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An Israeli military spokesman admitted Tuesday what was plainly obvious to witnesses of the mass destruction underway in the besieged Gaza Strip: that the goal of Israel’s ongoing bombing campaign is to inflict severe damage on the occupied territory, not to strictly target Hamas military installations.
“The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy,” Israel Defense Forces official Daniel Hagari said, according too Haaretz.
IDF Official Admits Israel’s Goal in Bombing Gaza Is to Inflict Severe Damage | Truthout
Gaza: Nowhere to go, as humanitarian situation reaches ‘lethal low’
UN humanitarians expressed deep concern on Friday for all civilians in the Gaza Strip following Israel’s order for the entire population there to leave the north, amid ongoing airstrikes and a deepening humanitarian crisis.
Agreed with David of the Rational National. Israel needs to STOP.
The UN Urges Israel To Stop As They Verge On A Ground Invasion Of Gaza - YouTube
“My government is waging an attack that seems to be using war crimes to retaliate on war crimes,” says Sfard. “They want revenge, as if a revenge would bring back the dear ones that are gone.” Sfard says Israel should end its bombing and lift the blockade on Gaza because civilians do not deserve punishment for militant attacks. “Modern international law prohibits, with no exception, collective punishment.”
After Hamas’s deadly attacks in Israel and Israel’s hellish bombardment of Gaza, I checked in on MSNBC. Before long, I heard one of their reporters talk about “the violent history between these two nations” – as if Palestine were a country… Palestine is not a country. That’s the whole point. Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel all live under various regimes of organized discrimination and oppression, much of which makes life nearly unlivable, and if the US media can’t even frame the issue correctly, what use is there in even covering it?
The double standard with Israel and Palestine leaves us in moral darkness | Moustafa Bayoumi
In New York, we speak with Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, who calls the blockade of Gaza “a pressure cooker. It had to explode.”
In response to the escalated conflict, the U.S. promised Israel would have “what it needs to defend itself,” pledging more military aid and munitions to Israel, already the largest annual recipient of U.S. military funding… “We finance this occupation. We finance this violence,” says Khalidi.
U.S. Pledges More Military Aid to Israel As Palestinians Challenge Blockade & Occupation - YouTube
Doomed or Not?
Rebecca Solnit writing in the Guardian: We can’t afford to be climate doomers:
“Some days I think that if we lose the climate battle, it’ll be due in no small part to this defeatism among the comfortable in the global north, while people in frontline communities continue to fight like hell for survival. Which is why fighting defeatism is also climate work.”
We have already lost the climate battle and it is stories or opinions like the one above, that are preventing others from grasping this, and stopping us from taking the kinds of collective adaptive responses appropriate on a local and global scale.
The not-too-late framing is a dangerous one. It means people are prepared to wait for global elites to roll out the energy transition, to deploy such ‘solutions’ as carbon capture technologies, or other flawed techno fixes, aimed at making those elites wealthy, while not stopping the baked in warming that is already here and accelerating. It is only when we finally break through the not-too-late taboo that we will begin the work in earnest of adaptation to reduce suffering as much as we can.
This question and discussion is on my mind most days. I don’t think there’s a correct answer. My response is just simply that we are now in a climate emergency that will have no end in our lifetimes. That we have gone too far and must respond and keep responding. Our everyday lives should be a response and in short order, whether we like it or not, our lives will involuntarily be a constant response, a forced adaption to ever changing, worsening conditions.
Better Catastrophe
A flowchart for navigating our climate predicament
Global warming is projected to rocket past the 1.5°C limit, throwing lifelong activist Andrew Boyd into a crisis of hope, and off on a quest to learn how to live with the “impossible news” of climate breakdown. With gallows humor and a broken heart, Andrew steers us through our climate angst as he walks his own. This flowchart is an invitation to join him on his narrative path and explore our predicament on your own.
Immediately participatory.
Manufacturing new computer hardware requires lots of energy and resources, not to mention the creation of undesirable byproducts. The production of one of the most vital components of computers, microchips, is especially resource-intensive. As a result, according to permacomputing principles, they should be treated as precious resources — because they are — and their lifespans maximized. They would not be reduced back to raw materials until absolutely necessary.
The assessment, published in the journal Nature, Wednesday, looked at two decades worth of data from more than 1,000 scientists…
…found that the status of amphibians globally is “deteriorating rapidly,” earning them the unenviable title of being the planet’s most threatened class of vertebrates.
Forty-one percent of the assessed amphibians are threatened with extinction in the immediate and long-term, Luedtke said. “Which is a greater percentage than threatened mammals, reptiles and birds.”
Climate change and development pushing world’s amphibians towards extinction. : NPR
This summer, the United States roasted like never before. People got third-degree burns from simply falling onto hot pavement in Arizona, filling up all the beds in Maricopa County’s burn center. High humidity teamed up with the Midwest’s worst heat wave in years to send the heat index, or the “feels like” temperature, soaring above 130 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of Kansas…
Off the coast of Florida, the ocean warmed to hot tub temperatures, leading to mass death in the coral reefs.
Climate Fiction Is No Longer Dystopian. Just Reality. – Mother Jones
Scientists have said climate breakdown caused by the burning of fossil fuels is the cause of unusually hot summers and winters with very low snow volume, which have caused the accelerating melts. The volume lost during the hot summers of 2022 and 2023 is the same as that lost between 1960 and 1990. … Experts have stopped measuring the ice on some glaciers as there is essentially none left.
Swiss glaciers lose 10% of their volume in two years | The Guardian
After extreme fire seasons in 2020 and 2021, Congress funded a temporary bonus that boosted average U.S. Forest Service wildland firefighter pay by either 50% or US$20,000, whichever was lower. But that increase expires after Sept. 30, knocking many federal firefighters back to earning the minimum $15 per hour…
The National Federation of Federal Employees warns that a large number of firefighters could quit if their pay also drops.
$15/ hour to do that job?! Insanity to cut their pay.
Wildland firefighters face a huge pay cut without action by Congress
March to End Fossil Fuels in New York City, activists decried President Joe Biden’s continued investment in fossil fuels and his refusal to declare a national emergency over the worsening effects of climate change. Louisiana climate justice activist Roishetta Ozane said Biden is “personally accountable” for climate change-fueled natural disasters, while 16-year-old Fridays for Future organizer Helen Mancini proclaimed, “There is not enough time to put this off another term.”
Frontline, Labor & Youth Voices Call on Biden to Immediately Act to Prevent Climate Catastrophe
Earth’s life support systems have been so damaged that the planet is “well outside the safe operating space for humanity”, scientists have warned.
Their assessment found that six out of nine “planetary boundaries” had been broken because of human-caused pollution and destruction of the natural world. The planetary boundaries are the limits of key global systems – such as climate, water and wildlife diversity – beyond which their ability to maintain a healthy planet is in danger of failing.
Earth ‘well outside safe operating space for humanity’ | Climate crisis | The Guardian
The devastation wreaked by floods in eastern Libya is nothing less than apocalyptic. In Derna, where two dams burst after torrential rains, a wall of water deluged the city and sliced out the land from beneath its inhabitants. Entire neighbourhoods were swept into the sea, which is now dumping bodies along the shore. More than 6,000 have died there, and 10,000 people are said to be missing, but because entire families were washed away, there may be no survivors to report some losses.
The Guardian view on Libya’s floods: humans, not just nature, caused this disaster | The Guardian
In the Atlanta suburb of Peachtree City, teens and older people alike rely on little electric vehicles to get around. Is this a potential model for a more sustainable suburbia?
With about 9,300 golf carts registered among its 13,000 households, this town 31 miles southwest of Atlanta might be the most golf-cart-friendly municipality in America. A hundred miles of car-free multi-use paths crisscross the town’s 25 square miles…"
E-Bikes and golf carts would seem to be perfect for slower, safer, more climate friendly local travel.
The Electric Vehicle That Suburbia Needs Could Be a Golf Cart
Climate rallies over the next few weeks to demand an end to fossil fuel usage ahead of the United Nations’ summit on 9/20.
“Clearly, saving the planet is the most important issue facing humanity,” the Democratic senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, said. “But here’s the ugly and brutal truth: right now, humanity is failing..”
The rally was one of some 200 global climate actions taking place this week in countries including Bolivia, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Austria.
Climate activists kick off rallies against fossil fuel in week of action in New York | The Guardian
Leaders failed to agree on a phase-out of fossil fuels despite a United Nations report a day earlier deeming the drawdown “indispensable” to achieving net-zero emissions.
G20 nations account for about 80 percent of global emissions and an inability to agree on the phase-out is a cloud over a key round of climate discussions to begin in November in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates.
I want to be hopeful but there is no evidence that we will phase out fossil fuels. Progress is far too slow, far too little.
Five key takeaways from G20 summit: ‘We need bolder action’ | Al Jazeera
The task ahead is immense: According to the report, global emissions need to be slashed 43 percent by 2030 to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, one of the main goalposts of the Paris agreement…
Among its recommendations, the report unapologetically calls for “phasing out all unabated fossil fuels” and for a “radical decarbonization of all sectors of the economy.”