A lifeguard hut rests on its side after Hurricane Milton, October 11, 2024, at Clearwater Beach, Fla.
RICH countries received strong criticism at the Cop29 conference in Azerbaijan today for wanting to spend more on wars and weapons than on preventing climate change.
“Global military spending stands at $2.5 trillion (£1.9trn) annually,” Panamian climate envoy Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez told delegates at the faltering annual talks sponsored by the United Nations.
“For some, $2.5trn dollars to kill each other, it’s not enough, but $1trn to save lives is unreasonable.”
“Causing our own extinction is the most ridiculous thing. At least the dinosaurs had an asteroid. What is our excuse?”
Palestinian Environment Quality Authority chairwoman warned that Israel is committing “ecocide” after over a year of bombardments in Gaza.
“Protection of the environment is actually not an ancillary issue, it is not a secondary option, it is a basic right that is related to all of us as human beings,” she said.
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Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva urged developed nations to consider moving their 2050 emission goals forward to 2040 or 2045.
“The G20 is responsible for 80 per cent of greenhouse-effect emissions,” he said. “Even if we are not walking the same speed, we can all take one more step.”
Meanwhile, a new scientific study has found that climate change has made Atlantic hurricanes about 18mph stronger in the last six years.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, center, stands with other dignitaries at the BRICS Plus conference in Kazan, Russia, on October 24. 2024. (Photo: Maxim Shipenkov/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
“We need peace in Ukraine,” U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said, speaking before Russian President Vladimir Putin.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, speaking in Russia on Thursday, called for peace in Ukraine and “across the board” as wars also rage in Gaza, Lebanon, and Sudan.
Guterres spoke before Russian President Vladimir Putin and other leaders from “BRICS Plus” countries gathering in Kazan, a city roughly 500 miles east of Moscow.
“Across the board, we need peace,” Guterres said.
“We need peace in Ukraine,” he added. “A just peace in line with the U.N. Charter, international law, and U.N. General Assembly resolutions.”
After the speech, Guterres renewed his call for a cease-fire in Lebanon and Gaza.
“We need a cease-fire in Lebanon—as we need a cease-fire in Gaza and the immediate release of all hostages,” he wrote on social media. “Escalation after escalation is leading to the unimaginable for the people of the region.”
We need a ceasefire in Lebanon – as we need a ceasefire in Gaza and the immediate release of all hostages.
Escalation after escalation is leading to the unimaginable for the people of the region. pic.twitter.com/YhwLkSbXzV
Putin presided over the closing ceremonies of the BRICS conference on Thursday, saying the group provided a counterbalance to the “perverse methods” of the West. Brazil, Russia, India, and China formed the group in the 2000s, with South Africa joining in 2010; BRICS recently expanded to include a number of other developing countries.
The conference drew the largest gathering of international diplomats into Russia since Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022, escalating a conflict that had begun in 2014.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry criticized Guterres for attending the conference and noted that he did not attend Ukraine’s global peace summit in Switzerland in June.
“This is a wrong choice that does not advance the cause of peace,” according to the ministry’s social media account. “It only damages the U.N.’s reputation.”
Guterres has repeatedly called for a cease-fire in Gaza in the last year. The Israeli government declared him persona non grata earlier this month, barring him from entering the country on the grounds that he had not strongly condemned an Iranian barrage of missiles into Israel—an accusation Guterres denied, saying he did forcefully condemn the Iranian attack.
For U.N. Day, celebrated annually on October 24, Guterres issued a video statement calling for the world’s nations to keep the “beacon of hope” that is the U.N. “shining.”
The U.N. has had only limited success in stopping or slowing the wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, and Sudan, which are among many dozens of conflicts across the world and have brought mass death and destruction.
The total number of Ukrainians and Russians who’ve died since February 2022 has reached roughly one million, The Wall Street Journalreported last month.
In Gaza, more than 42,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces in roughly the last year, following the Hamas-led October 7 attack that killed about 1,200 Israelis. More than 2,500 people have been killed by Israeli forces in Lebanon over the same period, including 1,900 in the escalation that’s occurred in the last five weeks, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. Dozens of Israelis have also died in that conflict.
A U.N. official said last month that the death toll in Sudan, which has been ravaged by civil war since April 2023, is at least 20,000 and could be much higher. The country is facing the prospect of a large-scale famine, with Save the Children on Tuesday raising the alarm that conditions there are worsening.
Netanyahu meets Harris July 2024. | Kenny Holston/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images.
This week, the US quietly deployed more weapons to Israel – particularly those that will be effective against Iran
US and Israeli leaders have celebrated this week’s death of Hamas military commander Yahya Sinwar. But while attention is focused on what it means for Gaza and the unlikely possibility of a ceasefire – few have noticed what this means for the much wider US-Iran war.
The US has, of course, put its military might, money and rhetoric behind Israel in its devastating operations in Gaza since last October. More specifically, the US even has a little-noticed permanent military presence in Israel itself – an advanced long-range over-the-horizon X-Band Radar system in the Negev. It is believed to be particularly effective against Iranian medium-range ballistic missiles.
But this week, two recent developments point to the US preparing for direct confrontation with Iran as it sharpens its ammunition and shares even more weaponry with its ally Israel.
First, we saw the US use long-range B-2 stealth bombers in attacks on underground weapons stores in Yemen for the first time. Only the US has these weapons which are thought to be the world’s most powerful ‘bunker-busters’ and can reach 200-feet underground. If there is a war with Iran it will be one of the very few means of inflicting damage on some of Iran’s most heavily protected targets.
That might sound scaremongering but the bombing of the Houthi targets in Yemen with these tools looks uncomfortably like a dry run for any conflict with Iran.
Secondly, we saw the deployment of an advanced US anti-missile system to Israel, again involving US military personnel. This is the THAAD weapon (terminal high-altitude aerial defence) which will supplement Israel’s own system that has not been as effective as the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) would like.
From an IDF perspective, if Netanyahu agrees to a substantial military attack on Iran, the likely response from Iran will be to do its best to swamp Israeli missile defences. Thus, the US THAAD deployment will reduce the risk of an effective Iranian response.
This all seems a far cry from the repeated US calls for a ceasefire, but these are best seen as part of a smoke screen, behind which lies a long-term enemy
This all seems a far cry from the repeated US calls for a ceasefire, but these are best seen as part of a smoke screen, behind which lies a long-term enemy. Most Europeans, including the British, tend to forget that ever since the Iranian Revolution in 1979 it has been Iran that is seen in Washington as by far the worst threat to US political and economic interests in the Middle East.
This fits in substantially with the Israeli position where Iran is, in the longer term as by far the greatest threat to its security – far worse than Hamas, Hezbollah or any other political movement. Moreover, an an Iran equipped with nuclear weapons really would be seen as an existential threat. That existential threat may not fully extend to the US view, but Iran is by some measure the greatest challenge to US Middle East policy.
“Israeli military strikes are targeting Iran’s armed allies across a nearly 2000-mile stretch of the Middle East and threatening Iran itself. The efforts raise the possibility of an end to two decades of Iranian ascendancy in the region, to which the 2003 US invasion of Iraq inadvertently gave rise.”
Israel wants rid of the regime in Tehran but that would also be a very good outcome for the many hawkish elements in the US political system. While world attention may be on the war in Gaza with this week’s killing of Yahya Sinwar, a potential conflict involving Iran may turn out to be even more significant.
Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party
Group calls for more MPs to join and vows to campaign on issues such as austerity and two-child benefit cap
Jeremy Corbyn is to form an official parliamentary alliance with four independent MPs who were elected on pro-Gaza platforms – issuing a call for more MPs to join.
The group will have the same number of MPs as Reform UK and the Democratic Unionist party, who each have five MPs, and more than the Green party and Plaid Cymru on four.
Promising to fight austerity and campaign on issues including the winter fuel allowance, the two-child benefit limit and arms sales to Israel, the group also explicitly invited MPs to join them, a reference to seven rebel Labour MPs suspended by the party for voting to axe the two-child benefit cap.
Corbyn, a former Labour leader, was elected as an independent MP for Islington North after being barred from standing as a Labour candidate at the last election. The group will also include the MPs Shockat Adam, Ayoub Khan, Adnan Hussain and Iqbal Mohamed.
The MPs said: “We were elected by our constituents to provide hope in a parliament of despair. Already, this government has scrapped the winter fuel allowance for around 10 million pensioners, voted to keep the two-child benefits cap, and ignored calls to end arms sales to Israel.
“Millions of people are crying out for a real alternative to austerity, inequality and war – and their voices deserve to be heard. As individuals we were voted by our constituents to represent their concerns in parliament on these matters, and more, and we believe that as a collective group we can carry on doing this with greater effect.
“The more MPs who are prepared to stand up for these principles, the better. Our door is always open to other MPs who believe in a more equal and peaceful world.”
Sudanese refugees in Chad. Over 10 million people have been forcibly displaced in over a year of war in Sudan. Photo: Wikimedia commons
Famine looms in Sudan, forcing people to flee to neighboring countries, while talks between warring parties and a UN envoy are still under way in Geneva
The governments of 15 Arab and African countries issued a statement on Tuesday, July 16, expressing their deep concerns regarding the escalating food security crisis in war-torn Sudan. The countries included the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Morocco, Mauritania, Chad, Comoros, Guinea-Bissau, Benin, Seychelles, Senegal, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Mozambique and Nigeria.
The statement came as a reaction to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, which was published on June 27, 2024. “Fourteen months into the conflict, Sudan is facing the worst levels of acute food insecurity ever recorded by the IPC in the country,” the report said, pointing out that more than half of the population in Sudan have experienced severe hunger, which makes Sudan the world’s largest hunger crisis.
The number of starving people is estimated at 25.6 million people, with 14 areas at the risk of famine including greater Darfur, Greater Kordofan, Al Jazirah and some hotspots in Sudan’s capital Khartoum. Many starving Sudanese people have been reportedly fleeing Sudan to seek asylum in neighboring countries due to hunger and looming famine.
The countries who issued the statement expressed their concern about what was set out in the IPC report as a “stark and rapid deterioration” in food security, and its dire impact on the safety and well-being of civilians, including thousands of children, who have suffered from severe acute malnutrition.
According to a Save the Children report published on July 7, due to the war in Sudan 30% of children are acutely malnourished and 20% of the overall population is facing extreme food shortages.
Since the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) began in April 2023, the destruction caused by the fighting resulted in a sharp decrease in the agricultural production, and therefore a hike in food prices and food scarcity. The hunger crisis in Sudan has been further deepened by the severe restriction on the movement of food and aid convoys due to the ongoing conflict.
Reiterating the United Nations Security Council’s call from June of 2023, the countries urged all the parties to the conflict to ensure immediate, safe, and unrestricted access to civilian humanitarian aid. They also called on the conflicting parties to adhere to international humanitarian law and to comply with all relevant Security Council resolutions.
The statement also addressed foreign actors requesting them to stop providing armed or material support to the parties involved in the conflict and to refrain from any action which may ignite the conflict. Furthermore, it called on the international community for immediate and coordinated international response to tackle the urgent needs of the affected Sudanese population. The countries encouraged the international community to scale up the humanitarian assistance it provides, and to support the IPC recommendations for increasing nutrition interventions, restoring productive systems and improving data collection.
While the humanitarian situation in Sudan is constantly deteriorating, talks between a United Nations envoy and delegations from both conflicting parties continue in Geneva this week. The talks started last Thursday, focusing on humanitarian aid and the protection of civilians.
There were a few “promising signs” emerging from Monday’s talks in Geneva, the Representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Sudan, Shible Sahbani commented. “Let’s wait for the coming hours and days, and we hope that if we don’t get a ceasefire, at least we can get the protection of civilians and the opening of humanitarian corridors,” he added.
