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Tag: US

  • Kamala Harris supports Israel’s Gaza genocide

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    ‘No,’ Kamala Harris Says to Withholding Arms From Israel

    Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

    Bodies of Palestinians, including babies, who were killed in the Israeli army’s attack on the Nuseirat Refugee Camp are brought to the Aqsa Martyrs Hospital morgue in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on August 30, 2024. (Photo: Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    “Harris is saying she will reject 77% of Democrats, 61% of Americans, international law, domestic U.S. law, and basic humanity to continue the flow of weapons to Israel while it stands accused of genocide,” said one analyst.

    Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris said in a CNN interview that aired late Thursday that, if elected in November, she would not change the Biden administration’s policy of steadfast military support for Israel, rejecting widespread calls for an arms embargo to help bring about an end to the devastating assault on Gaza.

    “I’m unequivocal and unwavering in my commitment to Israel’s defense and its ability to defend itself, and that’s not gonna change,” said Harris, recounting the horrors of the Hamas-led October 7 attack. “Israel had a right, has a right to defend itself.”

    Acknowledging that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed,” the vice president responded “no” when CNN‘s Dana Bash asked whether a Harris administration would implement a “change in policy in terms of arms” and withhold even “some” weapons shipments to Israel.

    Watch:

    The CNN appearance marked Harris’ first major television interview since becoming the Democratic nominee, a change at the top of the party’s 2024 ticket that Palestinian rights advocates hoped would open the door to a fundamental shift away from the Biden administration’s Gaza policy—which has been to arm Israel to the teeth while tepidly pressuring the country’s far-right government to protect civilians and agree to a cease-fire deal.

    “The vice president’s statement was morally indefensible and politically shortsighted as the lack of American consequences for Netanyahu’s horrific assault on Palestinian civilians in Gaza has emboldened Israel to now invade the West Bank,” Layla Elabed and Abbas Alawieh, co-founders of the Uncommitted National Movement, said in a statement Friday. “Vice President Harris must turn the page from one of the most glaring foreign policy failures of our time by aligning with the American majority that opposes sending weapons to Israel’s assault on Gaza.”

    Despite Bash’s characterization of calls for an arms embargo against Israel as a demand from the “progressive left,” survey data has shown that a majority of U.S. voters oppose sending weapons to Israel as it commits appalling war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank. Since October, the U.S. has sent Israel over 50,000 tons of weaponry.

    “Harris is saying she will reject 77% of Democrats, 61% of Americans, international law, domestic U.S. law, and basic humanity to continue the flow of weapons to Israel while it stands accused of genocide,” Middle East scholar Assal Rad said late Thursday, citing the results of a recent CBS News/YouGov poll.

    A separate poll commissioned by the IMEU Policy Project suggested that voters in key U.S. battleground states would be more likely to vote for a Democratic nominee who pledged to withhold weapons from Israel.

    The CNN interview aired as Israel continued its multi-day assault on the West Bank, a deadly military campaign that the head of the United Nations and others warned could become an extension of the nearly 11-month war on Gaza, during which Israel has killed more than 40,600 people, displaced 90% of the enclave’s population, and sparked famine across the territory.

    On Thursday, Israel’s military killed five Palestinians in an airstrike on a vehicle convoy of the Washington, D.C.-based American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA) agency. It is a violation of U.S. law to provide weaponry to a country obstructing the delivery of American humanitarian aid.

    The attack on the ANERA convoy came a day after Israeli forces opened fire on a World Food Program vehicle, forcing the U.N. agency to suspend employee movement in Gaza.

    Harris’ refusal to express openness to an arms embargo against a military that has repeatedly targeted aid and healthcare workers, journalists, and other civilians sparked immediate backlash from Palestinian rights advocates, including at least one member of Congress.

    Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American in the U.S. Congress, said Harris’ answer signaled that “war crimes and genocide will continue.”

    Yonah Lieberman, co-founder of IfNotNow, called the Democratic nominee’s answer on Gaza “terrible” and “out of touch with voters, especially those in key battleground states who Harris needs to feel motivated to go to the polls.”

    “Poll after poll after poll tells us that a majority of Americans and even more key Democratic constituencies want the US to stop giving arms to Israel that it’s using to kill and displace Palestinian families,” Lieberman added. “Not sending bombs to Israel is politically expedient and—quite obviously!—the morally correct thing to do for anyone reading the daily headlines of Israeli massacres being done with U.S. weapons.”

    In an op-ed for Common Dreams on Friday, RootsAction national director Norman Solomon warned that “time is running out for Kamala Harris to distance herself from U.S. policies that enable Israel to continue with mass murder and genocide in Gaza.”

    “Polling shows that a pivot toward moral decency would improve her chances of defeating Donald Trump,” Solomon wrote. “But during her CNN interview Thursday night, Harris remained in lockstep with President Biden’s unconditional arming of Israel.”

    This story has been updated to include a statement from the Uncommitted National Movement.

    Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

  • ‘Colossal Waste’: US Leads Way in Public Spending on False Climate Solutions

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    Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

    The Petra Nova Carbon Capture Project is seen on December 20, 2016 in Houston, Texas.  (Photo: Marie D. De Jesus/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)

    “The fossil fuel industry delays climate action, distracts from real solutions that would end the fossil fuel era, and does everything in its power to squeeze the last drops of profit from a dying industry, at the expense of all of us.”

    Among the world’s wealthiest countries, the U.S. leads the way in spending public money on so-called climate “solutions” that have been proven to “consistently fail, overspend, or underperform,” according to an analysis released Thursday by the research and advocacy group Oil Change International.

    The group’s report, titled Funding Failure, focuses on international spending on carbon capture and fossil-based hydrogen subsidies, which continues despite ample data showing that the technological fixes have “failed to make a dent in carbon emissions” after 50 years of research and development.

    The report details how five countries account for 95% of all carbon capture spending, with the U.S. investing the most taxpayer money in the technology, at $12 billion in subsidies over the last 40 years.

    Norway comes in second with $6 billion going to carbon capture and storage, while Canada has spent $3.8 billion, the European Union has spent $3.6 billion, and the Netherlands has poured $2.6 billion into the technology, with which carbon dioxide emissions are compressed and utilized or stored underground.

    “It is nothing short of a travesty that funds meant to combat climate change are instead bolstering the very industries driving it.”

    Harjeet Singh, global engagement director for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, told The Guardian that the subsidies amount to a “colossal waste of money.”

    “It is nothing short of a travesty that funds meant to combat climate change are instead bolstering the very industries driving it,” said Singh.

    While proponents claim carbon capture and storage reduces planet-heating carbon emissions, OCI notes, it was originally developed in the 1970s “to enhance oil production, and this remains its primary use,” with the technology “barely” reducing emissions.

    High-profile carbon capture failures in the U.S. include the Petra Nova project in Houston, Texas, which cost nearly $200 million in taxpayer funds and whose captured emissions were later used for crude oil production, and the FutureGen project, “which swallowed $200 million and never materialized.”

    “Investing in carbon capture delays the transition to renewable energy,” reads OCI’s report. “Instead of wasting time and money on technologies that do not work, governments must commit to justly and urgently phasing out fossil fuels before it’s too late.”

    Despite the lack of data supporting the use of carbon capture, the group said, countries including the U.S. are “preparing to waste hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on these ineffective technologies, further benefiting the fossil fuel industry.”

    OCI highlighted how the U.S. and Canada, while ostensibly fighting the climate crisis, have spent a combined $4 billion in public money to explicitly “pay oil companies to produce more oil,” with the subsidies going to carbon capture for “enhanced oil recovery.”

    The report also found that in addition to the $12 billion in taxpayer funds the U.S. has spent on carbon capture and fossil hydrogen—a leak-prone gas produced through energy-intensive processes that cause their own emissions—the government has spent an estimated $1.3 billion on the 45Q tax credit, which allows companies to write off tax for every ton of carbon dioxide they store underground.

    The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) increased the amount given to companies in 45Q tax credits from $35 to $60 per ton, meaning that the subsidy could grow to over $100 billion in the next 10 years.

    OCI’s Policy Tracker shows that overall public spending on carbon capture and hydrogen could grow by between $115 billion and $240 billion in the coming decades.

    “We need real climate action, not fossil fuel bailouts!” said OCI in a post on social media.

    The group’s report also highlights that fossil fuel giants such as ExxonMobil have shifted from carbon capture skeptics to outspoken proponents of the technology—with the company bragging to investors that carbon capture and hydrogen would help its Low Carbon Business Unit make “hundreds of billions of dollars” and grow to be “larger than ExxonMobil’s base business.”

    Exxon didn’t launch its carbon capture efforts until 2018, having spent several years and hundreds of millions of dollars on another “climate solution” that ultimately failed: the use of algae to make biofuels.

    Since then, Exxon has “pushed for direct government funding for carbon capture, particularly at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE),” successfully lobbying for $12 billion allocated in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill in 2021 for “carbon management research, development, and demonstration.”

    Exxon also lobbied for the increased rate of the 45Q tax credit in the IRA and “played a ‘central role’ in drafting a 2019 DOE-sponsored report on carbon capture that determined Congress would need to create an incentive of around $90 to $110 per ton to support carbon capture deployment,” according to OCI.

    The Guardian on Thursday reported that Exxon still “chases billions in U.S. subsidies for a ‘climate solution’ that helps drill more oil,” describing how the oil giant hosted an event at the Democratic National Convention earlier this month where senior climate strategy and technology director Vijay Swarup praised the IRA for helping Exxon pursue carbon capture and said: “We need new technology and we need policy to support that technology. We need governments working with private industry.”

    Exxon’s enthusiasm for carbon capture, said OCI, is an example of how “the fossil fuel industry delays climate action, distracts from real solutions that would end the fossil fuel era, and does everything in its power to squeeze the last drops of profit from a dying industry, at the expense of all of us.”

    Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

  • Blinken Condemned for ‘Empty Words’ on Genocide as US Backs Israel’s Obliteration of Gaza

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

    U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks to reporters on a tarmac in Doha, Qatar on August 20, 2024. (Photo: Kevin Mohatt/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

    “You are currently arming, funding, and defending a genocide in Gaza. That is how history will remember you.”

    U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was accused of stark hypocrisy on Saturday after he condemned the Myanmar military’s genocide against the Rohingya people while simultaneously aiding Israel’s genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip.

    Marking the seventh anniversary of Myanmar’s vicious ethnic cleansing of the stateless Rohingya, Blinken wrote on social media that “the United States continues to honor the victims and stand with the survivors as they seek justice and accountability for these atrocities.”

    Blinken also issued a statement highlighting the U.S. State Department’s “extensive documentation of the atrocities and abuses committed against Rohingya and all civilians”—a sharp contrast with the Biden administration’s reluctance to assess Israeli atrocities against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

    “You are currently arming, funding, and defending a genocide in Gaza,” Middle East researcher and analyst Assal Rad wrote in response to Blinken’s statement. “That is how history will remember you, not your empty words.”

    U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) also weighed in, telling Blinken to “just stop trying to act like you care about genocide or human rights.”

    Under Blinken’s leadership, the U.S. State Department has approved massive arms transfers to Israel—including a recent $20 billion sale—and provided diplomatic cover for the country’s far-right government on the world stage, dismissing as “meritless” the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

    Israel has killed more than 40,400 people in Gaza since the October 7 Hamas-led attack. Most of those killed in Israel’s assault have been women and children—including thousands of infants and toddlers.

    In addition to perpetrating horrific war crimes in Gaza—often with U.S. weaponry—Israel has sold arms to Myanmar’s military, even after the 2021 military coup.

    “According to documents and sources who spoke with Haaretz,” the Israeli newspaper reported last September, “the government-owned Israel Aerospace Industries and the Israeli arms maker Elbit Systems maintained their trade with Myanmar despite an international arms embargo on the country, and despite a 2017 ruling by Israel’s High Court of Justice and the Israeli government’s own 2018 statement saying it stopped such sales.”

    “Israel’s longstanding relations with the different regimes controlling Myanmar have involved arms trade since the mid-20th century,” Haaretz continued. “Even in the years in which the country was openly ruled by its military junta, Israel refused to stop the trade. The trade was maintained through the Rohingya genocide of 2016-17.”

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

  • ‘You Must Do Better’: Harris Rebuked Over Failure to Change Course on Gaza

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    Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

    A banner calling for an arms embargo against Israel is pictured outside of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 22, 2024. (Photo: Fatih Aktas/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    “Harris called for a cease-fire in Gaza, but she failed to commit to the change in policy that would secure a cease-fire: ending weapons transfers to Israel,” said one Palestinian rights group.

    During her speech Thursday night accepting the Democratic Party’s 2024 nomination, Vice President Kamala Harris decried the “heartbreaking” suffering that Gazans are experiencing after 10 consecutive months of Israeli bombardment.

    But Harris didn’t acknowledge, let alone condemn, the central role the United States has played in fueling the humanitarian emergency in the Palestinian enclave, where civilians face indiscriminate bombings daily as well as famine and appalling disease outbreaks—including a possible polio epidemic.

    Instead, Harris repeated a line that has become commonplace for the White House and its allies, declaring that “President [Joe] Biden and I are working around the clock” to secure a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.

    Nor did Harris explicitly denounce Israel’s actions in Gaza, which have included atrocities committed with U.S. weaponry.

    “Harris wanted to portray herself as strong and brave, but when she had to switch to passive voice (“What has happened in Gaza”) to avoid calling out Israel’s war crimes, she showed stunning cowardice,” said Palestinian American political analyst Yousef Munayyer.

    Declining to break with the administration in which she currently serves, the vice president did not express support for a policy shift that would pressure Israel’s far-right government to accept a cease-fire agreement, such as an arms embargo of the kind supported by United Nations experts, leading human rights groups, and a majority of U.S. voters.

    “I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself,” said Harris, condemning the Hamas-led October 7 attack.

    “If you really wanted a cease-fire, you’d just stop sending the weapons. It is that simple.”

    Abbas Alawieh, a co-founder of the Uncommitted National Movement, toldReuters following the vice president’s speech that she did not deliver what was badly needed as the disaster in Gaza worsens by the minute: “courageous leadership that breaks from the current approach.”

    The IMEU Policy Project, an affiliate of the Institute for Middle East Understanding, echoed Alawieh’s assessment, saying in a statement that “with Vice President Kamala Harris’ nomination, the party had an opportunity to move in a new direction.”

    “Tonight Harris called for a cease-fire in Gaza, but she failed to commit to the change in policy that would secure a cease-fire: ending weapons transfers to Israel,” the group said. “To be clear: There is no way to end this bloodshed while supplying Israel with billions of dollars in weapons as it indiscriminately bombs Palestinian families, schools, hospitals, refugee shelters, and places of worship.”

    “It must be noted that Harris’ call for ‘dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination’ for the Palestinian people received thunderous applause,” the organization added. “However, words are not enough. Democratic voters are increasingly united in their demand for a change in policy on Gaza and in support of Palestinian safety and freedom broadly; it is time for the Democratic Party leadership to catch up.”

    Denied a speaking slot on the convention stage, Palestinian American delegates and their allies made their voices heard in the hallways of Chicago’s United Center and outside of the facility, where they held a sit-in to protest the DNC’s rejection of their demands.

    Calls for a Palestinian American speaker on the DNC stage drew broad support from Democratic lawmakers and their allies, including Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and the United Auto Workers.

    Lily Greenberg Call, a Jewish Biden political appointee who resigned in May over the administration’s Gaza policy, said late Thursday that she was “so sad and disappointed” that the DNC chose to “silence Palestinian American voices and exclude them from the convention stage.”

    “VP, I want you to win in November,” Call added. “You must do better.”

    Layla Elabed, a co-founder of the Uncommitted National Movement and the sister of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), said Thursday that “Michigan voters want to vote for Harris, but we need to shift policy.”

    “Many of us know the impact of U.S.-funded bombs firsthand,” said Elabed.

    Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), one of the lawmakers who showed solidarity with uncommitted delegates as they staged a sit-in outside of the DNC earlier this week, clearly articulated the U.S. Palestinian rights movement’s position during a press conference on Wednesday, a day before Harris took the stage in Chicago.

    “If you really wanted a cease-fire, you’d just stop sending the weapons,” said Omar. “It is that simple.”

    Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

    ‘Let Palestine Speak’: Uncommitted Shares Speech the DNC Won’t Allow ›

    ‘History Is Watching’: Gaza Doctors Urge Harris to Back Israel Arms Embargo at Democratic Convention ›

  • ‘History Is Watching’: Gaza Doctors Urge Harris to Back Israel Arms Embargo at Democratic Convention

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

    An injured Palestinian baby is treated in al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital after an Israeli attack on Bureij refugee camp in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on August 7, 2024.
     (Photo: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    “We are here to deliver a policy that saves and improves lives,” Uncommitted National Movement co-founder Abbas Alawieh said in opening remarks at a press conference on the sidelines of the DNC.

    As humanitarians opposed to the U.S. government’s support for Israel’s assault on Gaza continued to protest during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Tuesday, American doctors who recently volunteered in the besieged enclave implored the party’s presidential nominee Kamala Harris—based on the carnage and heartache they have witnessed—to embrace an arms embargo on Israel and an immediate cease-fire.

    during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the Uncommitted National Movement held a Tuesday press conference at which American doctors who volunteered in Gaza implored Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, to embrace an arms embargo on Israel and an immediate cease-fire.

    “We are here to deliver a policy that saves and improves lives,” Uncommitted National Movement co-founder Abbas Alawieh said in opening remarks at Tuesday’s press conference. “We are here because we want to win a better world.”

    Alawieh slammed the “hypocritical action” of Biden administration officials who, while “saying they want a cease-fire,” continue “to send more and more weapons” to far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “murderous government,” which “is using those weapons to kill civilians” and is “preventing any hope for all captives, Israeli and Palestinian, to be reunited with their families.”

    Such support, Alawieh added, is also “preventing any hope of a departure from the horrors that we are seeing our siblings in Gaza experience with more than 16,000 children… being killed using U.S. weapons.”

    “The Uncommitted National Movement mobilized Democratic voters—more than 740,000 nationally—specifically around the idea that our candidate, regardless of who they may be, needs an updated approach to their Gaza policy,” Alawieh continued. “Specifically, our stance is that our government should embrace an arms embargo. Stop sending weapons that are being used to kill civilians.”

    “Vice President Harris is engaging with us on this issue,” Alawieh added. “Her team is engaging with us on this issue. We do view that as a positive step in the right direction. We want to be very clear that what we need to see urgently is for the bombs to stop. Stop sending bombs if you want us to believe that you want a cease-fire.”

    There are 30 Uncommitted delegates attending the DNC after being elected in Democratic primaries in states like Minnesota, where the movement received 18.9% of the vote, and the key swing state of Wisconsin, where it won 13.3%. As polling reveals that Democratic and Independent voters in crucial swing states would be more likely to vote for Harris if she backs an arms embargo on Israel, her campaign has made some moves to accommodate Uncommitted voices, including providing space at the DNC.

    Dr. Tammy Abughnaim, a Chicago-based emergency physician, said she asked Palestinians what she should tell people in the United States about Gaza, where she saw the aftermath of “massacre after massacre” and “suffering on an entirely unprecedented scale.”

    “Tell the world what you saw,” she said they told her. “We cannot afford another day of this.”

    On Monday, the DNC held its first-ever panel on Palestinian rights, which featured testimony from some of those who spoke at Tuesday’s press conference, including Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, an American pediatric intensive care physician who volunteered for two weeks at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

    On Tuesday, Haj-Hassan said that the American doctors who worked in Gaza “cannot unsee what we witnessed, it gives us nightmares.”

    “I can personally testify that I have never seen anything so horrific, so egregious, so inhumane,” she stated. “We decided to come here and bear moral witness with the unfortunate recognition that the only way to protect civilian life is through putting pressure on the U.S. government to stop militarily supporting Israel in its campaign.”

    Haj-Hassan continued:

    For the past 10 months, we have witnessed civilian casualty after civilian massacre after civilian massacre. The bread massacre. The Nuseirat massacre. The multiple school massacres, where internally displaced people, who have been forcibly transferred, a war crime in and of itself… finally sought shelter only to be massacred. Entire families exterminated. Humanitarian workers and healthcare workers and journalists killed in record numbers. Children with their extremities amputated traumatically in record numbers…

    Over 17,000 children have lost one or both parents in Gaza since October. We have treated children who are the only surviving members of their entire family who were killed in the same bombing. I have personally held the hands of children taking their last final gasps with no family alive… unable to comfort them during their final agonizing breaths… This phenomenon of children having their entire families killed and arriving to the emergency department is so frequent it actually has an acronym… wounded child, no surviving family, given the acronym WCNSF.

    Children who are fortunate enough to survive their injuries are discharged into a Russian roulette of a hundred different ways that they could be killed… another bombing, starvation, dehydration, disease. Now we have alarming reports of an outbreak of polio. Polio is something that we were able to eradicate on the majority of this planet decades ago.

    “And yet we continue to fund this,” Haj-Hassan added. “History is watching us. The world is watching us. I cannot make sense of this. I suspect you cannot too. And I hope that the Democratic Party recognizes the irony and the hypocrisy of what we continue to fund and chooses to finally stand by the values of human rights and justice that we claim to stand by.”

    Harris has expressed sympathy for Palestinians suffering what she called a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza. However, like Biden, she’s also proclaimed her “unwavering” support for Israel. When asked earlier this month if Harris would support a suspension in weapons transfers, one of her national security advisers said that “she will always ensure Israel is able to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups” and “does not support an arms embargo on Israel.”

    Human rights advocates fear that if elected to a second term, former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, would be even more supportive of Israel’s obliteration of Gaza than the Biden-Harris administration.

    According to Palestinian and international officials, at least 40,173 Palestinians have been killed—most of them women and children—and nearly 93,000 others have been wounded during Israel’s 319-day assault and siege on Gaza. Gaza officials say that at least 10,000 other Palestinians are missing, believed to be dead and buried under the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out homes and other buildings.

    Almost the entire Gaza population of 2.3 million has been forcibly displaced. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans are starving; dozens have died from malnutrition, dehydration, and lack of medicines and healthcare amid a crippling Israeli siege that has been cited as evidence during Israel’s genocide trial at the International Court of Justice. The blockade has also exacerbated the spread of contagious diseases including measles, hepatitis, and polio.

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