Danni Taaffe

Head of Communications for Climate Action Network, a global network of over 2,000 civil society orgs in 130 countries. @CANIntl [email protected]

[Danni Taaffe @ttaaffeedd]

@FergusPower1 Enoch Burke has wasted at least €110,000 in tax payer money in Ireland while the homeless figures soar. 500 days in prison x €230 daily cost of a prisoner. Plus the cost of wasting garda time and court time. Really patriotic and Christian, sure.

[Jason Hickel @jasonhickel]

Israel is annexing large areas of Syria and bombing Syrian military and civilian infrastructure, violating the UN Charter with total impunity and zero outrage from Western politicians and media.

[Danni Taaffe @ttaaffeedd]

@SocDems You’ll be steamrolled over. Learn from history. Learn from the last government. What did the Greens achieve? Very little.

[BBC News NI @BBCNewsNI]

Irish-language film Kneecap wins seven British Independent Film Awards (@BIFA_film) including the top honour - Best British Independent Film. https://t.co/2MdWrm0tpe

[Will Christou @will_christou]

Moammar has been searching for his brother for 39 years, arrested by Syrian soldiers in Lebanon when he was 18. He hadn’t heard anything from him since.

Until Thursday, when his brother emerged from Hama prison as an old man, 39 years later.

https://t.co/MpKH1pgKK1

[Danni Taaffe @ttaaffeedd]

@SocDems @Eoin_Hayes I did not vote for SocDems for the party to prop up FFFG. If you do go in with FFFG, you’re hypocrites and will lose sorely at the next election. Learn from history. So much for SocDems wanting to do politics differently. Shame, shame @HollyCairnsTD.

https://t.co/bcQMp6Ibcv

[Amnesty International USA @amnestyusa]

The world has witnessed the government of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in occupied Gaza. Month after month, the government of Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its specific intent to physically destroy them. Israel's government and state officials responsible for the crime of genocide must be held accountable. We are calling on all States to use every legal avenue to bring suspected perpetrators to justice. No one should be allowed to commit genocide and remain unpunished. https://t.co/lyfB55V7Y5

[Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys]

“My name is Amos Goldberg. I am an Israeli Professor of Holocaust Studies. For nearly 30 years I have researched and taught the Holocaust, genocide and state violence.

And I want to tell whoever is willing to listen that what’s happening now in Gaza is a genocide.

A year ago when October 7th happened, like all Israelis I was in shock. It was a war crime and a crime against humanity. 1200 people - more than 800 of them civilians - were killed in one day. Children and the elderly were among those taken hostage. Communities were destroyed. It was outrageous, traumatizing, personal. Like most Israelis, I know people who were killed, who lost loved ones or whose loved ones were taken hostage.

But immediately afterwards came Israel’s response and within weeks thousands of civilians were killed in Gaza. It took me some time to digest what was unfolding before my eyes. It was agonizing to confront that reality. I was reluctant to call it a genocide.

But if you read Raphael Lemkin – the Jewish-Polish legal scholar who coined the term ‘genocide’ and was the major driving force behind the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention – what is happening in Gaza now is exactly what he had in mind when he spoke about genocide.

It does not need to look like the Holocaust to be a genocide. Each genocide looks different and not all involve killing of millions or the entire group. The United Nations Genocide Convention explicitly asserts that genocide is the act of deliberately destroying a group in whole or in part. Those are the words.

But there does need to be a clear intent.

And indeed, there are clear indications of intent to destroy Gaza: Israel’s leaders - including the prime minister and the minister of defence - and many high-ranking military officers, media personalities, rabbis, as well as ordinary soldiers were very open about what they wanted to achieve. There were countless documented incitements to turn the whole of Gaza into rubble and claims that there are no innocent people living there.

A radical atmosphere of dehumanization of the Palestinians prevails in Israeli society to an extent that I can’t remember in my 58 years of living here.

Now that vision has been enacted. Tens of thousands of innocent children, women and men have been killed. Over a hundred thousand were wounded. There is a near total destruction of infrastructure, intentional starvation and blocking of humanitarian aid. There are mass graves and reliable testimony of summary executions. Children that were shot by snipers. All the universities and almost all hospitals are gone. Almost all the population is displaced. There have been numerous bombings of civilians in so-called ‘safe zones’. Gaza does not exist anymore. It is completely destroyed. Thus, the outcome fits perfectly with the stated intentions of Israel’s leadership.

Lemkin - that scholar who coined the term ‘genocide’ - described two phases of a genocide. The first is the destruction of the annihilated group and the second is what he called ‘imposition of the national pattern’ of the perpetrator. We are now witnessing the second phase as Israel prepares ethnically cleansed areas for Israeli settlements.

And therefore, I have come to the conclusion that this is exactly what a genocide looks like. We don’t teach about genocides in order to realize it retrospectively. We teach about it in order to prevent it and to stop it.

But like in every other case of genocide in history right now we have mass denial. Both here in Israel and around the world.

But reality cannot be denied.

So yes, it is a genocide.

And once you come to this conclusion you cannot remain silent.”

- Statement to Led By Donkeys, December 2024
- Photo: Parliament Square, London, 8.40am, 4th December 2024

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

Quite a sign when Stephen Walt, one of the most renowned scholars of international relations in the world (and Harvard professor), writes an article in Foreign Policy arguing that "Noam Chomsky has been proved right": https://t.co/SAmSGsXDJJ

Walt agrees with Chomsky that "the claim that U.S. foreign policy is guided by the lofty ideals of democracy, freedom, the rule of law, human rights" is "nonsense".

As he explains, all of US history proves the contrary, from the "genocidal campaign against the indigenous population" the country was founded upon, to the fact it intervened militarily "to thwart democratic processes in many countries, and waged or backed wars that killed millions of people in Indochina, Latin America, and the Middle East."

Walt also agrees with Chomsky that this is enabled by a massive brainwashing campaign on the US population: "government institutions work overtime to 'manufacture consent' by classifying information, prosecuting leakers, lying to the public, and refusing to be held accountable even when things go wrong or malfeasance is exposed. Their efforts are aided by a generally compliant media, which repeats government talking points uncritically and only rarely questions the official narrative."

Walt concludes: "If I were asked whether a student would learn more about U.S. foreign policy by reading [Chomsky's] book or by reading a collection of the essays that current and former U.S. officials occasionally write in journals such as Foreign Affairs or the Atlantic, Chomsky and Robinson would win hands down. I wouldn’t have written that last sentence when I began my career 40 years ago. I’ve been paying attention, however, and my thinking has evolved as the evidence has piled up."

[Dr Rachel Claire Morris, Shadow Secretary of Snark @5By5Creativity]

'Every boy should learn not to be an abusive incel at school'

[John Gibbons 🇵🇸 @think_or_swim]

In a decade’s time, long after the gaffes, promises & tantrums are long forgotten, this may come to be seen as the defining image of #ge24.

[Climate Action Network International (CAN) @CANIntl]

#COP29: The US$300 billion/year by 2035 is misleading.

With just 5% inflation,
the $300Bn would be $175Bn.

African countries are paying $163Bn in debt service just for 2024.

The Global North is not serious about climate action.

- via @FadhelKaboub

https://t.co/kncpm2rF8o

[asad rehman @chilledasad100]

The Guardian really must do better.
The global north didn’t commit to provide $300bn - in the word salad they will simply ‘lead’. And it’s not every year since
‘It’s by 2035’ by which time inflation would mean it’s about the same as $100 bn in 2009 of which only $30bn+ was new $

[Climate Action Network International (CAN) @CANIntl]

If #COP29 ends with a weak or nonexistent outcome, developed countries will be the ones to blame.

Read the letter from CSOs to the United States, European Union, UK, Canada, Japan and other developed countries: https://t.co/CuCmqiBZix

@ClimateAtState

#PayUp (2/2)

[Human Rights Watch @hrw]

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant, and Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri.

These warrants should push the international community to address atrocities and secure justice for all victims in Palestine and Israel.

[Climate Action Network International (CAN) @CANIntl]

🌍 Developing country blocs - G77, AGN, LMDC - came together at CAN's press conference to demand accountability and clarity from developed nations in the negotiations on the New Collective Quantified Goal #NCQG for #ClimateFinance.

Hear their latest updates on progress 🧵

[Climate Action Network International (CAN) @CANIntl]

The climate crisis doesn’t care who is in the White House. If President Trump’s last time in office was anything to go by, there'll be chaos and mayhem, but the climate movement will be defiant and continue fighting.

CAN reaction to the #USElections2024.

https://t.co/pTdSrjfB5k

[Oxfam International Media Team @newsfromoxfam]

Billionaires emit more carbon pollution in 90 minutes than the average person does in a lifetime.

@LaVanguardia #ClimateCrisis

https://t.co/6iPWDMZfNW

[Éireann Your Views @EireannYourView]

So sad. The poor church only owns 10k properties in Ireland at a tiny cost of €3.5 billion. No wonder it can’t afford to pay back any of the so called victims or give any vacant properties away to the state for housing. 😢