Lois Cordova

The plot twists are amazing. Just watching the Apocalypse...horrified grandma...what have we done?

[Lois Cordova @humboldtmud]

I'm hit daily w/ how much I don't know, how much of what I technically know, I don't deeply understand, & so much still fails to make sense. A lot of that long ago college ed is obsolete. I can only humbly keep learning.

[Lois Cordova @humboldtmud]

I'm proud to work with this AMAZING team. In any emergency, communication is key

[Watch Duty @watchdutyapp]

The app you see on your phone is just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, the software is the easy part in the grand scheme of things. Behind the scenes is a 24/7 operation consisting of 300 radio operators, engineers, and GIS mapping folks who dedicate their lives to service.

At a moment's notice, often in the middle of the night, we interface with county officials to support evacuation operations and fix mapping and infrastructure when systems are failing. We drive radio communication equipment into the fire to support operations for not only our team, but for emergency managers and firefighters. We work with Sheriffs and Public Information Officers when they need to get their messages out when seconds count. When we are needed most, we heed the call.

Just last week, we were summoned to the California TCU Lightning Complex fires when the Sierra Foothills were ablaze and Chinese Camp, CA was under threat. Radio communication channels were overloaded due the sheer number of lightning fires and our reporters as well as emergency managers were struggling to keep up with all of the traffic. We deployed a small team of our operators to drive critical radio equipment from Sonoma to Copperopolis in the middle of the night while engineers programmed the device as they drove.

Their mission was successful and we were able to restore remote communications without interruption. We couldn’t be prouder of our team who continue to go above and beyond the call of duty.

We are not an app. We are not AI. We are human beings and we live here too.

[Be A King @BerniceKing]

In these pivotal, painful times for so many, it is important that we refuse to adjust to injustice.

#CreativeMaladjustment #MLK

[Chris Hedges @ChrisLynnHedges]

https://t.co/ILBoNqfqQ7

[Lois Cordova @humboldtmud]

You gotta read this from Goldberg for yourself!

[Fred Wellman @FPWellman]

Trying again. https://t.co/SLvpGqsPnh

[Al Jazeera English @AJEnglish]

"If you’re watching this... then Al Jazeera has been banned in Israel."

Al Jazeera's @ajimran recorded his last report from occupied East Jerusalem, pre-empting the Netanyahu gov't’s unanimous decision to close Al Jazeera in Israel ⤵️

[Lois Cordova @humboldtmud]

@spinangora ACLU N Cal is on campus now

[Lois Cordova @humboldtmud]

@Prof_FSultana So far it's a different story at Cal-Poly Humboldt. Listen to this local news interview w/ faculty yesterday https://t.co/jxqCn1VRdG

[Lois Cordova @humboldtmud]

@MarioNawfal By 10:55pm, all law enforcement departed from the building , leaving the campus. One officer mentioned that law enforcement is “disbanded.” Students remain

[Lois Cordova @humboldtmud]

@rawsalerts As of 10:55 pm, all law enforcement have departed from in front of the building and seem to be leaving the campus. Scanner traffic appears to confirm the withdrawal of law enforcement. One officer mentioned that law enforcement is being “disbanded.”

[Lois Cordova @humboldtmud]

@VABVOX These actions are not stoking antisemitism, they are stoking fury at the Israeli government, Netanyahu's Israel. That is quite separate from, and absolutely not the same as antisemitism. Please don't conflate anti-Israeli government with antisemitism.

[Lois Cordova @humboldtmud]

@DoctorVive Never

[Lois Cordova @humboldtmud]

@VABVOX It's spit in the bottom of the bucket while banks provided some $3.2tn to the fossil fuel industry to expand operations since the 2015 Paris agreement. Tribes can't compete trillions/expansion with millions/"mitigation"

[Cascadia Fire Has No Season @barkflight]

This is a major update for @watchdutyapp

[Dr. Mads Gilbert @DrMadsGilbert]

Israel is pillaging not just Gaza’s cities but also its waters.
Foreign companies, including European ones, are helping Israel loot Gaza’s natural gas reserves. They must be stopped.
Foto: An Israeli gas platform is seen as an Israeli navy vessel patrols in the Mediterranean off the coast of Ashkelon on November 14, 2023 [File: Reuters/Amir Cohen]

Over the past few months, appalling videos have emerged from the conflict zone in Gaza of Israeli troops looting the properties of Palestinians who have fled their brutal aggression. Soldiers can be seen smiling to the camera and showing off watches, jewellery, cash, and even carpets and sports jerseys that they had stolen from Palestinian homes. Historical artefacts stolen from Gaza have even been put on display at the Knesset.

While similar acts of looting by Russian soldiers in Ukraine were well-documented and mocked, international media has hardly paid attention to the Israeli pillaging of Gaza.
Some may find it hard to believe that the well-paid soldiers of a rich country would engage in such crimes, but to the people of Palestine, this is hardly surprising. The scenes in these videos are highly reminiscent of what Palestinians saw happen to their properties as they fled ethnic cleansing by Zionist forces in the 1948 Nakba.

As Israeli historian Adam Raz describes in his recent book, Looting of Arab Property in the War of Independence, Jewish fighters and civilians looted everything from jewellery, books, and embroidered gowns to food and livestock to furniture, kitchenware and even floor tiles.

Once established, the state of Israel continued to steal on a greater scale from the Palestinians, taking their land and property. Palestinian natural resources, particularly water, have also been looted. Today, the war in Gaza is serving as a convenient cover for another theft on a grand scale; this time Israel is seeking to plunder the maritime offshore gas reserves that are the property of the state of Palestine.

In late October, the Israeli Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure announced that it had awarded concessions for natural gas exploration to Israeli and foreign companies in zones that significantly overlap with the maritime borders of Gaza.

Needless to say, Israel as an occupier has no right to award licences in areas that it does not hold sovereignty over under any circumstances.

Palestine is a party to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and has declared its maritime boundaries in accordance with these principles.

Israel has not signed UNCLOS. It also does not recognise the state of Palestine and has recently doubled down on this position with a vote in the Knesset to “oppose a unilateral recognition of the Palestinian state” despite growing calls globally, including from the US, its main sponsor, for a two-state solution.

The combination of these positions has given Israel the excuse for not recognising the maritime borders of Palestine and for expropriating the resources in these areas. These Israeli claims, of course, do not make its actions legal.
One has to wonder why foreign companies, including Italian Eni, British BP and Dana Petroleum, a subsidiary of Korea National Oil Corporation, have decided to continue their participation in this deal, particularly amid the continuing Israeli campaign of what the International Court of Justice has identified as a plausible case of genocide.

On February 8, four human rights organisations in Israel and Palestine – Adalah, Al Mezan, Al-Haq, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights issued a joint news release regarding the awarded gas exploration licences in the occupied waters of Palestine.

They announced that they have sent a letter to the Israeli Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure, demanding that the award and the related tender be cancelled. They also said they have sent legal notices to Eni, Dana Petroleum and Israeli Ratio Petroleum, asking them not to undertake any activities related to the licences.

“You should be aware that the International Criminal Court currently has an active investigation open into international crimes committed in territory of the State of Palestine, and has jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute any individual(s) it finds responsible for committing war crimes, including pillage. Complicity in war crimes like pillage is also a serious criminal offence and corporate actors can be subject to individual criminal liability … Complicity in violations of [international humanitarian law] can also expose companies like yours – and your managers and staff – to the risk of civil actions for damages,” the notices warned.

Apart from the illegality of the gas tender under international law, it is important to point out here the involvement of Eni, a European company. Its engagement with the Israeli gas exploration project contradicts the longstanding EU position that “all agreements between the State of Israel and the European Union must unequivocally and explicitly indicate their inapplicability to the territories occupied by Israel in 1967”.

The Israeli announcement of the awarded licences was made a bit more than a year after the EU signed on June 15, 2022, a memorandum of understanding with the Egyptian and Israeli energy ministers on regional cooperation on gas extraction. This came just a few months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and amid the EU’s scramble to divest from Russian gas.

Interestingly, the MoU omitted the territoriality clause that the EU is committed to include in order to protect Palestinian territories and waters from being exploited through illegal activity. Members of the European Parliament raised this question to the EU Commission a week after the signing of the MoU.

The answer from the EU Commission dismissed the importance of the omission with a rather technical point – claiming that the MoU was of a non-binding nature and therefore “no territorial clause on the applicability is deemed necessary. Nevertheless … the implementation of such Memorandum of Understanding will not apply in any form to the occupied Palestinian territory, which entails that Israeli supplies of natural gas as per the implementation of the memorandum of understanding may not originate from resources appropriated from Palestinian territories occupied by Israel.”

In this context, there are two questions worth posing to the EU Commission: Did this omission encourage the violation of Palestinian rights by Israel and what will be the fate of Eni’s involvement in the project?

This development also comes at a critical time when EU countries have taken highly problematic stances on the war in Gaza, supporting the “right to self-defence” of an occupier against the occupied and sending weapons to the occupying forces.

Furthermore, EU states have suspended financial support for UNRWA, practically the only lifeline for people in Gaza who are experiencing famine.

While the recent stance taken by the West against the violent, illegal settlers in the West Bank is a step in the right direction, failure to stem the blatant attempts by Israel to pillage Palestinian resources with the help of European companies will further entrench the growing cynicism in the Global South about the duplicity of the West when it comes to the application of the international law.

The EU could right some of the wrongs it has committed by helping the Palestinians exploit their natural resources. Amid the rumblings on the post-conflict reconstruction of Gaza and who should foot the bill, it is important to consider the ample gas resources in Gazan waters as a significant financial resource that can be used to secure a prosperous future for the Palestinian people. The EU can play a key role in assisting the Palestinians in developing and benefitting from these resources, as is their sovereign right.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Sultan Barakat
Professor in Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at Qatar Foundation’s Hamad Bin Khalifa University and an Honorary Professor of the University of York
Sultan Barakat is a Professor in Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at Qatar Foundation’s Hamad Bin Khalifa University and an Honorary Professor of the University of York. He is a world-renowned scholar known for pioneering the study of war-torn societies and their recovery. Professor Barakat founded the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and directed it between 2016 and 2022. Previously he served as Director of Research at the Brookings Institution’s center in Doha (between 2014 and 2016). At the University of York, he founded and led the Post-war Reconstruction and Development Unit between 1993 and 2019
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https://t.co/drOktEybFJ

[Lois Cordova @humboldtmud]

These proceedings could be the beginning of the end for landline customers in the Golden State. https://t.co/RREfniBjyS

[Nate Bear @NateB_Panic]

This is the bare minimum responsibility for the relative privilege of living in the imperial core

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

I rarely praise the Guardian but this is a extraordinary visual investigation of the sheer level of destruction in Gaza:
https://t.co/WkegK6bF5f

Absolutely crystal clear when you look through it that the objective is to render the place utterly inhabitable, and destroy Palestinian civil society. Places destroyed are homes, mosques, schools, hospitals, cemeteries, historical landmarks, supermarkets, etc. Everything that makes up a community.

Complete disconnect from the stated goal of fighting Hamas.

[Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده @RamAbdu]

Hebrew newspaper "Kol Ha'ir": The bombs dropped by the Israeli army on Gaza in 4 months surpass those used by Russia in its war on Ukraine over two years. Estimates suggest the quantity of bombs used by the Israeli army on Gaza exceeds those employed by Hitler in World War II.

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

Israel and its Western backers in 1948 wanted UNRWA to exist separately from the main UN Refugee Agency because Israel wanted to settle Jews from Europe in Israel without facing pressure to let Palestinian refugees return to the homes they had just fled. https://t.co/nbMmn5fd4p