starvation of thousands of people including children along with constant bombardment which has killed over 60,000 innocent people, maiming and disabling thousands of children. “Twenty thousand children have been killed in 23 months of war – more than one child every hour.” “At least 1,009 of the children killed were under age one, with nearly half (450) of these babies born and killed during the war. At least 42,011 children have been injured, according to the Ministry of Health, with the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities reporting at least 21,000 children left permanently disabled. Thousands more are missing or presumed buried under rubble. More information about these atrocities: Savethechildren.gaza-20000-children-killed-23-months-war-more-one-child-killed-every-hour These numbers of course continue to grow as you read this, as more and more days pass with no real action from the world’s governments. What is happening is a crime against humanity while the world stays silent. How much longer will the world do nothing ?
Stand with Palestine
How you can help Gaza. Here are just a few suggestions:
Palestine Solidarity Campaign
“Our campaigns are only strong because of people across the country and around the world working together for change. There are many different ways for you to get involved in the campaign for freedom, equality, and justice for Palestine.”
https://palestinecampaign.org/
Oxfam
HOW YOU CAN HELP GAZA: MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD
Over 2 million people in Gaza are suffering the unimaginable consequences of war.
An immediate and lasting ceasefire is the only humanitarian action that now matters.
Here are some ways you can stand in solidarity and make your voice heard:
https://www.oxfam.org.uk/oxfam-in-action/oxfam-blog/how-you-can-help-gaza-make-your-voice-heard/
Lots of actions to take, sign petitions, email your MP , sign a letter to stop UK arms sales and download and display a ceasefire poster, donate and more… Please take as many of these actions as you can – at the very least please sign the petition.
Amnesty International U.S.
Take the 7-Day Challenge to Help Stop Starvation in Gaza:
https://www.amnestyusa.org/toolkits/take-the-7-day-challenge-to-help-stop-starvation-in-gaza/
The Martyrs of Gaza
The martyrs of Gaza are not just numbers; each martyr has a story and will be documented here:
https://x.com/GazaMartyrs
“The obligations of law and equity reach only to mankind; but kindness and beneficence should be extended to the creatures of every species, and these will flow from the breast of a true man, as streams that issue from the living fountain.”
Plutarch
Who was Plutarch?
Plutarch was a Greek historian, who later became a Roman citizen, a biographer and essayist, he was born 46 -120 CE into a prominent family in Chaeronea, Boeotia, a town about twenty miles east of Delphi.
He married Timoxena and had four sons. Plutarch was educated at Athens and there studied Mathematics, physics, medicine, natural science, Greek and Latin literatures and rhetoric. He travelled extensively in Greece and Asia Minor and visited Alexandria and Rome.
His literacy accomplishments were enormous, but he was most known for his biographical studies of Greek and Latin Statesmen and philosophers, entitled Parallel lives, consisting of 46 biographies planned to be ethical examples in pairs, one Greek figure and one similar Roman, though the last four lives are single.
He also authored a number of treatises on matters of ethics, on topics such as education, marriage, religious observances and reason in non human animals and the practice of ethical vegetarianism. This collection of about 60 in fifteen volumes is Known as the “Moralia” Or moral essays.
Read More:
Animal Rights: A History Plutarch
http://thinkdifferentlyaboutsheep.weebly.com/animal-rights-a-history-plutarch.html
“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.”
Lao Tzu
Who was Lao Tzu?
Little is truly known about the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu (sometimes also known as Laozi or Lao Tze), who is a guiding figure in Daoism (also translated as Taoism), a still popular spiritual practice. He is said to have been a record keeper in the court of the central Chinese Zhou Dynasty in the 6th century B.C., and an older contemporary of Confucius. This could be true, but he may also have been entirely mythical—much like Homer in Western culture. It is certainly very unlikely that (as some legends say) he was conceived when his mother saw a falling star, or was born an old man with very long earlobes – or lived 990 years.
Read more: https://www.theschooloflife.com/article/the-great-eastern-philosophers-lao-tzu/
“I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth, and I am a citizen of the world.”
Eugene V. Debs
Who was Eugene V. Debs?
“Eugene Victor “Gene” Debs was an American socialist, political activist, trade unionist, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World and five times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States.”
Read more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs
Who was Martin Luther King Jr.?
Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Christian minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the Civil Rights Movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, King is best known for advancing civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience, inspired…
Read more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.
“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people”
Howard Zinn
Who was Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn was an American historian, playwright, philosopher, socialist intellectual and World War II veteran. He was chair of the history and social sciences department at Spelman College, and a political science professor at Boston University.
Read more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn
How you can help Gaza
Oxfam
HOW YOU CAN HELP GAZA: MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD
Over 2 million people in Gaza are suffering the unimaginable consequences of war.
An immediate and lasting ceasefire is the only humanitarian action that now matters.
Here are some ways you can stand in solidarity and make your voice heard:
https://www.oxfam.org.uk/oxfam-in-action/oxfam-blog/how-you-can-help-gaza-make-your-voice-heard/
Lots of actions to take, sign petitions, email your MP , sign a letter to stop UK arms sales and download and display a ceasefire poster, donate and more… Please take as many of these actions as you can – at the very least please sign the petition.
Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.
If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain.
Saadi
Who was Saadi?
Abū-Muhammad Muslih al-Dīn bin Abdallāh Shīrāzī, better known by his pen name Saadi, also known as Saadi of Shiraz, was a major Persian poet and prose writer of the medieval period. He is recognized for the quality of his writings and for the depth of his social and moral thoughts
Read more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saadi_Shirazi
An alternative translation and more information
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Saadi#:~:text=Human%20beings%20are%20members%20of,Other%20members%20uneasy%20will%20remain.
The Picture Quotes Blog 