COP27

First digital nation': Tuvalu turns to metaverse as rising seas threaten existence – video

Tuvalu says it plans to build a digital version of itself, replicating islands and landmarks and preserving its history and culture, as rising sea levels threaten to submerge the tiny Pacific island nation. Seemingly speaking from within the digital replica of one Tuvalu island, the foreign minister Simon Kofe, said it was the only way to preserve their country 'piece by piece' so that they can remind their 'children and grandchildren what their home once was'.

Could a digital twin of Tuvalu preserve the island nation before it’s lost to the collapsing climate?

AUTHORITARIAN THEOCRATIC STATISM
2022 General Election: All Peoples Party to reintroduce corporal punishment in schools

NAVNESH REDDY

FIJI TIMES
17 November, 2022,

All Peoples Party leader Pastor Tuiloma Tawaivuna addressing a large gathering of party supporters during their second batch of provisional candidates announcement in Lovu, Lautoka. 

Picture: NAVNESH REDDY

The All Peoples Party says it will aim to address the escalating crime issue in Fiji by reintroducing corporal punishment in schools.

“We have to really find the root cause of the increasing crime rate among the indigenous youths,” said leader Pastor Tuiloma Tawaivuna.

“The crime rate is very alarming indeed among the iTaukei youths.

“It has become an issue now and that is why one of our party policies includes the reinstatement of corporal punishment in schools.”

Mr Tawaivuna said the party had policies in place to address juvenile crimes, especially in the indigenous communities.

“Street fights and after-hours brawls are increasing tremendously in the Capital City and the reinstatement of corporal punishment will surely address the issue including child sex abuse and teenage pregnancy.”

US climate efforts – Pacific activists call out Biden’s climate champion claim


RACHAEL NATH AND LYDIA LEWIS
15 November, 2022,

Pacific Islands activists protest demanding climate action and loss and damage reparations at COP27 in Egypt. 

Picture: DOMINIKA ZARZYCKA/AFP


Pacific climate activists have challenged the United States’ assertion at COP27 that it is a ‘global climate leader’.

President Joe Biden announced commitments to accelerating his Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience, including a further $US150 million ($F334.4m) in Egypt.

He spoke of using public finance to unlock billions in private investment through the ‘Climate Finance +’ initiative to support global south countries in issuing green bonds.

And Mr Biden said the US would meet its climate commitments, reiterating America’s role as a climate leader and highlighting the recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.

However, 350.org executive director May Boeve said to be a true global climate leader, the US needs to own their responsibility and pay up what is owed for adaptation, stop funding fossil fuel projects and commit to real and significant investments in loss and damage in support of the most vulnerable nations.

Africa Regional Campaigner for 350.org Charity Migwi added as one of the world’s leading polluters, the pledges made by the US fall well short of the expectations of communities facing devastation from the impacts of the climate crisis.

She said real climate action from a “climate leader” would entail phasing out fossil fuels, providing much needed loss and damage finance and supporting the just transition to renewable energy in Africa.

Pacific calls ‘we are not drowning, we are fighting’ Meanwhile, hundreds of climate change activists across the Pacific and Egypt have taken to the streets, calling for real action by world leaders at COP27.

From the island of Rabi in Fiji, to Melbourne in Australia, and to the Blue Zone in COP27, Sharm El Sheikh – the resounding message from the Pacific is that “we are not drowning, we are fighting”.

“These actions take place within the framework of global mobilisations to demand more ambitious climate policies and climate justice,” 350.org Pacific managing director Joseph Sikulu said.

“Governments are refusing to step up and act in the interest of the people and, as a result, the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities continue to suffer while they have the least responsibility for causing it.”

Mr Sikulu said keeping global heating below 1.5 degrees Celsius is non-negotiable for the Pacific.

“We refuse to let up the pressure on global leaders at COP27 because this is a matter of survival for our islands. Our Pacific negotiators going into next week’s ministerials (meetings) are fighting an uphill battle against Goliath nations that are stalling for time and continuing to block the climate action needed for our survival.

“In the Pacific, we are facing the increasingly devastating impacts of climate change – tropical cyclones are more frequent, ocean temperatures threaten our marine ecosystems and rising sea levels eat at our shorelines.

“Our brothers and sisters here on the African continent face drought and famine while greedy corporations strip their land for more oil pipelines. It is appalling that the leaders of wealthy nations present at COP27 ignore these realities and ignore the clear science of climate breakdown.

“We march for climate justice, for human rights justice and to lift up the voices and demands of frontline communities in the Pacific and the rest of the world. We are not drowning, we are fighting.”

Environmental NGOs, women and gender constituency, indigenous peoples organisations, trade unions, and Children and youth NGOs joined the COP27 coalition on the Global Day of Action to organise the march that took place within the Blue Zone.RACHAEL NATH is an RNZ Pacific journalist. The views expressed in this article are the author’s and not necessarily the views of The Fiji Times

WHO STARTED THE WAR?

Russian State TV Admits 'We Weren't Ready for the War That We Started'

 

BY ISABEL VAN BRUGEN 

11/15/22 

A guest on Russian state TV has said the country was not prepared for the war that started when President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February.

The acknowledgment came from the head of the Expert Council of Russia's Strategic Development Fund, Igor Shatrov, following Russia's retreat from the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine.

A guest on Russian state TV has said that the country was not prepared for the war that Putin started.

"We aren't seeing results," Shatrov said during an appearance on Mesto Vstrechi (Meeting Point), as he discussed the ongoing war with fellow guests.

An excerpt of the show was published on Twitter by Julia Davis, a columnist at The Daily Beast and creator of the Russian Media Monitor, which added English subtitles to the clip.

Russia's withdrawal from Kherson last week marked the third major retreat by Putin's troops since the start of the war on February 24.

Ukraine's defense intelligence agency said on November 11 that the city was being restored to Ukrainian control and called for any remaining Russian soldiers to surrender to its troops entering the city.

"We weren't ready for the war that we started," said Shatrov.

He also said Putin's refusal to call the conflict a war is hindering Russian progress in Ukraine.

"We keep calling it a 'special military operation'—we're too shy to call it a war, which is a huge problem. Because with war, other laws are in play," said Shatrov.

It's not the first time guests on Russian state TV have pointed to the country's military setbacks in the conflict.

Russian TV host and Putin ally Vladimir Solovyov, nicknamed "Putin's voice" for his stridently pro-Kremlin views, said on November 1 that officials thought the war "would be a lot easier."

"True, not everything is going smoothly, yes, we thought everything would be a lot easier," he said on his Total Contact show, while giving his thoughts on the war.

"Yes, we anticipated and they started negotiations which have been derailed because nobody needs the Ukrainian people," Solovyov continued.

The TV host suggested that the Ukrainian people "have to burn in the fire of this civil war, as the president [Putin] defined it."

Neo-Nazis menace attendees at Harvard 

@ bookfair: report

Bob Brigham
November 16, 2022

NSC-131 in Harvard Square / screengrab

Harvard University's student newspaper reported a neo-Nazi group threatened people at Quincy House in Harvard Square.

"Members of the group wore apparel bearing the name of the Nationalist Social Club, also known as the 131 Crew, a neo-Nazi group based in New England," The Harvard Crimson reported. "A video posted by NSC-131 Tuesday on the online video-sharing platform Odysee showed members of the group performing an apparent Nazi salute in front of the Democracy Center — a Cambridge meeting house where the Boston Anarchist Bookfair was taking place over the weekend. Members of the group pounded on the doors and windows of the building and lunged at passersby on the street."

Men from the group NSC-131 were seen wearing masks in another video.

“You want to punch a Nazi?” one of the men in NSC-131 appeal said. “Come on, motherf*cker!”

It was reportedly the first instance of NSC-131 activity in Cambridge.

A spokesperson for the Cambridge Police Department said officers were unable to locate the van in which the men left Harvard Square.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) says, "NSC-131 members consider themselves soldiers fighting a war against a hostile, Jewish-controlled system that is deliberately plotting the extinction of the white race. Their goal is to form an underground network of white men who are willing to fight against their perceived enemies through localized direct actions."

ADL says the group was started by Chris Hood in 2019.

"Chris Hood, the group’s founder, and leader has been involved with a range of far-right extremist groups since 2019 including associations with the anti-government movement, Proud Boys, and other white supremacist groups such as Patriot Front and The Base," ADL reported. "Hood has a criminal history including two recent arrests during NSC-131 activity. In July 2022, Hood was arrested and charged with affray, or fighting in public, while protesting outside of a Drag Queen Story hour in Jamaica Plains, a neighborhood in Boston. He was also arrested for drinking in public in March 2022 during an NSC-131 demonstration."

UN climate summit in Egypt

Abdul Fattah al-Sisi's greenwashing fail

COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh is turning into a PR disaster for Egypt’s military regime. Instead of praise for the host, the news is full of solidarity for imprisoned activist Alaa Abdel Fattah and criticism of the event’s grotesque surveillance measures. By Sofian Philip Naceur

"No climate justice without human rights", "Freedom for all political prisoners", or "Freedom for Alaa": to the visible discontent of Egypt’s authoritarian military regime, it was slogans like these that dominated the first week of the UN Climate Change Conference COP27 in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, rather than reports of a successful start of the conference or progress made in negotiations on measures to limit global warming.

Never before has international coverage of the annual climate summit focused so extensively on the human rights situation in the state hosting the mega event. And rarely has a regime presented itself to the world so unambiguously for what it is: a paranoid and authoritarian police state that does not even shy away from clumsily and systematically spying on participants of a UN summit.

Egypt’s government intended to use the COP27 to present itself as a professional host country, to promote South Sinai as a venue for major international events and to attract green investments. However, in the run-up and at the beginning of COP27, Egypt was predominantly the subject of reports about mass arrests, a hunger-striking political prisoner, paranoid police controls, excessive surveillance measures around the venue of the climate conference, and the unsustainable energy and urban development policies of President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi’s regime.

For months, Egyptian government officials and media affiliated to the state had done everything to play down the systematic human rights crimes committed by authorities and to pretend that the regime was seriously interested in a change of course regarding environmental and climate-related policies.

With little success, as opposition figures, government critics and human rights groups have succeeded both in exposing the Egyptian government's sometimes clever, sometimes clumsy attempts at greenwashing and in drawing media attention to the disastrous situation in Egypt's prisons.

Hunger strike as a last resort

Much of the focus has been on British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, detained almost continuously since 2014. Imprisoned on flimsy charges, the 40-year-old had already gone on partial hunger strike in April to protest against his prison conditions and for the release of other political prisoners.

After 218 days of refusing food and coinciding with the start of the COP27, he escalated his strike on 6 November and refused to drink water for a week.

Although Abdel Fattah has since ended his water strike, his family continued to warn that he could die as a result of his protest during the conference, a scenario that Egypt’s government is desperate to prevent. The detrimental effect on the image of the regime and Egypt as conference host would be too severe.

Whether prison authorities actually force-fed him, as reports suggest, remains unclear. However, an immediate release of Abdel Fattah, as called for by solidarity campaigns, activists, human rights defenders and now also by European governments, appears increasingly unlikely. The regime’s reactions to the campaigns have been too vehement and, unfortunately, all too familiar.

Both the reports about Abdel Fattah being force-fed and the verbal attack by an Egyptian MP loyal to the regime on his sister Sanaa Seif at a press conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, as well as a statement by Egypt’s Permanent Mission to the UN in Geneva addressed to the UN Human Rights Council indicate the regime is playing for time. Last week’s demand by UN Human Rights Commissioner Volker Turk to have the activist, convicted in an “unfair trial”, finally released, was brusquely dismissed as an “unacceptable insult” by Egypt’s government.

 

An end to the silence

Abdel Fattah’s hunger strike and the vocal campaigns calling for the release of political prisoners in Egypt have nevertheless brought the climate and human rights movements closer together, leading to a more holistic drafting of demands. Human rights violations by the Egyptian authorities have not been so prominently discussed in public since Sisi’s bloody military coup in 2013. That that the climate movement afforded more space to human rights demands in the run-up to COP27 also helped.

That’s why Hossam Bahgat, director of the human rights group Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said: “COPs should go wherever civil society needs to be seen and heard. UN summits must not only be hosted in democratic countries. They can be turned into resistance spaces”, the human rights defender stressed on Twitter.

While press conferences, panel discussions and protests at the conference site in Sharm el-Sheikh have indeed provided occasions at which, for the first time in years, outspoken criticism of Egypt’s military regime could be voiced in Egypt itself, the headlines have been dominated by reports about the conditions in Egyptian prisons, the estimated more than 65,000 political prisoners, the severe restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly, or the recent nationwide arrest campaign against hundreds of people after dubious calls for anti-government protests were launched for 11 November.

Grotesque surveillance measures

COP27 participants, meanwhile, were made firmly aware during the conference’s first week of the authoritarian context in which this year’s climate summit is taking place. The sometimes urgent warnings to official delegations, environmental NGOs and climate activists about possible surveillance measures by Egyptian police and intelligence services, both known for being extremely paranoid, were no exaggeration

 

Even before the start of COP27, there were serious warnings about bugged cabs, possible searches of hotel rooms and against downloading the official COP27 app. Once installed, the app requires access to user emails, GPS data, photos and more. These could all be used by the Egyptian government as a means of comprehensively monitoring the respective smartphones, warned British newspaper The Guardian, among others, referring to initial investigations of the app by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Meanwhile, Sharm el-Sheikh and the conference centre are reportedly swarming with security personnel and plain-clothed police officers. Yet there was more to Egypt’s surveillance measures than simply spying on delegates attending the conference.

After an Indian activist was detained last week while trying to walk from Cairo to Sharm El-Sheikh to draw attention to the climate crisis, the authorities also denied a staff member of a Danish human rights organisation entry into Egypt.

The question for Egypt's civil society, human rights activists and imprisoned political prisoners is what will happen to human rights in the country once the COP and the massive international attention are over. As reported by the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, several political prisoners released in 2022 as part of a slow-moving wave of releases were threatened with re-arrest after the COP. Accordingly, the situation for politically involved people in Egypt is likely to remain tense once the UN summit is over.

Sofian Phillip Naceur

© Qantara.de 2022

Daniel Barenboim turns 80

Reconciler and musical genius

Daniel Barenboim is not only a world-famous pianist and conductor. He has also worked tirelessly to foster understanding and reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis. By Lukas Philippi and Katharina Rogner 

One of the world's best-known conductors, Daniel Barenboim is driven by the idea that music can change people for the better. He is passionate about music, but for him, music alone is not enough.

Barenboim's central conviction is that music must become "an essential part of social interaction". His own musical commitment has always been inextricably linked to his socio-political involvement.

On 15 November, the Argentine-born and world-renowned musician turned 80.

Barenboim has been general music director of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden and chief conductor in perpetuity of the Staatskapelle Berlin since 1992. Until recently, the busy star was a regular guest in the world's famous concert halls. But at the beginning of October, he announced that he would not be able to perform for the time being due to a serious illness. In particular, he would withdraw from conducting, the Berlin State Opera announced.

On Twitter, Barenboim had previously reported a "serious neurological illness" and that he first had to "concentrate on his physical well-being". The birthday concert planned for 15 November in Berlin, at which he was to perform as pianist, was also cancelled for health reasons.

Music against hatred: the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is a project close to Barenboim's heart.  He founded it in 1999 with his friend, the Palestinian literary scholar Edward Said (1935-2003). It is a peace project for young musicians from the Middle East – from Israel, the Palestinian Territories and other Arab countries. The maestro once stated that after two hours of rehearsal, he had "reduced the level of hatred to zero"

West-Eastern Divan Orchestra: A contribution to peace

Barenboim is inspired by the idea that music can change people for the better. One of his most cherished projects is the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. He founded it in 1999 with his friend, the Palestinian literary scholar Edward Said (1935-2003).

It is a peace project for young musicians from the Middle East – from Israel, the Palestinian Autonomous Territories and other Arab countries. After two hours of rehearsal, he had "reduced the level of hatred to zero", the maestro once stated.

He is also committed to founding "music kindergartens" to introduce even the youngest children to sounds, rhythm and instruments. His credo is: "Not music education, but education through music".

The Barenboim-Said Academy for young musicians from the Middle East, which began its work in Berlin at the end of 2016, is also intended to serve education and peace. The students at the private music academy are also taught philosophy, history and literature.

Making music and learning together is intended to contribute to understanding, a willingness to compromise and reconciliation. Can the academy really contribute to a peaceful solution in the Middle East conflict? "Certainly not in the short term, but in the long term there is a good chance," Barenboim said at the opening.

He is also famous for addressing the audience prior to giving a performance. In 2017, for example, as Brexit was in full swing, he warned against isolationism and nationalism in Europe during a concert at The BBC Proms in London. A few weeks previously, an article he wrote had criticised the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories following the 1967 Six-Day War as "immoral".

International career

The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Barenboim was born in Buenos Aires in 1942 and grew up in Israel from 1952 onwards. When he was five years old, his mother began giving him piano lessons. Later he studied with his father, who remained his only piano teacher.

The gifted pianist gave his first public concert at the age of seven in his native city of Buenos Aires. As a small child, he is said to have played with another Argentinian piano prodigy, Martha Argerich, under the grand piano at home. They would later share a stage together.

Barenboim was ten years old when he made his international debut as a pianist in Vienna and Rome. At the age of eleven, he also took conducting lessons, studying harmony and composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. He first appeared on stage as a conductor in London in 1967, and six years later he made his debut as an opera conductor in Edinburgh, Scotland, with Mozart's "Don Giovanni". Later he held positions as chief conductor in Paris and Chicago.

In addition to the classical concert and opera repertoire, Barenboim has increasingly devoted himself to contemporary music with the Berlin Staatskapelle, performing compositions by Pierre Boulez, Wolfgang Rihm and Elliott Carter. But he has also repeatedly paid tribute to the tango of his native country.

Barenboim is married to the Russian pianist Yelena Bashkirova. His first wife, the British cellist Jacqueline du Pre, died in 1987, and his two sons are also musicians.

"Music is not a profession, it is an attitude to life," Barenboim wrote in an article in the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit at the end of October. It is how he has spent his entire life.    (epd)

 CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate Change is No ‘Future Scenario’ for Pacific Island Nations; Climate Change is ‘Real’

By Busani Bafana

This photo was taken a month after Cyclone Pam hit Tuvalu. It shows the main square of Nui Island was still underwater. The tropical storm went onto Vanuatu, impacting nearly half the island's inhabitants. Credit: Silke von Brockhausen/UNDP

SHARM EL SHEIKH, Nov 15 2022 (IPS) - Pacific island countries are highly vulnerable to climate change, and several have disappeared – and more could sink under the sea owing to a rise in water levels.

According to UN figures, severe climate-change-induced weather conditions are already leading to the displacement of about 50 000 people each year. Urgent assistance is needed to help them adapt and lessen its impacts.

COP27 opened with an impassioned plea by Tuvalu Prime Minister Kausea Natano, who called for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty at COP27. Addressing the world leaders, he said: “Tuvalu has joined Vanuatu and other nations in calling for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to steer our development model to pursue renewables and a just transition away from fossil fuels.”

Related IPS Articles

• COP27: Cyclone Nearly Washed Away All My Dreams, says Vanuatu Youth Activist
• Pacific Islands: Climate Finance Action a Priority at COP27
• Indigenous Peoples Have Their Own Agenda at COP27, Demand Direct Financing

A losing battle against climate damage

In 2015, the Island of Vanuatu was hit by a category five cyclone that killed residents, displaced thousands and damaged infrastructure. It was not to be the last. Another severe cyclone hit the island in 2020 after buffeting the neighbouring Solomon Islands.

Vanuatu is one of 20 countries that make up the Pacific Islands. They have a population of more than 2 million whose livelihoods are tied to the sea. The island nations face a future underwater if they cannot cope with the impacts of climate change and repair the damage it has already caused.

Nelson Kalo, a Senior Mitigation Officer in the Ministry of Climate change in Vanuatu,

 says resources are needed to build adaptive capacity. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

“In Vanuatu, adaptation is a core issue to ensure we build resilience; otherwise, we will continue to see Vanuatu destroyed by cyclones and going under the sea,” says Nelson Kalo, a Senior Mitigation Officer in the Ministry of Climate change in Vanuatu, on the sidelines of COP27.

Kalo says climate change-induced natural disasters are impacting the area.

“We need resources to build our adaptive capacity so that in the future, we will be resilient to climate change,” he said.

Sea level rise, increasing temperatures and frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones, and storm surges are some of the climate change impacts facing island nations, some of which are in low-lying areas of just 5 meters above sea level at the highest point.

“In the Pacific Islands, the people are dependent on primary sectors, particularly agriculture and fishing, for their livelihoods, and we are seeing a variety of climate change effects across the region which are having impacts on livelihoods,” says Dirk Snyman, Coordinator of the Climate Finance Unit at the Pacific Community (SPC). The SPC is an international scientific and technical organization in the region that supports the rights and well-being of Pacific islanders through science and knowledge.

Ocean acidification and warming are affecting fisheries and causing the bleaching of coral reefs, which provide habitat for fish, a key source of food for islanders.

“In the Pacific islands, climate change is not some predicted future scenario based on projected models; it is a daily lived reality,” Snyman tells IPS. “It is becoming more and more difficult, particularly with crops and drinking water, for people to meet their daily needs that they now rely on imported food and drinking water, which come at a high cost.”

Snyman said the island nations had incurred economic and non-economic losses, such as cultural losses, and that a loss and damage facility is a timely intervention for them. The issue of loss and damage fund has made it on the agenda of the COP27 negotiations, which intensify this week in Egypt.

Mitigation

Pacific island countries have very low emissions and emit less than 1 percent of global emissions as a region. But despite these low emissions, the countries have developed ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement to be fully renewable in terms of energy by 2030.

“Compare that to any NDCs throughout the world … (Yet) Pacific island countries are struggling to get money for transitioning to renewable energy because the argument is always that they are too small or they have too little emission reduction, so they are not receiving the money to finance their NDCs,” Snyman said.

The climate financing needs for the Pacific Islands are estimated at between 6.5 and 9 percent of GDP per year, which is around 1 billion US dollars per year.

Snyman said current estimates of approved financing are around 220 million US dollars annually, which is only 20 percent of the 1 billion US dollars needed. He said multilateral mechanisms take up to five years to get financing, by which time countries would have experienced the worst impacts of climate change.

“Pacific countries feel very strongly that money should be made for loss and damage to compensate for these economic and non-economic losses that are unavoidable and that they cannot adapt to and that will continue to affect communities for decades,” said Snyman.

Espen Ronneberg, Senior Adviser, Multilateral Climate Change Agreements at SPC, says loss and damage will occur without ambitious mitigation action and reductions in GHG emissions.

Espen Ronneberg, Senior Adviser, Multilateral Climate Change Agreements at SPC,

 ambitious mitigation action and reductions in GHG emissions are needed. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

“We are already experiencing some of these things to a certain extent in that the impacts are being felt right now, but we are also looking into the future and how those impacts will get much worse unless mitigation is ramped up and unless technical assistance, finance, for instance, are also ramped up,” said Ronneberg, who explained that available resources were not fit-for-purpose in addressing the current impacts of climate change in pacific island countries.

Ronneberg said Pacific island countries were ambitious regarding mitigation as they have some of the world’s highest energy costs due to fuel and natural gas importation costs. They have looked at energy efficiency through solar voltaic technology and are exploring wind and wave power.

“We have to look at the slow onset of impacts like sea level rise and changes in rainfall patterns. There may be opportunities for adaptation, but there is a point where you can no longer adapt – where an island becomes unliveable because of conditions,” he said.

Anne-Claire Goarant, Manager of the Climate Change and Environmental Sustainability Division at the SPC, said adaptation was vital for implementing the NDCs in the Pacific islands but that there is a need to focus on robust mitigation programmes.

“We need the flexibility to describe the adaptation objectives to reflect the reality on the ground, and at this stage, we need transformative action,” Goarant told IPS. “We have to speed up the scale and amount of money that is available to implement action that will deliver some results in the short and long terms, for example, planting trees on a massive scale along the shores.”

“It is not just a small dot of adaptation action; we really need a global goal that can be implemented at a local level by local communities because the work will be done locally by the people who need to understand what climate change is and why it is important to adapt and how they can be supported.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Israeli extremists raid Al-Aqsa, cut down 2,000 olive trees

November 14, 2022

Fanatic Jewish settlers stormed Al-Aqsa mosque compound on September 26, 2022 [Jerusalem Islamic Waqf/Anadolu Agency]

November 14, 2022 at 7:04 pm

The Israeli Occupation Forces escorted groups of Israeli settlers as they raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound through the Al-Maghrebi Gate, this morning, Arab48 reported.

In a statement, the Jordan-run Islamic Waqf Department, which oversees the holy sites in Jerusalem, said some of the settlers continuously performed Talmudic rituals and prayers inside and at the gates of Al-Aqsa, in addition to carrying out provocative tours.

Al-Aqsa Mosque is the world's third-holiest site for Muslims. Jews call the area the "Temple Mount", claiming it was the site of two Jewish temples in ancient times.

Since 2003, Israel has allowed settlers into the compound almost daily.

Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers invaded the village of Qarawat Bani Hassan and cut down 2,000 olive trees, in addition to spraying chemical toxins on hundreds of dunams of Palestinian-owned land.

READ: Israeli settlers uproot 120 olive trees in Ramallah

According to the Mayor of the village, Ibrahim Assi, the soldiers invaded the Al-Awareed area, based north-west of Qarawat Bani Hassan, after declaring it a closed military zone.

The attack, he added, targeted 300 dunams of land and lasted for five hours, before the soldiers left with the uprooted olive trees.

These attacks come amid a noticeable increase in attacks by extremist Israeli settlers on vulnerable Palestinian communities across the Occupied West Bank.

All Israeli settlers, settlements and settlement "outposts" are illegal under international law.

Pegasus victims sue NSO in Thailand: It’s time for spyware accountability

15 NOVEMBER 2022 |

Companies like NSO Group facilitate human rights abuses — it is time they are held accountable for how their invasive spyware like Pegasus is used. Access Now supports a civil lawsuit filed today in Thailand against Israeli spyware company, NSO Group, for violating the rights, including privacy, of eight people whose phones were infected by Pegasus. This is the first lawsuit that the company is facing in Southeast Asia.

“Companies that peddle their products to actors seeking to invade the privacy of people, target them for harassment, and threaten their security must be stopped,” said Dhevy Sivaprakasam, Asia-Pacific Policy Counsel at Access Now. “Pegasus victims deserve judicial protection. Thai law allows them to claim damages for this Pegasus hack, and a ruling against NSO Group will send a strong message from the judiciary that fundamental rights are respected, and civic space will be protected in Thailand.”

Earlier this year, Thai organizations, Internet Law Reform Dialogue (iLaw) and DigitalReach, supported by forensic research from Canadian Citizen Lab, released a report documenting Pegasus infections in the devices of 35 victims — including 24 activists, mostly students from the pro-democracy youth movements, who have been critical of the government and the monarchy. Five members of the political opposition, three academics, and three human rights defenders were also identified as victims.

“Spyware technology violates our right to privacy and attacks the universally-protected rights to free expression, association, and political participation. Its abuse threatens the existence of civil society as a whole and undermines legitimate political engagement,” said Golda Benjamin, Asia-Pacific Campaigner at Access Now. “Thailand prides itself on releasing the first national action plan on business and human rights in Asia, with commitments to protect human rights defenders. This lawsuit against NSO Group is a test of that plan, and the Thai government must protect the victims.”

Collective pressure from all corners is critical to holding NSO Group accountable for the facilitation of human rights abuses. Access Now continues to campaign against the unchecked use of this dangerous technology, is pushing for sector-wide accountability, and is calling for an immediate global moratorium on the sale, transfer, and use of spyware technology until a regulatory framework that protects human rights is implemented.