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Category: Humanity (Page 1 of 8)

June 6, 2024 » the 80th Anniversary of D-Day » We Shall Remember Them

2024-06-06 /

80 years ago today, 160,000 troops from Britain, Canada, USA, —along with a dozen other nations— stormed five sandy beaches along the Normandy Coast, intending to liberate France and mainland Europe from Adolf Hitler’s tyranny.

The Canadian Encyclopedia says »

Juno Beach was the Allied code name for a 10 km stretch of French coastline assaulted by Canadian soldiers on D-Day, 6 June 1944, during the Second World War. The Canadian Army’s 3rd Infantry Division and 2nd Armoured Brigade seized the beach and its seaside villages while under intense fire from German defenders — an extraordinary example of military skill, reinforced by countless acts of personal courage. The 3rd Infantry Division took heavy casualties in its first wave of attack but took control of the beach by the end of the day. More than 14,000 Canadian soldiers landed or parachuted into France on D-Day. The Royal Canadian Navy contributed 110 warships and 10,000 sailors and the RCAF contributed 15 fighter and fighter-bomber squadrons to the assault. There were 1,074 Canadian casualties, including 359 killed.

Footage of Canadians landing on Juno Beach.

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Jewish anti-Zionism in the U.S. and around the world

2024-06-02 /

Anti-Zionist Jews have formed a large part of the protests across the United States, and indeed the world, against Israel’s war on Gaza.

In this Al Jazeera’s interview and Simone Zimmerman, co-founder, IfNotNow, a Jewish advocacy group which opposes the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, we hear of her own transition away from Zionism forms the core of the 2023 award-winning documentary, Israelism.

More » Al Jazeera

Israel National Security Adviser said the war in Gaza will continue for at least another seven months, the rest of the year

2024-05-29 /

BBC »

“The fighting in Gaza will continue for at least another seven months,” the prime minister’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, told Israel’s Kan public radio.

He also said Israel’s military had taken control of 75% of the buffer zone along the Gaza-Egypt border, as it pressed ahead with an assault on the southern city of Rafah.

Residents of Rafah meanwhile reported that there had been more Israeli air strikes and that tanks had mounted raids in central and western areas before retreating. »

Already, some 36,000 Palestinians, mostly children, women and non-combatants, have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli army since October 7, 2024. To date, the government of Israel has shown no intention of ceasing the genocidal actions against the innocent Palestinians, choosing instead to ignore the International Court of Justice order to stop its military operation in the Gaza city of Rafah.

More killing » Israeli kill at least another 37 Palestinians, most in tents, near Gaza’s Rafah as offensive expands

2024-05-28 /

The Israeli shelling and airstrikes continues despite an order from the top U.N. court on Friday for Israel to halt its offensive in southern Gaza.

More than 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive. The majority are children, women, and other non-combatants. Israel launched its air and ground war after Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023 killing around 1,200 people and seizing some 250 hostages, according to Israel.

Samy Magdy and Wafaa Shurafa, writing for the Associated Press »

Israeli shelling and airstrikes killed at least 37 people, most of them sheltering in tents, outside the southern Gaza city of Rafah overnight and on Tuesday — pummeling the same area where strikes triggered a deadly fire days earlier in a camp for displaced Palestinians — according to witnesses, emergency workers and hospital officials.

The tent camp inferno has drawn widespread international outrage, including from some of Israel’s closest allies, over the military’s expanding offensive into Rafah. And in a sign of Israel’s growing isolation on the world stage, Spain, Norway and Ireland formally recognized a Palestinian state on Tuesday.

ArabNews »

Saudi Arabia condemned on Tuesday the Israeli forces’ continued “genocidal massacres against the Palestinian people without deterrence” by targeting the tents of defenseless Palestinian refugees in Rafah. The Kingdom holds the Israeli authorities fully responsible for what is happening in Rafah and all the occupied Palestinian territories, a foreign ministry statement read.

More » Reuters / Vox

Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu called the airstrike in the Gaza city of Rafah that killed 45 Palestinians sheltering in a refugee camp a “tragic mistake”

2024-05-27 /

Health officials said at least 45 Palestinians were killed in the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Sunday night, including displaced people living in tents who were burnt alive.

Netanyahu called it a “tragic mistake.”

Footage and images released from the scene of the strike show large scale destruction.

More » BBC / France 24 / France 24 / Euronews /  The Journal / CTV News / Axios / AP / VOA / Time / NYT / Arab News / Globe and Mail

World Leaders Outraged » Officials in France, Germany, EU call for ceasefire » (Salon)

French President Emmanuel Macron called for an immediate cease-fire (UPI)

UN Security Council Expected to hold emergency meeting today  (AP)

Meanwhile » Israel continues striking Rafah (Le Monde / BBC)

Israeli tanks advance into Rafah’s centre despite global outcry (Reuters)

Women Peace Security Index for 2023

2023-10-25 /

Georgetown University’s Institute for Women, Peace and Security (GIWPS) seeks to promote a more stable, peaceful, and just world by focusing on the important role women play in preventing conflict and building peace, growing economies, and addressing global threats like climate change and violent extremism.

This fourth edition of the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Index ranks and scores 177 countries on women’s status. The results show that countries where women are doing well are also more peaceful, democratic, prosperous, and better
prepared to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

This year, nine of the top ten best countries to be women are European, with Scandinavian countries leading the rankings. Denmark leads the 2023 rankings, scoring more than three times higher than Afghanistan.

1 Denmark
2 Switzerland
3 Sweden
4 Finland
4 Iceland
4 Luxembourg
7 Norway
8 Austria
9 Netherlands
10 New Zealand

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The mayor of Pontevedra, Spain is placing pedestrians first

2023-09-27 /

For decades, throngs of cars clogged the cobblestone streets of Pontevedra’s downtown, making this seaside city on Spain’s northwestern tip a hard place to live. Smog, loud noise and narrow walkways drove young families away from a region struggling with a shrinking and aging population.

Family physician turned mayor Miguel Fernandez Lores managed to halt the bleeding by closing many streets to car traffic. Now Pontevedra is a model of success in a growing global movement that’s trying to reclaim streets for pedestrians.

Bloomberg »

This Spanish Mayor Is Putting Pedestrians First

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Conditions on Earth moving outside the ‘safe operating space’ for humanity

2023-09-15 /

CNN »

Human activities have breached safe levels for six of these boundaries and are pushing the world outside a “safe operating space” for humanity, according to the report, published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

The nine boundaries, first set out in a 2009 paper, aim to establish a set of defined “limits” on changes humans are making to the planet – from pumping out planet-heating pollution to clearing forests for farming. Beyond these limits, the theory goes, the risk of destabilizing conditions on Earth increases dramatically.

The limits are designed to be conservative, to enable society to solve the problems before reaching a “very high risk zone,” said Katherine Richardson, a professor in biological oceanography at the University of Copenhagen and a co-author on the report.

She pointed to the unprecedented summer of extreme weather the world has just experienced at 1.2 degrees Celsius of global warming. “We didn’t think it was going to be like this at 1 degree [Celsius]” she said. “No human has experienced the conditions that we’re experiencing right now,” she added. »

» Science.org » Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

Child poverty more than doubled in U.S. after expanded tax credits, stimulus checks ended

2023-09-13 /

CNBC »

  • The child poverty rate surged to 12.4% in 2022, up from 5.2% in the year prior, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
  • The bureau attributed the increase in child poverty to the expiration of expanded child tax credits and the end of stimulus checks.
  • The U.S. had made historic gains in fighting child poverty during the Covid-19 pandemic due in large part to the expanded tax credits. »

African children bearing the brunt of climate change impacts

2023-09-02 /

Children in Africa are among the most at risk from climate change impacts but are being woefully deprived of the financing necessary to help them adapt, survive and respond to the crisis, reports UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The African Climate Summit is taking place next week (4 – 8 September 2023) in Nairobi.

Children in 48 out of 49 African countries assessed were found to be at high or extremely high risk of the impacts of climate change, based on their exposure and vulnerability to cyclones, heatwaves and other climate and environmental shocks, and access to essential services.

Those living in the Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria, Guinea, Somalia, and Guinea-Bissau are most at risk.

At the African Climate Summit, leaders from across the continent are expected to highlight the need for increased investment in climate action.

 

 

African Union suspends Niger’s membership until ‘the effective restoration of constitutional order’

2023-08-23 /

AP »

The suspension announcement was the council’s first public communication since it met earlier this month to discuss Niger’s crisis. The body made up of foreign ministers called on the African Union’s other member nations and the international community to reject the “unconstitutional change of government and to refrain from any action likely to grant legitimacy to the illegal regime in Niger.”

A suspension means Nigerien representatives, from the head of state down, no longer can vote on AU proposals or participate in the organization’s committees or working groups. The council’s action was part of a standard playbook the AU and regional bodies have taken in response to coups elsewhere in Africa, Nate Allen, an associate professor at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, said.

East African | Le Monde | DW | France 24 | BBC | VoA |

» Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)  has rejected a plan by Niger’s coup leaders to relinquish power within three years (RFI)

Channel News Asia | France 24

More than 500 civil society groups jointly called on the United Nations to cut ties with Myanmar’s junta

2023-08-23 /

Al Jazeera »

In a joint statement shared by Progressive Voice, the 514 civil society groups acknowledged Griffiths’s post-visit call for “space for safe, sustained aid deliveries”, but said that could not be achieved by working with the military, which has been accused of preventing assistance from reaching those most in need, particularly as a result of the deepening conflict triggered by its coup.

“Principled humanitarian engagement must see OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) and other UN humanitarian agencies cut ties with the illegal criminal junta which is weaponizing aid and is the root cause of human suffering in Myanmar,” the civil society groups said.

VoA |

Beyond the movie Oppenheimer, lies a deeper narrative

2023-08-19 /

Join Garry Jacobs, President and CEO of the World Academy of Art and Science, an organization co-founded by J. Robert Oppenheimer, Albert Einstein, and other notable scientists and thinkers whose creations weren’t just scientific feats; they were profound reminders of the need for human security.

Today, as AI poses new ethical challenges, Garry Jacobs invites us to carry forward the founders’ vision by joining the “Human Security For All” campaign, co-launched by the United Nations Trust Fund for Human Security and the World Academy of Art and Science.

Oppenheimer: The Untold Story

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Is Donald Trump a Fascist?

2023-08-09 /

Robert Reich explains the difference between fascism and authoritarianism.

  • Rejecting democracy for a strongman
  • Stoking rage against cultural elites
  • Nationalism based on “superior” race
  • Glorifying strength and warriors
  • Disdain of women and LGBTQ+ people
Is Donald Trump a Fascist? | Robert Reich

Note: Clicking the above image will load and play the video from YouTube.

It’s official. July was the hottest month on record. By far

2023-08-09 /

AP »

July’s global average temperature of 16.95 degrees Celsius (62.51 degrees Fahrenheit) was a third of a degree Celsius (six tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) higher than the previous record set in 2019, Copernicus Climate Change Service announced Tuesday. Normally global temperature records are broken by hundredths or a tenth of a degree, so this margin is unusual.

The United States is now at a record 15 different weather disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damage this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Tuesday. It’s the most mega-disasters through the first seven months of the year since the agency tracked such things starting in 1980, with the agency adjusting figures for inflation.

“These records have dire consequences for both people and the planet exposed to ever more frequent and intense extreme events,” said Copernicus deputy director Samantha Burgess. There have been deadly heat waves in the Southwestern United States and Mexico, Europe and Asia. Scientific quick studies put the blame on human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.

Eight nations of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization are meeting in Belém to discuss the joint goals for rain forest protection

2023-08-08 /

AP »

The Amazon stretches across an area twice the size of India, and two-thirds of it lies in Brazil. Seven other countries and one territory share the remaining third — Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname, Ecuador and French Guiana. Presidents from all but Ecuador, Suriname and Venezuela are attending.

Massive destruction of the Amazon forest is a climate disaster and all the countries at the summit have ratified the Paris climate accord which requires signatories to set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But that’s about as far as their shared policy goes.

Reuters »

On Wednesday, Amazon countries will meet with leaders of the Congo, the DRC and Indonesia, looking to issue a joint statement from the world’s three major rainforest basins. Norway and Germany, which have funded Amazon preservation, and France, which controls the Amazon territory of French Guiana, will also participate.

1 in 4 new cars sold in California last quarter were EVs

2023-08-03 /

LA Times »

More than 25% of all new vehicles sold in the last quarter were EVs, according to the California Energy Commission, with sales for the three-month period totaling 125,939.

California has sold more than 1.6 million electric vehicles to date and accounts for 34% of all EV sales in the country, according to a market report by the nonprofit Veloz, which raises awareness about electric vehicles.

California leads the nation in promoting electric vehicle sales, having invested more than $5 billion to transition the state away from gas-powered vehicles.

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