May 7, 2024

Tales From The Gravel Pit: Kristi Noem Cries 'Fake News' After Disastrous Interview on CBS

The South Dakota governor complained that the host of “Face the Nation” had interrupted her “once every 25 seconds”—something that would never happen to, say, Gretchen Whitmer.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/kristi-noem-cries-fake-news-after-disastrous-interview-on-cbs



Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota would like to speak to the manager. The Republican took to social media on Sunday to complain that she’d been unfairly grilled by Margaret Brennan in a catastrophic appearance on CBS’ Face the Nation hours earlier, alleging that her Democratic counterparts would never have been subjected to such fierce interrogation. Having crunched the numbers, Noem posted on X: “This morning in our 15-minute interview, Margaret Brennan interrupted me 36 times—once every 25 seconds on average.” Though her math checks out, the governor was not actually “interrupted” by Brennan nearly as much as she claimed. As Noem steamrolled through her answers to the CBS host’s questions, Brennan attempted to interject just over a dozen times, resulting in crosstalk that just as often ended with Noem continuing to plough forward without answering the query.

https://twitter.com/KristiNoem/status/1787195109584322955
Noem clearly felt the heat even in the midst of the interview, however. At one point, her expression still perfectly neutral, the governor asked, “Why am I being treated differently than every other person that you’ve interviewed? You don’t interrupt other people. You let them talk.” She pressed that point in her X post. “But when liberals like [Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer] and [former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi] are on @FaceTheNation, they aren’t interrupted once,” Noem said. “In the fake news media, there are two sets of rules, and conservative[s] are always treated differently,” she continued. “That’s why Americans don’t trust the Fake News.” Noem struggled to keep to her talking points in the CBS interview, insisting to Brennan—who opened by asking whether the governor had actually ever met Kim Jong Un, as her upcoming book claimed—that she wasn’t going to talk about her “specific” encounters with world leaders, of whom she’d met “many, many.”

https://twitter.com/centerstreet/status/1787238419124338865
Center Street, the publisher of her memoir No Going Back, which is set to be released this week, announced Sunday that it would remove the passage in question “upon reprint of the print edition and as soon as technically possible on the audio and ebook editions.” But it did not address what may have happened to allow the seemingly false passage to make its way into print. “Further questions about about the passage should be referred to the author, ” Center Street added. The governor also continued to defend her decision to kill a troublesome hunting dog around two decades ago, insisting she didn’t regret the possibly career-ending decision to disclose that she once shot a 14-month-old puppy in the face. “As a mom, I made a choice between protecting my children, and protecting them from a dangerous animal that was killing livestock and attacking people,” Noem said. She similarly dug her heels in while addressing a passage of her book in which she appears to suggest that President Joe Biden’s dog, Commander, should meet a similar fate to Cricket.



“At the end of the book, you say the very first thing you would do if you got to the White House… is that you’d make sure ‘Joe Biden’s dog was nowhere on the grounds. Commander, say hello to Cricket.’ Are you doing this to try to look tough?” Brennan asked. “Well, number one, Joe Biden’s dog has attacked 24 Secret Service people,” Noem said. “So how many people is enough people to be attacked and dangerously hurt before you make a decision on a dog and what to do with it?” Brennan then correctly pointed out that Commander, who has indeed bitten around two dozen Secret Service personnel, has since been removed from the White House and sent to live with relatives of the president. “You’re saying [Commander] should be shot?” the host asked. “That’s what the president should be accountable to,” Noem replied. “What is the number?” No Going Back, which Noem repeatedly described on Face the Nation as a “how-to guide” for Americans looking “to have input into their government,” hits shelves on Tuesday.

snip

May 6, 2024

Haaretz - Israel's Government Has Abandoned Its Citizens. But the Opposition Offers Little Hope

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/haaretz-today/2024-05-05/ty-article/.highlight/israels-government-has-abandoned-its-citizens-but-the-opposition-offers-little-hope/0000018f-49cc-d6c3-afdf-4ddf0a700000

https://archive.ph/QrTVp


Last week, former Israeli prime minister and current MK Yair Lapid was interviewed for a new podcast by The New York Times. Lapid is a passionate critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and unlike some of his former political allies, Lapid has stayed out of the unhinged far-right Netanyahu government that is currently in charge. But when the interviewer described him as "the official leader of the Israeli opposition," she couldn't have said it better. Besides officially being the leader of the Israeli opposition, Lapid is not worthy of that title.

Lapid would probably argue that he stands for pretty much everything that the Netanyahu government despises: secularism, pluralism, liberalism, political centrism and the rule of law. But when he is met with critical questions about Israel's actions during the Gaza war, like he was on the podcast, Lapid morphs into Netanyahu in a heartbeat and the autopilot kicks in: The world just doesn't understand Israel; the war – whatever the toll on Gazans is – is justified; the American left is so woke and ignorant, it doesn't see that Hamas are the Nazis of our time.

While it is disappointing that Israel's official opposition leader is offering so little hope for change, it is downright infuriating that another opposition leader, Benny Gantz, has been pretty much holding the Netanyahu government in place for months. At first, there was a certain charm to a former general promising to be the grown-up in the war cabinet, so Netanyahu's pyromaniac partners don't get their way 100 percent of the time. But seven months into the war, to say that charm has faded would be an understatement. Israelis from every corner of the country and from every demographic were abandoned by their government in uncountable ways both on October 7 and since that day.

snip

Ben-Gvir and Netanyahu want to paint Lazimi and the protesters as criminals for lighting bonfires and blocking roads, while they get away with igniting the Middle East. Every Israeli elected official that would rather be in a room with them than on the streets with those calling them out has chosen the wrong side.

snip

May 6, 2024

Haaretz: These Israelis, Protesting Humanitarian Aid, Now Have Their Sights Set on Settling Gaza

Far-right religious Zionist activists have been monitoring the Gaza border region in Israel for months, preparing for their mission of breaking through the fence, entering Gaza, and ultimately re-establishing Jewish settlements

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-27/ty-article/.premium/these-israelis-protesting-humanitarian-aid-now-have-their-sights-set-on-settling-gaza/0000018f-207d-d1f3-afcf-2b7da58b0000

https://archive.md/UVSO3



Yosef de Brasser, 23, from Rehovot, has been arrested nearly ten times since the start of the Gaza war, but has no intention of stopping. For him, the arrests are no more than a mild irritant. "Since the start of the war, I've been home maybe four times. I've been out in the field all the time, organizing and being arrested," he says. At first, de Brasser, a right-wing activist known to the police, focused on organizing protests against the entry of humanitarian aid and fuel into the Gaza Strip. But now, he has decided to focus on his main goal – re-establishing Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip.



Over the past few months, de Brasser and his associates have conducted reconnaissance on the northern part of the Gaza border region. They studied the area and monitored the army's activity in order to prepare for their mission of breaking through the fence and entering the Gaza Strip. After extensive preparations, on Thursday morning, the group decided to make their move. This is not the first time they have tried to enter the Gaza Strip. About two months ago, several demonstrators managed to break through the military checkpoint at the Erez Crossing, and got 500 meters beyond the fence. The demonstrators even managed to build a sukkah and place a mezuzah at the entrance.

The attempts to enter the Gaza Strip and the demonstrations against the entry of aid make it difficult for the military to operate in the area, and force it to assign soldiers to guard convoys of truck entering Gaza, as well as the border fence in places where there is a risk of a breach. But none of this seems to discourage the demonstrators, who include young people from the "hilltop youth." Some of them claim that the soldiers are on their side, and it is only because of their commanders that they don't join the demonstrators. "I remember last time one of the soldiers said, 'Settle the region, we aren't fighting and losing brothers for nothing,'" says Shvut Albert, a 17-year-old resident of the southern Israeli moshav of Bnei Netzarim who stopped studying two years ago and works mainly in the construction of illegal farms in the West Bank.


Albert says that "the purpose of the march is to awaken the people and the country to begin to understand that it makes sense for us to move to Gaza." Yishai Ganot, 24, from Jerusalem, also believes that the dream of re-establishing settlements in Gaza is completely achievable. "No one takes us very seriously right now, but we are here day after day operating discreetly, and we are sure that as soon as the war ends, we will return to [former Gaza settlement] Gush Katif and to the entire northern Gaza Strip," he asserts emphatically. De Brasser explains that the purpose of the illegal marches is to establish facts on the ground, just like in the West Bank. "Settlements will be established in the Gaza Strip, no matter what," he declares. "It doesn't matter if they kick us out or not.

snip

May 6, 2024

Haaretz Editorial Board: Israelis Must Stop the Slide Toward an Operation in Rafah

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2024-05-05/ty-article/israelis-must-stop-the-slide-toward-an-operation-in-rafah/0000018f-4526-d17f-adcf-fde769590000

https://archive.md/obGvZ




Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition partners are quivering with excitement in anticipation of dispatching the Israel Defense Forces on a mission to conquer the Palestinian enclave in Rafah, which holds one million refugees who fled there from northern and central parts of the Gaza Strip. The enclave also holds the remaining organized military forces of Hamas. Netanyahu depicts the conquest of Rafah as a key to the "total victory" he has promised but not yet delivered. His partners, Bezalel Smotrich, Orit Strock and Itamar Ben-Gvir, hope that a military operation in Rafah will lead to a mass migration of Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip and to the establishment of Jewish settlements in areas that are evacuated.

Netanyahu and his partners are preaching an endless war and opposing a cease-fire, which would allow Israeli hostages to be released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, with displaced Gazans returning to the northern Gaza Strip and dreams of a second Nakba dissipating. Countering Netanyahu's swaggering hopes is, as usual, the reality. An extensive ground operation in densely-populated Rafah, in the manner in which Israel operated in Gaza City and Khan Yunis, will generate a new wave of killing, expulsion and ruin among a population that has already been uprooted from their homes and is currently on the brink of famine. Plans for evacuating civilians from Rafah, which the IDF presented to the Americans and to international aid agencies, were rejected as not sufficiently serious. Even if Israel succeeds in dismantling the four Hamas battalions in the enclave, Israel has no response to the regrouping of surviving Hamas militants, who will continue to snipe at the IDF's heels.

Israel also has no practical proposal for building an alternative ruling body to replace Yahya Sinwar and his people. The American administration has made it clear that it adamantly opposes an extensive operation in Rafah, warning that it would topple the Western-regional alliance which protected Israel during Iran's missile attack on April 13, as well as removing any chance for normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The "Iran night" illustrated the fact that Israel cannot defend itself on its own against the surrounding multitude of threats, and that its future security is contingent on building a coalition against Iran and its allies. If Netanyahu insists on disdainfully disregarding the Americans, as he's done in his announcements, he may face an arms embargo and the removal of the American diplomatic shield at the UN Security Council.

Indictments and arrest warrants issued in The Hague against senior Israeli officials will only multiply. The IDF is also warning Netanyahu of a strategic trap Sinwar is preparing in Rafah, after months of preparation and study of Israel's mode of operation. Thus, it is vital to stop the slide towards a redundant operation in Rafah, which is fraught with risks, and focus on a deal for a prolonged cease-fire and the return of Israeli hostages, in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners and the return of displaced Gazans to the northern Gaza Strip. Such a deal would also lead to a cease-fire on Israel's northern border. Israel must now focus on reversing the damage it sustained and above all on replacing the government that brought about the disaster and is still striving to maintain the current situation endlessly just to evade a public accounting of its actions.

snip

May 5, 2024

AP: Hamas says latest cease-fire talks have ended. Israel vows military operation in 'very near future'

https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-hamas-war-humanitarian-aid-5fb0455b81674b2bfe38d997c95d6f00


JERUSALEM (AP) — The latest round of Gaza cease-fire talks ended in Cairo after “in-depth and serious discussions,” the Hamas militant group said Sunday, reiterating key demands that Israel again rejected. After earlier signs of progress, the outlook appeared to dim as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to resist international pressure to halt the war. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant claimed Hamas wasn’t serious about a deal and warned of “a powerful operation in the very near future in Rafah and other places across all of Gaza " after Hamas attacked Israel’s main crossing point for delivering badly needed humanitarian aid, killing three soldiers.

But Israeli media reported that CIA chief William Burns, a main mediator in the talks, would meet with Netanyahu on Monday. An official familiar with the matter said Burns will travel to Israel after meeting with the prime minister of Qatar, which along with Egypt has been an intermediary dealing with Hamas. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations. Israel didn’t send a delegation to the latest talks. Egyptian state media reported that the Hamas delegation went for discussions in Qatar, where the group has a political office, and will return to Cairo for further negotiations on Tuesday.


Another threat to talks came as Israel ordered the local offices of Qatar’s Al Jazeera satellite news network to close, accusing it of broadcasting anti-Israel incitement. The ban did not appear to affect the channel’s operations in Gaza or the West Bank. Netanyahu, under pressure from hard-liners in his government, continued to lower expectations for a cease-fire deal, calling the key Hamas demands “extreme” — including the withdrawal of Israel forces from Gaza and an end to the war. That would equal surrender after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 that triggered the fighting, he said.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a statement earlier said the militant group was serious and positive about the negotiations and that stopping Israeli aggression in Gaza is the main priority. But Israel’s government again vowed to press on with a military operation in Rafah, the southernmost Gaza city on the border with Egypt where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents now seek shelter from Israeli attacks. Rafah is a key entry point for aid. Kerem Shalom, now closed, is another. The Israeli military reported 10 projectiles were launched at the crossing in southern Israel and said its fighter jets later struck the source. Hamas said it targeted Israeli soldiers in the area. Israel’s Channel 12 TV channel said 10 people were wounded, three seriously. It was unclear how long the crossing would be closed.

snip


related

May 5, 2024

So empire and the slave trade contributed little to Britain's wealth? Pull the other one, Kemi Badenoch

The business and trade secretary played into the ideological tosh that the wonders of the Industrial Revolution were funded by beer brewers and sheep farmers

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/may/05/so-empire-and-the-slave-trade-contributed-little-to-britains-wealth-pull-the-other-one-kemi-badenoch


Britain ran an empire for centuries that at its peak 100 years ago occupied just under a quarter of the world’s land area. Yet if you believe “Imperial Measurement”, a report released last week from the rightwing Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), the net economic impact of this vast empire on Britain was negligible, even negative. If you thought the empire profoundly shaped our industry, trade and financial institutions, with slavery an inherent part of the equation, helped turbocharge the Industrial Revolution and underwrote what was the world’s greatest navy for 150 years, think again. The contribution of the transatlantic trade in enslaved people to our economy was trumped by domestic brewing and sheep farming, opines the IEA. The tax “burden” of defending this barely profitable empire was not worth the candle. Instead, it was free-market economics that unleashed British economic growth – a truth that must be restated before Marxists and reparation-seeking ex-colonies start controlling the narrative.

It is a risible recasting of history that should have been ignored as self-serving ideological tosh. But enter the business and trade secretary and aspiring Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, who took it upon herself to endorse this IEA “research”. She told an audience of financial services bosses at a conference in London: “It worries me when I hear people talk about wealth and success in the UK as being down to colonialism or imperialism or white privilege or whatever.” If you believe any of this story about oppression and exploitation as the cause of British wealth, then the solutions to “our growth and productivity problem” will be even worse. It was “free markets and liberal institutions” that drove the Industrial Revolution and economic growth thereafter.

Except that, while they were certainly part of a cocktail of reasons for Britain’s rise to economic pre-eminence, they were only part. Recent historical research, blithely dismissed by author Kristian Niemietz, the IEA’s head of political economy, has increasingly uncovered a mountain of evidence that places ever more importance on empire, and slavery in particular, as important drivers of the Industrial Revolution and evolution of our economy. Take innovation, and the correctly celebrated inventions – James Hargreaves’ spinning jenny of 1764/5, Richard Arkwright’s water frame, patented in 1769, and Samuel Crompton’s mule, introduced in 1778/9 – that together made it possible to harness the delicate but tough Barbadense cotton and manufacture it at scale. By the turn of the 18th century, Lancashire had emerged as Europe’s pre-eminent manufacturing centre of high-quality cotton, usable with other weaves and whose dyes and prints would hold. It was a position of global dominance that Lancashire cotton manufacture, soon joined by West Yorkshire, would reinforce over the century ahead.


But as Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson write in their brilliant Slavery, Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution, it was no accident that this all began a few miles from Europe’s largest slave port, Liverpool. Or that fine Barbadense cotton flourished in Britain’s slave plantations in Barbados and elsewhere in the West Indies. Or that much of the finance for investing in these expensive, but highly profitable, innovative machines came from Liverpool merchants whose own fortunes originated in transatlantic trade. In painstaking research, they place slavery at the heart, not only of early industrialisation, but the growth of services such as banking and insurance. By the last decades of the 18th century, they demonstrate that the West Indies was co-equal with Europe as Britain’s biggest trading partner. Cotton’s importance was preceded by slave-grown sugar, which became a national staple. All this spawned a vast boom in British shipping, from 1m tons and 50,000 seamen in the 1780s to 2.5m tons and 130,000 seamen in the 1830s, with the growth propelled by the Atlantic plantation trade.

snip

May 5, 2024

CIA chief to meet with Qatari PM in Doha as hostage talks said to be 'near collapse'

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/cia-chief-to-hold-emergency-meeting-with-qatari-pm-as-hostage-deal-said-to-be-near-collapse/

CIA chief Bill Burns is traveling to Doha for an emergency meeting with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed Al-Thani regarding the ongoing negotiations for a hostage release and temporary truce deal, an official briefed on the talks says.

“Burns is on his way to Doha for an emergency meeting with the Qatari prime minister aimed at exerting maximum pressure on Israel and Hamas to continue negotiating,” the source adds.

His visit comes as the talks are “near collapse,” the official adds, after Hamas said its delegation was departing Cairo for Doha, where it will hold further consultations on the terror group’s position on the deal.

May 5, 2024

Six questions that will decide who wins the US election 2024

Donald Trump’s trial, Joe Biden’s age and the Kennedy effect — there are many wheels in motion during this presidential race. Which will matter most on polling day?

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trump-biden-who-wins-us-election-2024-2tnfwsqr3

https://archive.ph/Igphq



In precisely six months Americans will go to the polls to decide the 2024 presidential election, and it’s hard to overstate how unstable the political ground beneath both campaigns has become. The two oldest presidential candidates in US history, President Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump, are facing off at a time when one of them is on trial on felony charges and the nation is grappling with its worst bout of inflation in 40 years, while a conflict in Ukraine tests Washington’s resolve and campus unrest over the war in Gaza has hit heights unseen since the Vietnam War. That toxic brew makes predictions highly perilous. It is possible, though, to identify half a dozen questions whose answers are likely to determine the outcome.

Who is the economy going to help?

Usually, the economy looms over all other factors in a presidential election, particularly when an incumbent is involved. By most conventional metrics, the US economy is doing fine — in some ways, in fact, better than it was when Ronald Reagan won re-election resoundingly in 1984 by proclaiming it was “morning again in America”. Unemployment today is roughly half what it was then, and the rate of inflation lower. Economic growth has slowed but remains sound and the stock market is up more than 10 per cent over the past year. All of this should translate into good news for Biden, yet somehow it doesn’t seem to be doing so. In each of the last two Wall Street Journal surveys, the share of voters who said they approve of the job the president is doing handling the economy was just 40 per cent. The reason is simple: inflation might have plateaued but it has been high for most of the past three years. It is an insidious economic force that many have never really grappled with in their lifetimes.



Unemployment directly affects just a small portion of the population and not everyone benefits when the stock market is soaring, but each citizen feels inflation in every transaction at the grocery store or the gas pump. The result: the Conference Board, a non-partisan research organisation, just reported that consumer confidence fell last month for the third straight month. “Elevated price levels, especially for food and gas, dominated consumer’s concerns,” said Dana Peterson, its chief economist. The key is whether Biden can convince Americans that the positive economic forces are more important than those nagging inflation concerns. It’s possible he can. Mike Bocian, a Democratic pollster who helps conduct polling for the The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), notes that voters in swing stages now say their own economic fortunes and the economy in their own state are pretty good, but that the national economy isn’t. “The economy in every state can’t be doing OK while the country is doing poorly,” he notes. The first job of the Biden campaign is to persuade voters of that.

Will black, Hispanic and young voters revert to form?

In recent years, Democrats could always count on strong support among minority voters and the young. Right now, that is in question. Trump’s Republican Party is making inroads among working-class black and Hispanic voters, particularly among men. In a February WSJ survey, Trump had the support of 22 per cent of black voters and 46 per cent of Hispanics, when matched head-to-head with Biden. By contrast, exit polls in the 2020 election showed that Trump won just 12 per cent and 32 per cent of those groups, respectively. Four years ago, younger voters were a core plank of Biden’s winning coalition. But WSJ polling shows Trump getting the support of 40 per cent of voters aged 18 to 29, up from 36 per cent four years ago, and a poll for CNN last weekend had Trump leading Biden among the under-35s by a margin of 51 to 40 per cent. That is troubling for Democrats — as are signs that young voters simply aren’t very enthusiastic about engaging in this year’s election. If such trends persist, they could prove fatal to Biden.

The youth vote....................................

snip

May 5, 2024

Fox News Mingewomble Rachel Campos-Duffy's Hammer Joke About Paul Pelosi: Sickening

https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1786698438827983313

During a discussion about the Medal of Freedom award recipients Rachel Campos-Duffy laughs that Paul Pelosi should have gotten a hammer. Pelosi was viciously attacked in his home by a mentally unstable man with a hammer. He suffered a skull fracture and needed surgery.

May 4, 2024

Gaza anger casts cloud over UK Labour's election celebrations

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/gaza-anger-casts-cloud-over-uk-labours-election-celebrations-2024-05-03/

https://archive.ph/Qyzsh



LONDON, May 3 (Reuters) - Celebrations by Britain's Labour over local election victories were tempered on Friday by concerns that Muslim voters had turned against the opposition party over Gaza, a trend that could hamper its fortunes at a national poll this year. Labour leader Keir Starmer has struggled to bring his party with him on the Gaza conflict despite bowing to pressure this year to call for a lasting ceasefire, with some critics urging him to toughen his line on Israel. But despite seeing a drop in voters for Labour in places with large Muslim populations in southern and northern England, one lawmaker said he saw it more as a protest vote, which would not necessarily be replicated in the national election.

Speaking after his party won a parliament seat in northern England and control of several councils across England, dealing a huge blow to the governing Conservatives, Starmer acknowledged Gaza had had an impact on Labour support in some areas. "Look, there are some places where that's a very strong factor and I understand that, respect that," he told reporters. "Where we have lost votes, we will earn them back through hard work, just as we have done on many other issues, but I don't think that that can really shut out the fact that this is a very good set of results for the Labour Party."



Britain's leading pollster John Curtice said from the earliest results it looked as though Labour's support was down by eight points since last year in areas where more than 10% of people identify as Muslim. With his Labour Party well ahead in the polls before the national election, Starmer's approach to the conflict has almost been in lockstep with the government's, carefully calibrated to say Israel has the right to defend itself but saying the level of death and destruction in Gaza has been intolerable. His position is also shaped by his pledge when appointed Labour leader in 2020 to stamp out antisemitism in the party after his leftist predecessor Jeremy Corbyn repeatedly came under fire by critics over his response to allegations of antisemitic abuse.

OPEN DIVISIONS

The divisions in Labour blew open late last year when several members of Starmer's policy team quit their roles to vote for a ceasefire in Gaza. Since then he has been forced to pull the party's support for a candidate at an election in northern England earlier this year who had been recorded espousing conspiracy theories about Israel. That opened the way for left-wing maverick George Galloway to win a seat in parliament on a pro-Palestinian platform. At Thursday's local elections, Labour lost control of the council in Oldham, a town in northwestern England with a sizeable Muslim population, after two former |Labour councillors left the party] to run as independents over Gaza. The Labour leader of the council in nearby Bolton said some results had been affected by the war in Gaza, after voters elected a Green Party councillor for the first time.

snip