The opening plenary of the U.N. climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, November 11, 2024. Kamran Guliyev / U.N. Climate Change
At least 1,773 fossil fuel lobbyists are attending the U.N. climate negotiations now underway in Baku, Azerbaijan, according to a tally by a coalition of climate groups.
“Fossil fuel corporations and their surrogates shouldn’t have a seat at the negotiating table where climate policy is being made — allowing them that access is like setting the cat loose among the pigeons,” said Kathy Mulvey, a campaigner at the Union of Concerned Scientists, one of more than 450 groups belonging to the coalition.
Every conference attendee must disclose which organization they work for and the nature of their role. Climate groups scoured the provisional list of attendees, identifying those who could “be reasonably assumed” to represent the interests of fossil fuel firms.
The groups found that fossil fuel lobbyists outnumber delegates from every country except Turkey, Brazil, and Azerbaijan. The 1,773 lobbyists also dwarf the number of delegates from countries at greatest risk from warming. The 10 most vulnerable nations, as rated by experts at Notre Dame University, sent a combined 1,033 delegates to the negotiations.
ExxonMobil alone sent as many delegates as Guyana, a small South American country at imminent risk from rising seas. Said Mulvey, “Corporations such as ExxonMobil, which have engaged in a decades-long campaign to deceive the public and policymakers and block or delay climate action, have repeatedly shown that they can’t be trusted as good-faith players in climate policymaking.”
Después de que Rusia advirtiera en septiembre de que el uso de misiles de la OTAN, imposibles de operar sin la supervisión de ésta, significa una guerra directa de los países de la OTAN contra ella, Estados Unidos y sus aliados europeos han dado ese paso.
Moscú ha respondido modificando su doctrina nuclear, abriendo el uso de armas atómicas al escenario de ataques, incluso con armas convencionales, “si tal agresión creara una amenaza crítica a su soberanía e integridad territorial”.
Pese a la evidencia no solo doctrinal, sino también histórica, de que el uso de armas nucleares es perfectamente real y creíble en caso de que Rusia se vea confrontada a un enemigo superior en recursos convencionales, como es la OTAN –esa fue, precisamente, la doctrina de la OTAN en Europa cuando la URSS disponía de esa superioridad en el continente, los políticos europeos rechazan esas peligrosas advertencias de Moscú como “retórica” (el jefe de la diplomacia europea, Josep Borrell).
Incluso proponen la entrada de tropas de la OTAN contra Rusia (Margus Tsahkna, ministro de Exteriores de Estonia).
Desde la misma génesis del conflicto, cuando la OTAN se metió en Ucrania a finales de los noventa, invitó a su gobierno a ingresar en la alianza (2008), forzó un cambio de régimen en el país (2014) y financió y armó después a su ejército con miles de millones, infraestructuras y entrenamiento
Esta escalada ha despreciado claramente la voluntad de la mayoría de la población ucraniana expresada en múltiples encuestas. La actual escalada mantiene esa misma pauta.
En Ucrania, el 52% de la población desea poner fin a la guerra lo más rápido posible, admitiendo gran parte de la sociedad concesiones territoriales al invasor ruso, frente a un 38% que quiere continuarla, según una encuesta de Gallup conocida esta semana.
En el conjunto de Europa una gran mayoría rechaza también esa política.
Hay que decir que en la cima de esta última grave y temeraria decisión de escalada se encuentra un presidente saliente errático y senil al que apenas le quedan dos meses al mando.
La combinación del propósito que encierra la guerra de Ucrania –que no es la defensa de ese país agredido por Rusia, sino debilitar a Rusia con una “derrota estratégica” más el cambio de su régimen, como han declarado repetidamente los máximos dirigentes de Estados Unidos y la Unión Europa–, con la respuesta nuclear que advierte Moscú para el caso de una “amenaza existencial” a su régimen, y un presidente gagá con sus facultades mentales mermadas en Washington que va a ser sucedido por un sociópata, configura un escenario absolutamente inquietante para el mundo.
Sobre todo si se tiene en cuenta que la coalición occidental que está escalando la guerra en Ucrania es la misma que anima un genocidio en Gaza, permite el bombardeo israelí de Líbano e Irán y calienta motores para un enfrentamiento con China en Asia.
Two weeks ago, diplomats from almost 200 countries arrived at a sports stadium on the outskirts of Baku, Azerbaijan, to debate a subject that had never before been at the center of a United Nations climate conference: money. World leaders have long agreed, in theory, on a dire need to scale up international investment in…
The Heritage Foundation’s “Project Esther” claims to combat antisemitism but in fact, aims to destroy the Palestine solidarity movement as a first step in a crusade against all domestic dissent in the U.S.
Reading this Manifesto by Chiara Bottici [1], at the end of 2021, was a breath of fresh air in the panorama of anarchist feminism which is lacking in ideas, let alone building a social movement, in this country.
Not to underestimate, far from it, all the efforts that are made to build a feminist proposal from anarchism, everything is useful and, especially, in these times.
However, we have to recognize how difficult and slow it is to start it: sometimes due to a lack of ideas, also because activism in other fields leaves little time for the creation of solid anarcho(a)feminist groups with continuity over time. and, finally, often because confrontations dominate the feminist and anarchist space and time and energy are wasted on them.
In addition to reading the Manifesto, I attended the conference in Barcelona (March 7, 2022) in which the author synthesized her ideas, which she explains in a book [2] that has just come out and which I am immersed in reading these days. .
Why a Manifesto? The need for a Manifesto here and now is given by the existence of gendered bodies that are exploited and dominated throughout the world, not because it is presented as a plan that can be given once and for all and applied in all contexts.
The latter would be in flagrant contradiction to the anarchism that impregnates this Manifesto that must be open and in constant development, as the author proposes.
Why Anarchafeminist? Anarchism means that there is no arché (that there is no law, that there is no single principle that explains the oppression of women) and the anarcho concept is feminized to give visibility to the specifically feminist facet within anarchist theory and practice.
Content of the Manifesto (following the idea that the Manifesto is open and in constant development, it should be clear that this is not a summary of the Manifesto, I have made it my own and have chopped it up to my liking).
The author starts from the existence of a global androcracy (political and social supremacy of men). Although patriarchy, which means the law of the male head of the family, has been overthrown in many contexts, the power of men over the “second sex” (a term borrowed from Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘The Second Sex’) [3]) continues through death, the state, capital and the imaginal. Bottici dedicates seven of the nine chapters that make up her Manifesto to these four instruments of androcracy.
Death, the State, Capital and the Imaginal.
Regarding death (chapter 1), the author points out the existence of an authentic global gendercide against people perceived as women.
“Lucha y represión a las mujeres libertarias” – “Struggle and repression of anarchist women”
The second instrument of androcracy is the State (chapters 2 and 3) and its gender dimension. The State has always been a tool of a minority (where there are hardly any women) that governs the majority.
Capital (chapter 4) is the third instrument of androcracy, it needs the gender division of labor, in this way it can achieve the extraction of surplus value from productive salaried work and also from unpaid reproductive work.
The author points out that “women” is not an eternal essence or a pre-given object. Women are not objects but processes (the place of a becoming); they are not things but social relations.
Uncaptured Media founder Dan Cohen spoke at a Nov. 20 UN Security Council meeting on a U.S. proposal for a UN military intervention in Haiti.
NO! to Another UN “Peace-Keeping” Force to Militarily Occupy Haiti
On Wed., Nov. 20, 2024, at 3 p.m., the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) met again to discuss whether to deploy another Chapter 7 UN military mission to Haiti, similar to the UN Mission to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH), which deployed from 2004 to 2017
Haiti was occupied by the U.S. military from 1915 to 1934; Again from 1994 to 1995, and by a U.S.-endorsed force 2004 and 2017, plus a…..
The session was prompted by a Nov. 13 resolution adopted by the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) which sought “to encourage the UNSC to urgently support Haiti’s request to transition the MSS [Multinational Security Support] mission into a UNPKO [UN Peace-Keeping Operation] under a United Nations mandate, …”
watch Cohen’s Uncaptured Media FILM here
One must realize that “Haiti’s request” came from the current president of the Anthony Blinken-fashioned Transitional Presidential Council (TPC), Leslie Voltaire, who has no more standing or legitimacy than some random street-vendor selling packets of water in a Port-au-Prince market.
Dan Cohen (on screen), American investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker, speaks at the Security Council meeting on the situation in Haiti. UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
As a sort of compromise, on Sep. 30, the council unanimously approved a renewal of the MSS’s mandate for one year, starting Oct. 2. (Russia and China abstained from the vote in 2023.)..
Russia and China,who are wise to Washington’s game, invited Dan Cohen, a well-known and well-respected independent journalist, who has intensively covered Haiti for the past four years, producing five films and many articles on the situation in the country.
Below is the text of Cohen’s address to the UN Security Council.
Kim Ives
Distinguished members of the council,
I am an investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker, one of the few independent journalists to report from Haiti in recent years. My most recent film is titled Haiti: Intervention versus Revolution.
The UN Security Council is being asked to approve deployment of another so-called “peace-keeping” mission to Haiti.
Let us recall that Haiti has been under U.S. and UN occupation for 21 of the last 30 years, from 1994 to 2000 by UNMIH, UNSMIH, UNTMIH, and MIPONUH, and from 2004 to 2019 by MINUSTAH and MINUJUSTH.
However, those two plus decades of occupation never achieved their stated goals.
Dan Cohen is a well-known independent journalist who has covered Haiti intensively over the past four years.
In fact, UN soldiers, under the familiar pretext of “combating gangs”, in one operation that became emblematic of their conduct, wantonly fired some 22,000 bullets into the slum of Cite Soleil, killing residents in their ramshackle houses.
These UN troops were also responsible for crimes against the Haitian people, from the introduction of cholera to the rape of children, for which they were never held accountable. Now, the Haitian people are being asked once again to let UN troops occupy their nation.
Yet it is clear that there is another agenda at play.
The United States’ government, my government, seeks to impose its will on Haiti, with or without the approval of this council.
Don’t take my word for it.
In December 2021, China and Russia voted to limit the Security Council mandate for U.S. trainers to the Haitian National Police to only nine months rather than the 12 months that Washington sought.
This outraged U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, then the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. During a briefing to his committee, Menendez rhetorically asked a State Department official: “Why do you think China and Russia stopped us?” He answered his own question, saying: “They want total unrest in the hemisphere, that’s their whole purpose in this hemisphere, is creating instability.” He added, “At some point we have to think about how we circumvent that.”
In 2023, Washington indeed found a way to circumvent the UN Security Council when it was prevented from once again using this body, as it did in 1994 and 2004, to further its interventionist goals in Haiti. It concocted the Multinational Security Support mission or MSS, which U.S. representative to the UN, Jeffrey DeLaurentis, called “a new way of preserving global peace and security.”
Indeed, the United States has enacted legislation known as the Global Fragility Act, which might be better described as the Crumbling Empire Act.
This bipartisan legislation, signed into law by President Trump in 2019 and continued under the Biden administration, seeks to combine military force and soft power to push back against the growing influence of China and Russia, which Washington, still applying its long-discredited imperial Monroe Doctrine, sees as a threat.
Haiti is the pilot case for this new strategy, which the U.S. openly stated it seeks to apply to so-called fragile states around the world, beginning with Libya, Mozambique, Papua New Guinea, and Benin, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Guinea, and Togo in West Africa.
An intervention would meet stiff armed resistance and cause bloodshed to the Haitian population and among UN troops.
This intervention assumes that the Haitian people are incapable of solving their own problems, an insulting notion to those who know Haitian history. An intervention would be, first and foremost, a violation of Haitian sovereignty. But even more so, it would empower and support the forces which have carried out the most heinous acts of violence in Haiti today.
The Free 