… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Tag: Europe

  • Talking about Palestine “not a crime,” reminds UN Rapporteur Albanese

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    Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

    Francesca Albanese during the event “Reclaiming the Discourse: Palestine, Justice, and Truth”. Source: screenshot

    UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s talks have faced intense state pressure across Europe, with Germany at the forefront

    Talks by UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese in Europe continue to face fierce pressure. Following the withdrawal of an invitation by some Dutch parliamentarians, German authorities have gone to great lengths to obstruct events where Albanese was scheduled to speak. Two German universities canceled events that had already been announced and had garnered widespread interest. However, activists secured alternative venues, ensuring Albanese could still present the results of her work.

    Yet even non-institutional venues were not spared from pressure. The publisher of Junge Welt, which stepped in to host the event “Reclaiming the Discourse: Palestine, Justice, and Truth“ after it was cast out from its original location, found itself facing nearly 100 police officers. Inside the hall, around 200 attendees gathered to hear Albanese speak. Despite protests, the police remained stationed at the venue throughout the event, serving as a clear reminder of the dire state of free expression in Germany. While the hosts are considering legal action against the police, such repression is expected to persist, as left-wing activists remain under surveillance and students organizing Palestine solidarity events at universities face persecution.

    Read more: German state continues crackdown on Palestine solidarity

    Organizations hosting Albanese, including the political platform DiEM25, have described these pressures as “a direct assault on the rule of law and the core principles of democracy.” Similarly, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance – Reason and Justice, along with members of the left party Die Linke, condemned the suppression of academic freedom and the silencing of discussions on Palestine soon after the news of the cancellations.

    According to Albanese, Germany is the first country she has visited recently where universities have capitulated to pressure and canceled her speeches. “This gives me a sense of the state of the debate in this country,” she told attendees of Reclaiming the Discourse. Throughout the discussion, the UN Special Rapporteur emphasized the lengths to which many European governments are willing to go to suppress debates on Palestine—Germany, in particular, leading the charge. Despite the authorities’ repressive actions, she insisted that “it’s not a crime to talk about Germany’s implications and responsibilities vis-à-vis what’s happening in Palestine.”

    She also urged participants to reject fear and organize against the climate of repression surrounding discussions on Palestine in Europe, describing it as an atmosphere lacking oxygen. “It’s no longer [just] about Palestine,” she continued. “When I see police officers in Europe using the stick against people standing against injustice, when I see Jewish people in this country being lectured about what antisemitism is—I say something has gone wrong.”

    “I wouldn’t feel comfortable living in a country where you cannot talk about a people who are being genocided,” she added.

    Read more: A year of struggle for Palestine in the belly of the beast

    In their attempts to silence Albanese, Zionist groups and other right-wing organizations have attempted to smear her as antisemitic. Some have fallen for this ruse, but many more continue to stand by her and amplify her work. While audience members noted that university staff largely failed to publicly support her or defend academic freedom following the cancellations, Albanese pointed to the legal and academic experts, including in the Global South, who have spoken out, urging institutions to refuse such repression.

    “While our politicians and universities fail to show respect for a UN Special Rapporteur, we, as international lawyers, fail a colleague and a luminary in these dark times by not standing up for her against false and unfounded accusations,” wrote public and international economic law expert and professor Isabel Feichtner. “Most of all, however, we fail our students, broader society, and the very idea of human rights, which—if they are to have any meaning—must serve the powerless.”

    Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

  • ‘This Is Climate Change’: Devastating Flooding Kills More Than 70 in Spain

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

    A view of the damaged area after a deluge brought up to 200 liters of rain per square meter (50 gallons per square yard) in hours in towns across the region of Valencia, Spain on October 30, 2024. (Photo: Alex Juarez/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    “These disasters are only getting worse, and stopping the industries and systems driving climate collapse is the only rational response,” one climate group said.

    Spain’s deadliest flooding in 30 years killed at least 72 people as torrential rain slammed the eastern region of Valencia on Tuesday, with some towns recording a year’s worth of rain in a single day.

    The flooding sent churning muddy water down narrow streets, tossing cars, downing trees, bulldozing bridges and buildings, and trapping people in rising flood waters.

    “The neighborhood is destroyed, all the cars are on top of each other, it’s literally smashed up,” Christian Viena, who owns a bar in Valencia’s Barrio de la Torre, told The Associated Press. “Everything is a total wreck, everything is ready to be thrown away. The mud is almost 30 centimeters (11 inches) deep.”

    https://x.com/MatthewCappucci/status/1851377469942562964?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1851377469942562964%7Ctwgr%5Ecee4dacd5fa098e03f39569643b409cc286a36a7%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fclimate-deadly-flooding-spain

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    As of Wednesday morning, officials reported 70 deaths in Valencia and two in the bordering region of Castilla La Mancha. However, the death toll could rise as search and rescue operations continue amid difficult conditions, such as power outages and blocked roadways. Many people remain missing with their fates uncertain.

    This includes residents of Utiel in Valencia, whose mayor, Ricardo Gabaldón, told Spanish broadcaster RTVE that Tuesday was the “worst day of my life.”

    “We were trapped like rats,” Gabaldón said. “Cars and trash containers were flowing down the streets. The water was rising to 3 meters (9.8 feet).”

    One person who was rescued was Denis Hlavaty, who spent the night perched on the edge of the roof of a gas station where he works.

    “It’s a river that came through,” Hlavaty told Reuters, adding, “The doors were torn away and I spent the night there, surrounded by water that was 2 metres (6.5-feet) deep.”

    “The fossil fuel industry increases the climate emergency, destroys the balance of critical ecosystems, and puts people’s lives in danger.”

    The storm also canceled high-speed rail travel between Valencia and Madrid and Barcelona, and derailed one high-speed train near Malaga, though no one was injured.

    While the rains had tapered off in Valencia by Wednesday morning, the rest of the country is not out of danger, as the storm is projected to move northeast.

    “We mustn’t let our guard down because the weather front is still wreaking havoc and we can’t say that this devastating episode is over,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez told the nation on television Wednesday.

    Even if the death toll does not rise, Tuesday’s floods are already the deadliest in Spain since 1996, when a flood near the Pyrenees killed 87. They are also the deadliest in Europe since floods in 2021 that killed at least 185.

    In the immediate term, Tuesday’s deluge was caused by a phenomenon called a gota fría, or “cold drop,” a storm formed as cold air moves over the warm Mediterranean. In Spain, these kinds of storms are also commonly referred to with the acronym DANA—for Depresión Aislada en Niveles Altos, or isolated high-level depression.

    However, scientists observe that the climate crisis is making rainstorms like this one more extreme, as warmer air can hold more moisture to dump when conditions are right. For Europe specifically, the warming of the Mediterranean causes more water to evaporate from its surface, super-charging rainstorms.

    “Events of this type, which used to occur many decades apart, are now becoming more frequent and their destructive capacity is greater,” Ernesto Rodriguez Camino, senior state meteorologist and a member of the Spanish Meteorological Association, told Reuters.

    https://twitter.com/DaveThroup/status/1851315836239110151?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1851315836239110151%7Ctwgr%5Ecee4dacd5fa098e03f39569643b409cc286a36a7%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fclimate-deadly-flooding-spain

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    The Spanish flooding comes a little more than a month after record rainfall swamped Central Europe and Eastern Europe, in an event that scientists concluded was made approximately twice as likely and 7% more severe by the climate crisis fueled primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.

    “When we talk about climate change and climate emergency, it’s often perceived as an abstract concept far from our daily reality,” Eva Saldaña, the executive director of Greenpeace Spain, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, this is climate change: the intensification of extreme weather phenomenons like what happened tonight, with the level of destruction greater each time. Ignoring it causes deaths that we cannot allow.”

    In a post on social media, Greenpeace Spain said that fossil fuel companies including the Spanish Repsol should pay for the damages.

    “DANAS are more intense every time due to climate change,” the group wrote. “The fossil fuel industry increases the climate emergency, destroys the balance of critical ecosystems, and puts people’s lives in danger.”

    https://twitter.com/greenpeace_esp/status/1851291333362860337?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1851291333362860337%7Ctwgr%5Ecee4dacd5fa098e03f39569643b409cc286a36a7%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fclimate-deadly-flooding-spain

    Extinction Rebellion Global agreed. “These disasters are only getting worse, and stopping the industries and systems driving climate collapse is the only rational response,” the group wrote on social media.

    The U.S.-based Climate Defiance, meanwhile, shared images of flood-ravaged streets with dismissals often leveled at climate activists.

    https://x.com/ClimateDefiance/status/1851390346145788144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1851390346145788144%7Ctwgr%5Ecee4dacd5fa098e03f39569643b409cc286a36a7%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fclimate-deadly-flooding-spain

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    Yellow Dot Studios, Don’t Look Up director Adam McKay’s climate-focused media studio, also shared an image of cars dropped in piles in the street by the flood waters to call out the double-standard in how direct-action climate protests and the corporate crimes of the fossil fuel industry are punished.

    https://twitter.com/weareyellowdot/status/1851637056126308480?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1851637056126308480%7Ctwgr%5Ecee4dacd5fa098e03f39569643b409cc286a36a7%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fclimate-deadly-flooding-spain

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    Friends of the Earth Spain focused on the human impacts, arguing that urgent climate action meant “putting people’s lives, and not economic models, at the center.”

    “Don’t prioritize sending people to work in extreme and dangerous conditions,” the group wrote. “It is a priority to take effective, ambitious, and urgent measures in response to the climate crisis we are living through.”

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

    dizzy: It’s almost as if Elon Musk’s X is censoring the climate crisis!

  • Jeremy Corbyn: Peace and solidarity must guide us in building a united international left

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    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/peace-and-solidarity-must-guide-building-united-international-left

    PEACE: Former Labour Party leader and now independent MP Jeremy Corbyn speaks at a London rally for Palestine, September 11 2024

    Speaking at the Podemos congress over the weekend, JEREMY CORBYN MP outlines three crucial areas for building a powerful leftist movement across Europe: opposing austerity, promoting peace and combating the far right

    AS we look to build a united left across Europe, there are three key issues that can form the basis of a strong, powerful movement: anti-austerity, peace and opposition to the far right.

    Europe is heading toward a renewed era of austerity. We have witnessed attacks on wages and conditions all over Europe. Working-class living standards have fallen. Wages have stagnated. Meanwhile, there are more billionaires than ever before.

    Inequality is not inevitable. It is the result of decisions that governments take to take money from the many and give it to the few. Last week, the British government celebrated its 100-day anniversary.

    In that time, it has made two supposedly “tough” choices. One is to keep children in poverty by retaining the two-child benefits cap, refusing to lift 250,000 children out of poverty. The second decision was to cut the winter fuel allowance for 10 million pensioners.

    We are told that these have been “tough choices.” Every day, my constituents make tough choices. Tough choices like deciding whether to heat their homes or put food on the table. Tough choices like taking out a loan to pay for this month’s rent. Tough choices like selling their home to pay for their family’s social care.

    The government knows that there is a range of choices available to them. They could introduce wealth taxes to raise upwards of £10 billion. They could stop wasting public money on private contracts. They could launch a fundamental redistribution of power by bringing water and energy into full public ownership.

    Instead, they have opted to take resources away from people who were promised things would change. There is plenty of money, it’s just in the wrong hands — and we will not be fooled by ministers’ attempts to feign regret over cruel decisions they know they don’t have to take.

    Austerity is not a tough choice. It is the wrong choice. The British government tells us there is no money. At the very same time, they are committing to raising defence expenditure to 2.5 per cent of GDP.

    …

    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/peace-and-solidarity-must-guide-building-united-international-left

    Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.
    Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.

  • As Europe Reels From Flood Damage, Calls Grow for Big Oil to Pay for Climate Destruction

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

    Firefighters in a boat make their way past a car submerged by the floods in Rust im Tullnerfeld, Austria, on September 16, 2024. (Photo: Helmut Fohringer/APA/AFP via Getty Images)

    “We are deeply worried such events will get worse until oil and gas giants like Shell, Total, Equinor, Exxon, OMV, and ENI are forced to stop drilling for fossil fuels driving climate change,” said one campaigner.

    The international climate group Greenpeace on Friday called on European leaders to “reciprocate” the courage shown by first responders in several countries over the weekend by forcing fossil fuel giants to pay for climate damages.

    Calling out leaders including Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, and Romania Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, Greenpeace campaigner Ian Duff said Central and Eastern European countries should end their “support for fossil fuels and [make] climate polluters pay for this disaster,” as emergency workers rescued people from catastrophic flooding.

    The death toll on Monday rose to at least 16, with many more people missing and hundreds of thousands of people displaced in countries including Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia after the low-pressure system Storm Boris dumped torrential rains on the region for days starting late last week.

    Two men, aged 70 and 80, drowned in their homes in northeastern Lower Austria after being trapped by rising floodwater, and confirmed deaths in Poland rose to six.

    About 70% of Litovel, about 140 miles east of the Czech capital of Prague, was underwater Monday, while a power plant servicing the country’s third-largest city was forced to shut down and leave residents without heat and hot water.

    “Greenpeace is horrified by damages brought by floods across Central and Eastern Europe, claiming lives, leaving homes without power and farmers with ruined fields, after being already ravaged by drought,” said Duff, head of Greenpeace’s Stop Drilling Start Paying campaign. “We are deeply worried such events will get worse until oil and gas giants like Shell, Total, Equinor, Exxon, OMV, and ENI are forced to stop drilling for fossil fuels driving climate change.”

    In the U.S., the notion of big polluters being required to pay for damages caused by the climate crisis has recently gained traction, with lawmakers introducing a bill in Congress last week.

    In Europe, a “polluter pays” principle is followed for many kinds of pollution, but advocates have called for it to be applied to planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions.

    The flooding in Europe comes, as London-based meteorologist Scott Duncan explained on the social media platform X, after “an exceptional summer for the Mediterranean Sea,” with heat records broken—just as scientists have warned this year that record heat in the North Atlantic and other oceans around the globe would mean “a busy hurricane season.”

    “Warmer sea surface temperatures allow more moisture to evaporate, like fuel for a storm. The warmer the water, the greater the evaporation,” said Duncan.

    Liz Stephens, science lead for the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center, noted that in Central and Eastern Europe, “climate change is known to be playing a role in increasing the risk of flooding,” with the World Weather Attribution saying in 2021 that disastrous flooding that hit Germany and Belgium was tied to “a rapidly warming climate.”

    Reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Stephens added, “have indicated that we have already observed an upward trend in heavy rainfall, surface water, and river flooding, and climate models show high confidence of further increases into the future.”

    “The flooding looks set to be the worst in the region since 2002,” she said. “Lessons will have been learned from previous big European floods, but forecasts for some locations are for flooding of unprecedented magnitude, and history tells us that people are often surprised by the seemingly unimaginable consequences of such events.”

    Journalist and climate advocate George Monbiot pointed out on Al Jazeera that storms previously described as “once-in-1,000-year occurrences [are] happening several times now in the past decade. We’re seeing a massive acceleration and intensification of extreme weather events, and unfortunately this is exactly what climate scientists were predicting.”

    Climate action group Friends of the Earth echoed Greenpeace’s demand to “leave fossil fuels in the ground and instead invest in a green future,” and Duff emphasized that communities across Central and Eastern Europe are far from the only ones “reeling from deadly floods and torrential rains,” with Typhoon Yagi causing flooding and landslides that killed at least 250 people in Southeast Asia in recent days and heavy rains across West and Central Africa leading to floods that killed more than 1,000 people.

    “The fossil fuel industry,” said Duff, “is worsening weather extremes everywhere.”

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

  • Deadly Flooding in Europe Shows ‘Dramatic Consequences’ of Climate Change

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

    The Danube Canal overflows its banks in Vienna’s city center on September 15, 2024. 
    (Photo: Alex Halada/AFP via Getty Images)

    “What you see here is worse than in 1997, and I don’t know what will happen because my house is under water and I don’t know if I will even return to it,” one storm evacuee said.

    Extreme flooding has claimed the lives of at least seven people in Central and Eastern Europe and forced thousands to flee their homes over the weekend.

    Storm Boris—a low pressure system—has been lashing the area since Thursday, with major cities seeing a month’s worth of rain and some areas seeing their heaviest rainfall in 100 years between Saturday and Sunday.

    “We are again facing the effects of climate change, which are increasingly present on the European continent, with dramatic consequences,” Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said, as The Guardian reported.

    The storm has been deadliest in Romania, where four people were killed on Saturday and a fifth on Sunday, according toCNN. Hundreds of people also had to be rescued from rising waters.

    The most impacted part of Romania was Galati, where the storm damaged around 5,400 homes—and around 700 in the village of Slobozia Conachi alone.

    “This is a catastrophe of epic proportions,” Mayor Emil Dragomir said, as The Guardian reported.

    “The idiotic media have failed to make it clear what’s coming—and this is still the beginning.”

    The sixth death came in Austria, where a firefighter battling flooding perished on Sunday. Authorities have declared a disaster for Lower Austria, where Vienna is located, and staged nearly 5,000 rescues there Saturday night. The storm also shut down rail service in the eastern part of the country.

    “We are experiencing difficult and dramatic hours in Lower Austria,” said the provincial governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner, as The Associated Press reported. “For many people in Lower Austria these will probably be the most difficult hours of their lives.”

    In Poland, one person drowned in the hardest-hit region of Kłodzko, where around 1,600 people were forced to evacuate and 17,000 lost power.

    In another town of Stonie Slaski, flood waters overwhelmed a dam and collapsed a bridge, while the river in Glucholazy overflowed its banks.

    “The situation is still very dramatic in many place[s],” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Sunday, according to CNN. “Unfortunately, these situations are repeating themselves in many places… but some residents sometimes underestimate the level of threat and refuse to evacuate.”

    The storm also pummeled parts of Slovakia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, where some of the highest rainfall totals in the region were reported and where four people are still missing.

    The storm forced 10,000 people from the city of Opava to flee their homes, and Mayor Tomáš Navrátil said conditions were worse than in 1997’s so-called “flood of the century,” according to AP.

    “What you see here is worse than in 1997, and I don’t know what will happen because my house is under water and I don’t know if I will even return to it,” Lipová-lázne resident Pavel Bily said, as The Guardian reported.

    The rains are expected to continue at least through Monday.

    In 2021, World Weather Attribution said that the climate emergency has made extreme flooding in Europe more likely. The storm also followed the hottest summer on record, as well as a warm beginning to September in the region, and warmer air can hold more moisture.

    “People are in prison today for trying to warn the public how bad things are going to get,” author Matthew Todd wrote on social media in response to footage of a dam bursting in Poland. “Scientists have taken to the streets to warn us.”

    “The idiotic media have failed to make it clear what’s coming—and this is still the beginning,” Todd continued. “Educate everyone you know.”

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