South Africa to file legal action with ICJ against UK, US, for war crime complicity
Article republished from the Skwawkbox
Nation whose case put Israel formally on trial for genocide joins Nicaragua in turning its sights on accomplices in genocide
A team of almost fifty South African lawyers is preparing a legal case to bring to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’ top court, against the US and UK, for their complicity in Israel’s array of war crimes in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
South Africa’s successful ICJ case against Israel last month led to Israel being put formally on trial for genocide and resulted in a string of binding orders on Israel to stop its slaughter of Gazans and even to protect Palestinians from harm, as well as to ensure adequate aid reaches the strip’s 2.5 million people, many of whom are now starving and homeless.
Israel has flouted the rulings, continuing and even intensifying the mass murder and blockade, and is being supported in its flagrant disregard for international law by the UK and US, who are providing both material and financial aid, and giving political cover by refusing to condemn Israel’s actions or to call its crimes what they are, instead casting doubt on the mass deaths and brutality and denigrating the Court’s ruling.
South Africa joins Nicaragua in taking action against the UK and US. The Central American nation has also filed a case against Germany, Canada and the Netherlands.
The team of lawyers, which already numbers around fifty, is likely to grow further as more lawyers are set to join from other nations. Wikus van Rensburg, who is leading the action, said that it was time for the US and other complicit nations to “be held responsible for [their] crimes”.
Article republished from the Skwawkbox
North Sea oil and gas assets a risky bet for private equity, think tank warns
North Sea oil and gas production is expected to plummet in the coming years, as renewables become increasingly competitive. Now, a new report by the think tank Carbon Tracker argues that private equity companies invested in North Sea (UK and Norway) oil and gas assets are particularly vulnerable to losses as demand falls. Private equity’s presence in the North Sea has grown steadily since the 2014 oil price crash.
In 2010, just 8% of North Sea assets were held by private companies, with the remainder owned by publicly listed oil majors and state-owned utilities. Currently, 29.7% of North Sea equity licences are held by current or former private equity-backed ventures, according to recent analysis from the Common Wealth think tank.
Carbon Tracker argues that while all upstream investors risk being saddled with stranded assets as demand for hydrocarbons falls, private equity companies are particularly vulnerable. For starters, the private equity industry is already facing “serious headwinds” as the low interest rate environment that “buoyed private markets” for the last decade “has, at least temporarily, come to an end”.
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Extreme UK flood levels are happening much more often than they used to, analysis shows
Original article by Louise Slater and Jamie Hannaford republished from the Conversation under Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives licence.
Heavy rain across southern Britain meant that most rivers in England swelled at the beginning of 2024, prompting widespread flooding.
The River Trent was among the most severely affected. Water levels at the Drakelow gauging station in the west Midlands reached 3.88 metres on January 4 – well above the previous record set less than four years earlier in February 2020.
Are floods growing larger and happening more often in the UK? There are two ways to answer this question. One is to consult computer models which project Earth’s climate in the future, and the other is to search the historical record.
Climate projections are important but highly uncertain as they indicate a wide range of potential futures for any given river. Projections also only tell part of the story as they do not reflect the patterns of water use, changes to groundwater levels or to the urban environment that can decide flooding on a particular river.
That’s why we give equal importance to historical data, although we cannot project past changes directly into the future. Historical archives of river monitoring data can help us understand how the largest floods are changing on the River Trent.
For instance, how is the 50-year water level (the highest point a river would be expected to reach in 50 years on average) changing? On the River Trent at Drakelow, the 50-year water level has risen from about 3.46 metres in 1959 to 3.83 metres in 2024. This means the largest floods are indeed getting bigger.
How the January 2024 floods compare
The flood water level on the Trent at the start of January 2024 was actually higher than what scientists would consider a once-in-50-year event in today’s warmer climate.
Another way to understand how much floods have changed is to consider how often they happen today compared with the past. If we look at the 50-year level from 1959 (about 3.46 metres), how often would such a flood occur in today’s climate?
On the Trent, a 3.46-metre flood level would now be expected to occur every 9.38 years, on average, in 2024. This makes sense, considering there have already been six events in which the river level exceeded 3.5 metres since the 1980s. The historical data shows that extreme water levels are being reached more frequently on the Trent.
Our analysis of the Trent aligns with results from a previous study which looked at rivers across the rest of the UK. In many places, 50-year floods are now happening less than every ten years, on average.
This is partly due to climate change and also partly due to natural variations in the climate which see rivers cycle through spells of more and less flooding. The UK went through a “flood-poor” period in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, and has been going through a “flood-rich” period since then.
Prepare for worse
It is worth noting that there are caveats to this type of analysis which tries to assess how extreme events are changing over time. Caution must be exercised when looking at long records of river levels given changes in river management practices and measurement techniques over time.
It should also be noted that these results use a different methodology to the industry standard for flood estimation.
But what matters is not the precise changes in the frequency of major floods (from 50 years down to nine or even two-and-a-half years, according to some statistical methods). It is understanding that the frequency of large floods is changing fast.
For many UK rivers with more extensive historical archives of river level measurements, floods appear to be occurring far more frequently than before. In a smaller number of places, they are occurring less frequently.
We need to better understand how flood risk will evolve in response to further human-induced warming. The UK’s efforts to predict and prepare for future floods are supported by the Environment Agency’s flood hydrology roadmap, which is mobilising a wide community of researchers and practitioners.
Overall, the UK must prepare to live with bigger floods and be able to predict flood-rich periods several years ahead. This starts with an understanding of how the severity and frequency of such events is changing.
To support this effort, we are preparing a range of tools to guide flood planners, including an interactive map allowing users to explore how flood return periods are changing across the UK. Being better prepared for extreme events in a warming climate starts with understanding what it will mean for your local area.
Original article by Louise Slater and Jamie Hannaford republished from the Conversation under Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives licence.
Hundreds of Thousands March for Gaza as World Demands Cease-Fire
Original article by JON QUEALLY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Coordinated actions from DC to London to Jakarta designed to “send a powerful message not just to the Israelis but to the Western powers who are backing them that the public say ‘not in our name.'”
Major coordinated demonstrations took place across the world on Saturday to mark the 100th day of Israel’s bombardment and military assault on the people of the Gaza Strip that have now claimed the lives of nearly 24,000 Palestinians, a large majority of them innocent men, women, and children who had nothing to do with the attacks orchestrated by Hamas on October 7 of last year.
In London, as many as 500,000 people marched on Parliament Square to demand an immediate cease-fire Gaza, condemn their own U.K. government’s support of Israel’s disproportionate and “genocidal” onslaught, and warn against a wider regional war that experts warn is creeping closer by the day.
“This Global Day of Action, from Australia through to Asia, Europe and the Americas, is the first coordinated, international movement against the war being waged by Israel on the Palestinian people,” said Gaza Global Day of Action organizers ahead of the demonstration. “It will send a powerful message not just to the Israelis but to the Western powers who are backing them that the public say ‘not in our name.'”
In Dublin, organizers of a march that saw more than 100,000 march through city streets called it the largest rally for Palestinian rights in Irish history.
As the Irish Timesreports:
The crowd was filled with Palestinian flags, posters calling for an “End to the Gaza genocide” as well as makeshift washing lines, with baby clothes hanging from it, representing the many young lives lost in the conflict.
At the front of the march, four people held mock corpses in bloody body bags to represent the growing number of civilian casualties.
In the United States, tens of thousands marched in Washington, D.C. to denounce the Israeli onslaught—which has claimed over 23,000 lives, including more than 10,000 children—as well as their own government’s complicity in the carnage. President Joe Biden was on the tip of many demonstrators’ tongues and polls in the U.S. have shown very little support across the political spectrum for how he is handling the situation.
Jake and Ida Braford, a young couple from Richmond, Virginia, who brought their two small children to the protest, told the Associated Press the situation in Gaza has made them unsure of their support for Biden come this year’s election.
“We’re pretty disheartened,” Ida told the news agency. “Seeing what is happening in Gaza, and the government’s actions makes me wonder what is our vote worth?”
Following the march, demonstrators left a pile of bloodied baby dolls, including severe parts, in a pile outside the White House as a message to Biden. “The blood of the over 10,000 murdered children in Gaza is on his hands,” said CodePink co-founder Jodie Evans.
Meanwhile, in Indonesia, thousands gathered outside the U.S. embassy in Jakarta to condemn the ongoing “genocide” in Gaza perpetrated by Israel with the backing of the U.S. government and other Western allies.
Large protests were also held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia as well as in the South African cities of Cape Town and Johannesburg. On Thursday, a delegation from South Africa presented its case charging Israel with genocide before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.
“We are here today to be part of the global day of action that will see demonstrations planned in more than 66 cities and at least 36 countries,” said a statement released by the organizers in Cape Town. “Today’s rally will be part of a united front of global voices, calling unconditionally for an immediate and permanent ceasefire.”
Cities in Israel were not among those holding large-scale demonstrations against the government’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza. One application by Israelis for a rally in Haifa to denounce the onslaught was rejected.
As Haaretzreported: “The commander of the police’s Coastal District, Maj. Gen. Daniel Levy, explained that the refusal to grant the permit was over “real concerns about a serious disruption to public order,” adding that there was a high likelihood that violence would break out between demonstrators and people opposing the demonstration.”
Original article by JON QUEALLY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).