February, 04 2021, 11:00pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Lindsey German: 07472 198 941
Chris Nineham: 07930 536 519
The British Government Must Follow Joe Biden and End Support for the War on Yemen
WASHINGTON
President Joe Biden's announcement of an end to US support for the war on Yemen and a suspension of arms sales to Saudi Arabia is a welcome change to US foreign policy. Shamefully, the British government continues to support the war which has created the worst humanitarian crisis on earth. The overwhelming majority of those with views oppose the war and oppose arms sales to Saudi Arabia on both sides of the Atlantic.
Following the Biden announcement and the World Says No to War on Yemen Global Day of Action involving tens of thousands of people in 28 countries, Stop the War is stepping up its campaign to demand the British government ends all support for the war and all arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
Thousands have already signed a petition to the government, an early day motion has been launched in parliament and all those opposing the war are being asked to lobby their MPs to sign it.
More events are being planned in the run up to the anniversary of the war in March.
Stop the War Convenor, Lindsey German, said:
'The crisis in Yemen which threatens the lives of more than 20 million people is not a natural disaster, it is a direct result of the Saudi-led war of which Britain is now the main western backer.
Quite simply, Johnson and Raab have blood on their hands. Their support for the carnage in Yemen must end immediately.'
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.
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Jayapal, Sanders Offer Answer to Elon Musk's Healthcare Cost Question
"The most efficiently run healthcare systems in the world," said National Nurses United, "have been proven time and time again to be single-payer systems."
Dec 05, 2024
Two of the United States' most outspoken critics of the for-profit health system welcomed billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk's criticism of the country's sky-high healthcare spending—and suggested that Musk, a potential Cabinet member in the incoming Trump administration, join the call for Medicare for All.
A social media post by Musk drew the attention of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who reintroduced legislation to expand Medicare coverage to every American last year and have long called for the for-profit healthcare system to be replaced by a government-run program, or single-payer system, like those in every other wealthy country in the world.
"Shouldn't the American people be getting getting their money's worth?" asked Musk, posting a graph from the nonpartisan Peter G. Peterson Foundation that showed how per capita administrative healthcare costs in the U.S. reached $1,055 in 2020—hundreds of dollars more than countries including Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
"Yes," said Sanders, repeating statistics he has frequently shared while condemning the country's $4.5 trillion health system in which private, for-profit health insurance companies increasingly refuse to pay for healthcare services and Americans pay an average of $1,142 in out-of-pocket expenses each year.
"We waste hundreds of billions a year on healthcare administrative expenses that make insurance CEOs and wealthy stockholders incredibly rich while 85 million Americans go uninsured or underinsured," the senator added. "Healthcare is a human right. We need Medicare for All."
Jayapal added that she has "a solution" to exorbitant healthcare costs in the U.S.: "It's called Medicare for All."
Musk has been nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to lead a new federal agency that he wants to create called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Sanders has expressed support for some of the agency's mission, saying its plan to "cut wasteful expenditures" could be put to use at the Department of Defense, which has repeatedly failed audits of its annual spending.
But Sanders has sharply criticized the economic system and business practices that have helped make Musk the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $343.8 billion.
Another progressive, David Sirota of The Lever, suggested last month that DOGE could be used to eliminate the nation's vast health insurance bureaucracy and replace it with Medicare for All, pointing to a 2020 report from the Republican-controlled Congressional Budget Office that showed that a government-run healthcare program would save the country an estimated $650 billion each year.
"Such a system could achieve this in part because Medicare's 2% administrative costs are so much lower than the 17% administrative costs of the bureaucratic, profit-extracting private health insurance industry," wrote Sirota.
Musk drew the attention of Medicare for All advocates amid online discussion about the greed of for-profit insurance giants.
The killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on Wednesday prompted discussion about widespread anger over the U.S. healthcare system, and following public outcry, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield on Thursday backtracked on a decision to stop paying for surgical anesthesia if a procedure goes beyond a certain time limit. The American Society of Anesthesiologists said that if Anthem stopped fully paying doctors who provide pain management for complicated surgeries, patients would be left paying hundreds or thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs.
National Nurses United, which advocates for a government-run healthcare system, urged Musk and others who support the broadly popular proposal to "join the movement to win Medicare for All."
"The most efficiently run healthcare systems in the world," said the group, "have been proven time and time again to be single-payer systems."
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'We Disagree': US Dismisses Landmark Amnesty Report Accusing Israel of Genocide
"We have said previously and continue to find that the allegations of genocide are unfounded," said a State Department spokesperson.
Dec 05, 2024
A U.S. State Department spokesperson told reporters on Thursday that the United States disagrees with Amnesty International's new report accusing Israel of carrying out genocide in the Gaza Strip.
"We disagree with the conclusions of such a report," spokesperson Vedant Patel said a day after the human rights group released the document. "We have said previously and continue to find that the allegations of genocide are unfounded."
The Israeli government has vehemently rejected the findings in the report.
"The deplorable and fanatical organization Amnesty International has once again produced a fabricated report that is entirely false and based on lies. The genocidal massacre on October 7, 2023, was carried out by the Hamas terrorist organization against Israeli citizens. Since then, Israeli citizens have been subjected to daily attacks from seven different fronts. Israel is defending itself against these attacks acting fully in accordance with international law," wrote the Israel Foreign Ministry in a post on X.
Amnesty Israel also does not accept the findings of Amnesty International's report, according to The Times of Israel.
In a statement, the Israeli branch of the organization—which reportedly did not take part in the funding, research, or writing of the report—said that "the scale of the killing and destruction carried out by Israel in Gaza has reached horrific proportions and must be stopped immediately," per The Times of Israel. However, the groups does not believe the events "meet the definition of genocide as strictly laid out in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide."
In the 296-page report released Wednesday—titled, "You Feel Like You Are Subhuman": Israel's Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza—Amnesty International found through its research and legal analysis "sufficient basis to conclude that Israel committed, during the nine-month period under review, prohibited acts under Articles II (a), (b), and (c) of the Genocide Convention, namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part."
In order for a conflict to be considered genocide under international law, there must be both evidence of specific criminal acts—such as killing members of a given group—as well as "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such."
In its report, Amnesty International concluded that "these acts were committed with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza."
Intent also came up during the State Department press conference Thursday when journalist Said Arikat of the Palestinian paper Al-Quds asked Patel a follow-up question about the report.
"I know that genocide depends a great deal on intent... And [the report] bases its conclusions on the statements, time and time and time again, by Israeli commanders, by Israeli officials," he said. "What is it going to take for you, for the United States of America... to say what is happening is genocide?"
Patel responded, "That's an opinion, and you're certainly welcome and you are entitled to it, as are all the organizations."
Israel faces an ongoing genocide case, led by South Africa, at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court recently issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri.
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Green Group Sounds Alarm Over Meta's Nuclear Power Plans
"In the blind sprint to win on AI, Meta and the other tech giants have lost their way," said a leader at Environment America.
Dec 05, 2024
Environmental advocates this week responded with concern to Meta looking for nuclear power developers to help the tech giant add 1-4 gigawatts of generation capacity in the United States starting in the early 2030s.
Meta—the parent company of Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and more—released a request for proposals to identify developers, citing its artificial intelligence (AI) innovation and sustainability objectives. It is "seeking developers with strong community engagement, development, ...permitting, and execution expertise that have development opportunities for new nuclear energy resources—either small modular reactors (SMR) or larger nuclear reactors."
The company isn't alone. As TechCrunchreported: "Microsoft is hoping to restart a reactor at Three Mile Island by 2028. Google is betting that SMR technology can help it deliver on its AI and sustainability goals, signing a deal with startup Kairos Power for 500 megawatts of electricity. Amazon has thrown its weight behind SMR startup X-Energy, investing in the company and inking two development agreements for around 300 megawatts of generating capacity."
In response to Meta's announcement, Johanna Neumann, Environment America Research & Policy Center's senior director of the Campaign for 100% Renewable Energy, said: "The long history of overhyped nuclear promises reveals that nuclear energy is expensive and slow to build all while still being inherently dangerous. America already has 90,000 metric tons of nuclear waste that we don’t have a storage solution for."
"Do we really want to create more radioactive waste to power the often dubious and questionable uses of AI?" Neumann asked. "In the blind sprint to win on AI, Meta and the other tech giants have lost their way. Big Tech should recommit to solutions that not only work but pose less risk to our environment and health."
"Data centers should be as energy and water efficient as possible and powered solely with new renewable energy," she added. "Without those guardrails, the tech industry's insatiable thirst for energy risks derailing America's efforts to get off polluting forms of power, including nuclear."
In a May study, the Electric Power Research Institute found that "data centers could consume up to 9% of U.S. electricity generation by 2030—more than double the amount currently used." The group noted that "AI queries require approximately 10 times the electricity of traditional internet searches and the generation of original music, photos, and videos requires much more."
Meta is aiming to get the process started quickly: The intake form is due by January 3 and initial proposals are due February 7. It comes after a rare bee species thwarted Meta's plans to build a data center powered by an existing nuclear plant.
Following the nuclear announcement, Meta and renewable energy firm Invenergy on Thursday announced a deal for 760 megawatts of solar power capacity. Operations for that four-state project are expected to begin no later than 2027.
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