Gary-C 💚

A horrific video shows an Israeli soldier assaulting a Palestinian child in the village of Al-Ygheer, near Ramallah in the West Bank, during an Israeli army raid on the village today.

UK urges full reopening of Strait of Hormuz —— British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said on Saturday that the Strait of Hormuz has not yet returned to normal operations despite the ceasefire, calling on Tehran to allow global shipping to fully resume. "We are at a critical diplomatic moment with a ceasefire now in place ... but we don't yet have normal passage through the strait," Cooper told Reuters on the sidelines of a diplomacy forum in Antalya. Cooper said the US-Iran truce must evolve into a durable peace and stressed that reopening the waterway was urgent for the global economy. "We need the Strait of Hormuz open ... because this helps all of our economies right across the world that are currently being held hostage," she said. She added that more than 50 countries had supported efforts to ensure freedom of navigation, with over a dozen ready to contribute maritime assistance, including demining and security support for shipping once the war ends.

As people get postal votes for the Scot Parl election please be careful of the spoiler operation which is 'Independent Green Voice'. They are listed second on the regional ballot paper in South of Scotland with the Green Party further down. IGV is a right-wing spoiler operation.

JUST IN: IRGC Navy called Iran’s own Foreign Minister an “idiot” over open maritime radio.

No more illegal wars. Introduce a Prevention of Military Intervention Act and put human rights at the heart of foreign policy. Review all UK arms sales and make us a force for international peace and justice.

A settler sexually harassing a female activist in my community Masafer Yatta while she was documenting the attack on Palestinians were working on their land.

In 1946 the British government introduced free school milk for every child in the country. One third of a pint, every school day, from the age of five to the age of fifteen. The milk was whole. Full-fat. From British dairy herds. It was delivered to the school gate in small glass bottles with foil caps and left on the doorstep in metal crates, where it sat in the sun until morning break if the weather was warm and developed a slightly suspect taste that an entire generation of British adults can still describe with uncomfortable precision. The generation that grew up on school milk was, by every anthropometric measure, the healthiest generation of British children ever recorded. Average height increased. Bone density improved. Dental health, despite the sugar in everything else, improved. Iron deficiency rates among school-age children dropped. The growth charts that the Ministry of Health had been keeping since the war showed a consistent, measurable, year-on-year improvement that tracked precisely onto the introduction of the milk programme. In 1971 Margaret Thatcher, then Education Secretary, cut free school milk for children over seven. The tabloids called her Thatcher the Milk Snatcher. She was vilified. She kept the policy. The next generation of British children, the ones who grew up without the daily third of a pint, were measurably less healthy than the one before. The growth charts show it. The dental records show it. The conscription medicals, while they lasted, showed it. The thing the milk had been providing, the calcium, the vitamin D, the vitamin A, the complete amino acid profile, the conjugated linoleic acid, the fat-soluble nutrients that a growing skeleton requires in order to reach its genetic potential, was no longer arriving at morning break in a glass bottle with a foil cap. It was replaced, eventually, by nothing. Or by a carton of fruit juice. Or by a packet of crisps from the vending machine that appeared in the school corridor in the 1990s. The generation that drank the milk is now in its seventies and eighties. They are, on average, taller, stronger-boned, and longer-lived than the generation that came after them. The milk was not magic. The milk was milk. It was the thing the body needed, delivered at the time the body needed it, at a cost the government considered acceptable until it didn't. The cost of not providing it has been rather higher.