Trina's Kitchen: Air Fryer Salmon in the Kitchen

That's Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Texas' Failure To Launch Boyz" and it's brand new tonight. He's highlighting Ken Paxton who is abusing his position (Texas' Attorney General) in order to bully and intimidate Latino Americans. It's disgusting and it's illegal.

Norah e-mailed to note an air fryer recipe and she says we haven't had one in a while. So this is Budget Bytes' Air Fryer Salmon recipe (just in time for Fish Friday):

Ingredients

2 7-oz. pieces Atlantic salmon, skin on; thawed if frozen ($8.41)
Cooking Spray ($0.05)
1 Tbsp soy sauce ($0.06)
¼ cup brown sugar ($0.17)
½ tsp freshly cracked black pepper ($0.03)
½ tsp garlic powder ($0.07)

Instructions

Preheat your air fryer to 400°F. If using frozen salmon, allow it to thaw in the refrigerator before cooking. We are cooking salmon from a fresh or fully thawed state in this recipe.
Gather marinade ingredients: soy sauce, brown sugar, pepper, and garlic powder.
Whisk together soy sauce, brown sugar, pepper, and garlic powder.
Spoon the marinade mixture over the salmon filets, gently rubbing it onto the salmon until it’s fully coated. A little extra on top is great! The brown sugar will melt during cooking and caramelize, giving your salmon a beautiful color and sweetness.
Spray your salmon and your air fryer crisper plate with your cooking oil of choice and position the salmon skin side down in your air fryer. Depending on the size of your air fryer, you may have to do this in batches. If you are dividing bigger salmon filets into smaller portions, it’s easiest to do so once it’s fully cooked unless you have a sharp knife that can get through the skin with ease when they are raw.
Air fry for 7-8 minutes to start. At the halfway mark, baste your salmon with more marinade and then continue cooking.*

News? Did you catch it by the way? Ava and C.I. smoked serial plagiarist Chris Hedges out. He was avoiding endorsing because he stabbed Cornel West in the back. They noted that in their report earlier this week and a day later Chrissie Lynn Liar has Jill Stein on his show.

Everything about Chrissie Lynn Hedges is a lie. Including his strong stance 'against' the Iraq War. His cult members don't seem to grasp that the grifter wrote the NYT front page 'report' falsely linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11. It was October of 2021. Long before Judith Miller got around to lying about Iraq, Chrissie Lynn was there first.

He's a liar and always will be. From WIKIPEDIA (and he did some of the typing):

In June 2014, Christopher Ketcham published an article on The New Republic website accusing Hedges of plagiarism in several Truthdig columns and a 2010 Harper's Magazine article.^[50] The Truthdig posts were updated to give attribution to their author,^[51] and the Harper's article was withdrawn.^[50]

Additional accusations of plagiarism from Ketcham were countered by an independent investigation from the Type Media Center.^[52]^[53]

There is no link to The Nation Institute (it wasn't "Type Media Center" back then). There is no published report from The Nation Institute. There is only the long list of lies that Chrissie Lynne writes and then attributes to them in the WIKIPEDIA sentence. Chris is a liar. And the link does not go to a report by The Nation Institute, it goes to THE NEW REPUBLIC which has both Ketcham and THE NEW REPUBLIC's response to Chrissie lies about his plagiarism:

Response from Christopher Ketcham

Please allow me to respond to Hedges's six complaints:

Hedges says that he couldn't have plagiarized because he completed his reporting before Katz did. Katz’s series came out in November 2009. According to the editors at Harper’s, Hedges submitted his manuscript in February of 2010. I spoke to four people at the magazine, including its top brass, about the incident, and all these sources reiterated that the plagiarism did indeed occur and that it involved exact same sentences as found in Katz’s series. To accept Hedges’s version of events, one would have to assume that the staff at Harper’s decided to invent the tale of his plagiarism there.
The main issue of concern in the passages cited from Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt is not the erroneous footnoting but the fact that his language almost exactly copies that of Matt Katz.
Hedges claims he corrected the Hemingway plagiarism on his own, prior to being alerted by University of Texas Prof. Thomas Palaima, but this runs counter both to Palaima’s account and to the statement of the spokesman at his former publishing house, PublicAffairs.
The Postman paragraph was corrected by Hedges—so he claims—but only after two years had passed since the article in question was published. Regardless of the correction, that he did it in the first place is an act of plagiarism.
Concerning the Bartosiewicz plagiarism, Hedges, as detailed in my piece, does not address—and continues here to fail to address—why he made so many small changes to the original text (this includes the tweaking of some sentences and lines but not others, the adding of a hyperlink not in the original, and the changing of certain phrases).
Hedges claims he did not copy Naomi Klein's words, though if you look at the text, alas, he clearly did.

Response from The New Republic

As for Hedges's claim that the piece wasn't edited: that's absolutely incorrect. The New Republic also fact-checked it, thoroughly, over a long period of time. Hedges had been contacted by Ketcham and by another publication about these allegations before—he is quoted in response to them in the piece.

So, no, there was no real counter to the findings that Chris Hedges repeatedly plagiarized in his writing. Repeatedly. Over and over. Non-stop. He's a liar. And when he 'corrects' the record, he's still lying.

Now that he went where Ava and C.I. were nudging him, he's in even more trouble but he'll learn that soon enough.

This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for Thursday:

Thursday, September 5, 2024. Ken Paxton and Greg Asshole continue to attack voting rights in Texas, Robert Kennedy Junior mocks the way Kamala Harris speaks indicating Junior has never heard himself speak, polio vaccination efforts take place in Gaza, and much more.

Starting with the US presidential election which is sixty days away. To vote, you'll need to be registered -- check the registration date in your state many require you register within by the first of October. And, of course, if you live in a state like Teas, the government is actively and illegally attempting to prevent you from registering to vote.

So that we're all on the same page, let's note Ava from this week's "Roundtable" at THIRD:

I'm in California and I was outraged to learn that the attorney general in Texas, Ken Paxton, was sending armed officers to the homes of Latinos involved in voter registration, barging into their homes at six in the morning, refusing to let them get dressed and treating them like criminals. It's outrageous and it's offensive. There was no legitimate reason for it but it was intended to terrorize the Latino population in Texas. As a Latina, I call it out. CBS did something Wednesday evening and I'd like to include it.

Ava (Con't): Ken Paxton should be carted off in handcuffs for those raids. And Texas Latinos -- Democrats, Republicans, independents and non-voters -- need to especially register what happened. They need to turn out and they need to support Colin Allred for the US Senate and Democrats in every race to send a message to the GOP in Texas and elsewhere that this is not acceptable and we will not ignore it.

Let's note this Tweet from US House Rep Joaquin Castro.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Governor Greg Asshole are abusing their official powers and breaking the law -- Asshole needs to read up on culling the voter rolls because you can't do within 90 days of an election -- you can't legally do it.

If they get away with these illegal actions in Texas, rabid MAGA will try to do it elsewhere.

But I'm not seeing that awareness at left and 'left' sites.

IN THESE TIMES Has Failed The Latino Reader. Did you see what we did there? We took a headline to one of IN THESE TIMES many useless crap-ass stories and switched it around to underscore what was really happening Oh, and, yes, please bore us with another poem -- Manny was never the favorite on MODERN FAMILY but let's pretend bad poetry with a good heart wins the world. THE PROGRESSIVE's not reported on word on this. COMMON DREAMS? I can easily find attacks on Kamala Harris but I don't find ____ on this effort to destroy voting rights. Sadly, it's that way everywhere you look. I remember when FREE SPEECH TV couldn't stop promoting their 'diverse' line up of guests for a multi-hour broadcast discussing the state of union during Barack Obama's first term as president. And I remember there were 30 or so guests and there was not one Latino or Latina among them. And when their issues were raised, an uninformed idiot would speak 'for them.'

It's past time that left outlets started realizing American Latinos deserve coverage throughout the year and not just on the day before Cinco de Mayo.

In Texas, the GOP continues to make clear that they will bully and intimidate Latino-Americans. American citizens have faced Attorney General Ken Paxton's armed stormtroopers who show up at dawn banging on doors, barge in with weapons and refuse to allow people to get dressed as they tear apart their homes and apartments. It's disgusting, it's outrageous and it's illegal. And if they get away with it in Texas, you damn well better believe that they will try it elsewhere.

Edith Olmsted (THE NEW REPUBLIC) notes:

It seems that Texas Governor Ken Paxton will do anything to prevent Texas from flipping for Kamala Harris—including preventing eligible citizens from registering to vote.

Paxton threatened legal action against Bexar and Harris counties if they proceed with sending out mail-in voter registration forms, which the counties have proposed doing via third-party vendors. Paxton argues that it could encourage noncitizens to register to vote.

Of course, Bexar and Harris aren’t like other counties in Texas. They’re urban and populous, and have a majority or even plurality of Latino voters, according to The Hill. And, in 2020, both counties overwhelmingly voted for Joe Biden.

Paxton’s office announced Wednesday that he’d filed a lawsuit against Bexar County Commissioner Court after it approved a proposal that funds the production and mailing of voter registration forms “to unregistered voters in location(s) based on targeting agreed to by the county,” according to KENS-5. Paxton claimed the program was unlawful because it “could induce ineligible people—such as felons and noncitizens—to commit a crime by attempting to register to vote.”

The one committing a crime is Ken Paxton -- no surprise considering his history of corruption. The crime Paxton is committing is creating an undue burden for Latino-Americans to register to vote. It is not an equal playing field. This is not just voter intimidation, it is also a return to the Jim Crow era where only some citizens have voting rights. Maria Villarroel (LATIN TIMES) reports:

The oldest and largest Latino civil rights group, LULAC, says Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has actively "engaged in official oppression" of minority voters following a series of raids on the homes of Latino campaign volunteers in the state.

The League of United Latin American Citizens issued a press release asking the U.S. Justice Department to investigate Paxton and "his agents for abuse of the elderly, children, violations of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 and more to be announced."

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits racial discrimination in voting, and it is designed to enforce the voting rights protected by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the Constitution.

The group also announced it will be hosting a news conference in El Paso to address its allegations. Ray Mancera, national vice president for the Southwest for LULAC will be among the expected speakers. They said that local elected and community leaders, concerned citizens, and get-out-the-vote volunteers will also speak at the event.

The Aug. 20 raids targeted Manuel Medina, chair of the Tejano Democrats, several LULAC members, a state House candidate and a local area mayor, according to the Associated Press.

I'm disappointed in a lot of people over their silence on this. This needs national attention.

This is an assault on democracy. In the US, we're supposed to believe in voting, we're not supposed to working to prevent Americans from voting. And yet there is silene from so many.

I get that grifters like Glenn Greenwald who never, ever defend the average American but can't shut up about 'injustice' when the French police arrest a multi-millionaire. I get that. But we're supposed to be better than grifters.

We're the party of the people -- All the people.

This is outrageous. No American citizen should ever be made to feel afraid to vote or afraid to register to vote. But that is what Paxton and Governor Greg Asshole are trying to do right now. It needs to be called out loudly and repeatedly and, yes, the Justice Dept needs to open an investigation and to do so immediately.

Kaitlin Lewis (NEWSWEEK) notes:

As The New York Times reported, some Democratic officials warned that the efforts could intimidate voters so close to Election Day. Mike Doyle, chair of the Harris County Democratic Party, told the newspaper, "The message is we're going to do everything we can to discourage voting in Texas. Why else would you announce this as a big victory? This is supposed to be a routine accuracy check that has been going on forever."

Saul Elbien (NEWS NATION) reviews this week's chronology of events:

In a warning on Monday night, Paxton sought to cast the county’s voter registration plan as a means of registering noncitizens to vote — something the right wing of the state and national GOP insist is part of a plan by Democrats to steal the election.

County leadership defied Paxton on Tuesday when the board of commissioners voted 3-1 to mail out the registration forms, The Texas Tribune reported.

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday morning in Bexar County District Court, Paxton is demanding that state judges block the registration drive.

Chris Walker (TRUTHOUT) points out:

In his statement announcing the lawsuit, Paxton said the program was “blatantly illegal,” despite no state statute saying so, and claimed Bexar County had acted “irresponsibly” in passing the measure — even though studies have shown that the amount of noncitizen voting in the state is effectively zero.

Bexar County Commissioner Rebeca Clay-Flores said that encouraging people to vote was at the heart of the county’s decision.

“The word ‘integrity’ was used in a statement by the attorney general regarding our voter rolls and [to] ensure only eligible voters can vote,” Clay-Flores said, referring to Paxton’s initial threat of litigation. “And that’s exactly what we are trying to pass…so we can encourage and make sure Americans exercise their right to vote.”

Texas does have a voter registration problem — not in the sense that fraud is being perpetrated on a mass scale, but rather that more than a third of the state who is eligible to vote isn’t registered to do so. According to statistics compiled by the Kaiser Family Foundation, only 65.2 percent of Texans who were able to register to vote did so in 2022, placing the state as 10th worst in the entire U.S. in terms of voter registration rates.

Long viewed as a Republican stronghold, Texas has seen small but noticeable shifts in its voting patterns over the past few election cycles. In the 2012 presidential election, for example, Republican Mitt Romney outperformed then-Democratic incumbent President Barack Obama by 15.8 points. In the 2020 presidential race, however, Democrat Joe Biden was only defeated by Republican Donald Trump by 5.6 points.

Monday, LULAC's national president Roman Palomares issued a statement that noted the way Paxton and his goons attempted to intimidate American citizen and civic duty minded Lidia Martinez (she tells her story in the CBS NEWS video at the start of this snapshot) and Roman pointed out:

Labor Day is not just about the work we get paid for. It's also about your countless hours volunteering and defending our communities. LULAC would not be the largest membership-based Latino civil rights organization in the United States without the passion and dedication of volunteers like you. You are the backbone of everything we do.

Also, take pride in knowing that Latinos contribute tremendously to America, contrary to what some would like us to believe. Latinos added $3.2 trillion to the U.S. economy in 2023 alone! We are the driving force in the country's economic engine, and your labor in every area is the reason why.

You help our veterans, seniors, refugees, asylum seekers, and families. Plus, you're fighting for women's rights, supporting the LGBTQIA+ community, and leading voter registration and education efforts. You are making every voice heard, every person valued, and every right protected.

On this Labor Day, know that LULAC sees you, appreciates you, and stands with you in solidarity and gratitude. Together, we are making a difference, one step at a time, one community at a time.

Paxton deserves prison for what he's doing. Actually, he should be horse whipped in the town square for abusing the powers of his office. Hogan Gore (AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN) reports:

A delegation of congressional Democrats from Texas is asking the U.S. Justice Department to investigate Attorney General Ken Paxton's actions amid his office's hunt for instances of voter fraud that has largely targeted the state's Latino communities.

[. . .]

"We know very well that the attorney general has used his office historically as a way of pursuing political efforts," U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, said Wednesday. "From my perspective, he has a history of misusing his power."

The coalition of Democrats expects to submit a letter to the Justice Department later in the week to formally request an investigation into Paxton's recent actions, Escobar said.

In addition, LULAC and others need to sue him. When he says that X has done something, he needs to prove it. He's an Attorney General. He's saying illegal activity has taken place in the past carried out by these groups. So where's the proof. Because it's a libel and a libel is illegal. There is no proof, it didn't happen. If it had, Greg Asshole and others in Texas would have prosecuted it. They didn't. So they lie in public and they need to be confronted in court for smearing the reputations of various civic organizations with lies which, as government officials, they know is illegal.

We'll note this letter to the editors of THE AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN:

I am a third-generation Texan. I have three degrees from the University of Texas. I have traveled around the country and around the globe and proudly claim my Texas roots. I have never been ashamed of my Texas heritage until Monday, when I first heard of Attorney General Ken Paxton’s illegal raids against Latino activists, 87-year-old retired teachers and Latino candidates for election.

Claiming to be the result of an as yet-unfounded investigation into voter fraud, Paxton’s flimsy justification for these predawn raids is straight out of the petite dictator's playbook and has no place in the United States. Paxton should be impeached (again) and his actions renounced in the strongest terms.

Darrick W. Eugene, Austin

Now if you missed it, Little Junior insulted Kamala Harris' speaking yesterday. Let's note Elaine:

KKK weirdo Robert Kennedy Junior is in the news:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. slammed Vice President Harris’s candidacy Tuesday, saying she is not “a worthy president” while defending his choice to instead endorse former President Trump.

“I don’t think that Vice President Harris is a worthy president of this country,” Kennedy told NewsNation host Chris Cuomo. “I think we need to have a president who can give an interview, who can articulate a vision, who can put together an English sentence, who can articulate her and defend her policies and her record and who can engage in a debate with, and regular debates unscripted appearances, president or vice president.”

First off, I understand Kamala Harris when she speaks. I think most people do.

That said, does Junior not get how he sounds when he's grasping for air and volume? If we're toing to talk about the way Kamala sounds -- which I say is fine -- then maybe we need to talk about the way Junior sounds -- like he's on a respirator.

I think it's in keeping with his long standing racism -- the same long standing racism that led him to endorse Trump -- for him to attack the way a highly educated woman of color speaks. From the same article:

“What our agreement [is] about, it’s about a unity party, about unifying our party over certain objectives,” he added. “And this will allow me to continue to disagree with President Trump on issues that I don’t agree with him on, and him to disagree with me.”

He has no party, he never has. But I wonder how he sleeps at night knowing that his father's watching him and shaking his head in disgust.

As Elaine notes, Junior can't speak with that strange voice of his.

But to help Junior out, let's note things that a president or would-be one should be able to do. When staring into a news camera,

1) I can say for the record, "My previous wife did not kill herself because of my non-stop, serial cheating."

2) I did not harass a baby sistter -- not in my 30s, not in my 40s, not in my 50s and not in my 60s.

3) I grasp that an elderly man like myself should not be propositioning underage baby sitters.

4) I am not doing cocaine in 2024.

5) Any women I have bedded in the last 12 months were not kept secret from my current wife.

6) I realize most Americans think I'm a whiny bitch boi due to the fact that I cried and cried over getting on the ballot and now I'm crying as they won't take me off the ballot.

7) I'm sure if my father were alive today, he would say, "Junior, you're making it so hard for this family. You need to grow up and shape up."

8) I know my Daddy would not have approved of my dumping a bear cub's corpse in Central Park to stage a fake crime.

9) I don't always cry out "Daddy!" while in bed climaxing. Not always. Maybe four out of every five times.

10) My father was a giant of a man and me, I'm just Little Junior. Wah! Wah! Wah!

Now let's note this from yesterday's DEMOCRACY NOW!

AMY GOODMAN: Amidst Israel’s continued military attacks on Gaza, the World Health Organization says its mass vaccination campaign against polio has so far reached about a quarter of Gaza’s children to protect them from paralysis, after Israel agreed to eight-hour pauses in its attacks in certain areas of Gaza. This comes after health officials recently confirmed Gaza’s first polio case in a quarter of a century, a 10-month-old child. This is Gaza resident Baha al-Arbid.

BAHA AL-ARBID: [translated] We’ve heard about the truce for polio vaccinations, but I want to stay in this area, because I don’t trust this truce that has just begun. We still fear bombing will happen at any moment, as it happened this morning.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is Ghada Judeh, who recently got her children vaccinated at Yafa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, where she’s also volunteering with the polio vaccination campaign.

GHADA JUDEH: [translated] We are displaced from Deir al-Balah. I gave my children the polio vaccine to protect them from disease, but I can’t protect them from strikes and from death, unless you help us, just as you helped us and delivered the medications to us to protect our children. So, please, stand with us to stop the war so that our children can live peacefully and to continue their studies.

AMY GOODMAN: This comes as residents of Gaza are also facing other diseases and chronic lack of food or access to education. This is Karam Yassin, a 10-year-old Palestinian boy in Deir al-Balah, as well.

KARAM YASSIN: [translated] We want to play with our friends, go to school, eat and drink. But this vaccination is of no use. It’s only useful against polio, but the war has destroyed us. It has destroyed our houses. I wish I can play with my friends, go to school. I wish to eat and drink like I used to before.

AMY GOODMAN: Just before we went to air today, Democracy Now! received this update from Tarneem Hammad in central Gaza, who’s part of the polio vaccination campaign with Medical Aid for Palestinians.

TARNEEM HAMMAD: We would need at least 95% vaccination coverage during each round of the campaign to prevent the spread of polio and reduce the risk of its reemergence. However, we’ve been facing many challenges, given the severely disrupted health system, also water system and sanitation systems. Other requirements for a successful campaign delivery include sufficient cash, fuel and functional telecommunication networks to reach communities with information about the campaign, which has been very, very difficult for all of our healthcare workers and social mobilizers who are working on the ground. Gaza has been polio-free for the last 25 years, so the reemergence, which the humanitarian community has warned about for the last 10 months, is another threat to the children in Gaza and also to the neighboring countries. A ceasefire is the only way to ensure public health security in Gaza and also in the region.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined in Washington, D.C., by Janti Soeripto, president and CEO of Save the Children US. Its staff is working from Deir al-Balah Primary Health Care Center, a key vaccination site, working there in Gaza.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Janti. Can you explain what is happening, how many people you understand have gotten this vaccine? It’s children that they’re attempting to do.

JANTI SOERIPTO: Thanks, Amy.

Yes, our site, our Primary Health Care Center in Deir al-Balah, is one of the 51 sites where vaccinations are given to children. I’ve understood that on day one we were able to vaccinate 1,825 children already, which is encouraging, of course. And our staff are working around the clock to make sure that people understand, that parents understand where they can go to get vaccinations, that those vaccinations are safe, to make sure that children are prepped and to make sure that healthcare workers are trained in order to do so safely. But, of course, we need much more than just a couple of days to be able to give these vaccinations. Also, you heard the cover rate there between 90 and 95%. But you have to give two doses of these vaccinations, and they have to be four weeks apart. So one dose is not enough.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about how these vaccines are being administered? Israel has agreed to certain pauses in the bombing. We’re reporting about children being vaccinated in this area, and children being killed in this area by Israeli bombs. Explain how it all happens and how the vaccines are getting into Gaza right now.

JANTI SOERIPTO: So, the procedure, getting in through the WHO over the road. But I think, look, you laid out so clearly. You can, say, have an eight-hour pause in the window in which you can vaccinate these children in these 51 designated sites. But then, I mean, in practice, yeah, children then have to be moved to a particular site. Then sometimes they have to move back to where they were displaced, because most of the people in Gaza are displaced anyway. They’re not in their homes. Homes are destroyed. So it’s very hard to say. I can’t imagine. You heard the previous person in Gaza talking how worried they were to actually even travel across roads that are destroyed to some of these clinics.

So, there’s real practical, operational problems with this current pause. It is not a ceasefire at all. It is an eight-hour pause every day. And then, again, the vaccines are oral drops, two or three drops per dose. You have to give them twice with four weeks in between. That means you have to track and trace these children, as well. They’re all displaced. Whatever happens between the intervening four weeks between those doses then also impacts how effective your campaign can be.

AMY GOODMAN: So, according to the World Health Organization, the Israeli military bombardment of Gaza has damaged or destroyed 31 of 36 hospitals in the area.

JANTI SOERIPTO: That’s right.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the significance of this, and also how polio has reemerged after a quarter of a century in Gaza?

JANTI SOERIPTO: Yeah, it’s just unbelievable. Look, I was there end of March, and I thought it was unbelievably dire then. And clearly, it has gotten much, much worse since, because I was there when people were still congregating in Rafah, and since then, they’ve been displaced from Rafah and the south of Gaza, as well.

So, you know, there is very, very limited access to healthcare. We set up that Primary Health Care Center in Deir Al-Balah. If you look at the people who come there every day, over half of them have to walk more than an hour — walk more than an hour — to get even to that site. So that tells you something about the lack of healthcare, adequate healthcare, in Gaza right now.

And the reemergence of polio doesn’t surprise us. Save the Children and many other organizations and doctors have been warning against this for many, many weeks now. If you look at the sanitation, the sanitary conditions there, solid waste is everywhere in the Gaza Strip. There are not enough toilets. There are no showers. This was a situation just waiting to happen.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you talked about how this is a two-dose regimen, and they’re trying to get, what, just under 700,000 children, to inject them with these vaccines. This never was an issue in the past. But if they are only able to get the first dose, is it ineffective?

JANTI SOERIPTO: That’s not the right level of coverage. I think — and we should also remind ourselves, these are oral drops. Children are already — in Gaza, are already malnourished. They’re weakened. Their immune systems are compromised after almost a year of conflict, displacements, lack of food — you heard it here before — lack of clean water, etc. So, to get adequate protection, they would definitely need those two doses. So we’re concerned that even the current setup, we will do what we can — the WHO is doing what they can — but it’s going to be difficult to reach the coverage numbers in the way that you would normally do it in a campaign.

AMY GOODMAN: So, families have — surviving families in Gaza have to trust that as the polio vaccination campaign makes its way, for example, to Rafah, and then there’s a pause there, that they won’t be bombed if they leave their house or wherever they are currently displaced to, to get this vaccination. That’s in Gaza. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Israelis are continuing their protests calling for a ceasefire and a hostage deal from the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said no so far. The significance of this? And the position of Save the Children on a ceasefire?

JANTI SOERIPTO: We’ve been calling for a ceasefire since October last year, because we know, as humanitarian operators, that that is the only way to get adequate aid, supplies and services to children and families that need it now. In the current scenario, our amazing staff and volunteers in Gaza are doing what they can at the risk of their own lives. We’ve lost colleagues and partners over these past months. But it’s really difficult to get people to come out, whether to get vaccinated, whether to get food, whether to get some level of mental health support or protection when bombs are falling. And deconfliction, so the safety of your convoys, of sending your own staff on the road with supplies to reach people, is not guaranteed at all.

AMY GOODMAN: In a moment, we’re going to speak with Gershon Baskin, Middle East director of the state International Communities Organization, a back-channel negotiator with Hamas in the past. So I wanted to switch gears just for one minute, Janti, to talk about what’s happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In mid-August, the World Health Organization declared a public health emergency in response to mpox. This is Nzigire Lukangira, whose child has been suffering from mpox for days in an isolation ward in Kavumu in the eastern DRC.

NZIGIRE LUKANGIRA: [translated] Since my child got this disease and I brought him here, he only received one injection and some pills. The conditions here are very poor. We have no food, and people are forbidden to visit us because we have a dangerous disease. We are suffering a lot and feel like we will die of hunger here.

AMY GOODMAN: Before we go, Janti Soeripto, as chair and as president and CEO of Save the Children US, you were just in the DRC. Can you talk about this outbreak of mpox and what people should understand and how difficult it is to get a vaccination right now?

JANTI SOERIPTO: Right. Thanks. Yes, I was there in May. I was actually in South Kivu, which is now the epicenter, I think, of this particular outbreak, with over 50 — with 50% of the cases. It is an incredibly contagious disease. It is very dangerous for children. So, of the cases, I think two-thirds of the cases affect young children.

And again — and we see a pattern here, Amy, whether it’s Gaza or the DRC or Sudan, for that matter. You know, contagious diseases, whether it’s cholera or polio or mpox, you know, wreak havoc on populations that are already vulnerable, that are displaced, and there is no access to proper healthcare, vaccinations, no sanitation. And these diseases often cause even more casualties than bombs and bullets.

So, we’re doing what we can. Again, we’re working with communities to make sure that they understand how to prevent or reduce the risk of spreading — simple hygiene, handwashing. Again, clean water is in short supply. People are weakened because there was already a food insecurity crisis. We’re trying to ascertain where people can have access to healthcare. But as you heard in the previous segment, it is difficult to get access to medicine. And there is currently no — there are vaccines in the DRC, either.

AMY GOODMAN: Janti Soeripto, we want to thank you for being with us, president and CEO of Save the Children US.

Next up, as tens of thousands of Israelis protest for Prime Minister Netanyahu to agree to a Gaza ceasefire, we’ll speak with Gershon Baskin, longtime Israeli back-channel negotiator with Hamas. His new book, In Pursuit of Peace in Israel and Palestine. Stay with us.

Gaza remains under assault. Day 334 of the assault in the wave that began in October. Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion. The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction. But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets: How to justify it? Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence." CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund." ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them." NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza." The slaughter continues. It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service. THE NATIONAL notes, "Gaza death toll rises to 40,861, with 94,398 injured." Early on, Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) pointed out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide." Months ago, United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of of acute food insecurity or worse." Months ago, AP noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing." February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home." February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted:

April 11th, Sharon Zhang (TRUTHOUT) reported, "In addition to the over 34,000 Palestinians who have been counted as killed in Israel’s genocidal assault so far, there are 13,000 Palestinians in Gaza who are missing, a humanitarian aid group has estimated, either buried in rubble or mass graves or disappeared into Israeli prisons. In a report released Thursday, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that the estimate is based on initial reports and that the actual number of people missing is likely even higher."

The following sites updated;