The French president has called for action at a climate summit in Paris attended by heads of state and scientists before Cop28
France will spend €1bn (£880m) on polar research between now and 2030, amid rapidly rising scientific concern over the world’s melting ice caps and glaciers.
A new polar science vessel will spearhead the effort, and France is calling for a moratorium on the exploitation of the seabed in polar regions, to which the UK, Canada, Brazil and 19 other countries have so far signed up.
French president Emmanuel Macron told a summit of heads of state and scientists in Paris: “We are not talking about a threat for tomorrow, but one that is already present and accelerating. We are talking about a transformation of the cryosphere [the Earth’s ice] that already threatens millions and will threaten billions of the planet’s inhabitants with multiple direct and indirect consequences.”
The plight of the Earth’s polar regions and glaciers has sparked alarm among many scientists, as heatwaves at both poles, which were seen for the first time last year, look set to be a regular occurrence.
They heard from polar and glacier experts that temperatures were rising four times more rapidly in the Arctic than the global average, half the world’s 200,000 glaciers were set to disappear by the end of the century and that the rate of sea level rise had doubled in the last two decades.
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Glaciers were melting across the world, warned the head of the World Meteorological Organisation, Petteri Taalas. As they vanish irrecoverably, more than 1 billion people who depend on them for water and agriculture will face increasingly severe shortages. As well as cutting greenhouse gas emissions overall, there are also urgent measures that scientists believe could be taken now that would reduce or delay the risk of the collapse of glaciers or a tipping point at the poles.
Men check the bodies of people killed in bombardment that hit a school housing displaced Palestinians, as they lie on the ground in the yard of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on November 10, 2023. (Photo: Khoder al-Zaanoun/AFP via Getty Images)
As the death toll from Israel’s obliteration of Gaza topped 11,000, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said “far too many Palestinians have been killed”—while the United States’ armed aid to Israel continues.
Palestinian civil defense officials said Friday that more than 50 bodies were recovered from the rubble of a school in northern Gaza where civilians were sheltering when it was destroyed during overnight Israeli bombardment.
Palestine’s WAFA News Agency reported civil defense and ambulance rescue teams removed the blasted and crushed remains of victims of Thursday night’s missile and artillery strikes on the al-Buraq School in the al-Nasr neighborhood of Gaza City. The outlet said that most of those killed were women, children, and elders.
The Times of Israel reports that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officials have not yet commented on the attack.
Injured survivors of the attack were rushed to al-Shifa Hospital, which was hit by Israeli airstrikes at least four times over the past 24 hours.
DIRECTOR OF AL-SHIFA HOSPITAL: The bodies of about 50 people were recovered from inside Al-Buraq School after an Israeli missile and artillery bombardment targeted it on Friday morning.
As Common Dreams reported earlier Friday, Israeli strikes targeted the courtyard and obstetrics department of the hospital, where doctors have been forced to operate on patients without anesthesia after running out of critical supplies to treat an overwhelming number of wounded victims. Gaza officials said 13 people died in the attacks on al-Shifa.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, al-Shifa general director Muhammad Abu Salmiya called Friday “a day of war against hospitals.”
Israeli officials have made unsubstantiated claims of Hamas fighters operating from inside or under al-Shifa and other Gaza hospitals.
Message to Biden – and all who are complicit – by Norwegian doctor, specialist in anesthesiology, Mads Gilbert @DrMadsGilbert who has been working at the Al-Shifa hospital on and off for 16 years pic.twitter.com/niYh7hg6gs
On Friday Israeli warplanes bombed in the vicinity of the Indonesian Hospital in Bait Lahia—where doctors announced a cessation of surgeries—while Mustafa al-Kahlout, director of the al-Nasr hospital and al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital in northern Gaza, told CNN that Israeli tanks had “surrounded” the complex.
Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said Friday that northern Gaza resembles “hell on Earth” due to Israel’s bombardment and a lack of aid.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Friday that at least 11,078 Palestinians—including more than 3,000 women and over 4,500 children—have been killed and upward of 27,000 injured by Israeli bombs and bullets since October 7, when Hamas-led attacks on Israel killed around 1,200 civilians and soldiers, with another 240 or so people taken hostage. Israeli officials on Friday revised down their death toll, which they previously said was higher than 1,400.
According to Gaza officials, around 70% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced, while half the homes in the besieged strip have been destroyed. Officials also said 238 schools, 67 mosques, and 88 government buildings have been wiped out by Israeli attacks.
In the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem—whose residents were already suffering the deadliest year since the second intifada, or uprising, a generation ago—Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 182 Palestinians while wounding thousands more since October 7.
After 35 days of relentless and indiscriminate bombing—an IDF spokesperson acknowledged early in the war that “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy”—U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday during a visit to India that “far too many Palestinians have been killed.”
However, the U.S. continues to stand staunchly behind its number one Middle Eastern ally, with the Biden administration and Congress working on a $14.3 billion military aid package to Israel, atop the nearly $4 billion the country already receives from Washington annually. The U.S. also provides diplomatic cover for Israel, including a recent veto of a Brazil-led United Nations Security Council cease-fire resolution.
While Israel on Thursday agreed to daily four-hour humanitarian pauses for at least three days so that civilians have a chance to flee the constant bombardment and advancing IDF ground forces, Israeli officials—and U.S. President Joe Biden—stress that no cease-fire is imminent.
Doctors Without Borders once again begging for a ceasefire
Here is the head of Doctors Without Borders mocking the idea of a “humanitarian pause” a few days ago. This placebo bullshit is what Warren, Sanders, Biden, etc are trying to pass off as a bold progressive gesture. https://t.co/KrEjiX484Hpic.twitter.com/yg14jkaBnS
Israeli leaders have said a cease-fire is off the table until all hostages held by Gaza-based militants are freed. Abu Hamza, the military spokesperson of the al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, said Thursday that the group was preparing to release an elderly woman and teenage boy in its custody.
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini wrote in an opinion piece published Thursday by The Washington Post that “the present course chosen by the Israeli authorities will not bring the peace and stability that both Israelis and Palestinians want and deserve.”
“Razing entire neighborhoods to the ground is not an answer for the egregious crimes committed by Hamas,” Lazzarini asserted. “To the contrary, it is creating a new generation of aggrieved Palestinians who are likely to continue the cycle of violence. The carnage simply must stop.”
An injured toddler cries as she awaits treatment at the emergency ward of the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on November 5, 2023. (Photo: Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images)
“When are you going to stop this?” Dr. Mads Gilbert asked U.S. President Joe Biden and the leaders of European nations.
A Norwegian physician who has volunteered in Gaza for decades said Friday that Western leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, are complicit in Israel’s intensifying assault on the Palestinian enclave’s hospitals, which are overwhelmed with airstrike victims and displaced people seeking refuge.
In a video message posted to social media as Israeli forces bombarded al-Shifa—Gaza’s largest hospital—and other medical facilities, Dr. Mads Gilbert asked, “Can you hear the screams from innocent people, refugees sheltering, trying to find a safe place, being bombed by the Israeli attack forces this morning inside the hospital, hospitals that are the temples of humanity and protection?”
“When are you going to stop this?” Gilbert added, with audio of screams from Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital playing in the background. “You’re all complicit.”
BREAKING: Israel commits new horrible hospital massacres! Shifa hospital bombed this morning! pic.twitter.com/VrpF38Zgi5
Gilbert’s plea for immediate action from world leaders who are supporting and arming Israel’s military came as Israeli forces surrounded al-Shifa and other hospitals in northern Gaza, claiming that Hamas is using the facilities as command centers—an assertion that hospital directors have denied.
Israeli airstrikes and sniper fire on Gaza hospitals have forced thousands of people who were sheltering at the facilities to flee, but many others “remain trapped inside,” the U.K.-based humanitarian group Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) said Saturday.
The charity said it has heard “chilling testimony from inside Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa,” including reports that “the intensive care unit has been bombed and damaged.”
“Staff moving between buildings have been shot at and critically wounded,” said MAP, which is calling for a cease-fire. “Those who have tried to flee have come under fire, and lie dead or wounded in the street as rescue is impossible. With the mortuary shut down, a hundred bodies are piled up and cannot be buried.”
“Power has gone out, and staff are having to hand ventilate critically ill patients to keep them alive,” the group continued. “At least one patient in intensive care has already died. Babies in the neonatal intensive care unit which MAP has supported over many years are beginning to die from lack of oxygen. More will die soon unless the power supply is restored. Day after day, week after week, we have been warning of catastrophic consequences if world leaders fail to protect healthcare in Gaza. Our worst fears are coming true.”
Doctors Without Borders, which has been providing emergency assistance in the Gaza Strip, offered a similarly harrowing account.
“We are currently unable to contact any of our staff inside al-Shifa, and we are extremely concerned about the safety of patients and the medical staff,” the group said late Friday. “Patients are still in the hospital, some in critical condition and unable to move.”
Mohammed Obeid, a Doctors Without Borders physician at al-Shifa, said that “there is a patient who needs surgery. There is a patient who’s already asleep in our department. We cannot evacuate ourselves and [leave] these people inside. As a doctor, I swear to help the people who need help.”
Early Saturday, the group wrote on social media that its staff “are witnessing people being shot at as they attempt to flee the al-Shifa hospital.”
People take part in the National March for Palestine in London on Saturday November 11, 2023. (Photo: Victoria Jones/PA Images via Getty Images)
“In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians,” demonstrators chanted at Saturday’s march, described as one of the largest political protests in U.K. history.
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of London on Saturday to demand an immediate cease-fire in Gaza as Israeli forces ramped up their aerial and ground assault on the Palestinian enclave’s hospitals and other civilian infrastructure, intensifying the territory’s humanitarian crisis.
Described as one of the largest political demonstrations in U.K. history, the march moved ahead despite criticism from British Home Secretary Suella Braverman and Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who suggested earlier in the week that the protest should have been banned by London police given that it coincided with Armistice Day. Braverman accused the police of giving favorable treatment to “pro-Palestinian mobs.”
“I am horrified by the tone, language, and incitement our own government is using to whip up hatred against its own citizens—citizens who are standing up in solidarity with the besieged and bombed citizens of Gaza,” British Army veteran and march participant Nadia Mitchell wrote for OpenDemocracy. “Personally, I cannot think of a more appropriate day to demand a cease-fire than on the day we remember the mother of all cease-fires, to remember and honor those who sacrificed their lives in pursuit of peace and an end to war.”
Some U.K. lawmakers, including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Labour MP John McDonnell, joined Saturday’s march alongside hundreds of thousands of peace activists, union members, and people of all faiths.
“In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians,” demonstrators chanted.
(Photo: Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)
Reuters reported that “police said far-right groups opposing the march were present in central London in ‘significant numbers,’ leading to skirmishes with officers near the Cenotaph war memorial, close to the Houses of Parliament and in Westminster.”
“Officers in riot gear sought to contain the far-right protesters, some of whom threw bottles at them, and police vehicles sped around the city to respond to reports of tensions in the streets,” the outlet added.
Participants in the mass demonstration, meanwhile, marched from London’s Hyde Park to the U.S. Embassy to protest the Biden administration’s unwavering military and political support for the Israeli government as the death toll in Gaza continues to climb.
The head of the World Health Organization told the United Nations Security Council on Friday that Israel’s bombing and siege are killing one child on average every 10 minutes in Gaza.
“Nowhere and no one is safe,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Mohammed Abu Mughaisib, deputy medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in Gaza, toldThe Washington Post on Saturday that hospitals in northern Gaza have become “a graveyard” due to mounting Israeli attacks.
Medical workers at al-Nasr pediatric hospital were forced to leave babies in incubators behind as they evacuated south, Abu Mughaisib said.
“The medical staff evacuated because of the shelling on the pediatric hospital, and they couldn’t save the babies to take them out, so they left five babies alone in the intensive care on the machines and the ventilators,” he told the newspaper. “That’s the situation: leaving babies now alone on the ventilators.”
(Photo: Victoria Jones/PA Images via Getty Images)
Saturday’s march was organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), Stop the War Coalition, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and other advocacy groups.
“We march to call for an end to the indiscriminate bombing of civilians and a #CeasefireNOW,” PSC director Ben Jamal wrote on social media. “We march in respect of the rights of all to live in freedom and with dignity.”
The demonstration is part of a growing international movement supporting a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip as Western leaders, including Sunak and U.S. President Joe Biden, refuse to demand an end to Israel’s siege and relentless bombing campaign.
Earlier this week, as Israeli forces encircled northern Gaza, Biden told reporters that there is “no possibility” of a cease-fire. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly rejected a proposed five-day cease-fire in exchange for the release of some of the hostages held by Hamas.
(Photo: Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)
Video footage of Saturday’s march shows the streets of central London packed with demonstrators expressing solidarity with the people of Gaza and demanding an end to Israel’s assault, which began after a deadly Hamas-led attack in southern Israel last month.
An estimated 300,000 people took part in Saturday’s march, according to London authorities.
“This footage shows the true will of the British people,” wrote Ahmed Alnaouq, a London-based Palestinian journalist and co-founder of the nonprofit We Are Not Numbers. “Hundreds of thousands are protesting peacefully despite rounds of vicious smear campaigns and intimidation. “All say in one word: CEASE-FIRE NOW!”
This is the Coming soon article, may get revised or elaborated.
Our recent ancestors – parents, grandparents and great-grandparents – likely fought a war against the realization of an evil, racist ideology called Fascism. Most of the World fought Fascism in the Second World War with Russia paying the far heaviest price in killed soldiers. German Nazi Fascists murdered many people: political opponents like Communists or Anarchists, homosexuals or those they considered inferior due to disability or race e.g. Slavs, Roma and Jews. The concept of subhuman (Untermensch) was employed by Nazi Fascists to rationalise or justify their systematic mass murders.
Image of Fascists Mussolini and Hitler
I would point out that race is a fake, synthetic construct and that people of geographical regions will have a similar mix of genes. You are welcome to disagree is you’re a racist in which case I challenge you to prove me wrong ;) It follows that a heirarchy of races is not possible since races don’t exist. There can be no superior races if there are no races.
The war to defeat Fascism and the United Nations have failed in the sense that war crimes and the mass murder of civilians regarded as racially inferior and less than human occurs and is witnessed today. There is complicity in war crimes by Biden, Sunak, Starmer and European leaders. Human rights are not protected, international law is not upheld. Prosecutions for war crimes and complicity should but I expect are unlikely to happen. There is a democratic deficit: ordinary people worldwide are witnessing genocidal atrocities which their governments often facilitate or are complicit in. We need to prosecute, get rid of those evil politicians and try to ensure that no more are elected.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is the only permanent global court to have jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. It recently issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Karim Khan, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, has said the court has “active investigations ongoing” in relation to Gaza and the West Bank going back to 2014.
During its current campaign against Gaza, Israel has violated Article 31 of the Geneva Convention on Protection of Civilians by imposing collective punishment on 2.3m people by withdrawing all water, food and electricity.
By targeting civilian infrastructure such as hospitals and schools, Israel has also violated the same convention. Amnesty International has referred to Israel’s “killing of civilians on a mass scale” and documented “indiscriminate” attacks on civilians.
A team of UN experts has said Israel’s campaign in Gaza involves “crimes against humanity”.
Rishi Sunak has given Britain’s full approval to the flattening of Gaza.
Late on 7 October, the prime minister tweeted “we stand unequivocally with Israel”. Sunak had expressed “full solidarity” to Benjamin Netanyahu, the tweet added.
As Netanyahu had promised “mighty vengeance” following the Hamas-led offensive that morning, there was no room for doubt about the signal which Sunak was sending.
In a few words, Sunak took Britain’s foreign policy to a new extreme.
Israel’s “mighty vengeance” is shaping up to be its most destructive bombardment ever of Gaza and its 2.3 million inhabitants.
A “mighty vengeance” endorsed by 10 Downing Street.
There is a long history of the UK supporting Israel’s wars.
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11 Nov 23 11.55 It is the same democratic deficit where politicans fail to address the climate crisis and the transition to net zero. By sucking up to the rich and powerful and actively undermining such a transition politicians such as Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak make that democratic deficit clear to all. They’re representing twisted and evil vested interests instead of the interests of their electors and constituents.
18 Nov 23. I am disappointed with Bernie Sanders, Jon Lansman and the likes. They’re unable to call for a ceasefire despite the obvious atrocities committed by Israel on a largely defenceless population. Like Starmer, they are siding with Israel.
