President Donald Trump announced on his social media that a joint invasion between the U.S. and Israel resulted in the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
In addition, three U.S. soldiers were also killed, and five others were seriously injured, according to U.S. Central Command during “Operation Epic Fury,” the joint U.S.-Israeli military operation against Iran. Trump said more American deaths are expected. As of March 3rd, the death toll of U.S. Service personnel was 6, with many injured.
At least 165 people were killed when a strike hit an all-girls school in Minab, which is in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province. A local official said among the dead were students, parents, and school staff.
Trump also urged the Iranian people to “seize control of your destiny” by rising against the Islamic leadership that has ruled the nation since 1979.
The attack on Iran by the U.S. and Israel was launched in the middle of diplomatic efforts to avert conflict. Congress was not consulted on the invasion, which has been cast as a war.
President Trump does not have the power to declare war on another country. The Founding Fathers and the Constitution gave war authority and power to Congress, and Congress alone, said the ACLU.
President Trump violated the Constitution when he announced that the U.S. was going to war and launched an open-ended bombing campaign against Iran, a country with nearly 100 million people, without ever going to Congress for authorization.
President Trump ordered U.S. military strikes against Iran without prior congressional authorization, and key members of the U.S. Congress say they were not given intelligence briefings before the operation began.
Several lawmakers strongly criticized the decision as a violation of constitutional and statutory war powers.
The attack on Iran reportedly targeted military sites as well as the leadership of the Iranian regime.
Explosions were heard in Israel and Gulf countries after Iran launched a wave of drones and missiles in a strong response to being attacked.
Trump announced the invasion in an eight-minute speech after the first bombs had fallen.
Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, called for an immediate cessation of hostilities and de-escalation and warned that a failure to do so risks a wider regional conflict with grave consequences for civilians and regional stability.
Mr. Guterres declared that the military escalation in the region undermines international peace and security, and recalled that all Member States must “respect their obligations under international law, including the Charter of the United Nations,” which prohibits “the threat of the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”
The attack on Iran reportedly targeted military sites as well as the leadership of the Iranian regime.
President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana addresses UN General Assembly
Sep. 25, 2023 (GIN) – “We must make up for time lost to foot-dragging, arm-twisting and the naked greed of entrenched interests raking in billions from fossil fuels.”
That was Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the U.N. speaking to world leaders at a General Assembly symposium at United Nations headquarters this month.
The world still has the capacity to course correct if only global leaders would take action and support developing countries in addressing the crises, he added.
“Our focus here is on climate solutions – and our task is urgent. Humanity has opened the gates of hell,” Guterres said. “If nothing changes we are heading towards a 2.8 degrees temperature rise towards a dangerous and unstable world.
Meanwhile, in speeches before the U.N., African leaders presented a new and militant message: The continent is done being a victim of a post-World War II order. It is a global power and must be partnered with — not sidelined.
“We as Africa have come to the world, not to ask for alms, charity or handouts, but to work with the rest of the global community and give every human being in this world a decent chance of security and prosperity,” Kenyan President William Ruto was reported to say by the Associated Press.
He urged countries in the Global South to pool together their trillions of dollars in collective resources to independently finance climate initiatives.
Neither Africa nor the developing world stands in need of charity from developed countries,” he said, proposing a universal tax on the sale of fossil fuels.
Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo blamed Africa’s present-day challenges on “historical injustices” and called for reparations for the slave trade.
President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa said the continent is poised to “regain its position as a site of human progress” despite dealing with a “legacy of exploitation and subjugation.”
“Africa is nothing less than the key to the world’s future,” said Nigerian leader Bola Tinubu, who leads a country that, by 2050, is forecast to become the third most populous in the world.
With the largest bloc of countries at the United Nations, it is understandable that African leaders increasingly demand a bigger voice in multilateral institutions, said Murithi Mutiga, program director for Africa at the Crisis Group. “Those calls will grow especially at a time when the continent is being courted by big powers amid growing geopolitical competition.”
“Africa has no need for partnerships based on official development aid that is politically oriented and tantamount to organized charity,” President Felix-Antoine Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of the Congo said. “Trickling subsidies filtered by the selfish interests of donors will certainly not allow for a real and effective rise of our continent.”
Tshisekedi’s country has the world’s largest reserves of cobalt and is also one of the largest producers of copper, both critical for clean energy transition.
What Africa needs instead, according to Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi, is a more inclusive global financial system where Africans can participate as “a partner that has (a) lot to offer to the world and not only a warehouse that supplies cheap commodities to countries or international multinational corporations.”
By Linda Givetash, David Ingram and Farah Otero-Amad, NBC News
Climate strike rally at Federal Courthouse in Opelika, Alabama (photo by Jim Allen)
Crowds of children flooded the streets of major cities in a global show of force Friday to demand action on climate change, with many young people skipping school in protest and sharing a unified message aimed at world leaders.
Rallies were held across Alabama including Tuscaloosa, Huntsville, Birmingham, Mobile and east Alabama at Opelika.
“No matter how many times they try to ignore the issue, you can see every teenager in the area is here,” said Isha Venturi, a 15-year-old high school sophomore from New Jersey who joined tens of thousands in New York’s lower Manhattan taking part in a second “Global Climate Strike.”
“We’re not quiet anymore,” she added, “and change is coming.”
From New York to London and San Francisco to Sydney, Australia, not just children but other groups took part in the strikes, including trade unions, environmental organizations and employees at large tech companies such as Amazon and Google. And their demands were similar: reducing the use of fossil fuels to try to halt climate change.
“As leaders, we’ve failed them,” Halima Adan, 36, of Somalia, said amid the large number of young people in New York, where the city’s 1.1 million public school students were told they could skip classes to attend protests.
Adan, who was in the city for the Peoples’ Summit on Climate, organized by the United Nations Human Rights Office and others, said her own war-torn African nation has felt the effects of “every aspect of [the] climate crisis.”
In a day of coordinated global action, when millions were expected to protest:
• Australia saw some of the first protests kick off Friday morning with organizers estimating that upwards of 300,000 students and workers filled the streets of Melbourne, Sydney and other cities in the biggest protests the country has seen in years.
• New Delhi, India, one of the world’s most polluted cities, saw dozens of students and environmental activists chant “we want climate action” while hundreds marched in Thailand’s capital Bangkok, before staging a “die-in” outside the Ministry of Natural Resources
• In London, thousands of people from infants to grandparents blocked traffic outside the Houses of Parliament chanting “save our planet.”
• Crowds gathered in European capitals, including Berlin and Warsaw, Poland, and African capitals such as Nairobi, Kenya, while organizers said there are some 800 events planned across the U.S.
•
“The climate crisis is an emergency — we want everyone to start acting like it. We demand climate justice for everyone,” organizers said on one website dedicated to Friday’s protests, adding that there was action planned in more than 150 countries.
A coalition of environmental groups, youth organizations and others using the hashtag #strikewithus have demanded passage of a “Green New Deal.”
The climate strike movement began as a weekly demonstration led by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg in August 2018.
The latest worldwide demonstrations are timed to nearly coincide with Monday’s U.N. Climate Summit in New York, where U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said he wants to see governments and businesses pledge to abandon fossil fuels. “We are losing the fight against climate change,” he said at a news conference on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
Anna Taylor, 18, who co-founded the climate strikes movement in the U.K., addressed a crowd in London on Friday that young people are now “desperate.”
Writer Lavinia Richards, 41, said she decided to take the day off work to join the London march when her 6-year-old son, Ruben, asked to join.
“I was pleased that he wants to do the right thing and he’s standing up for what he believes in,” she said. “If these children are brought up to be ethical and responsible, then maybe there is a chance.”
Ruben told NBC News that he wanted to strike in hopes of seeing Thunberg, his role model, and “to save the rainforest and all the tarantulas and the gorillas.”
“Some people think there is going to be a sixth mass extinction, so we don’t really want that to happen,” said Rosa Cormcain, 9, with her group of friends carrying signs that read “there is no planet b” and “don’t be a fossil fool.”
Protesters blocked roads around London’s Parliament, waving flags, beating drums, chanting and singing in the sunshine for hours. At 1 p.m. local time, strikers honked horns, rang bells, blew whistles and cheered in an effort to sound the alarm for action on climate change.
“If we don’t take action now … it won’t be a certain amount of people who will suffer, it will be everyone on this planet,” said activist Al Shadjareh, 16.
Shadjareh and his peers point to warnings from scientists, including an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report from last year, that forecast severe consequences for the environment and human life if global temperatures rise more than 2.7 degrees.
More than 2,300 companies around the globe from a variety of industries, including law, tourism and technology, have joined the Not Business As Usual alliance and pledged to support their workers to strike with students on Friday.
Global brands including Ben & Jerry’s and Lush announced they would be closing their stores on the day of the protest.
Thousands of tech workers say they are planning to join the protests in the middle of their workdays, showing a renewed level of political activism in Silicon Valley where software engineers and other employees traditionally haven’t spoken up in public against their bosses.
Amazon Employees for Climate Justice said it expected more than 1,600 employees would walk off their job sites to protest what they called the company’s lack of action in addressing the climate crisis. It will be the first strike at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters in the company’s 25-year history, according to Wired magazine.
Outgoing Commissioner Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma of the African Union
Jan. 30, 2017 (GIN) – An outraged African Union recalled the kidnapping of Black Africans as it considered the controversial new US anti-immigrant rules. After forcibly bringing Africans to the U.S. as slave labor, noted the AU, Washington now slams the door on Muslim immigrants entering the U.S.
“It is clear that globally we are entering very difficult times,” cautioned outgoing AU Commissioner Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, speaking at a recent two-day summit in Addis Ababa of the 53 member states.
“The very country to which many of our people were taken as slaves during the transatlantic slave trade has now decided to ban refugees from some of our countries.”
Just before the weekend, President Donald Trump suspended all US refugee programs and banned immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries, three of which are AU members.
The executive order signed by Mr. Trump specifically bars Libyans, Somalians and Sudanese from travelling to the US. It also blocks visas for citizens from four Middle Eastern countries – Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran.
All US refugee programs are frozen for 120 days, and the flow of Syrian refugees to America is ended indefinitely.
The new UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, speaking at the AU’s summit in Ethiopia, commended African countries for opening their borders to refugees and people fleeing violence while in other parts of the world, including the developed West, they are closing borders and building walls.
He praised African nations for being among the world’s largest and most generous hosts of refugees.
AU Summit proceedings began with the swift election of Chadian Foreign Minister Moussa Faki Mahamat, 56, as the new chairperson of the AU Commission, beating four other candidates.
Faki won in a final battle against his Kenyan counterpart Amina Mohamed after seven rounds of voting. The Kenyan government praised Ms. Mohamed, once the odds-on favorite, for waging a “valiant race”. Faki takes on the role as his country’s President Idriss Deby Itno hands over the rotating presidency of the AU to Guinea’s Alpha Conde.
A former prime minister, Faki has been at the forefront of the fight against Islamists in Nigeria, Mali and the Sahel and has promised “development and security” will top his agenda as chief of the 54-member continental bloc. Faki said he dreams of an Africa where the “sound of guns will be drowned out by cultural songs and rumbling factories” and pledged to streamline the bureaucratic AU during his four-year term in office.
