SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Jan 7 2025 (IPS)* – When news broke over the weekend that President Biden just approved an $8 billion deal for shipping weapons to Israel, a nameless official vowed that “we will continue to provide the capabilities necessary for Israel’s defense.”
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Displaced Palestinians walk through the Nour Shams camp in the West Bank. Credit: UNRWA/Mohammed Alsharif
Following the reports last month from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch concluding that Israeli actions in Gaza are genocide, Biden’s decision was a new low for his presidency.
It’s logical to focus on Biden as an individual. His choices to keep sending huge quantities of weaponry to Israel have been pivotal and calamitous.
But the presidential genocide and the active acquiescence of the vast majority of Congress are matched by the dominant media and overall politics of the United States.
7 January 2025 (UNEP)* —In the unusually hot summer of 2016, a bacterium that causes anthrax killed more than 2,500 reindeer in Siberia’s remote Yamal Peninsula, according to one study.
Credit: AFP/Olivier Morin
Normally locked deep in a layer of permanently frozen land, or permafrost, the once-dormant pathogen eventually spread to humans, claiming the life of a 12-year-old boy and causing dozens of others to fall ill.
Some researchers believe the outbreak is a sign of things to come. As climate change rapidly warms the Artic, scientists say it could unleash a wave of potentially deadly microbes that for centuries have been trapped in ice.
(UN News)* — “We saw dead bodies scattered to the left and right, decomposing in the sun”, recounts Jonathan Dumont, Head of Emergency Communications at the World Food Programme (WFP). A veteran of conflict zones around the world, he says that the destruction and suffering he witnessed in Gaza is on a “different scale”.
Since the fierce bombardment of Gaza by Israel began in October 2023, in response to a deadly Hamas attack on the country, over 45,000 Palestinians have been killed, and over 100,000 injured.
The vast majority of Gazans, around 90 per cent, are internally displaced, forced to relocate several times to avoid airstrikes and fighting.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 