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Tag: United States

  • European Court of Human Rights Delivers ‘Quantum Leap for Climate Accountability’

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

    An activist from the environmental movement Extinction Rebellion holds up a sign reading “Oil Kills” as police officers remove him from the premises of DNB Bank during a protest in Oslo, Norway on August 21, 2025. (Photo by Javad Parsa/NTB/AFP via Getty Images)

    “Requiring governments to assess the global climate consequences of oil and gas combustion before approving new fossil projects is common sense, and long overdue,” said one campaigner.

    Although the European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday sided with the Norwegian government over six young adults and a pair of climate groups, the plaintiffs still welcomed the tribunal’s ruling as “a major step forward,” in the words of Frode Pleym, head of Greenpeace Norway.

    The case stems from the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy granting 10 exploration licenses to 13 companies for fossil fuel production in the Arctic Barents Sea in 2016. The plaintiffs argued that doing so violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, or the right to respect for private and family life.

    The court unanimously held that “there had been no violation” of Article 8, but it also affirmed that the government must conduct a full environmental impact assessment, including greenhouse gas emissions from combustion, for any new petroleum production.

    “It’s a relief to see the court recognize what science has told us for years—that new oil and gas fields threaten our most basic human rights,” Pleym said in a statement. “Requiring governments to assess the global climate consequences of oil and gas combustion before approving new fossil projects is common sense, and long overdue.”

    Young Friends of the Earth Norway, which sued alongside Greenpeace and the six individuals, also praised the ruling as progress.

    “This decision is a quantum leap for climate accountability,” said the group’s leader, Sigrid Hoddevik Losnegård. “The government can no longer continue its oil and gas policy as if climate change doesn’t exist. This judgment will have ripple effects far beyond Norway.”

    I can think of at least seven ways fossil fuel producers could wiggle out of this, but still: holy shit this is huge.

    — Dr. Genevieve Guenther (she/they) (@doctorvive.bsky.social) 2025-10-28T11:17:12.237Z

    The plaintiffs noted in a joint statement that the ruling “builds on” recent decisions from the International Court of Justice and the UK Supreme Court. The ICJ said in a landmark advisory opinion in July that countries have a legal obligation to take cooperative action to address the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency. At the time, Danilo Garrido, legal counsel at Greenpeace International, hailed the development as “the start of a new era of climate accountability at a global level.”

    That decision came roughly a year after the UK’s top court ruled that Surrey authorities’ approval of the Horse Hill drilling project “was unlawful” because they didn’t consider “emissions that will occur when the oil produced is burnt as fuel,” as required by law. Friends of the Earth UK called the ruling “a heavy blow for the fossil fuel industry” that could impact other projects.

    The European court’s Tuesday decision came less than two weeks away from the start of the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil. In preparation for COP30, the UN on Tuesday released a report warning that governments’ climate plans would reduce fossil fuel emissions by just 10% by 2035 compared to 2019 levels, far short of what is needed to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting temperature rise this century to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.

    As Oil Change International pointed out in a June report, Norway and three other wealthy nations—Australia, Canada, and the United States—account for the majority of planned oil and gas expansion over the next decade. This month, the group commissioned a poll that found a majority of Norwegians believe their country should either stop exploring for new oil and gas or slow down the pace.

    “The data show that Norwegians increasingly want political leadership that aligns the country’s oil policy with its climate goals,” Oil Change’s North Sea campaign manager, Silje Lundberg, said Monday. “People are calling time on endless oil expansion—it’s the government that’s stuck in the past. The public clearly wants a plan to phase down oil and gas and deliver real climate leadership, not more empty talk from ministers protecting the industry.”

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

    Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
    Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
    Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
    Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
    Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
    Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.

  • Trump’s military escalation against Venezuela repeats the Iraq War blueprint

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    Original article by Manolo De Los Santos republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

    A US Army soldier watching a burning oil well at Rumaila oil field in Iraq in April 2003. Photo: US Navy

    With the suspension of dialogue between the US and Venezuela, the sighting of US B-52 bombers in Venezuelan airspace, and the further lethal US strikes in the Caribbean, the US seems to be accelerating its drive towards war with Venezuela

    Lee en español aquí

    The mood in the Caribbean grows increasingly tense, as the United States intensifies its military threats. Beneath the deceptive shroud of the “war on drugs,” the United States is actively executing a blueprint for military intervention in Venezuela, employing lethal force and projecting power in a manner that legal institutions and regional leaders have condemned as a profound threat to international order. This aggression is not a law enforcement operation; it is the negation of law, a neocolonial revival of the Monroe Doctrine, designed to shatter the sovereignty of Venezuela, seize control of the world’s largest oil reserves, and install a compliant regime.

    A license to kill: the precedent of state murder

    A chilling adoption of extrajudicial violence has marked the current escalation. The Trump administration has ordered unilateral military strikes against private vessels near the Venezuelan coast, allegedly to stop drug trafficking. To launch these alarming attacks, the US military has deployed a massive naval force of warships, drones, and special operations forces.

    These strikes have resulted in the summary execution of at least 27 people as of recent reports. The most recent lethal strike in the Caribbean resulted in the “elimination” of 6 more people. This is not law enforcement; it is extrajudicial murder and a campaign that now stands as part of a war plan against Venezuela. The administration has characterized the victims, without credible proof, as drug traffickers and “terrorists,” a claim that, even if true, provides no legal authority for the US president to execute whomever it decides.

    Read more: Trump chooses war over diplomacy in the Caribbean

    Legal and human rights organizations have been unequivocal in their condemnation of this profound and dangerous policy, which replaces established law enforcement procedures with premeditated lethal force. The New York City Bar Association (NYCBA), a key voice on international legal ethics, has strongly denounced these actions. The NYCBA stated explicitly that “Because the recent attacks on Venezuelan vessels and their crews were unauthorized by US law and in violation of binding international law, they were illegal summary executions – murders.” They further argued that these actions violate the fundamental international principle that “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life” under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

    The US government possesses ample legal authority for the Coast Guard to interdict and search vessels suspected of carrying narcotics, followed by prosecution in US courts according to due process requirements. However, in the case of the Venezuelan vessels, the Coast Guard’s Congressionally authorized police function was bypassed; instead, the crews were simply targeted and executed by overwhelming military force. Regional leaders, including Colombian President Gustavo Petro, have condemned the extrajudicial killings, highlighting the profound anxiety across Latin America over a return to unilateral US military action under the cover of anti-narcotics policy.

    Read more: Trump’s smokescreen on Venezuela: Exposing the “narco-state” accusation

    Escalation: B-52s and the threat of war

    Beyond the lethal strikes, the US government has engaged in significant military posturing that amounts to a direct challenge to Venezuelan sovereignty. The sighting of US B-52 bombers in Venezuelan airspace, flying in close range, is a significant escalation. This warmongering has nothing to do with the “war on drugs” and everything to do with regime change to plunder Venezuela’s oil. This reckless push for war is a criminal act of international aggression.

    The Trump Administration’s unilateral drone strikes in the Caribbean, combined with the White House’s termination of all negotiations with Venezuela, appear as a precursor for a full-scale regime change operation. This is a critical moment. We must sound the alarm: there is a risk of a new, catastrophic conflict in the region.

    The US government’s own officials continue to escalate the crisis with bellicose rhetoric and actions. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a key architect of the regime-change policy, has consistently refused to rule out a military option, asserting that the Maduro regime has become a “threat to the region and even to the United States.”

    Venezuela’s response has been one of principled defense of its sovereignty. Ambassador to the UN, Samuel Moncada has repeatedly sounded the alarm on the global stage, arguing that the US military deployment in the Caribbean is a massive propaganda operation that seeks “excuses to fabricate a conflict” to seize the country’s oil wealth. Moncada affirmed that, “The United States believes that the Caribbean belongs to it because it has been using the expansionist Monroe Doctrine for over 100 years, which is nothing more than a remnant of colonialism.”

    President Nicolás Maduro has called on Washington to resume dialogue, stating, “Our diplomacy isn’t the diplomacy of cannons, of threats, because the world cannot be the world of 100 years ago,” while simultaneously mobilizing national defense exercises to ensure the country is prepared for any direct assault. The NYCBA warned that attacks against Venezuelan vessels and reported threats against the Venezuelan government violate the nation’s obligations under the United Nations Charter, with the risk of escalating to open hostilities.

    Parallels with the Iraq War: oil, ideology, and deception

    The current situation is chillingly reminiscent of the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In that case, the Bush administration justified unilateral action on the basis of “weapons of mass destruction,” but this was a pretext. The true objectives were not limited to oil, but also included achieving profound ideological and political goals – overthrowing a government to reshape Middle Eastern politics and assert dominance.

    Read more: In the name of the “War on Drugs”, the US continues to target Venezuelan boats

    Washington must learn the lessons of this history. The Bush administration promised a quick victory in Iraq. Instead, the invasions and occupation claimed countless Iraqi lives, resulted in tens of thousands of American soldiers killed or wounded, and destabilized the region. The notion that the US can carry out military invasions into the heart of Latin America without a massive blowback is outlandish.

    In the case of Venezuela, the “war on drugs” and the labeling of the government as a “threat” serve as the new rhetorical pretexts. The US interest is multifaceted: it involves securing the world’s largest proven oil reserves and achieving the ideological and political goal of overthrowing a socialist government to assert dominance and reshape Latin American politics. The US seeks to dismantle the Bolivarian Revolution and eliminate a major center of anti-imperialist politics in the hemisphere.

    The current escalation is not about law enforcement or counter-narcotics; it is about regime change and plunder. While members of Congress from both Democratic and Republican parties, as well as key voices of public opinion, are increasingly speaking up about the illegality of these strikes and the absence of credible information from the administration, this situation requires much more urgency, once the escalation ladder is climbed, there may be no going back. The international community must recognize this aggressive campaign for what it is: a criminal act of international aggression. The world must stand against this threat of a new, catastrophic conflict.

    Manolo De Los Santos is Executive Director of The People’s Forum and a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. His writing appears regularly in Monthly Review, Peoples Dispatch, CounterPunch, La Jornada, and other progressive media. He coedited, most recently, Viviremos: Venezuela vs. Hybrid War (LeftWord, 2020), Comrade of the Revolution: Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro (LeftWord, 2021), and Our Own Path to Socialism: Selected Speeches of Hugo Chávez (LeftWord, 2023).

    Original article by Manolo De Los Santos republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

    Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn't bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
    Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
    Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
    Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
    Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
    Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.

  • Attempts to delegitimise: Netanyahu at the UN General Assembly

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    This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

    Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the United Nations headquarters on September 26, 2025 in New York City, United States. [Mostafa Bassim – Anadolu Agency]

    by Dr Binoy Kampmark

    It takes a lot to make UN delegates walk out from an address to the General Assembly.  But this was precisely what Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, managed to achieve in his September 26 speech.  His address began by attempting to show his country as a guardian of law and civilisation, fighting a lonely, unsupported war against fiendish barbarians.  “Last year I stood at this podium and I showed this map.  It shows the curse of Iran’s terror axis.”  Such an axis threatened “the peace of the entire world.  It threatened the stability of our region and the very existence of my country, Israel.  They were meant also to threaten the United States and blackmail nations everywhere.”  

    The speech then moved into a triumphant register.  Hezbollah had been cowed.  The Houthis had been “hammered”.  The “bulk of Hamas’s terror machine” had been “crushed”.  The armaments of Bashir al-Assad had been destroyed, Iran’s Shiite militias in Iraq deterred.  “And most importantly, and above everything else that I could say to you or that we did in this past year, in this past decade, we devastated Iran’s atomic weapons and ballistic missile programs.”  Israel’s assassination program – the slaying of Iranian nuclear scientists, the killing of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, the slaughter of half of the Houthi leadership – were also points of celebration.  Regarding Hamas, Netanyahu offered the following: “The final remnants of Hamas are holed up in Gaza City.  They vow to repeat the atrocities of 7 October again and again.  That is why Israeli must finish the job.”

    Anyone familiar with Netanyahu’s streaky command of Disney cartography or predictive assessments on the military power of other states already knows the strained performance here.  Vital to his argument is delegitimising the cause of Palestinian statehood, treating it as an annex of a foreign power and a foreign movement.  He goes on to link with little effort Iran’s “massive nuclear weapons program and massive ballistic program” to the late Yahya Sinwar’s “dispatched” terrorists of Hamas as they made their way into Israel on 7 October 2023, to Hezbollah’s missiles and rockets in Lebanon, to Syria’s now deposed Assad regime, which “hosted Iran’s forces, tightening the noose of death around our throats.”  For good measure, the Houthis in Yemen were also thrown in. 

    READ: Netanyahu addresses empty hall, after most delegations walked out in protest

    This shoddy reasoning shares the strain of paranoia US strategists demonstrated with feverish intensity during the Cold War.  There was a stubborn refusal, at least till the Nixon administration, to see Communist insurgencies as the product of indigenous conditions rather than directed movements from Moscow and Peking.  Assistance and aid to North Vietnam, for instance, was misconstrued as command and control.  

    Similarly, Netanyahu sees radical Islam as a monolithic bloc of obscurantism that has absorbed the Palestinian cause.  Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis all shout “Death to America”.  All had “murdered Americans and Europeans in cold blood.”  Israel’s enemies were enemies of the West.  “They want to drag the modern world back to the past… to a dark age of violence, fanaticism, and terror.”  With demagogic purpose, he also pointed to “the radical Islamist surge” in the societies of Israel’s allies. Thank Israel, he declared, for having the capacity to supply the intelligence of five Central Intelligence Agencies, for doing, to quote German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, “the dirty work for all of us.”

    The Israeli PM represents a country whose magistrates and representatives sneer and mock international law, treasuring an exceptionalism that have given it an increasingly roguish character.  He is contemptuous of accusations that the IDF is not minimising harm to civilians, claiming that the ratio of non-combatant to combatant casualties is “less than two to one”, one much “lower than NATO’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq”.  This is an astonishing view, given that Israel’s own military data, as revealed by The Guardian, +972 magazine and Local Call, shows that 83 per cent of those killed in Gaza have been civilians.

    Besides, even where civilians were killed, they only did so under coercion from Hamas.  The oft repeated claim was made that the organisation “implants itself in mosques, schools, hospitals, apartment buildings and tries to force these civilians not to leave, to stay in harm’s way”.  This is a convenient spread, justifying the destruction of critical infrastructure and the essential features of a functioning society.  Unfortunately, evidence from the IDF on many of these claims has been skimpy.

    The allegations of genocide, firmed up by the findings of an independent UN commission of inquiry, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and numerous human rights groups including Israel’s own B’Tselem, were also swatted away as blood libels.  Those wishing to commit genocide would never “plead with the civilian population it is supposedly targeting to get out of harm’s way.”  The Nazis were never good enough to tell Jews to “kindly leave”.

    READ: Netanyahu promoted 8 major lies in UN speech, Gaza government says

    As for the starvation policy, this was yet another lie.  “There’s one ton of aid for every man, woman and child in Gaza” with each person receiving 3,000 calories per day.  “Some starvation policy!”  It takes some gumption to embrace such mendacity and self-imposed delusion, denying the militarisation of the aid model in the Strip, with necessaries drip-fed through a limited number of delivery points defended by private contractors and trigger-happy IDF personnel.

    Regarding the latest round of countries recognising Palestinian statehood, Netanyahu could only hector. “Murdering Jews pays off.”  The forces of antisemitism had been rewarded by France, Britain, Australia and Canada, along with other states.  “Your disgraceful decision will encourage terrorism against Jews and against innocent people everywhere.”

    On the issue of the two-state solution, the argument was slyly inverted.  Israel did believe in the formula.  It was those nasty, ungrateful Palestinians who never did.  They were “given territory” only to then attack Israel in “totally unprovoked” circumstances.  Absurdly, Netanyahu even called Gaza a proto-Palestinian state, a gift from the Jewish state.  Never mind that it became the world’s largest open-air prison, its residents the convenient lab rats of Israeli surveillance, technology and military experimentation.

    As long as Palestinians exist in Gaza and the West Bank, they are unsettling reminders of the colonial project, the thefts, the dispossessions, the habitual violence.  As long as they have political representatives of any stripe, or any voice uttered through any form – literature, media, the podium, and even the gun – they are exercising the very same rights to self-determination that saw the creation of Israel.  It is those rights that Netanyahu showed such withering contempt for in this indignant address.  

    OPINION: Violating the terms of service: Microsoft, Azure and the IDF

    The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

    Experiencing issues with this image not appearing. I suspect because it's so critical of Zionist Keir Starmer's support of and complicity in Israel's genocides.
    Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA
    Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza's hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
    Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
    Vote Labour for Genocide.
    Vote Labour for Genocide.

  • With Genocide Confirmed and Gaza City a ‘Lifeless Wasteland,’ US Vetoes Another UN Ceasefire Resolution

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

    Deputy United States Special Envoy to the Middle East Morgan Ortagus raises her hand to veto a United Nations Security Council veto of a Gaza ceasefire resolution at UN headquarters New York City on September 18, 2025. (Photo by UN News/X)

    “Israel kills every day and nothing happens,” said Algeria’s UN ambassador. “Israel starves a people and nothing happens. Israel bombs hospitals, schools, shelters, and nothing happens.”

    Against a backdrop of Israel’s genocidal obliteration of Gaza City and a worsening man-made famine throughout the embattled Palestinian exclave, the United States on Thursday cast its sixth United Nations Security Council veto of a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire and the release of all hostages held by Hamas.

    At its 10,000th meeting, the UN Security Council voted 14-1 with no abstentions in favor of a resolution proposed by the 10 nonpermanent UNSC members demanding “an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire” in Gaza, the “release of all hostages” held by Hamas, and for Israel to “immediately and unconditionally lift all restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid” into the besieged strip.

    Morgan Ortagus, President Donald Trump’s deputy special envoy to the Middle East, vetoed the proposal, saying that the move “will come as no surprise,” as the US has killed five previous UNSC Gaza ceasefire resolutions under both the Biden and Trump administrations, most recently in June.

    Ortagus said the resolution failed to condemn Hamas or affirm Israel’s right to self-defense and “wrongly legitimizes the false narratives benefiting Hamas, which have sadly found currency in this council.”

    The US has unconditionally provided Israel with billions of dollars worth of armed aid and diplomatic cover since October 2023 as the key Mideast ally wages a war increasingly viewed as genocidal, including by a commission of independent UN experts this week.

    Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour said the torpedoed resolution represented the “bare minimum” that must be accomplished, adding that “it is deeply regrettable and painful that it has been blocked.”

    “Babies dying of starvation, snipers shooting people in the head, civilians killed en masse, families displaced again and again… humanitarians and journalists targeted… while Israeli officials are openly mocking all of this,” Mansour added.

    Following the UNSC’s latest failure to pass a ceasefire resolution, Algerian Ambassador to the UN Amar Bendjama asked Gazans to “forgive” the body for not only its inability to approve such measures, but also for failing to stop the Gaza famine, in which at least hundreds of Palestinians have died and hundreds of thousands more are starving. Every UNSC members but the US concurred last month that the Gaza famine is a man-made catastrophe.

    “Israel kills every day and nothing happens,” Bendjama said. “Israel starves a people and nothing happens. Israel bombs hospitals, schools, shelters, and nothing happens. Israel attacks a mediator and steps on diplomacy, and nothing happens. And with every act, every act unpunished, humanity itself is diminished.”

    Benjama also asked Gazans to “forgive us” for failing to protect children in the strip, more than 20,000 of whom have been killed by Israeli bombs, bullets, and blockade over the past 713 days. He also noted that upward of 12,000 women, 4,000 elderly, 1,400 doctors and nurses, 500 aid workers, and 250 journalists “have been killed by Israel.”

    Condemning Thursday’s veto, Hamas accused the US of “blatant complicity in the crime of genocide,” which Israel is accused of committing in an ongoing International Court of Justice (ICJ) case filed in December 2023 by South Africa and backed by around two dozen nations.

    Hamas—which led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and is believed to be holding 20 hostages left alive out of 251 people kidnapped that day—implored the countries that sponsored the ceasefire resolution to pressure Israeli Prime Minister

    who along with former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, to accept an agreement to halt hostilities.

    Overall, at least 65,141 Palestinians have been killed and over 165,900 others wounded by Israeli forces since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry—whose figures have not only been confirmed by former IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, but deemed a significant undercount by independent researchers. Thousands more Gazans are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the ruins of the flattened strip.

    UK Ambassador to the UN Barbara Woodward stessed after Thursday’s failed UNSC resolution that “we need a ceasefire more than ever.”

    “Israel’s reckless expansion of its military operation takes us further away from a deal which could bring the hostages home and end the suffering in Gaza,” Woodward said.

    Thursday’s developments came as Israeli forces continued to lay waste to Gaza City as they push deeper into the city as part of Operation Gideon’s Chariots 2, a campaign to conquer, occupy, and ethnically cleanse around 1 million Palestinians from the strip’s capital. Israeli leaders have said they are carrying out the operation in accordance with Trump’s proposal to empty Gaza of Palestinians and transform it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

    In what some observers said was a bid to prevent the world from witnessing fresh Israeli war crimes in Gaza City, internet and phone lines were cut off in the strip Thursday, although officials said service has since been mostly restored.

    Gaza officials said Thursday that at least 50 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces since dawn, including 40 in Gaza City, which Al Jazeera reporter Tareq Abu Azzoum said is being pummeled into “a lifeless wasteland.”

    Azzoum reported that tens of thousands of Palestinians “are moving to the south on foot or in carts, looking for any place that is relatively safe—but with no guarantee of safety—or at least for shelter.”

    Israel has repeatedly bombed areas it advised Palestinians were “safe zones,” including a September 2 airstrike that massacred 11 people—nine of them children—queued up to collect water in al-Mawasi.

    “Most families who have arrived in the south have not found space,” Azzoum added. “That’s why we’ve seen people setting up makeshift tents close to the water while others are left stranded in the street, living under the open sky.”

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

    Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
    Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
    Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn't bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
    Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.

  • Pope Leo highlights grave humanitarian situation in Gaza despite US pressure on Israel

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    This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 

    Pope Leo XIV celebrates his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, on September 17, 2025. [Riccardo De Luca – Anadolu Agency]

    Pope Leo XIV expressed deep concern over the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, criticizing the lack of effective measures to alleviate the suffering of civilians despite pressure on Israel from the United States, Anadolu reports.

    “Even though there has been some pressure on Israel from the United States, and despite some very clear statements recently from President Trump, there has not been a clear response in terms of finding effective ways to alleviate the suffering of the people, the innocent people in Gaza, and that is obviously of great concern,” the pope said in an interview with Penguin Peru published Thursday.

    The pope highlighted the urgent needs of Gazans, particularly children, emphasizing the requirement for medical assistance and humanitarian aid to address the “very grave” situation.

    “It’s just so horrible to see the images that we see on television, hopefully something will turn this around,” he said.

    Pope Leo also warned against growing numbness to the crisis. “That’s a sort of a human response, because you can only stand so much pain,” he added.

    On whether the Gaza situation could be labeled “genocide,” the pope stated that the Holy See cannot make an official declaration at this time. “There’s a very technical definition about what genocide might be, but more and more people are raising the issue, including two human rights groups in Israel have made that statement,” he explained.

    The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory concluded on Tuesday that Israeli forces committed “four of the five” genocidal acts defined under the 1948 genocide convention: killing members of a group, causing them serious bodily and mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy the group, and preventing births.

    The interview also touched on US politics, with Pope Leo emphasizing that his American background allows him to better understand the country’s context, though he clarified he does not plan to engage in partisan politics.

    He later acknowledged that “the United States is a power player on the world level,” and said: “We have to recognize that, and sometimes decisions are made more based on economics than on human dignity and human support, but (we have to) continue to challenge and to raise some questions to determine the best way to respond.”

    ‘The intent is clear’: Bernie Sanders says Israel is committing genocide in Gaza

    This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 

    Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza's hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
    Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
    Experiencing issues with this image not appearing. I suspect because it's so critical of Zionist Keir Starmer's support of and complicity in Israel's genocides.
    Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA