April 7, 2023

From AL JAZEERA:
What’s behind the Ramadan raids at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque?
5 April 2023
“Before dawn on Wednesday, Israeli police stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem, attacking dozens of worshippers in the Qibli Mosque.
Israeli police, who claimed they were responding to “rioting”, beat worshippers with batons and used tear gas and sound bombs to force them out of the prayer halls, according to witnesses.”

Why would armed security forces enter a mosque?
Israeli police said in a statement that they were forced to enter the compound after “masked agitators” locked themselves inside the mosque with fireworks, sticks and stones.
“When the police entered, stones were thrown at them and fireworks were fired from inside the mosque by a large group of agitators,” the statement said, adding that a police officer was wounded in the leg.
The Israeli police also said that according to a prior agreement with the Al-Aqsa compound authorities, no one was to spend the night inside the compound during the month of Ramadan.
“The police said they ‘peacefully’ tried to convince people to leave but when that didn’t happen they forced their way into Al-Aqsa,” said Al Jazeera’s Natasha Ghoneim.

“Why are Palestinians fearful about Al-Aqsa’s future?
The Al-Aqsa compound sits on a plateau in East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed in a move not recognised by most in the international community.
For Muslims, the compound hosts Islam’s third-holiest site, Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Dome of the Rock, a seventh-century structure believed to be where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.
The compound is also where Jews believe the Biblical Jewish temples once stood and is known to them as Temple Mount.

The contested site has been the focal point of the decades-long Israeli occupation of the West Bank.”

More info about the Six Day War:

From Wilson Center: The 1967 Six-Day War
“Fifty years ago, war transformed the Middle East. Six memorable days, known to Israelis as the Six-Day War and to Arabs and others as the 1967 War, redrew the region’s landscape in fundamental ways. In those six days, Israel defeated three Arab armies, gained territory four times its original size, and became the preeminent military power in the region. The war transformed Israel from a nation that perceived itself as fighting for survival into an occupier and regional powerhouse.”

From BBC: 1967 war: Six days that changed the Middle East
“Fifty years ago, war broke out between Israel and its neighbours. The conflict lasted just six days but its effect would last to the present day.

At the end of 1948, Israel’s Arab neighbours had invaded to try to destroy the new state, and failed. The Egyptian army had been beaten, but a force surrounded in a piece of land known as the Falluja pocket refused to surrender. […]
Just a few years after the Nazis had killed six million Jews, the dream of establishing a state in their biblical homeland had come true.
Palestinians call 1948 “al-Nakba”, or “the Catastrophe”. Up to 750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from the land that became Israel, and were never allowed back.
For the Arabs, defeat at the hands of the fledgling Israeli state was a seismic political moment that led to years of upheaval.”

From History.com: Six Day War
“The Six-Day War was a brief but bloody conflict fought in June 1967 between Israel and the Arab states of Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Following years of diplomatic friction and skirmishes between Israel and its neighbors, Israel Defense Forces launched preemptive air strikes that crippled the air forces of Egypt and its allies.
Israel then staged a successful ground offensive and seized the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. The brief war ended with a U.N.-brokered ceasefire, but it significantly altered the map of the Mideast and gave rise to lingering geopolitical friction.”

From: AL JAZEERA:
Are storms getting more powerful and dangerous?
By Catherine Gilon

4 April 2023

“It started off innocuously, like any other tropical storm. But Cyclone Freddy, born off the northwest coast of Australia in early February, was anything but ordinary.
By the time it eventually dissipated after making two landfalls in mid-March, it had become the longest-lasting tropical cyclone in recorded history. It was also the most powerful storm ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere, with its trail of destruction leaving more than 600 people dead and more than 1.4 million affected.”

From SPACE.com:
The Solar Cycle And Why It Matters

By Daisy Dobrijevic

updated May 27, 2022

“The solar cycle describes an approximately 11-year cycle of solar activity driven by the sun’s magnetic field and indicated by the frequency and intensity of sunspots visible on the surface.
Heightened solar activity poses a risk to satellites, spacecraft and even spacewalking astronauts due to increased radiation exposure. On Earth, the large geomagnetic storms that solar activity triggers can interfere with high-frequency radio communications and Global Positioning Systems (GPS), according to NASA(opens in new tab).
Every 11 years or so, the sun’s magnetic field flips so north becomes south and south becomes north. Changes in the sun’s magnetic field affect the amount of activity on the solar surface.”

ARTICLES aboutTHE VOICE.

From Inside
The Indigenous Voice to Parliament Referendum Explained

From THE CONVERSATION:
First Peoples’ knowledge of ‘mysterious fairy circles’ in Australian deserts has upended a long-standing science debate:

“In 2016, a group of international scientists concluded that, in the Australian Pilbara, “fairy circles” arose from spinifex plants competing for water and nutrients – a similar explanation to the one they proposed for fairy circles in Namibia. These stories were amplified by the media, but the voices of Aboriginal desert people were not reported.
In a study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution today, we show what our Aboriginal coauthors have always known – that fairy circles in the Western Deserts of Australia are flat, hard “pavements” inhabited by spinifex termites

This knowledge about pavements and termites is shared and passed down through generations by Martu and other Indigenous groups.
Why such strong feelings? Spinifex termites are kin to them. Those that live in the pavements are like the krill of desert ecosystems – they are super-abundant. Most people think of above-ground termite mounds, but here is a whole community that lives mostly below the soil surface, only emerging to eat dead spinifex or to fly to reproduce.”

From The Independent:
Tina Fey ‘told Donald Glover he was a diversity hire’, actor claims

From news.com:
Caitlin Clark taunted by Angel Reese in NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament

“America is sharply divided after college basketball player Angel Reese brutally mocked her opponent in the final minutes of a crucial game.
LSU Tigers star Angel Reese was pictured making a “you can’t see me” gesture towards Hawkeyes guard Caitlin Clark, a signal made famous by wrestling star John Cena.”


From The Stylander:

The Video They Wish Xxxisted

“For the last few decades I have had to contend with all sorts of lies and gossip about me, some may even be true. [insert nonchalance here]

Saints are a human construct, they don’t exist, people learn from the mistakes they make, at least the good ones do, I did… regardless, it hurts to be gossiped about even if it is true.
(I look thick skinned, but I’m ‘thin skinned’ because I feel things. I’m not a reptilian smiling aunty with a heart of cold. MY core is strong, which is what counts)
One of the ones MOST DEFINITELY NOT TRUE is this persistent story about there being a sex tape (“blue movie”* it was called back then) featuring me.
YOU WISH.
What prompted this impromptu episode for Radio Fly was receiving yet another set of spam messages via my photography page’s Messenger.”

*DEEP DIVE VISION (DDV) coming up.
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