The Self-Devouring Furnace: Gaza's Unending Cycle of Death

According to the most recent data from the Gaza Ministry of Health, the cumulative death toll in the Gaza Strip has risen to 73,795 individuals since Hamas' surprise attack in October 2023. 

Demographically, independent assessments and ministry records indicate that children and women constitute the vast majority of the overall fatalities, but they do not include precise demographic counts. 

In comprehensive analyses tracking verified identities, the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) analysis found that close to 70% of the fatalities in residential areas were women and children. In their verified datasets, children accounted for roughly 44% of the victims, while women accounted for 26%. 

Moreover, according to UN figures, roughly 82% of Gaza’s buildings have been damaged, with two thirds of them destroyed.

Beyond these structural losses, researchers estimate over 116,000 cumulative injuries, creating a massive surgical and reconstructive backlog that will take years to address under a decimated healthcare infrastructure. 

And, even with a de jure ceasefire in place since last October, 1,369 Gazans have been systematically killed. 

In fact, Gaza’s Hamas government have accused Israel of violating the truce more than 4,000 times since then. 

Ultimately, these ongoing casualties expose the illusion of diplomatic reprieves; the mechanism of violence has become self-sustaining, leaving civilians trapped in a seemingly infinite loop of bloodshed and destruction where a ceasefire is meaningless and the body count climbs without end.

WHEN WILL THE KILLINGS STOP? 😭😭😭😭

A SAL No Regrets Speech

On Thursday, I was back in Sunway Mentari for our regular SAL meeting, where I delivered my CSL2(1) "Lead with Clear Structure" speech titled "No Regrets". 

In it, I shared how our mistakes are truly our teachers, urging everyone to view past events as lessons that shape our current wisdom rather than wishing they never happened. This requires us to forgive ourselves and release any lingering guilt, recognizing that we made the best possible choices with the knowledge we had at that moment. After all, dwelling on the past only traps our energy, so we must focus forward – letting yesterday's outcomes guide today's choices without carrying the weight of old pain.

Following the project speeches, it was time for "That's One Minute". The topic was the three-letter word, "Cat" 🐈. 

I must confess I am not a cat person. Still, I tactically chose laziness – skipping the metaphors to talk strictly about whiskers and litter trays. 😁😁😁

Photos of the said meeting:

👇RESPECT!

If you didn't know, Mark Ruffalo plays Bruce Banner/The Hulk in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Babies Are Special Targets of Israeli killings

The attacks by Israel on Gaza show a targeted annihilation of newborns and infants that should be punished, the head of a UN panel that probed the excesses determined. 

The violence unleashed by Israeli forces was “unjustified and disproportionate… in considerable terms”, Justice S Muralidhar, the chair of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory, said in an exclusive interview on Tuesday when he presented his findings.

The Gaza war began after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 07, 2023, in which around 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage. Israel’s subsequent military operation devastated much of Gaza, killing over 73,000 Palestinians and injuring more than 173,000, according to the local health authorities. 

Citing a pattern of targeted attacks on children, Muralidhar (left) pointed out: “When you shoot a 10-day-old baby breastfeeding on his mother... through his head, you can by no means label such a baby as an enemy of the State of Israel and justify these kinds of attacks”. 

He drew attention to the fact that Israeli quadcopters with thermal imaging cameras can clearly distinguish a child from an adult. 

That children were being singled out for callous murder is clear from the number of “instances of babies with gunshot wounds to their head and neck to cause maximum damage”. Babies were aimed at with “tiny cube-shaped pellets” that “spread like a cluster of ammunition and destroy all the internal organs”.  

“So it became very clear… that babies were special targets”, Muralidhar, who once served as chief justice at the high court in India's state of Odisha, disclosed. 

The pattern clearly emerged from the totality of the evidence, including forensic and medical records.

Israel carried out airstrikes on the most densely populated areas, knowing that children would constitute a sizable proportion of the population, he noted, stating: “The demolition of the hospitals is [done] with patients still... in the hospital”. 

Muralidhar revealed that “one of the elements of genocide is to prevent childbirths”, claiming that for Israeli forces, “mothers who are pregnant are targets, and they are denied any nutritious intake, so the mothers are malnourished”. 

Not only hospitals but orphanages too and the report cited over 58,000 parentless children in just two years. 

Muralidhar lamented the failure of all UN member states to prevail upon Israel to comply with the three Gaza orders of the International Court of Justice, to address the prevention of genocide and the protection of civilians in Gaza as per the ⁠Genocide Convention. 

Well, that's the UN for you, all talk and no action! 😡😡😡

Lebanon, Syria, Gaza: The Forever Occupation

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz reiterated on Wednesday his country will keep its troops in occupied areas of Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza indefinitely. 

“Our policy for defending the borders of the State of Israel... is clear”, Katz said, as quoted by the Jerusalem Post. “The IDF will not withdraw and will remain in the security zones in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza for an unlimited period of time”. 

Katz also renewed an earlier warning to Iran, saying it would be struck with “full force” if it retaliated over Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon. 

The warning echoed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent pledge that Israel’s pursuit of “total victory” over Iran and its allied groups “never ends”. 

Tehran has made an end to Israeli military operations in Lebanon one of its key conditions in the ongoing peace talks with the US. 

If you must know, in recent months, the IDF have pushed deeper into southern Lebanon, establishing what Israeli officials describe as a security buffer zone. According to media reports, by June, Israeli forces controlled roughly 2,000 square kilometers of Lebanese territory – nearly one-fifth of the country.

Let me repeat here that Iran's decision to sign the MOU and pursue (indirect) "negotiations" is WRONG! 😡😡😡

The 'Cancel ChatGPT' Trend

If you do not already know, the US and other militaries increasingly deploy AI as part of their arsenals. 

Israel’s military have used drones with autonomous capabilities in Gaza and have extensively used AI to fill their targeting bank in Gaza. The US military used AI targeting for strikes in Iraq and Syria in recent years. 

Claude, the AI model developed by Anthropic, was used by the US military during their operation to kidnap Nicolás Maduro and wife from Venezuela, the Wall Street Journal had revealed on February 14. The US raid on Venezuela involved bombing across the capital, Caracas, and the killing of 83 people, according to Venezuela’s defence ministry. 

Anthropic’s terms of use prohibit the use of Claude for violent ends, for the development of weapons or for conducting surveillance. 

AI companies have grappled with how their technologies should engage with the defence sector, with Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei (right), calling for regulation to prevent harms from the deployment of AI. Amodei has also expressed wariness over the use of AI in autonomous lethal operations and surveillance in the US. 

This more cautious stance has apparently rankled the US defence department, with the secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, saying in January that the department wouldn’t “employ AI models that won’t allow you to fight wars”.

Anthropic wanted safeguards in place but the the Department of War weren't agreeable. 

Enter OpenAI: the company swooped in to sign a deal with the US military, claiming they have "more guardrails" than the one Anthropic rejected, including around mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, with "red lines" that OpenAI plan to enforce going forward. 

But ChatGPT users are far from happy about it. They aren't at all convinced – especially when it comes to the "all lawful purposes" language used in the deal, which was announced on February 27.

And a growing number of people are canceling their ChatGPT subscriptions and switching to other AI chatbots instead, including Claude. A quick browse of social media or Reddit is enough to see that there's an escalating backlash to the move. 

Some Redditors are posting guides to extracting yourself and your data from ChatGPT, while others are accusing OpenAI of having "no ethics at all" and "selling their soul" by agreeing to allow their AI models to be used by the US military complex. 

I reckon this is a debate that's going to run and run, but in the meantime, Anthropic's Claude overtook OpenAI's ChatGPT to hit No. 1 on the App Store. As per Business Insider on March 01, 2026.

Punch the Monkey and Selective Empathy

An abandoned baby monkey broke millions of hearts online, after being spotted hugging an orangutan stuffed toy given to him as a substitute for his mother. 

Not only that but over the long holiday weekend in Japan, fans queued for up to an hour to catch a glimpse of him, the Ichikawa City Zoo said in a post on X, with more than 5,000 visitors recorded Monday.

Punch (his full name is Punch-kun), the young Japanese macaque (Scientific name: Macaca fuscata) at the zoo, became everybody's favorite after videos of him being bullied by other monkeys and rejected by his mother went viral last week. And he was seen dragging around and playing with the soft toy that zookeepers gave him. 

Without maternal guidance to help him integrate, Punch turned to the plushie for comfort.

At the same time, there's a post by "KHAN Speaks" on Facebook that surely must make us ponder and reflect: 

A monkey moves you. 
But a massacred child doesn’t – 
Because the media didn’t tell you to feel. 

The whole world is crying today. 
Tears everywhere. 
Broken hearts. 
Because a monkey lost its toy. 

Celebrities shared it. 
Media pushed it. 
People wrote essays on humanity. 

But tell me – 
Where were these tears when Gaza’s children lost their parents? 
Where was this heartbreak when tiny bodies were pulled out from rubble? 

When a child hugged the dead body of a mother – not a toy? 
Suddenly the world went silent. 

No hashtags. 
No profile picture filters. 
No viral empathy.

This is hypocrisy. 
This is selective empathy. 

Empathy that wakes up only when it’s comfortable. 
When it doesn’t question power. 
When it doesn’t expose crimes. 
When it doesn’t cost anything. 

Remember this: 

Empathy that chooses sides is not humanity. 
It’s conditioning. 
And history will remember who cried for toys and who ignored children buried under bombs.

😢😢😢

We really do have to ask ourselves the hard questions!

Israel's Genocide in Gaza Continues

The cold-blooded murders won't stop! 😡😡😡

And the Israeli genocide in Gaza cheerfully continues! 😡😡😡

HELL ON EARTH! 😡😡😡

And Israel’s genocide in Gaza left more than 39,000 children without parents.

A flagitious fact is that Alaa al-Din al-Aklouk, spokesperson for the National Committee for Missing Persons, had made the appallingly atrocious attestation last November that Gaza has become “the world’s largest graveyard”.

In bloodied Gaza, agony and anguish are ever present, ceasefire or no ceasefire! 😭😭😭

Nobody can ever imagine what Gazans suffer! 😭😭😭

And daily, their deaths multiply! 😭😭😭