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Tag: France

  • Protesters March on NYC Transit Hubs Demanding Gaza Cease-Fire

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

    Demonstrators demanding a Gaza cease-fire protest outside Penn Station in New York City on December 18, 2023. (Photo: caren/X)

    “We must stand up and not be silent to this injustice,” said one rabbi taking part in the demonstration.

    A coordinated wave of demonstrations against what activists called Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza targeted New York City transit hubs Monday afternoon, with protesters demanding an immediate cease-fire as heavy Israeli bombardment of the besieged strip pushed the death toll from 73 days of attacks to nearly 20,000.

    Protesters marched from Grand Central Station to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and then on to Penn Station, where at least hundreds of activists gave police the slip and occupied Moynihan Hall. Many participants prayed for peace before leaving the station.

    “We must stand up and not be silent to this injustice,” Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss toldamNewYork Metro outside Grand Central Station. “We hurt and cry with the people who are dying and suffering under the stranglehold of the Zionist occupation. We want the world to know that we hurt because we are Jews, we will not be silent because we are Jews.”

    Independent photojournalist Katie Smith followed the entire demonstration—which was coordinated by the group Within Our Lifetime—documenting incidents including police “violently engaging with protesters” and a confrontation between the actor Alec Baldwin and activists.

    According to Smith, activists later marched to a building in Greenwich Village where a fundraiser for the Israel Defense Forces was reportedly being held.

    Monday’s actions followed recent protests in New York, including a Manhattan march led by artists remembering the life and work of Refaat Alareer—a Gaza poet and professor killed last week in an Israeli airstrike—and calling on Israel to free political prisoners including the members of Freedom Theater recently arrested in Jenin in the illegally occupied West Bank.

    In recent days, large protests for Gaza have also taken place in U.S. cities including Houston, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., as well as in cities in countries including the U.K., Canada, France, Belgium, Norway, and Germany.

    In California, workers at Google and allies held a Thursday die-in at the tech giant’s San Francisco office “to demand the company stop powering Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza” through the $1.2 billion Project Nimbus cloud computing contract.

    More protests are planned for this week, including a nationwide action by Mennonites on Tuesday and a rally by over 80 groups on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. that same day.

    Sponsored by the Action Center on Race and Economy, Adalah Justice Project, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, and the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Tuesday’s D.C. event is being held to “demand a permanent cease-fire in Gaza and oppose the Biden administration’s proposed military aid package sending billions of taxpayer dollars to Israel, U.S. southern border militarization, and immigration enforcement.”

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

    Zionist president Joe Biden. 27 July 2021 image by Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz. Original public domain image from Flickr
    Zionist president Joe Biden. 27 July 2021 image by Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz. Original public domain image from Flickr

  • Emmanuel Macron pledges €1bn to fund research into melting ice caps

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    Image of an iceberg
    The tip of the Iceberg

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/12/emmanuel-macron-pledges-1bn-to-fund-research-into-melting-ice-caps

    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.

    This year is already the hottest on record and probably the hottest in 100,000 years, with ocean temperatures so far above normal as to be, in the words of one scientist, “gobsmackingly bananas”.

    …

    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.

    …

    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.

    …

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/12/emmanuel-macron-pledges-1bn-to-fund-research-into-melting-ice-caps

  • Europe cracks down on ‘direct action’ climate protests

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    Insight: Europe cracks down after rise in ‘direct action’ climate protests

    • Summary
    • France, German states use wiretaps, GPS to track activists
    • Bavaria tries to stop protests with preventative detention
    • Berlin police spend more than 400,000 hours on climate cases
    • France outlaws one group, German states consider ban

    BERLIN, Aug 10 (Reuters) – Simon Lachner had plans to glue himself to a German city thoroughfare in June to call public attention to climate change. Instead, he ended up in police custody before he’d even left his home.

    Lachner, 28, is one of thousands of activists caught up in a European crackdown on a wave of direct action protests that gathered pace last year demanding urgent government action against climate change.

    Roadblocks on major motorways in Britain have caused traffic chaos, protests at oil installations in Germany have disrupted supplies, and in France, thousands of activists and police clashed over water usage, leaving dozens injured.

    Determined to prevent such protests from strengthening further, states in Germany and national authorities in France are invoking legal powers often used against organised crime and extremist groups to wiretap and track activists, Reuters found, based on conversations with four prosecutors, police in both countries and more than a dozen protesters.

    In Berlin alone, police have spent hundreds of thousands of hours working on more than 4,500 incidents registered against the “The Last Generation” and “Extinction Rebellion” groups, according to previously unreported data from police.

    State authorities in Germany are widely using preventative detention to stop people from protesting, including holding at least one person for as long as 30 days without charge, which is permissible under Bavarian law, the prosecutors consulted by Reuters said.

    Lawmakers passed new surveillance and detention laws in France in July and in Britain in May, with Britain making it illegal to lock, or glue, yourself to property.

    …

    Insight: Europe cracks down after rise in ‘direct action’ climate protests

  • France sees its hottest year on record as temperatures across the globe continue to soar to dangerous levels

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    Image: Luis Graterol / Creative Commons

    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/france-sees-its-hottest-year-on-record-as-temperatures-across-the-globe-continue-to-soar-to-dangerous-levels

    FRANCE has experienced its hottest year since records began, the country’s national weather service said on Wednesday.

    This comes as temperatures across the globe continue to soar to dangerous levels.

    Extreme weather has devastated communities across the globe this year, including sweltering heat and drought conditions across Europe.

    France saw temperatures surge repeatedly in successive heat waves from May and into October, accompanied by extreme events like wildfires in areas like north-western Brittany.

    “[This year] will be the hottest year recorded in France since measurements began, so since at least 1900, that is a certainty, even if December is very cold,” said Matthieu Sorel, a climatologist at Meteo France.

    …

  • Macron warns France of ‘the end of abundance’ and tough times ahead

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    France: Macron warns of tough times ahead

    https://www.france24.com/en/france/20220824-macron-warns-french-of-tough-times-ahead-end-to-energy-price-cap

    After a summer marked by drought, massive wildfires and the war in Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a stark speech on Wednesday at the first cabinet meeting following the summer holiday break, warning of tough months ahead as the world faces a possible “end of abundance”.

    “I believe that we are in the process of living through a tipping point or great upheaval. Firstly because we are living through… what could seem like the end of abundance,” said Macron, 44. 

    The speech appeared designed to prepare the country for what promises to be a difficult winter ahead, with energy prices rising sharply and many families struggling with inflation.

    “The moment we are living … may seem to be structured by a series of crises, each more serious than the other,” Macron said, referring to the drought, fires and storms that have hit France during the summer as well as the Ukraine war and disruptions to global trade.

    “Freedom has a cost,” Macron said, urging his ministers to be ambitious and the French to accept new policies adapted to current circumstances. “The battles we have to fight … will only be won through our efforts.”

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