The crushed Warsaw Uprising and Nazi war crimes continue to dog Polish-German relations today. Frank-Walter Steinmeier will be the second German president to talk at the commemoration ceremony this week.
https://p.dw.com/p/4ivY3
Up to 50,000 people are thought to have died just in the first days of the uprising
This August 1, like every year, the capital of Poland, Warsaw, will hold a minute of silence to mark the beginning of the uprising against the German occupation ahead of the Nazi retreat west.
At 5 p.m. local time, alarm sirens will blare in remembrance of the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, bringing the city and its inhabitants, regardless of their political views, to a standstill.
The Warsaw Uprising began on August 1, 1944, and the bitter fighting dragged on for 63 days before the Polish Home Army was finally forced to surrender to the Nazis. A source of national pride for many Poles, the day symbolizes Poland's fight against totalitarianism and foreign rule, and its desire for freedom.
After World War II, German politicians were long unwelcome at the annual memorial services. That didn't change until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.
In 1994, then Polish President Lech Walesa invited his German counterpart Roman Herzog, the president of a recently reunified Germany, to Warsaw to give a speech — it was a bold move at the time for the former labor activist.
A new report outlines how the Tanzanian government is cutting essential services to force the relocation of Maasai living in a conservation area.
https://p.dw.com/p/4iwbY
The Maasai people in Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Arusha, Tanzania face eviction
A new report released Wednesday by Human Rights Watch (HRW) reveals some of the consequences of a plan from the Tanzanian government to force the Maasai to relocate from their ancestral lands in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in northern Tanzania.
With over 82,000 Maasai being evicted, the rights watchdog has said that the government had violated the Maasai's rights to land, education, and health without providing fair consent.
"The Maasai are being forcibly evicted under the guise of voluntary relocation," said Juliana Nnoko, HRW senior researcher on women and land.
The HRW report said that "government-employed rangers assaulted and beat residents with impunity," with community members reporting 13 alleged incidents of beatings between September 2022 and July 2023.
The government has said that relocating the Maasai aims to protect the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, a UNESCO World Heritage site, from human encroachment.
To pressure the community into relocating, Tanzanian authorities have cut funding for schools and health centers, which restricts access to essential care and increases travel distances.
HRW reported that the service cuts have had severe consequences, with one woman giving birth to premature twins in a car, both babies dying from delayed care.
Additionally, three women died from pregnancy-related complications between April and May last year due to a lack of timely medical help.
Controversy over the relocation scheme has led to the World Bank in April suspending $150 million worth of conservation funding, and the EU also removing Tanzania's eligibility for around $19 million in similar funding.
Government denying Maasai voting rights - expert tells DW
"In the past three years, the government of Tanzania has been inflicting social and economic restrictions on the Maasai in Ngorongoro," Denis Oleshangay, a lawyer and activist from Ngorongoro told DW.
He has been advocating for the Maasai in several cases, both in Tanzanian courts, and in the East African Court of Justice.
"The community is denied rights to access important social services, like education, health and essential places for pasture, water and salt links," Oleshangay added.
He said that the government, through the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA), has denied building permits for the renovation of collapsed structures, including classrooms, health facilities, and residential homes.
"Recently, the community has been complaining that the government is now stripping them of their voting rights and disenfranchising them, to facilitate their removal from Ngorongoro," he added.
Oleshangay pointed out that, while the government listed polling stations nationwide, the villages in Ngorongoro were notably absent from the list.
Written using material from AFP and EFE news agenciesEdited by: Wesley Rahn
A pair of migrant thugs who attacked two of New York’s Finest are back on the street after Manhattan prosecutors agreed to cut them loose without bail, The Post has learned.
Brian Joseph, 24, and Jose Gonzalez, 19, were both arrested Sunday after scuffling with cops on traffic patrol on Eighth Avenue shortly after 9:50 p.m. — allegedly biting one officer and hurling a moped at the other, according to law enforcement sources and officials.
But when they were hauled into court on Monday, Manhattan prosecutors agreed to let them walk.
The media isn’t going to tell you this. The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) describes itself as “America’s largest Muslim civil liberties organization.” In that guise, and as it has championed numerous far-left causes, it has become a respected member of the leftist establishment, with numerous ignorant and self-serving politicians lavishing praise on this unsavory gang in hopes of gaining Muslim votes. Among them has been, not surprisingly, Kamala Harris.
This has been known for years, but no one has cared. Back in Oct. 2020, the Washington Free Beacon reported that “as California’s attorney general and then as U.S. senator, Harris forged a relationship with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), one of the nation’s top anti-Israel groups and advocates for boycotts of the Jewish state.” After the Hamas massacres of Oct. 7, 2023, this matters more than ever.
CAIR, the Free Beacon added, “advised Harris on community issues during her time in California politics, and she later offered the group her ‘gratitude and admiration’ in a 2018 personal letter to the group.” Specifically, “Hussam Ayloush, executive director of CAIR’s Los Angeles office, praised Harris in 2015 for including the group in an interfaith meeting with law enforcement officials. Harris, he said, ‘exemplified leadership’ by vowing to tackle Islamophobia at a time when the state’s Jewish institutions were facing threats.”
Since October 7.... the total of US taxpayer funds donated to Gaza as a reward since the massacre on October 7 to $896 million, or close to a billion dollars.
A lawsuit, brought in December 2022 and updated in March 2024, by Rep. Ronny Jackson and victims of terror attacks in Israel, alleges that President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken "knowingly and unlawfully" provided more than $1.5 billion in aid to Gaza and the West Bank since taking office. Biden and Blinken have "known for years" that the US aid is providing "material support" for Hamas' "tunnels, rockets, weapon procurement, and command and control infrastructure," among other terror structures, the lawsuit stated.
The Biden administration has sought to have the case dismissed twice but failed. On June 28, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled that the lawsuit can proceed, and that there is evidence the Biden administration continued awarding taxpayer cash to UNRWA even after Congress blocked funding to that group due to its support for Hamas's military infrastructure.
In short, the Biden administration has donated less to Sudan and DRC Congo combined, where a total of nearly 50 million people face starvation, than to Gaza, where 2 million people face no such thing. What is going on? And where is Congress?
According to FBI director Christopher Wray, "the actions of Hamas and its allies will serve as an inspiration the likes of which we haven't seen since ISIS launched its so-called caliphate years ago." Iran, officially labeled the world's leading sponsor of state terrorism by the 2023 US annual Terrorism Report, calls the US "the Great Satan" and continues to vow "Death to America."
Blinken casually announced in a July 19 interview that Iran had reduced the time it would need to create sufficient fissile material for a nuclear weapon "to one to two weeks." He then went on to gaslight the audience by claiming that the Biden administration has been "maximizing pressure on Iran across the board."
Why is the Biden administration, under the pretense of "humanitarian aid," drowning these terrorist enemies of America in US taxpayer money? And what, if anything, is Congress going to do about it?
A lawsuit, brought in December 2022 and updated in March 2024, by Rep. Ronny Jackson and victims of terror attacks in Israel, alleges that President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken "knowingly and unlawfully" provided more than $1.5 billion in aid to Gaza and the West Bank since taking office. Biden and Blinken have "known for years" that the US aid is providing "material support" for Hamas' "tunnels, rockets, weapon procurement, and command and control infrastructure." Pictured: Blinken meets with the Emir of Qatar, Hamas' state sponsor, in Lusail on October 13, 2023. (Photo by Jacquelyn Martin/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
The US has donated close to a billion dollars of taxpayer money to Gaza, ruled by the officially designated terrorist group, Hamas, in the eight months following October 7, 2023. On that day, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Iranian proxies that invaded southern Israel, carrying out this act of war on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran. There, they brutally murdered 1,200 people, raped and mutilated women and children, burned children to death in front of their parents, and abducted more than 250 people into Gaza.
Also, starting on October 7, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad – in close cooperation with their allies in Iran's terrorist proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon – have launched more than 19,000 rockets, missiles and attack-drones at Israel, a country smaller than New Jersey.
And yet, since October 7 the Biden administration has rewarded Hamas with the gift of close to a billion dollars in US taxpayer money, disguised as "humanitarian aid", most of which clearly ends up in the hands of Hamas (here, here, here, here, here and here).
Since October 7, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) gave more than $674 million in "humanitarian aid" to Gaza. On July 11, USAID announcedanother $100 million for Gaza, making it a total of more than $774 million. In addition, since October, the Biden administration has given $122 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which effectively functions as a branch of Hamas in Gaza, bringing the total of US taxpayer funds donated to Gaza as a reward since the October 7 massacre on to $896 million, or close to a billion dollars.
The overlap between UNRWA and Hamas has been an open secret for the past decade, but became fully public only after October 7 with the findings that at least 12 UNRWA staff actively participated in the October 7 attack. Most recently, on July 4, Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs asked UNRWA to terminate the employment of 100 terrorist operatives still working for the organization.
"In recent months Israel has discovered that hundreds of terrorists, members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) have been employed by UNRWA in the Gaza Strip, some of them holding high-ranking positions in UNRWA or in Hamas," Ambassador Amir Weissbrod wrote in the letter to UNRWA.
A lawsuit, brought in December 2022 and updated in March 2024, by Rep. Ronny Jackson and victims of terror attacks in Israel, alleges that President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken "knowingly and unlawfully" provided more than $1.5 billion in aid to Gaza and the West Bank since taking office. Biden and Blinken have "known for years" that the US aid is providing "material support" for Hamas' "tunnels, rockets, weapon procurement, and command and control infrastructure," among other terror structures, the lawsuit stated.
The Biden administration has sought to have the case dismissed twice but failed. On June 28, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled that the lawsuit can proceed, and that there is evidence the Biden administration continued awarding taxpayer cash to UNRWA even after Congress blocked funding to that group due to its support for Hamas's military infrastructure.
So, billions in US aid for the Gaza Strip, which is home to just two million people, most of whom actively support the terrorists running the territory and their Iranian handlers according to poll after poll. The Biden administration would have Americans believe it is all about humanitarian aid for people in extreme need.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (ICP), a UN-affiliated body, published two reports in June, concluding that there is no famine and that the supply of food to Gaza has, in fact, increased, not decreased, in recent months. The UN has also admitted that until now there have only been 32 deaths in Gaza from malnutrition, 28 of them among children under 5 years old.
The question nobody seems to ask is whether it is a reasonable policy to send billions in aid to a terrorist group supposedly for two million people who apparently do not receive it -- rather than to, for instance, according to the US World Food Program (US WFP), which works in cooperation with USAID, "nearly 350 million people around the world [who] are experiencing the most extreme forms of hunger right now. Of those, nearly 49 million people are on the brink of famine."
US WFP lists the ten countries suffering the most from hunger right now (updated on June 25), including Sudan (26 million people facing extreme hunger), the Democratic Republic of Congo (23.4 million facing extreme hunger), Yemen, (17 million), Syria (12.9 million), Afghanistan (12.4 million), and South Sudan (7.1 million people). Gaza is nowhere to be found on the list.
Sudan is the country in the world with the most people facing hunger and the situation is extreme, with people eating grass and peanut shells.
"At least 750,000 people are on the brink of starvation and death in Sudan, where a devastating civil war has left over half the country's 48 million people in a situation of chronic hunger," the New York Timesreported last month. The famine has been deliberately induced by the warring sides, according to anonymous sources within the UN, and is therefore a war crime. By the UN's own admission, although Sudan is the country with the worst famine, it is also the most forgotten and ignored.
How much aid has the Biden administration, so concerned with humanitarian assistance and people in dire need, donated to Sudan in fiscal year 2024? About one third of the aid to Gaza, namely $280 million. Let that sink in: Gaza's Hamas terrorists, who shoot at their own people when they try to take some of the aid intended for them, received almost three times as much as Sudan in fiscal year 2024, even though Sudan, a country of 48 million, is in the midst of devastating famine.
How about DRC Congo, where 23.4 million people face starvation? The Biden administration, so concerned with humanitarian compassion for victims of famine and war, has donated around $424 million dollars from June 2023 to June 2024 to DRC Congo -- about half the amount that Gaza received.
In short, the Biden administration has donated less to Sudan and DRC Congo combined, where a total of nearly 50 million people face starvation, than to Gaza, where 2 million people face no such thing. What is going on? And where is Congress?
There is more: Hamas is an Iranian proxy: Iran orchestrated the October 7 attacks. Iran sends $100 million to Hamas, $700 million to Hezbollah, and tens of millions to Islamic Jihad every year. Biden has actively enabled those Iranian donations by propping up the Iranian Islamic regime's generous financing of its terrorist proxies, most recently in March by offering Iran sanctions waivers worth $10 billion.
It is evident that US foreign aid is not premised on humanitarianism and alleviating suffering, as the Biden administration would like to have us all think. Because if it were, its foreign aid would be channeled where people are actually starving to death -- not to Gaza and straight into the pockets of Hamas.
According to FBI director Christopher Wray, "the actions of Hamas and its allies will serve as an inspiration the likes of which we haven't seen since ISIS launched its so-called caliphate years ago." Iran, officially labeled the world's leading sponsor of state terrorism by the 2023 US annual Terrorism Report, calls the US "the Great Satan" and continues to vow "Death to America."
Blinken casually announced in a July 19 interview that Iran had reduced the time it would need to create sufficient fissile material for a nuclear weapon "to one to two weeks." He then went on to gaslight the audience by claiming that the Biden administration has been "maximizing pressure on Iran across the board."
Why is the Biden administration, under the pretense of "humanitarian aid," drowning these terrorist enemies of America in US taxpayer money? And what, if anything, is Congress going to do about it?
Robert Williams is a researcher based in the United States.
A High Court judge in London on Monday upheld the British Government's emergency ban on puberty blockers, citing a study which found "very substantial risks and very narrow benefits" in support of the decision.
According to a review commissioned by England’s National Health Service, gender care is an area of "remarkably weak evidence," and that young individuals have been caught up in a "stormy social discourse," according to AP.
Thousands of protesters took to the streets after authorities declared Nicolas Maduro as the winner of Sunday's election — an outcome that opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia says he has "proof" of being false.
