Daily Archives: 30 October 2023

Israel Has Killed More Kids in 3 Weeks Than Were Killed in All Global Conflicts Annually Since 2019

Spread the love
A man carries an child injured by Israeli airstrikes in Rafah, Gaza on October 13, 2023. (Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

“One child’s death is one too many, but these are grave violations of epic proportions,” said the humanitarian group Save the Children. “A cease-fire is the only way to ensure their safety.”

Over just a three-week period, the Israeli military has killed at least 3,195 children in the Gaza Strip—a death toll that surpasses the annual number of children killed in all of the world’s armed conflict zones since 2019.

That’s according to a disturbing new analysis by Save the Children, which observed that kids make up more than 40% of the total death toll in the Gaza Strip since October 7, when Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel that was met with a massive bombing campaign and an intensifying ground attack.

The humanitarian group noted that, according to the United Nations, at least 1,000 Gazan children have been reported missing and may be trapped under rubble, meaning the reported death toll is almost certainly an underestimate. UNICEF has called child deaths in Gaza “a growing stain on our collective conscience” and demanded a cease-fire.

Save the Children did the same on Sunday. Jason Lee, Save the Children’s country director for the occupied Palestinian territory, said in a statement that “three weeks of violence have ripped children from families and torn through their lives at an unimaginable rate.”

“The numbers are harrowing and with violence not only continuing but expanding in Gaza right now, many more children remain at grave risk,” Lee added. “One child’s death is one too many, but these are grave violations of epic proportions. A cease-fire is the only way to ensure their safety. The international community must put people before politics—every day spent debating is leaving children killed and injured. Children must be protected at all times, especially when they are seeking safety in schools and hospitals.”

Save the Children cites the most recent three annual reports from the U.N. secretary-general, which have found that 2,985 children were killed across two dozen countries last year, 2,515 were killed in 2021, and 2,674 were killed in 2020. More than 4,000 children were killed in global conflicts in 2019.

The group’s analysis was released days after it warned that Israel’s expanded ground assault on the Gaza Strip has put children “at heightened risk of loss of life, physical harm, severe emotional distress, and protracted displacement.”

Israeli troops and tanks advanced toward Gaza City on Monday and “blocked one of the main roads connecting the northern part of the Gaza Strip to the south,” The Wall Street Journalreported, “a major advance that appeared aimed at encircling the enclave’s biggest population center.”

More than a million Gazans had already been displaced by Israeli airstrikes before the country launched its fresh ground attack late last week. Israeli bombing has also destroyed or damaged at least 45% of Gaza’s housing units.

On Friday, as Israel ruthlessly bombed northern Gaza and knocked out the territory’s internet and communications, a Save the Children team member in Gaza warned in a message that “we could all die, we could survive, we could survive, we could… pray for us.”

Save the Children said later in the day that it lost contact with its team on the ground in Gaza.

“This is pure horror for all children and their parents,” Lee said Friday. “Across the Gaza Strip, more than one million children are trapped in the middle of an active conflict zone with no safe place to go and no route to safety. With communications down, children are cut off from the world, more isolated than ever before. They are unable to speak to loved ones, or even to call an ambulance.”

“Despite Save the Children and thousands of other voices calling for an urgent cease-fire, we are seeing an increase in military operations,” he continued. “We call on all parties to the conflict to take immediate steps to protect the lives of children, and on the international community to support those efforts, as is their obligation.”

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Biden Is a Genocide Denier and the ‘Enabler in Chief’ for Israel’s Ongoing War Crimes

Continue ReadingIsrael Has Killed More Kids in 3 Weeks Than Were Killed in All Global Conflicts Annually Since 2019

Climate Groups Back Efforts to End Tens of Billions in Foreign Fossil Fuel Subsidies

Spread the love
Scientists protest at UK Parliament 5 September 2023.
Scientists protest at UK Parliament 5 September 2023.

Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

“This is the moment where OECD countries can turn their words into action,” said an Oil Change International strategist. “All eyes are on them, the world is watching. Immediate action is necessary.”

Over 250 climate groups from 30 countries published an open letter on Monday urging governments that endorsed a global pledge at the United Nations summit in Scotland two years ago to support new efforts to cut off subsidies for foreign fossil fuel projects.

The coalition letter came a day after the Financial Timesreported that the European Union and United Kingdom—which left the E.U. in 2020—have proposals to end subsidies for foreign gas, oil, and coal projects that they plan to discuss at a closed-door Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) meeting in France next month.

“This is the moment where OECD countries can turn their words into action,” Oil Change International (OCI) strategist Nina Pusic said Monday. “Will they live up to the pledge most of them made in Glasgow in 2021 to end international public finance for fossil fuels at the OECD? All eyes are on them, the world is watching. Immediate action is necessary to align global financial flows with a habitable climate future, and this November represents a critical opportunity that we can’t afford to miss.”

According to the Financial Times:

People close to U.K. Export Finance, Britain’s credit agency, said that Canada had committed to backing the U.K.’s planned proposal to the OECD ahead of the meeting next month. Canada’s finance department said it “looked forward to working alongside like-minded partners at the OECD and in other international forums to grow and promote the clean economy around the world.”

The E.U. has submitted its own proposal, according to one person familiar with the matter, after member states agreed on a draft proposal last month, according to another person familiar. It did not provide a comment.

The coalition letter highlights that the 2021 Clean Energy Transition Partnership (CETP)—whose signatories agreed to align public finance institutions with the Paris agreement’s 1.5°C goal—is already shifting an estimated $5.7 billion a year to clean energy.

As part of the CETP, countries committed to driving “multilateral negotiations in international bodies, in particular in the OECD, to review, update, and strengthen their governance frameworks to align with the Paris agreement goals,” the letter explains.

“This November at the OECD Export Credits Forum, your country has a critical opportunity to fulfill this commitment. Your country can do this by joining forces with other CETP signatories to support restricting oil and gas export finance at the OECD,” wrote the coalition, which along with OCI includes Friends of the Earth (FOE) United States, Japan Center for a Sustainable Environment and Society (JACSES), and Environment Governance Institute (EGI) Uganda.

“Ending OECD oil and gas support is critical to limit global heating to 1.5°C,” the coalition added, citing the International Energy Agency’s warning that new fossil fuel investments are incompatible with the goal. “And yet, the OECD export credit agencies (ECAs) currently provide five times as much financing for fossil fuels as for clean energy every year. By putting an end to their fossil fuel financing, governments have an opportunity to free up $41 billion USD per year to support the clean energy transition.”

The OECD’s existing Arrangement on Officially Supported Export Credits has a prohibition from January 2021 that “shifts an estimated $4 billion per year out of highly polluting coal fired-power,” the letter notes, calling for an extension of that policy “to encompass all fossil fuels, including oil and fossil gas, without any loopholes.”

https://twitter.com/PriceofOil/status/1718991576150475165?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1718991576150475165%7Ctwgr%5E087597d51595695f79494b600bb0101306a3e2ec%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Foecd-foreign-fossil-fuel-subsidies

Some leaders at groups behind the letter took aim at specific nations, such as the United States, which is among those that have come under fire this year for continuing to dump a collective $4.4 billion into fossil fuel projects abroad.

“We have waited long enough for the United States, and other wealthy historical emitters, to be a force for good at the OECD,” said Kate DeAngelis, FOE’s senior international finance program manager. “The U.S. must turn away from its multibillion-dollar fossil financing and support the U.K. and Canada proposal, leading the push to finally end export credit agency support for fossil fuels.”

JACSES program director Yuki Tanabe targeted Japan, which snubbed the Glasgow pledge but backed a similar one from the Group of Seven last year—and has since faced criticism for continued investments in fossil fuels.

“Japan should not be a blocker at the OECD negotiations and should agree to end its public finance for fossil fuel projects,” Tanabe argued. “Ammonia and hydrogen co-firing should not be exempted as ‘abatement’ technologies, since the current co-firing development roadmap is not in line with the Paris goals.”

EGI CEO Samuel Okulony stressed how decisions of nations like Japan affect communities where projects are based.

“The impacts of climate change in Africa are a matter of life and death, and Japan, Korea, and other OECD countries should listen to the lived realities of global south communities, who have been devastated by the impacts of climate change for decades,” he said. “It is imperative that these countries make resolute commitments, support a resolution to stop public financing for fossil fuels at the OECD, and demand the global community align itself with the commitments to keep the 1.5°C target alive.”

Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Extinction Rebellion NL image reads STOP FOSSIELE SUBSIDIES
Extinction Rebellion NL image reads STOP FOSSIELE SUBSIDIES

Related:

The TRUTH about fossil fuel subsidies.

Extinction Rebellion NL pauses daily A12 highway blockades awaiting a decision on government fossil fuel subsidies

FFS: Huge Fossil Fuel Subsidies in UK and globally

Continue ReadingClimate Groups Back Efforts to End Tens of Billions in Foreign Fossil Fuel Subsidies

Boris Johnson took no Covid updates during February 2020 half-term break

Spread the love
Image of Tory idiot Boris Johnson
Lazy Tory idiot and former part-time UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson

Original article by Ruby Lott-Lavigna and finlay johnston republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Boris Johnson did not receive any updates about the escalating Covid crisis during a school half-term break just weeks before he announced the first lockdown.

The Covid inquiry today heard that over ten days between 14 February and 24 February 2020, the prime minister received no information from his staff, including from the two COBRA meetings that took place.

Johnson spent the break – during which parliament was in recess – at Chevening House, a grace-and-favour Kent mansion. He was labelled a “part-time prime minister” by then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and accused of “sulking in a mansion” while coronavirus unfolded and large parts of the UK were devastated by flooding. Johnson insisted the government had been working “flat out”.

When asked today why he did not update the PM with any information on Covid, Johnson’s former parliamentary private secretary (PPS) Martin Reynolds said he “could not recall”.

Hugo Keith, chief counsel to the inquiry, told him: “There were no emails. There were no notes put in his red box. You don’t appear to have been in touch with him about coronavirus, or anybody else.”

“To what extent did you think to yourself we’ve got…emails about a viral pandemic coming our way? Why was nothing done in terms of keeping the prime minister in the loop in those ten days?” he asked.

Reynolds responded: “I cannot recall why and whether there was any urgent business to transact over that period with the PM.”

When asked whether it was because it was half-term, Reynolds said he was “happy to accept it was half-term”.

The day before the PM’s ten-day information blackout, a cabinet reshuffle had taken place that saw the resignation of chancellor Sajid Javid, who was replaced by Rishi Sunak.

By 27 February, the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies had discussed the “reasonable worst case scenario” in which 80% of the UK population became infected, with a 1% fatality rate – which would mean up to 500,000 deaths.

The PM’s top aide added he “probably should have done more” to keep the prime minister updated on the biggest crisis since the Second World War.

Reynolds agreed that “little had been done” between the middle of February and early March.

He also agreed that the ten-day gap in pandemic planning was an “untoward delay” which contributed to the virus being “out of control” by 13 March.

The inquiry continues.

Original article by Ruby Lott-Lavigna and finlay johnston republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Continue ReadingBoris Johnson took no Covid updates during February 2020 half-term break