Day: March 31, 2016

Planet Watch
climate

WMO report: Earth’s climate deeply out of balance

Key climate indicators such as greenhouse gas concentrations, global temperatures, ocean heat, and sea levels all reached record highs in recent years, according to the World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Global Climate 2025 report. The past 11 years have been the warmest on record, with 2025 among the top three. Melting ice, rising seas, and extreme weather are intensifying risks to ecosystems, health, and economies. With the 1.5°C warming limit established by the Paris Agreement nearing, the report stresses urgent emissions cuts. “Every key climate indicator is flashing red,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. “Humanity has just endured the 11 hottest years on record. When history repeats itself 11 times, it is no longer a coincidence. It is a call to act.” (Image: blende12/Pixabay)

Greater Middle East
Lebanon

Lebanon ceasefire —real or fiction?

The ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese political and militant group Hezbollah is on shaky ground following an Israeli air-strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs. It was the first strike on Lebanon’s capital since a pause in hostilities came into effect in November last year. Israel—which has bombed southern Lebanon almost daily despite the ceasefire—said it was retaliating for a rocket attack into northern Israel. Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem warned that if Israel continues to carry out strikes in Lebanon, and the Lebanese government does not act to stop it, then his organization will take matters into its own hands. (Image via Flickr)

Planet Watch
anthropocene

2023: ‘bonkers year’ for global climate

Records were once again broken last year for greenhouse gas levels, surface temperatures, ocean heat and acidification, sea level rise, and retreat of glaciers, according to a new global report issued by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The WMO State of the Global Climate 2023 report finds that on an average day in 2023, nearly one third of the ocean surface was gripped by a marine heatwave, harming vital ecosystems and food systems—far beyond the already inflated levels seen in recent years. Antarctic sea ice reached its lowest extent on record—at one million square kilometers below the previous record year of 2022, an area equivalent to the size of France and Germany combined. One leading oceanographer wryly stated: “The scientific term is bonkers year.” (Photo: CounterVortex)

Palestine
Israeli police

Israel: detention of ‘terror suspects’ without charge

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett instructed security services to hold “terror suspects” in “administrative detention,” even without charge. The order extends to Palestinians in Israel a policy long applied to Palestinians on the West Bank. Bennett cited “a new situation that requires suitable preparations and adjustment by the security services to the circumstances within which extremist elements of Arab society, directed by extremist Islamic ideology, are carrying out terror attacks and taking lives.” The order follows deadly attacks by Israeli citizens who were said to be supporters of the so-called “Islamic State.” (Photo: Wikimedia)

Planet Watch
#QuedeteEnCasa

Worldwide police-state measures in face of COVID-19

With whole nations under lockdown, sweeping powers are being assumed by governments across the world in the name of containing the COVID-19 pandemic. Hungary’s parliament voted to allow Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to rule by decree. The Russian parliament has approved an “anti-virus” package that includes up to seven years imprisonment for serious violations of quarantine rules. Israel has joined South Korea in authorizing use of personal cellphone data to track the virus. Chilean President Sebastian Piñera has declared a “state of catastrophe,” sending the military to public squares recently occupied by protesters. Military patrols are also enforcing the lockdown in Peru, Italy, Romania and South Africa. “We could have a parallel epidemic of authoritarian and repressive measures following close on the heels of a health epidemic,” said Fionnuala Ni Aolain, UN Special Rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights. (Photo: Peruvian army demonstration video, via YouTube)

Greater Middle East

Turkey arrests Kurdish politicians on election eve

Turkish police conducted raids on 127 homes in Istanbul and arrested at least 53 people, including all candidates for the city council with the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). The sweeps come less than 24 hours before nationwide local elections commence. In southern Sanliurfa province, police arrested 11 other HDP candidates and campaigners on supposed “terrorism-related” charges. Some 30 more HDP candidates and supporters were arrested in the cities of Adana, Van, and Igdir. The government accuses the HDP of links to outlawed Kurdish militants, and 10 lawmakers, 40 mayors and thousands of activists remain behind bars. Before the raids, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan repeated the accusation and called the party “terror lovers.”

The Andes

Oil contracts at issue in Peru political scandal

Seemingly irregular oil contracts have emerged as a factor in the ongoing political scandal that last week brought down Peru's president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. Following accusations from left-opposition congressmembers, state agency PeruPetro admitted that hours before leaving office, Kuczynski had issued a Supreme Decree initiating the process of approving five offshore oil concessions with a private company—but without the involvement of PeruPetro in vetting the contracts, as required by law. Calling the deals "lobista," Dammert is demanding that new President Martín Vizcarra declare the contracts void. (Photo: Gestión)

MOZAMBIQUE’S MOVEMENT TO END LAND GRABS

by Anabela Lemos, Toward Freedom

This article was drawn from an interview with Anabela Lemos, and conducted, edited, and condensed by Simone Adler for Toward Freedom. Anabela Lemos is co-founder, campaign coordinator and board member of Justiça Ambiental, the Mozambique branch of Friends of the Earth.

To corporations, the forest is only business. To communities, the forest is everything: trees, medicine, culture, spirituality. Land-grabbing and the removal of communities from forests and land breaks the community, displaces access to food and water, and uproots the connection to nature and [local] knowledge. If the community structure is broken, if the land—the means of food production—is lost, we lose everything.

Land That Can Only Grow Stones
In Mozambique, where 80% of the population is campesinos—traditional, family farmers—companies are taking the best, most fertile land and moving people to land that can’t grow anything. For example, the coal mining project in the Tete province relocated people from the fertile soil by the Zambezi River, with the promise of houses and two hectares of land per family. They were moved to an arid place with land that can only grow stones, as they say, losing access to the land and river their lives depended on.

Continue ReadingMOZAMBIQUE’S MOVEMENT TO END LAND GRABS 
Greater Middle East

Syria: jihadis target Armenians

Some 2,000 Armenians from the town of Kessab in northern Syria have taken refuge in the port city of Latakia following the occupation of their town by jihadist forces.