Hmmmmmm…. Why is the audio of the @youtube version of the UNSG office daily briefing for 1st July missing sound from 5:24 to 6:07?

Afghanistan, Lebanon, Myanmar & other topics - Daily Press Briefing (1 J... via @YouTube


The content of this portion is available as it is simply a quote from written remarks of UNSG @antonioguterres made to a meeting in Austria. But the missing YouTube audio is unprecedented in my experience and hard to explain.

Another day. Another Israeli
war crime.

Intense bombing by Israeli forces on Gaza continues and kills at least 3... via @YouTube This report also addresses the widening rift between Israeli PM Netanyahu and the U.S. Government. True to form Netanyahu is showing no sign of backing down. But this tweet showing former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant leaving on a U.S. flight for the U.S. speaks volumes in this very intense moment.

Amidst continued bombing of Rafah, Israeli forces are resuming strikes i... via @YouTube

A « Defund Gaza Genocide : Kick Big Polluters out » protest has just begun outside the #SB60 Mid- COP meeting of @UNFCCC COP Negotiators here in Bonn Germany. The first speaker at this Gaza Solidarity action is from Gaza himself. Mohammed.

The fatal flooding event yesterday in Southern Germany (5 confirmed dead so far) is a big wake up call to Europe, with echoes of the Ahr Valley flooding disaster of 2021. That incident coincided with the announcement of the EU Green New Deal in Brussels and this event is coinciding with the UNFCCC #SB60 mid-COP28 negotiations meeting in Bonn.

Picture: The Rhein River today in Bonn is running very high displacing the Geese mothers and their children.


Thread follows with news links.

1/ bbc.com/news/articles/…

The story of what happened to Twitter/X according to @jack & including Nostr. & @nos.social which has journalism accelerator program and which is a collaboration with @Rabble who was there with @jack at the beginning,

I will post some screenshots. The account of what happened is astonishing. Shedding interesting new light on #TwitterFiles among many important issues related to Social Media censorship.

piratewires.com/p/interview-wi… 1/many THREAD

Twitter files related, @jack says the issue of censorship takedown was way broader than we knew and fully global.

The news that the TPLF are back in Alamata is chilling I hope the competing reports that the Govt FDRE has told them to withdraw are correct. According to what I have heard it is getting messy.

I posted 3 stories on Alamata and this one brings them together a bit. With rumours and disputed claims about a return of TPLF to Wolkait flying around the fear of more war coming is rising in the North of Ethiopia.

Private sources tell me that TPLF is overreaching, stirring up trouble again, and the absence of a clear public statement from the Govt clarifying precisely what is agreed or not at all helpful.

Worthy and unworthy Ethiopians via @abrennowabren.org/worthy-and-unw… 2/ this is the main story I wrote on Alamata back in 2022 after visiting immediately after the COHA Cessation of Hostilities Agreement was concluded in Pretoria.

It’s primarily a report about a huge mass grave on the right hand side on the Road heading north out of the city.

The story tells you what happened and what the locals in the town told me, and about the evidence they provided me of this as I left I did a more extensive interview with them into the broader story of what had happened in the city over the long periods of TPLF occupation. And leading up to the war breaking out in 2020

The idea that TPLF are back there again gives me chills. The mass grave which you can see in the story linked below is only a fraction of what the Alamata citizens have been through.

m.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2211…

This is an interesting line of questioning here from Journalist @samhusseini which perhaps points to the substantive legal sophistry underlying the U.S. position on Gaza, in particular wrt the legality of wholesale slaughter y Israel of Gaza’s civilian population with U.S. supplied weapons .

@samhusseini tries to get answer from @StateDept’s Matthew Miller
(again) , he has been seeking an unambiguous answer repeatedly on this question as to « whether the U.S. govt accepts that the 4th Geneva Convention rules apply in the Gaza Conflict. Meanwhile the rule of international law seems to be catching up on the Israeli-US « axis of sophistry » as we can see here in an new additional ICJ ruling on the Gaza Genocide complaint which coincides with the passage of a binding UNSC Resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in the conflict.

An interesting report on Egypt 🇪🇬 ‘s response/practice when it comes to the shifting sands in international financial trading as a result of BRICS and the rise in the importance of the Yuan in particular for settling trade transactions.

At a practical level nations anticipating a loss in US dollar liquidity are increasingly hedging their bets on trade financing and broadening the quantity of trade in currencies other than the USD.

At a macro global level there is a high level of risk associated with these changes, principally because of the astronomical amount of US debt and deposits denominated in the USD.

The report shows that Egypt 🇪🇬 - a close U.S. ally is simultaneously seeking to be pragmatic about the threat this poses to its own economy by this expanding phenomena.

I have long considered that this « great unwinding » of the USD is the greatest threat to international economic conditions of my lifetime. I expect central bankers are having conniptions all over the planet at the moment.

Made in Egypt, sold in dollars goo.gl Here is the original report I am referring to here. (See Quoted tweet).

What is happening now in global finance dwarfs the GFC of 2008 and its predecessor crises, the Asian Flue in the late 29th Century and the Dot Com Crash of the early 2000s.

The US Federal Reserve played a critical role in righting the great ship of global finance in those cases by providing liquidity. It is unclear whether they will be either willing or able to do so in the coming crises. Europe and China together need to consider how they can cooperate to address this coming crisis.

Critically the causes of this crisis are different and the War in Gaza is extremely important in relation to concerns about the Dollar and is driving the hoarding of USD liquidity by the super rich which is most probably one of the drivers of what is happening here.

Lots of People have been raving to me about this amazing piece from @JohnJCampbell in the early summer. Just read it and OMG! Is it good or what.

NZ’s politics as we begin 2024 are febrile in a manner significantly beyond anything I have ever seen thanks to the bonkers agenda set out by the coalition govt that should not have been allowed to happen.

If you haven’t read this yet do so.1news.co.nz/2023/12/30/joh… Justifiably the bit in the piece on former pm, Labour Leader @chrishipkins is excoriating, albeit in the relatively understated personal rhetorical tone in which @JohnJCampbell has achieved mastery.

“Labour’s vote almost halved in three years and their leader is talking about “vibe”.
“People don’t vote on a left-right continuum. They vote on the vibe of the campaign”, Chris Hipkins declared.
I’m not suggesting a hair shirt – Labour should be taking stock not doing penance. But some acknowledgement that they arrived at an election campaign without an actual campaign, might be useful.
If you’re having a sausage sizzle and you don’t have any sausages, that’s not a vibe issue. It’s that the central ingredient isn’t there.
Audrey Young asked Chris Hipkins what sort of Leader of the Opposition he wants to be. He talked about “highlighting how we would do things differently, and charting a different course”, which echoes David Lange’s belief that if you want to be elected you have to look like a government in waiting.
But then Chris Hipkins said, “you won’t see much of that in the first few months, because we need to take stock and we need to the opportunity to reflect and refresh.”
Good God. The first few months? (Is Labour on sabbatical?) By that stage the Government will be insisting that everyone called Wiremu change their name to William.”

Here’s how it went down 5 minutes ago.

https://twitter.com/althecat/status/1741354744126562315

GAZA CHRISTMAS CARTOON THREAD:

Martin Rowson @Guardian on Christmas in Gaza – cartoon

THREAD theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
2.
Christmas Gaza- Times of India
#GazaChristmas timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cartoons/line-…

#COP @UNFCCC Exec Sec Simon Stiell is about to make a brief statement outside the Plenary and take questions from media. Part 1

It is very hard to understand what exactly the COP presidency was thinking today releasing this draft of the key stone Global Stock Take GST text.

Given the positive atmosphere leading up to the release of this text, it feels as if he has set a match to burn 🔥 his own COP Presidency down just as it has begun.

And the absence of UNFCCC Exec Sec. Simon Stiell from this afternoons interrupted plenary suddenly makes a lot more sense.

https://twitter.com/althecat/status/1734252737905181031

This was the interruption. From a 12 year climate activist from East Timor. It took place roughly an hour before the Presidency’s draft text was released, a text which now looks set to ignite protests across the planet. [I caught the very end of this as she was being hauled away.]

I expect she will receive a hero’s welcome on her return to Indonesia.

https://twitter.com/licypriyak/status/1734235118175420874

This bit considers the language around equity which has been a very hot topic in many of the civil society discussions here in Dubai. Equity = fairness and the context here is about finding a way to acknowledge that the phase-out of fossil fuels inherently bumps up against and gives effect to the “differentiated rights and responsibilities” language in the UNFCCC framework convention.

Helpfully there is now a first draft practical assessment (ngo report) on the table which suggests how this could work in practice.

https://twitter.com/drsimevans/status/1733164613057794543

This is the report, which I was kindly given a copy of on day one.

The report and a list of endorsers can be found at equityreview.org

A short thread on Uganda 🇺🇬 whose pavilion I have had the pleasure of dropping into a couple of times over the past two days. I attended a recording session with three speakers on the subject of the plastics waste treaty with three youth speakers. Each gave impassioned speeches on the subject from different perspectives. 1/6
2/6 ^^ the first speaker addressed the issue from an overview of the treaty perspective what it is for and why it is needed. The plastics packaging industry which is an offshoot of the Fossil Fuel Industrial Complex causes a lot of issues in terms of contributing to the waste stream in developing nations, and unfortunately many plastics contain a lot of toxic chemicals & are not recyclable.

Packed Plenary today at #COP28 considering progress so far and perhaps signing off some documents on work which has been completed.

In comparison to the Westminster parliamentary system this phase is a bit like a collective report back from all select committees to to committee of the whole of Parliament. Not precisely this, but similar.


From my recollection this really is an astonishing turnout. Not only are most of the nation state tables occupied but so are most of the NGOs and Civil society desks. Nearly all seats are filled.

The overall interest shown by attendees in this - a largely technical part of the process - is definitely different from what I saw in both Glasgow and Sharm el sheikh (Egypt). I’m assuming this represents a higher level of energy and desire to understand the #COP process.

These remarks by UAE’s Sultan Al Jaber 2 weeks ago are now at the heart of the Phaseout vs Phasedown of fossil fuels debate which has always been at the heart of what was going to be deliberated here at #cop28

Through making these remarks and then seemingly seeking to gaslight the world by claiming that he didn’t Sultan Al Jaber has now brought this question very clearly to centre stage, and highlighted how much self interest among the super wealthy interests behind fossil fuel exploitation is an obstacle to the scale of energy transformation which is needed to keep 1.5o degrees alive.

https://twitter.com/globalhlthtwit/status/1731728863107891678

This article from a couple of days ago, resurrecting the earlier remarks had launched what is now a firestorm of controversy about the role of fossil fuel interests, nation states, lobbyists and financiers in obstructing the path to net-zero carbon emissions.

“Cop28 president says there is ‘no science’ behind demands for phase-out of fossil fuels”

The mood of #cop28 has changed dramatically. The UAE 🇦🇪 COP which had been peaceful & ambiant is now activated and in some circles angry following an apparent crack-down on civil society protests and a unfortunate press conference by the COP President on the “fossil fuel phase-out Vs phase/down debate.
Two out of an already very limited number of locations for civil society activism “actions” were closed yesterday, the first I reported on in the quoted thread below yesterday.

https://twitter.com/althecat/status/1731613461170266293

Video Message from The Holy Father Pope Francis on the occasion of the inauguration of the ‘Faith Pavilion’ at #cop28 in Dubai. His message is for religious unity and Peace & Climate.

December 3, 2023

Full text of Pope Francis’s message:

Dear brothers and sisters,

I warmly greet you, and I deeply regret not being able to be with you. I entrust Cardinal Parolin with the message I would have liked to convey to you, and I want to say ‘thank you’. Thank you, because for the first time, you have created a faith pavilion within the COP conference. And thank you because this testifies to the willingness to work together. Today, the world needs alliances that are not against someone, but for the benefit of everyone. It is urgent that religions, without falling into the trap of syncretism, set a good example by working together; not for their own interests or those of a particular group, but for the interests of our world. Among these, the most important right now are peace and climate.

Let us, as religious representatives, set an example to show that change is possible, to demonstrate respectful and sustainable lifestyles, and let us fervently ask the leaders of nations to preserve our common home. This is particularly requested by the little ones and the poor, whose prayers reach the throne of the Most High. For their future and the future of all, let us safeguard creation and protect our common home; let us live in peace and promote peace.

Thank you.

The death toll of children in the Tigray Wars was in all likelihood higher in both 2021 and 2022. But the UNHRC & OHCHR did not investigate this in their reports for either year.

Most of the deaths in these wars were were of child soldiers forcibly recruited into the Tigrayan Defence Forces.

https://twitter.com/battleforeurope/status/1730996255508045968

This is not to detract from the horror of the war in Gaza. But rather to highlight an injustice against the children of Tigray which for reasons unfathomable was monumentally mismanaged by the peak bodies of the UN. And about which the truth is overdue in being investigated, revealed or even acknowledged by Western news media.

« How shortsighted is humanity? Will we all perish tomorrow morning? No. »

Francois Pickard on the opening of #COP28 which begins in earnest over the next 2 days with National heads of states delivering remarks and holding meetings.

My third COP. And it oooks like it will be another momentous one.

THE DEBATE • FRANCE 24 English via @YouTube