AOC Pleads for Biden to End Israel Aid Amid ‘Unfolding Genocide’ in Gaza

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Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) pleads for a suspension of U.S. military aid to Israel during a March 22, 2024 speech on the floor of the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C.  (Photo: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez/YouTube screen grab)

“The time is now to force compliance with U.S. law and the standards of humanity.”

Progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to the House floor Friday to demand a suspension of U.S. military aid to Israel as it wages a genocidal war on Gaza and deliberately starves Palestinians to death in the besieged enclave.

“As we speak, in this moment, 1.1 million innocents in Gaza are at famine’s door. A famine that is being intentionally precipitated through the blocking of food and global humanitarian assistance by leaders in the Israeli government,” Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said during her speech. “This is a mass starvation of people, engineered and orchestrated following the killing of another 30,000, 70% of whom were women and children.”

“If you want to know what an unfolding genocide looks like, open your eyes,” she continued. “It looks like the forced famine of 1.1 million innocents. It looks like thousands of children eating grass as their bodies consume themselves, while trucks of food are slowed and halted just miles away. It looks like good and decent people who do nothing. Or too little. Too late.”

“As we speak, in this moment, 1.1 million innocents in Gaza are at famine’s door.”

Noting that much of the death and devastation in Gaza was “accomplished with U.S. resources and weapons,” the congresswoman pointed out that “it is against United States law to provide weapons to forces who block United States humanitarian assistance.”

“That is exactly what is happening right now,” she said. “So much so that the president himself stated, during the State of the Union, that the United States must and will be building its own port to let aid through. It will be too late.”

“The time is now to force compliance with U.S. law and the standards of humanity,” the lawmaker asserted. “And fulfill our obligations to the American people to suspend the transfer of U.S. weapons to the Israeli government in order to stop and prevent further atrocity.”

Ocasio-Cortez related that “a decent man” once said: “‘Preventing genocide is an achievable goal, a goal that requires a level of government organization and engagement that matches in its intensity the brutality and efficiency required to carry out mass killing. Too often, these efforts have come too late, after the best and least costly opportunities to prevent them have been missed.'”

“The man who said that was then-Vice President and now President Joseph Biden,” she revealed. “And he was right.”

Ocasio-Cortez was referring to a 2011 speech during which Biden told an audience at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that “when a state engages in atrocity, it forfeits its sovereignty.”

This, as U.S. troops were committing atrocities while violating the sovereignty of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia as the Obama administration continued and expanded the so-called War on Terror launched after 9/11 by then-President George W. Bush.

“This is not just about Israel or Gaza. This is about us,” Ocasio-Cortez added. “The world will never be the same. And we will never be the same. And we must write our story in this moment, of what it means and who we are as Americans. And our story must be not that we were good men who did nothing. But that we were a committed democracy that did something.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s plea came as her House colleagues voted 286-134 on Friday to extend U.S. sanctions on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) until March 2025, while authorizing another $3.8 billion in military aid to Israel. Ocasio-Cortez was one of just 22 House Democrats to vote against the measure, which also authorizes more than $1 trillion in spending on U.S. militarization.

Responding to unfounded Israeli claims—reportedly resulting from torture—that 12 of UNRWA’s more than 13,000 workers in Gaza took part in the October 7 attacks on Israel, the U.S. and more than a dozen other countries suspended funding for the lifesaving agency, even as famine loomed amid Israel’s relentless bombardment and siege. Numerous nations have since reinstated financing for UNRWA, most recently Finland on Friday.

The Biden administration—which is seeking an additional $14.3 billion in military aid for Israel—continues to support the country’s war on Gaza even as evidence mounts that the key ally is violating an International Court of Justice order to avoid genocidal acts. However, the administration has ramped up its criticism of Israeli war crimes, with Biden imploring the Israel Defense Forces to stop its “indiscriminate bombing” of civilians and Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week asserting that “children should not be dying of malnutrition in Gaza.”

“It’s time for the president to bring real leverage to bear, in accordance with existing U.S. law, and suspend military assistance to Israel.”

But they are dying, and critics say U.S. humanitarian airdrops and construction of an aid port are essentially meaningless as long as Washington also continues to back Israel’s genocidal onslaught. And now the world is watching as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his far-right government vow to invade Rafah, where around 1.5 million Palestinians—the vast majority of them refugees forcibly expelled from other parts of Gaza—are sheltering.

“The Biden administration has rightly been sounding the alarm about the threatened Israeli incursion into Rafah, and the looming famine resulting from Israel’s indiscriminate war on Gaza,” said Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy. “But the devastating last five months have shown the limits of the power of words.”

“It’s time for the president to bring real leverage to bear, in accordance with existing U.S. law, and suspend military assistance to Israel,” Duss added. “We applaud Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez’s courageous call today for President Biden to do that.”

Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingAOC Pleads for Biden to End Israel Aid Amid ‘Unfolding Genocide’ in Gaza

AOC Says Climate Movement Must Become ‘Too Big and Too Radical to Ignore’

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) speaks in front of the U.S. Capitol on July 28th, 2022. (Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) speaks in front of the U.S. Capitol on July 28th, 2022. (Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Original article by JON QUEALLY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

“We have to send the message that some of us are going to be living on this planet 30, 40, 50 years from now and we will not take no for an answer.”

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez issued a fiery speech to the tens of thousands of climate marchers who took to the streets of New York City on Sunday, telling the crowd that “it means something” when people show up in force because now is the time for elected leaders in the United States and around the world to finally show “urgency” on the issue of soaring global temperatures that are driven by the burning of fossil fuels.

“The way that we create urgency on the issue of climate,” declared Ocasio-Cortez, “is when we have people all across the world in the streets—in the streets!—showing up, demanding change, and demanding a cessation of what is killing us. We have to send the message that some of us are going to be living on this planet 30, 40, 50 years from now and we will not take no for an answer.”

Over 75,000 are estimated to have marched Sunday ahead of the rally that capped off days of organized action in New York and elsewhere in the country and around the world. All of the coordinated activities came ahead of this week’s United Nation’s General Assembly, including a Climate Ambition Summit initiated by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres slated for Wednesday.

Calling the climate crisis “the biggest issue of our time,” the New York Democrat said the organized movement demanding bold change “must be too big and too radical to ignore.”

Ocasio-Cortez touted her 2019 Green New Deal legislation that called for a 10-year time period for rapid decarbonization alongside a shift to renewable energy that also includes a just transition for workers impacted by the shift away from good-paying and reliable jobs in the oil, gas, and coal industries.

“We are demanding a change,” she said, “so that working people get better jobs and lower bills under a renewable energy economy—that is what we are here to make sure we achieve!”

Further, Ocasio-Cortez slammed the U.S. government under the Biden administration for approving a record number of oil and gas drilling leases and told the crowd “that has got to end today” as she applauded the climate movement for starting to “crack the grip” which the fossil fuel industry holds on the nation’s political economy.

“That’s because of you,” she said to those in the crowd. “Don’t let the cynics win. The cynics want us to think that this isn’t worth it. The cynics want us to believe that we can’t win. The cynics want us to believe that organizing doesn’t matter; that our political system doesn’t matter; that our economy doesn’t matter. But we’re here to say that we organize out of hope! We organize out of commitment! We organize out of love! We organize out of the beauty of our future! And we will not give up. We will not let go! We will not let cynicism to prevail!”

Original article by JON QUEALLY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingAOC Says Climate Movement Must Become ‘Too Big and Too Radical to Ignore’

AOC Calls Out ‘Dangerous Authoritarian Expansion of Power in the Supreme Court’

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Original article republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) speaks in front of the U.S. Capitol on July 28th, 2022. (Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) speaks in front of the U.S. Capitol on July 28th, 2022. (Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

‘There also must be impeachment on the table’

US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Sunday warned of an “authoritarian expansion of power” by the Supreme Court and demanded that lawmakers on Capitol Hill use all of their oversight authority to probe and stop the corruption inside the Supreme Court.

“The courts, if they were to proceed without any check on their power, without any balance on their power, then we will start to see an undemocratic and, frankly, dangerous authoritarian expansion of power in the Supreme Court,” Ocasio-Cortez said on CNN’s “State of the Union.’

“Which is what we are seeing now, from the overturning of abortion rights to the ruling that discrimination and, frankly, stripping the full personhood and dignity of LGBTQ people in the United States. … These are the types of rulings that signal a dangerous creep towards authoritarianism and centralization of power in the court,” the New York Democrat said.

CNN’s Dana Bash asked, “Are you saying that the justices’ power should somehow be limited?”

Ocasio-Cortez said, “I truly do. And this is not new; this is not a new development in history. This is part of our system of checks and balances. The courts, if they were to proceed without any check on their power, without any balance on their power, then we will start to see an undemocratic and frankly dangerous authoritarian expansion of power in the Supreme Court, which is what we are seeing now from overturning abortion to the ruling for discrimination and frankly stripping the full dignity and personhood of LGBTQ people in the United States.”

She added, “There also must be impeachment on the table. We have a broad level of tools to deal with misconduct, overreach, and abuse of power and the Supreme Court which has not been receiving the adequate oversight necessary in order to preserve their own legitimacy. And in the process, being themselves have been destroying the legitimacy of the court, which is profoundly dangerous for our entire democracy.”

Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joins CNN’s Dana Bash to respond to the Supreme Court’s decisions on …

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Original article republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingAOC Calls Out ‘Dangerous Authoritarian Expansion of Power in the Supreme Court’

‘Hypocrites and greenwash’: Greta Thunberg blasts leaders over climate crisis

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/09/hypocrites-and-greenwash-greta-thunberg-climate-crisis

Leaders are happy to set targets for decades ahead, but flinch when immediate action is needed, she says

Greta Thunberg has blasted politicians as hypocrites and international climate summits as empty words and greenwash. Until humanity admits it has failed to tackle the climate crisis and begins treating it as an emergency like the coronavirus pandemic, society will be unable to stop global heating, she said.

In an interview with the Guardian, Thunberg said leaders were happy to set targets for decades into the future, but flinched when immediate action to cut emissions was needed. She said there was not a politician on the planet promising the climate action required: “If only,” said the teenager, who will turn 18 in January.

But she is inspired by the millions of students who have taken up the school strike she began by herself in Sweden 116 weeks ago. Since then she has addressed the UN and become the world’s most prominent climate campaigner. She also has hope: “We can treat a crisis like a crisis, as we have seen because of the coronavirus. Treating the climate crisis like a crisis – that could change everything overnight.”

“So the first thing we need to do is understand we are in an emergency [and] admit the fact that we have failed – humanity collectively has failed – because you can’t solve a crisis that you don’t understand,” Thunberg said.

Continue Reading‘Hypocrites and greenwash’: Greta Thunberg blasts leaders over climate crisis