Top News: UN Chief Says Ban Fossil Fuel Ads as Warming Rate Hits All-Time IT'S TIME TO THINK! IT'S TIME TO READ!

Wednesday, June 5, 2024 ■ Today's Top News  Rate of Global Warming Reaches All-Time High, Report Shows "The devastation wrought by wildfires, drought, flooding, and heatwaves the world saw in 2023 must not become the new normal," the report's author said. By Edward Carver Climate scientists published a report Wednesday showing that the rate of global warming reached an all-time high in the 10 years up to and including 2023 and that the record-breaking heat of last year was primarily due to that human-caused heating rather than other factors such as El Niño. The scientists found that from 2014 to 2023, the Earth warmed 0.26°C—higher than any previous 10-year period. The report, published in Earth System Science Data, was completed by 57 scientists who used the methods of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which produces major reports only every five to 10 years, with the next one expected in 2027. The report authors sought to fill the gap and, at least in one case, to galvanize climate action. "Rapidly reducing emissions of greenhouse gases towards net zero will limit the level of global warming we ultimately experience. At the same time, we need to build more resilient societies," lead author Piers Forster, a climate physicist at the University of Leeds in the U.K. and an IPCC author, said in a statement. "The devastation wrought by wildfires, drought, flooding, and heatwaves the world saw in 2023 must not become the new normal." Over the course of 2023, temperatures were on average 1.43°C above preindustrial levels, Forster and co-authors found, with an estimated 1.31°C of that due to human-caused global warming, and the relatively small remainder due to variability from events such as El Niño and La Niña. The report also shows that the Earth's remaining "carbon budget"—how much can be emitted before reaching 1.5°C of warming, the Paris agreement target—is now roughly 200 gigatonnes, which will take only five years or so for the global population to use. This is down from the 500 gigatonnes that the IPCC estimated remained in the budget as of 2020. Adam Vaughan, environment editor at The Times, a U.K. newspaper, drew attention to the short time period in which humanity has to act, writing on social media that the 1.5°C target could be "blown" if emissions didn't go down. In a guest post in Carbon Brief, Forster and another co-author explained that their report was "nothing short of alarming, yet it does contain some encouraging news." "Greenhouse gas emissions have not yet risen beyond pre-pandemic levels and there is evidence that the rate of increase in CO2 emissions over the past decade has slowed compared to the 2000s," they said. Forster, who also led the annual report in its first iteration last year, spoke to reporters in such a way as to avoid doomsday rhetoric. "If you look at this world accelerating or going through a big tipping point, things aren't doing that," he told The Associated Press. "Things are increasing in temperature and getting worse in sort of exactly the way we predicted." However, the climate news remains dire: Researchers working with even more up-to-date data—through May—have found that the average temperature increase above preindustrial levels is now 1.6°C, and each of the last 12 months has been the hottest on record for that month. Those findings are from data released by the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service and reported byThe Washington Post. UN Chief Calls for Global Ban on Fossil Fuel Advertising "There is no longer any cover for agencies to say that they are doing the right thing when working with polluters," said one campaigner. "Everyone knows this is wrong, and everyone needs to act." By Julia Conley Jewish US Army Major Explains Why He Resigned Over Gaza "I knew that as long as I stayed, I'd be contributing to this campaign that had already demonstrated basically it was going to be indiscriminately killing civilians at an industrial scale," said Harrison Mann. By Jessica Corbett US Agencies Urged to Tackle Medicare Advantage, Other 'Outrageous' Healthcare Greed "There is much the Biden administration can and must do to address the national embarrassment that is for-profit healthcare in the U.S.," said Public Citizen's healthcare policy advocate. By Jake Johnson Biden Claims Israel Isn't Starving Gazans. Rights Groups Say 'It Is Clear as Day' "The fact that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza is not in contention," said a Human Rights Watch researcher. By Jake Johnson 'Dystopian': UAE Used Global Climate Summit to Push $100 Billion in New Oil Deals "Make no mistake, COP28 was hijacked by the interests of the fossil fuel industry," said one campaigner. By Julia Conley JOIN THE MOVEMENT As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover the issues the corporate media never will. Your contribution supports this bold media model—free, independent, and dedicated to reporting the facts every day. Stand with us in the fight for economic equality, social justice, human rights, and a more sustainable future. JOIN WITH US TODAY ■ More News 'Unhinged' Trump Floats Imprisoning Political Foes FAKE NEWS! MUST READ! Israeli Government Funded Covert Influence Campaign Targeting US Lawmakers: NYT Israel's Ministry of Diaspora Affairs organized and paid for a digital campaign to influence U.S. lawmakers, especially Democrats who are Black, The New York Timesreported on Wednesday. The ministry allotted $2 million to the operation in October and hired Stoic, a Tel Aviv-based political marketing firm, to carry it out. Stoic established fake news websites and hundreds of fake accounts on X, Instagram, and Facebook that posted pro-Israeli messages, trying to push lawmakers such as Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the House minority leader, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) to fund Israel's military and support its war efforts, the Times reported. The influence campaign had been reported by a few news and nonprofit organizations in recent months, but the Times article, which drew from operation documents and interviews with current and former diaspora ministry officials, was the first to show that Israel's government was behind it. Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, published a related story one hour later on Wednesday. Critics condemned the Israeli government for its role in the disinformation campaign. "So in addition to the pro-Israel lobby spending tens of millions to defame and defeat progressives in Congress, we now learn that Israel creates fake media to target friends and opponents by inundating with fake news supporting Israeli positions," James Zogby, co-founder of the Arab American Institute, wrote on social media. The disinformation campaign comes amid other efforts by pro-Israel groups to influence U.S. politics during its assault on Gaza, notably the lobbying and campaign money spent by groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its affiliates. The Israeli disinformation campaign also drew comparisons to Russia's well-known attempt to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, which was a central focus of the U.S. political commentariat in the years that followed. Ishmael Daro, an editor at Democracy Now!, made a tongue-in-cheek prediction that the reaction from the U.S. political establishment would be similar this time. Last week, both Meta and OpenAI issued reports on Stoic's disinformation campaign and said they had blocked the company's network from further activity. Meta said it had closed more than 500 fake Facebook accounts and OpenAI called Stoic a "for-hire Israeli threat actor," NBC Newsreported. Stoic's users remain active on X, the Times reported. Many of the fake social media posts were generated using ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot owned by OpenAI, and much of the language in the posts was "stilted" and repetitive, the Times reported. The covert scheme has also been characterized as "sloppy" and "ineffective," and it made little penetration with the general public or government figures. "We found and removed this network early in its audience building efforts, before they were able to gain engagement among authentic communities," Meta wrote in its report. The Times did not explain that the covert influence campaign was discovered in February by the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) of the Atlantic Council, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, and by Marc Owen Jones, a professor in Middle East studies and digital humanities at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, according to social media posts. FakeReporter, an Israeli disinformation watchdog, followed up those initial discoveries with a March report on the campaign's activities, including the fake social media accounts and creation of the online platforms—Non-Agenda, The Moral Alliance, and Unfold Magazine—that created or republished news from a pro-Israel perspective, focusing on, for example, purported links between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and Hamas. The findings were reported in Haaretz at the time. That Israel "ran an operation that interferes in U.S. politics is extremely irresponsible," Achiya Schatz, the executive director of FakeReporter, told the Times. He characterized it to Haaretz as "amateurish" and "anti-democratic." FakeReporter in fact issued a second report on Wednesday showing that Stoic's influence network may have gone further than the Times reporting shows. The watchdog group uncovered four additional websites, apparently Stoic-affiliated, that contain Islamophobic and anti-immigrant content. DFRLab had issued a report in March which also cited pro-Israeli disinformation and Islamophobic rhetoric, in that case targeted largely at Canadians. The new report concluded that the influence network has "apparently developed into a large-scale effort to target various groups, some outside the U.S., using Islamophobic and anti-immigrant content." 'What Are They Afraid Of?': Columbia Law Review Board Shuts Down Website Over Nakba Article 'We Can Get There': Medicare for All Advocates See Resurgence in National Movement VIEW ALL NEWS ■ Opinion Open Letter to Joe Biden on Behalf of Jewish Americans: Stop Sending Israel Offensive Weapons The continuation of violence will continue to increase the heart-wrenching death toll, increase the number of calls for a ceasefire, and decrease your poll numbers — straight through the election. By Jamie Beran Is Carbon Capture Just Climate Delusion? Direct air capture and similar technologies come with glossy brochures and lofty promises but we must not be fooled. They are a distraction and a scam orchestrated by the fossil fuel industry. By Basav Sen,Jim Walsh A Jury of 12 Upheld the Rule of the Law. Don't Hold Your Breath for the Right-Wing Supreme Court So many thanks to the dozen anonymous everyday people in New York who courageously did what the nation's highest court likely will not. By Miles Mogulescu VIEW ALL OPINION Call 207.775.0488 to donate by phone or mail a check to: Common Dreams · PO Box 443 · Portland, ME 04112-0443 · USA Common Dreams is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Your contribution is tax-deductible. EIN: 20-3368194

FAKE NEWS! FAKE NEWS! FUNDED BY ISRAEL! Israeli Government Funded Covert Influence Campaign Targeting US Lawmakers: NYT

A FOREIGN GOVERNMENT, ISRAEL, SHOULD NOT GOVERN AMERICAN POLICY....

US TAXPAYERS WERE ALREADY QUESTIONING THAT ISRAEL IS THE LARGEST US RECIPIENT OF WELFARE...WHY?

IT'S TIME TO END ISRAEL'S TAXPAYER FUNDED GRAVY TRAIN!

TAX PAYER DOLLARS COULD ACCOMPLISH FAR MORE ELSEWHERE....

INCLUDED IN ISRAEL'S PROPAGANDA AND DISINFORMATION IS HATE AND ISLAMAPHOBIA AND ANTI-IMMIGRANT HATE.... 

AS WELL AS FALSE CLAIMS OF ANTISEMITISM 

ISRAEL SHOULD NOT DICTATE US POLICY!

ANYONE WHO DARES TO SPEAK ILL OF ISRAEL IS TARGETED & CONDEMNED 

AIPAC HAS DEFEATED CANDIDATES WHO DARE SPEAK THE TRUTH ABOUT ISRAEL 

AIPAC IS KNOWN FOR PUBLISHING LIES & DISINFORMATION  TO DEFEAT CANDIDATES 

AIPAC TARGETS ANY MEIDA OUTLET THAT DARES TO REPORT TRUTH 

"NONE DARE SPEAK ILL OF ISRAEL" ! 

MEDIA CENSORSHIP TO PROTECT ISRAEL'S WAR CRIMES NEEDS TO END!

Israeli Government Funded Covert Influence Campaign Targeting US Lawmakers: NYT

The head of an Israeli watchdog group called the operation "anti-democratic" and "extremely irresponsible."

Israel's Ministry of Diaspora Affairs organized and paid for a digital campaign to influence U.S. lawmakers, especially Democrats who are Black, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

The ministry allotted $2 million to the operation in October and hired Stoic, a Tel Aviv-based political marketing firm, to carry it out. Stoic established fake news websites and hundreds of fake accounts on X, Instagram, and Facebook that posted pro-Israeli messages, trying to push lawmakers such as Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the House minority leader, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) to fund Israel's military and support its war efforts, the Times reported.

The influence campaign had been reported by a few news and nonprofit organizations in recent months, but the Times article, which drew from operation documents and interviews with current and former diaspora ministry officials, was the first to show that Israel's government was behind it. Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, published a related story one hour later on Wednesday.

Critics condemned the Israeli government for its role in the disinformation campaign.

"So in addition to the pro-Israel lobby spending tens of millions to defame and defeat progressives in Congress, we now learn that Israel creates fake media to target friends and opponents by inundating with fake news supporting Israeli positions," James Zogby, co-founder of the Arab American Institute, wrote on social media.

The disinformation campaign comes amid other efforts by pro-Israel groups to influence U.S. politics during its assault on Gaza, notably the lobbying and campaign money spent by groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its affiliates.

The Israeli disinformation campaign also drew comparisons to Russia's well-known attempt to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, which was a central focus of the U.S. political commentariat in the years that followed. Ishmael Daro, an editor at Democracy Now!, made a tongue-in-cheek prediction that the reaction from the U.S. political establishment would be similar this time.

Last week, both Meta and OpenAI issued reports on Stoic's disinformation campaign and said they had blocked the company's network from further activity. Meta said it had closed more than 500 fake Facebook accounts and OpenAI called Stoic a "for-hire Israeli threat actor," NBC News reported. Stoic's users remain active on X, the Times reported.

Many of the fake social media posts were generated using ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot owned by OpenAI, and much of the language in the posts was "stilted" and repetitive, the Times reported.

The covert scheme has also been characterized as "sloppy" and "ineffective," and it made little penetration with the general public or government figures. "We found and removed this network early in its audience building efforts, before they were able to gain engagement among authentic communities," Meta wrote in its report.

The Times did not explain that the covert influence campaign was discovered in February by the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) of the Atlantic Council, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, and by Marc Owen Jones, a professor in Middle East studies and digital humanities at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, according to social media posts.

FakeReporter, an Israeli disinformation watchdog, followed up those initial discoveries with a March report on the campaign's activities, including the fake social media accounts and creation of the online platforms—Non-Agenda, The Moral Alliance, and Unfold Magazine—that created or republished news from a pro-Israel perspective, focusing on, for example, purported links between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and Hamas. The findings were reported in Haaretz at the time.

That Israel "ran an operation that interferes in U.S. politics is extremely irresponsible," Achiya Schatz, the executive director of FakeReporter, told the Times. He characterized it to Haaretz as "amateurish" and "anti-democratic."

FakeReporter in fact issued a second report on Wednesday showing that Stoic's influence network may have gone further than the Times reporting shows. The watchdog group uncovered four additional websites, apparently Stoic-affiliated, that contain Islamophobic and anti-immigrant content. DFRLab had issued a report in March which also cited pro-Israeli disinformation and Islamophobic rhetoric, in that case targeted largely at Canadians.

The new report concluded that the influence network has "apparently developed into a large-scale effort to target various groups, some outside the U.S., using Islamophobic and anti-immigrant content."

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) speaks onstage at the March For Israel at the National Mall on November 14, 2023.

 (Photo: Noam Galai/Getty Images)

COMMON DREAMS

INVITING AN INDCTED FELON TO SPEAK TO CONGRESS DEFINES MORAL DECAY OF THE US!

Displaying Photos of Kids Starved by Israel, Sanders Explains Boycott of Netanyahu Speech

Children are dying of malnutrition in Gaza as a "direct result of Netanyahu's policies," the Vermont senator said in a speech on the Senate floor.

Sen. Bernie Sanders displayed photos of starving Palestinian children on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Monday to explain his decision to boycott an upcoming speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom Democratic and Republican leaders formally invited to address a joint meeting of Congress amid Israel's catastrophic assault on Gaza.

The monthslong military campaign has had appalling impacts on Palestinian children, Sanders (I-Vt.) emphasized in his floor remarks Monday, blasting U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for eating "fine steaks" at fundraising dinners with his "billionaire friends" while Israel's army blocks critical food aid from entering Gaza, causing kids to starve to death.

"This is a photograph of a child in Gaza taken by Getty," said the Vermont senator as an aide displayed a picture of an emaciated Palestinian child.

The photo was one of several that Sanders showed during his speech, stressing that there are thousands of children in Gaza suffering acute malnutrition as a "direct result of Netanyahu's policies—Netanyahu, the man Speaker Johnson has invited to address Congress."

"No," Sanders said, "I will not be in attendance for that speech."

Watch Sanders' remarks in full:

Sanders is one of many progressive U.S. lawmakers expected to boycott Netanyahu's speech to Congress, the timing of which remains unclear after the Israeli prime minister's office denied reporting by Punchbowl and other outlets that the date was set for June 13—a day U.S. President Joe Biden is scheduled to be out of the country.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the roughly 100-member Congressional Progressive Caucus, toldAxios on Monday that she expects the boycott of Netanyahu's speech to be "large," noting there are "a lot of people who are extremely upset he is coming here."

According to Axios, "Jayapal said she has spoken to several lawmakers who went to Netanyahu's 2015 speech [to Congress] but said they will not attend this time."

Speaking to reporters at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) signaled that she would join the congressional boycott, saying the Israeli prime minister "shouldn't be here."

"I don't think that it is productive for a Republican or a Democrat to invite him," she added.

Netanyahu stands accused by the International Criminal Court of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip, including the "starvation of civilians as a method of warfare" and "willfully causing great suffering." Last month, the ICC's prosecutor formally applied for arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as several Hamas leaders.

Whatever the date of his speech to the U.S. Congress, protests are expected to greet the prime minister upon his arrival in Washington, D.C.

Recent survey data has shown that a majority of Americans oppose Israel's war on Gaza and want the Biden administration to cut off U.S. arms sales to the country.

"He's an indicted felon in Israel with an indictment as a war criminal at the ICC and they've invited him to speak here! Shame," James Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute, said of Netanyahu late Monday.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) delivers a speech on June 3, 2024 explaining why he will boycott Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's expected speech before Congress.

 (Photo: C-SPAN/Screengrab)

COMMON DREAMS

 

Biden Claims Israel Isn't Starving Gazans. Rights Groups Say 'It Is Clear as Day'

"The fact that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza is not in contention," said a Human Rights Watch researcher.

U.S. President Joe Biden said in an interview published Tuesday that he does not believe the Israeli government is using starvation as a weapon of warfare in Gaza, contradicting the findings of leading human rights organizations that have documented Israel's deliberate obstruction of food aid as Palestinians die of malnutrition.

"No, I don't think that," Biden said in response to TIME magazine's Washington bureau chief Massimo Calabresi and editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs, who noted some have "alleged that Israel is intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare."

The president, who has approved more than 100 arms sales to Israel during its eight-month assault on the Gaza Strip, acknowledged that Israel's military has "engaged in activity that is inappropriate" and that "Palestinians have suffered greatly."

But he stopped well short of the conclusions reached by Oxfam International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), and the International Criminal Court, which recently applied for arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for their role in the "starvation of civilians as a method of warfare" and other war crimes.

The U.S. Agency for International Development has also determined that Israel has unlawfully impeded the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Gaza, leading to a "deterioration of food security and nutrition in Gaza [that] is unprecedented in modern history."

"The fact that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza is not in contention. It is clear as day," Hiba Zayadin, a researcher at HRW, wrote in response to Biden's TIME interview, pointing to her group's December report that found the Israeli military was "deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food, and fuel, while willfully impeding humanitarian assistance, apparently razing agricultural areas, and depriving the civilian population of objects indispensable to their survival."

"The evidence is even stronger today," Zayadin added, citing HRW's April report that focused specifically on the Israeli military's starvation of Gaza children. Dozens of Palestinian kids, some just months old, have died of malnutrition since October, a figure that is almost certain to grow as Israel's bombing campaign and ground offensive in Rafah continue.

The World Food Program said Wednesday that unless Israel's assault on Gaza ends and desperately needed humanitarian aid is allowed to flow, more than a million people in the occupied enclave "are expected to face death and starvation... by mid-July."

Humanitarian groups and experts—including an outspoken former U.S. State Department official—have argued that by continuing to arm Israel and provide it with diplomatic cover on the world stage, the Biden administration is complicit in Gaza's increasingly dire hunger crisis.

"This is not just turning a blind eye to the man-made starvation of an entire population, it is direct complicity," Josh Paul, who resigned from the State Department in October over the administration's support for Israel's assault on Gaza, told The Independent last month.

In a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate earlier this week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) displayed photos of emaciated children as he explained his decision to boycott Netanyahu's upcoming speech to Congress.

"Blocking humanitarian aid and creating the conditions for famine is not only an act of extreme cruelty—using starvation as an act of war—but it is a violation of both American and international law," Sanders added. "It is a war crime."

Palestinians wait in line to receive food distributed by charitable organizations amid Israeli attacks in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza on May 28, 2024. 

(Photo: Hassan Jedi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

COMMON DREAMS