OUR CRUCIAL SPRING CAMPAIGN IS NOW UNDERWAY
Please donate now to keep the mission and independent journalism of Common Dreams strong.
For Immediate Release
February, 25 2015, 02:45pm EDT
Contact:
Email:,office@stopwar.org.uk
Anti-War Campaigners Condemn Decision to Send British Troops to Ukraine
WASHINGTON
Lindsey German, convenor of Stop the War, said "After British military exercises in Ukraine last year; Nato's long known intention to construct a military base in Ukraine, and the US supplying weapons to the Kiev government, David Cameron's latest decision to send British troops to the Ukraine is another very dangerous development that will escalate an already tense stand off between Russia and the West."
Stop the War was founded in September 2001 in the weeks following 9/11, when George W. Bush announced the "war on terror". Stop the War has since been dedicated to preventing and ending the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere. Stop the War opposes the British establishment's disastrous addiction to war and its squandering of public resources on militarism. We have initiated many campaigns around these issues.
+44 20 7561 4830LATEST NEWS
'About That Climate Emergency?': Northeastern US Chokes on Wildfire Smoke
The smoke has drifted south from "unprecedented" wildfires in Canada sparked by record spring temperatures.
Jun 07, 2023
Smoke from Canadian wildfires fueled by the climate crisis continued to smother eastern regions of the United States on Wednesday, with 13 states issuing air quality alerts affecting millions of people.
New York City had the worst air quality of any major city Tuesday night, and the third worst as of 11:38 am ET Wednesday, behind only Delhi and Dhaka. Both New York and Washington, D.C. have issued Code Red Air Quality Alerts and canceled outdoor activities at public schools.
\u201cNew York City now with the worst air quality in the world among major cities:\u201d— Capital Weather Gang (@Capital Weather Gang) 1686099512
"In the capital city of the United States of America it is medically unsafe to inhale air," the group Climate Defiance wrote on Twitter. "Fossil-fueled climate change has parched Canada, where 6,600,000 acres of forest just burst into flames. Those majestic woodlands are now ash. And we are inhaling the soot."
\u201cBREAKING: in the capital city of the United States of America it is medically unsafe to inhale air.\n\nFossil-fueled climate change has parched Canada, where 6,600,000 acres of forest just burst into flames. Those majestic woodlands are now ash. And we are inhaling the soot.\u201d— Climate Defiance (@Climate Defiance) 1686140401
Millions of people in the U.S. and Canada are breathing unhealthy air for the second day in a row Wednesday, with more than 55 million under air quality alerts in the Eastern U.S. and the Canadian capital of Ottawa also hard hit, CNN reported.
"The smoke—making the Eastern U.S. look like California at the peak of fire season—is not normal," The Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang tweeted. "The air is compromised from Minneapolis to D.C. to Boston, and the worst from western NY to around Ottawa."
\u201cThe smoke -- making the Eastern U.S. look like California at the peak of fire season -- is not normal.\nThe air is compromised from Minneapolis to DC to Boston, and the worst from western NY to arround Ottawa. A thread... 1/\u201d— Capital Weather Gang (@Capital Weather Gang) 1686072533
New York Mayor Eric Adams advised vulnerable residents to stay inside until the smoke cleared.
"This is not the day to train for a marathon," he said, as The New York Times reported.
AccuWeather assessed that the smoke was the worst the Northeast had experienced in more than two decades.
"Unlike other wildfire smoke episodes in the Northeast, where the smoke was primarily present well above the ground, only resulting in hazy skies and more vivid sunrises and sunsets, the smoke in recent days has also been at ground level resulting in poor air quality, low visibility, and serious health risks to people, especially those outdoors," the outlet wrote in a media advisory.
Wildfire smoke is a cause of particulate matter air pollution, which has been linked to a growing number of health hazards from heart and lung disease to poor mental health and cognitive decline. In the U.S. West, regular smoke from climate-fueled wildfires has begun to reverse policy-driven improvements in air quality, and now the East is beginning to see similar impacts.
New York City's air quality on Wednesday was its worst since the 1960s, New York City health commissioner Ashwin Vasan said, according toThe New York Times. AccuWeather, meanwhile, likened spending hours breathing the air in the hardest-hit Northeast cities to smoking five to 10 cigarettes.
\u201cLive view of Lower Manhattan from @Earthcam as dense wildfire smoke settles in close to the surface. Air quality is very poor and visibility has dropped significantly.\u201d— New York Metro Weather (@New York Metro Weather) 1686091573
"If you can see or smell smoke, know that you're being exposed," William Barrett, the national senior director of clean air advocacy with the American Lung Association, told CNN. "And it's important that you do everything you can to remain indoors during those high, high pollution episodes, and it's really important to keep an eye on your health or any development of symptoms."
The smoke is coming from more than 400 fires burning in Canada, as officials in that country said this year could be the worst for fires on record, the Independentreported. In the province of Quebec alone, more than 150 fires were burning as of Tuesday, with more than 110 out of control, forcing thousands to evacuate, The Associated Press reported.
The climate crisis is fueling these fires with record spring heat, and high latitudes are warming faster than the global average, as The Washington Post pointed out. Already in May, Canada saw more than 6.5 million acres burn, far surpassing the average for the month of around 370,000 acres.
"These conditions this early in the season are unprecedented."
"These conditions this early in the season are unprecedented and of course they are deeply concerning to all Canadians," Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair toldCBC News June 1.
Smoke from the Quebec fires is being pushed south over the Great Lakes, Northeast, and Mid Atlantic by a clockwise low pressure system over Nova Scotia, The Washington Post reported further. It has drifted as far south as South Carolina and as far west as Minnesota.
\u201cAs we continue to monitor the widespread smoke from wildfires in Canada, @NOAA's #GOESEast \ud83d\udef0\ufe0f can see some of it being swept up by a large swirling low pressure system. Numerous #AirQuality Alerts are in effect across the central and eastern U.S.\n\nMore: https://t.co/wJGBXDcNu2\u201d— NOAA Satellites (@NOAA Satellites) 1686142437
It's not clear when the smoke will end, though a change in wind direction could improve conditions Friday into Saturday.
"As bad as the smoke and air pollution was on Tuesday, the air quality can be even worse at times across parts of the Northeast on Wednesday and poor air quality is expected to linger in some areas into the weekend," AccuWeather chief meteorologist Jonathan Porter said.
The location of the smoke could also change as the week progresses.
“On Thursday and Friday, the worst smoke and related air quality is expected to shift west across the Great Lakes and parts of Ohio Valley and interior Northeast including the cities of Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and Detroit," AccuWeather director of forecasting Operation Dan DePodwin said.
DePodwin warned that a system in the Ohio Valley region in the coming days or next week could turn into something called a "smoke storm," causing the smoke "to wrap westward across the Great Lakes and then southward through the Ohio Valley and into the mid-Atlantic."
While millions wait for the smoke to lift, climate activists pointed out that a change in political wind is really what is needed to prevent such extreme weather events.
"Hey @POTUS, about that climate emergency?" Fossil Free Media director Jamie Henn tweeted over a picture of a smoke-darkened New York.
\u201cHey @POTUS, about that climate emergency?\u201d— Jamie Henn (@Jamie Henn) 1686152278
Food and Water Watch policy director Jim Walsh also tweeted a smoky D.C. streetscape Wednesday as he headed to Capitol Hill to protest the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 300-mile natural gas pipeline that Congress fast-tracked as part of the debt ceiling deal signed into law by President Joe Biden on Saturday.
"The hazy sky over D.C. this morning, from climate change charged wildfires in Canada, is just one more way the fossil fuel industry is killing us in their blind pursuit of profit," Walsh said.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Explosive': UAE Oil Firm Has Been Reviewing Internal COP28 Communications
"This is an absolute scandal," said one lawmaker. "It is like having a tobacco multinational overseeing the internal work of the World Health Organization."
Jun 07, 2023
One of the world's largest fossil fuel corporations has been able to read emails to and from the United Nations climate summit office and was given advice on how to respond to a media inquiry, The Guardianreported Wednesday.
Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, the CEO of the United Arab Emirates' state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), is also president-designate of COP28, set to be hosted this fall by the UAE.
"This is an absolute scandal," said Manon Aubry, a European Union lawmaker from France. "An oil and gas company has found its way to the core of the organization in charge of coordinating the phasing out of oil and gas. It is like having a tobacco multinational overseeing the internal work of the World Health Organization."
Aubrey, who co-led a recent letter in which 133 members of the United States Congress and the European Parliament called for al-Jaber to be replaced as chair of the U.N.'s upcoming annual climate conference, added: "The COP28 office has lost all credibility. If we care more about preventing a climate disaster than protecting the profits and influence of fossil fuel companies, we need to react now."
According to The Guardian: "The COP28 office had claimed its email system was 'standalone' and 'separate' from that of ADNOC. But expert technical analysis showed the office shared email servers with ADNOC. After The Guardian's inquiries, the COP28 office switched to a different server on Monday."
"If we care more about preventing a climate disaster than protecting the profits and influence of fossil fuel companies, we need to react now."
Bas Eickhout, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, called the newspaper's findings "explosive."
Eickhout, vice chair of the E.U.'s environment committee, said that "the [UAE presidency of COP28] is a merger of the economic interests of a fossil country with a fundamental transition agenda that should be away from this fossil industry—that will not go well, and [these revelations] already show that it's not going well."
Pascoe Sabido, a researcher at Corporate Europe Observatory and co-coordinator of Kick Big Polluters Out, noted that the UAE's selection of al-Jaber as COP28 leader in January was "a huge blow to the credibility" of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
"It's completely inappropriate that an oil corporation was consulted and it exposes just how influential it has been in shaping what gets presented to the outside world," said Sabido. "Until world governments accept that fossil fuels need to be left in the ground and their lobbyists are no longer allowed to write the rules of climate action, this will keep happening."
Last year's COP27 gathering was overrun by fossil fuel lobbyists. Like the 26 U.N. climate summits that preceded it, the meeting ended with no binding commitment to phase out the extraction and combustion of coal, oil, and gas, even as evidence mounts that the failure to do so is exacerbating deadly planetary heating.
\u201cOur 'leaders' are not even bothering to keep up pretences. They have handed over the climate crisis agenda, plus all its internal comms, to the oil barons. And public opinion averts its gaze... https://t.co/i595pW0J3O\u201d— Yanis Varoufakis (@Yanis Varoufakis) 1686141626
Soon after the UAE picked al-Jaber to oversee COP28, Kick Big Polluters Out, a global coalition of more than 450 organizations led by Corporate Europe Observatory and Corporate Accountability, warned in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and UNFCCC executive secretary Simon Stiell that this year's climate conference is also destined to end in failure unless action is taken to crack down on the fossil fuel industry's corruption of international negotiations.
That marked the beginning of an ongoing effort to oust al-Jaber from the COP28 presidency and to eliminate fossil fuel industry interference in climate talks more broadly. On Wednesday morning, Kick Polluters Out protested Big Oil's obstruction of progress at the U.N.'s Bonn Climate Change Conference—a crucial precursor to COP28 currently being held in Germany.
The campaign to remove al-Jaber from his COP28 leadership position has gained steam since it was revealed that ADNOC, fresh off of a major profit surge in 2022, plans to expand its drilling operations in 2023 and beyond.
Despite years of warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the International Energy Agency that exploiting new oil and gas fields is incompatible with averting the climate emergency's most catastrophic impacts, ADNOC is one of several fossil fuel firms moving to ramp up dirty energy production in the coming years.
Notably, U.S. President Joe Biden's top climate diplomat, John Kerry, has faced criticism for supporting al-Jaber. More than two dozen progressive members of Congress have implored Kerry to advocate for the appointment of a new COP28 president who doesn't have connections to the industry most responsible for fueling the climate crisis.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Homophobic Mob Attacks Defenders of LGBTQ+ Equality Outside School Board Meeting in California
"This violence is unacceptable and will not be tolerated in California," said one California lawmaker. "We stand in strong support of our LGBTQ+ community. Diversity and inclusion is our strength, and our schools WILL remain welcoming to all."
Jun 07, 2023
Far-right fascist groups and homophobic parents instigated violent clashes outside a local school committee meeting in the town of Glendale, California on Tuesday evening which resulted in defenders of the district recognizing June as Pride Month being punched, kicked, pepper-sprayed, and thrown about as police failed to maintain a peaceful situation.
While the Glendale Unified School District board met inside to hear from community members and parents prior to a vote, the overflow crowd that gathered became increasingly confrontational.
Footage taken from above the protest showed the moment when protesters broke a police line and the fighting between the opposing factions ensued:
\u201cAnti-LGBT protestors attack Pro-LGBT demonstrators outside of a Glendale, CA schoolboard meeting.\n\nThe schoolboard is voting on recognizing June as Pride month.\u201d— Brennan Murphy (@Brennan Murphy) 1686100986
Local reporters estimated that 500 people—which included local parents opposed to recognizing the dignity of LGBTQ students as well as others identified as "traveling fascists" and outside agitators without students in the district, like the far-right Proud Boys and other fascist groups—had gathered outside the meeting.
A large group of parents and others who gathered to approve of the Pride recognition vote and support the LGBTQ+ community in Glendale were also in attendance, carrying signs that said "Dads Against Proud Boys" and "Stop Threatening Educators."
\u201cMultiple anti-LGBTQ protestors push against police officers, eventually some push past police and fight with LGBTQ.\n\nAn LGBTQ supporter who is tackled and beaten on the ground by protestors ends up arrested by Glendale police.\u201d— Sergio Olmos (@Sergio Olmos) 1686100997
In a statement, the police said, "While most of the protest was peaceful, a small group of individuals engaged in behavior deemed unsafe and a risk to public safety."
According to local ABC affiliate Channel 7 Eyewitness News:
The school board was set to adopt a resolution recognizing Pride Month, which has been done for the last four years. However, a shelter-in-place order disrupted the meeting as a brawl happened outside.
Board members later unanimously adopted the resolution to declare June as Pride Month.
Many in the crowd opposed to LGBTQ+ rights and recognition wore t-shirts that read: "Leave Our Kids Alone."
The Republican Party and other far-right political actors have increasingly targeted local public schools in their effort to gin up opposition to trans youth and promote a culture war that seeks to equate common-sense love and acceptance of LGTBQ+ children and adults with some kind of leftist "indoctrination" that should be opposed.
\u201cThis violence is unacceptable and will not be tolerated in California. We stand in strong support of our LGBTQ+ community. Diversity and inclusion is our strength, and our schools WILL remain welcoming to all.https://t.co/hRsD2dzDAT\u201d— Buffy Wicks (@Buffy Wicks) 1686114833
One parent of a queer middle school student in the district who was at Tuesday's meeting told the Los Angeles Times that her child had faced discrimination growing up.
The woman said she was grateful for the commitment by the GUSD board in protecting LGBTQ+ acceptance. "I've never spoken before," she said, "but as an actual parent, I felt that I had to be here because a lot of the opposing people don't believe that I exist."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular
SUPPORT INDEPENDENT
JOURNALISM TODAY
JOURNALISM TODAY
We Can't Do It
Without You!
Without You!