https://arab.news/2fzy2
WASHINGTON: Democratic Senator Peter Welch said President Joe Biden should end his bid for re-election.
“For the good of the country, I’m calling on President Biden to withdraw from the race,” Welch said in an op-ed column published on Wednesday in the Washington Post.
NEW DELHI: A massive rescue operation was underway in the southern Indian state of Kerala on Tuesday following landslides that have killed dozens of people in the hilly district of Wayanad.
The landslides struck in the early hours of the morning when people were asleep as waves of mud crushed their homes.
Teams from civil defense, police, 200 personnel of the army, and rescue swimmers from the navy have been deployed to the affected areas, but search efforts were hampered by heavy rains.
The Kerala Revenue Ministry estimated that at least 84 people were dead and 116 injured, but the Wayanad District Disaster Response Force told Arab News it was difficult to ascertain the exact numbers, as more than 120 were missing, trapped under mud and debris.
“We fear that the death figure will go up as many missing might be dead. As of now, we can’t speculate,” the disaster response force office told Arab News. “Rescue operation is going on in full swing.”
Most of Kerala was on the India Meteorological Department’s highest alert due to extreme rainfall on Tuesday morning.
Jebi Mather, member of the upper house of the Indian Parliament representing Kerala, told lawmakers that reports from the state indicate that entire families had disappeared under the mud.
“The devastation cannot be measured at this moment … It is so vast,” she said.
Some 350 families lived in the hilly forest region, where most residents worked on tea and cardamom plantations.
Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, the former MP for Wayanad, said in a post on X that he was “deeply anguished” by the disaster.
“The devastation unfolding in Wayanad is heartbreaking,” he said. “I have urged the Union government … to extend all possible support.”
The Kerala government declared official mourning on Tuesday and Wednesday.
LONDON: A group of MPs has urged UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy to intervene and stop a US oil tanker carrying fuel to Israel from docking in Gibraltar.
The 300,000 barrels of jet fuel aboard, believed to be military-grade JP-8 fuel, are expected to be used by the Israeli military to power F-16 fighter jets used in the war on Gaza.
Protests in Spain have already seen the owners of the ship, Overseas Santorini, decide not to dock at the Spanish port of Algeciras.
In the past shipments of fuel, sent from Corpus Christi in Texas to Ashkelon in Israel, would regularly dock at Algeciras and the Cypriot port city of Limassol. Authorities in Gibraltar say they have yet to receive a formal request for the vessel to dock.
The letter — signed by MPs including the former chair of the international development select committee, Sarah Champion, and John McDonnell, the former shadow chancellor — says the F-16 is the aircraft type thought to be behind an Israeli strike that killed several British doctors from Medical Aid for Palestinians in Gaza in January.
It calls on the UK and Gibraltar’s leader chief minister, Fabian Picardo, to “prohibit and prevent Gibraltar being used as a haven for the transport of military fuel used in Israel’s assault on Gaza.”
The letter goes on to say: “The jet fuel will be unloaded and used to fuel the Israeli air force’s F16 and F35 that drop bombs on the people of Gaza. The 300,000 barrels of fuel are sufficient for around 12,000 F-16 refuellings.”
The signatories added: “The case to prevent Gibraltar’s facilities from being complicit in Israel’s breaches of international law are overwhelming. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s assault.”
Earlier this year, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion where it too warned against other nations aiding Israeli operations against the Palestinians in breach of international law.
In May, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said his country would not allow ships carrying weapons bound for Israel to use its ports.
Opposition to the Overseas Santorini docking in Spain or Gibraltar has been raised by local port-worker unions Union General de Trabajadores and Comisiones Obreras, as well as Spanish politicians including the current and former Podemos leaders Ione Belarra and Pablo Iglesias respectively.
A number of groups have also raised their opposition, including the Progressive International, Global Energy Embargo for Palestine, Disrupt Power, the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, Valero Out of Corpus, the Arab Group for the Protection of Nature, Gibraltar for Palestine, and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
The UK government is reviewing export licenses selling arms to Israel in light of allegations of war crimes committed in the war on Gaza, which has so far killed more than 39,000 people.
LONDON: A group of Washington staffers have launched a website to raise objections and criticisms of the US government’s stance on Gaza.
The site, known as the Congressional Dissent Channel, is designed so that individuals can speak freely and anonymously — including about colleagues, superiors and employers — without fear of retaliation, in a manner similar to a channel created by the US State Department to allow employees to voice dissent at their government, which was set up during the Vietnam War.
It has been established by aides who organized a walkout on Capitol Hill last week to protest the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during which he addressed Congress. The same group also set up a flower vigil outside the Capitol in November last year to demand a ceasefire in Gaza, the New York Times reported.
The group said it is comprised of “congressional aides dedicated to changing the paradigm of US support for the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza being carried out by the state of Israel.”
Congressional aides tend to keep low professional profiles and have little recourse to airing opinions that differ from those of their bosses, and can face dismissal for doing so.
Michael Suchecki, spokesman for the Congressional Progressive Staff Association, told the NYT that aides have a duty to raise alternative opinions, especially when they differ from representatives and are being put forward by voters.
“While we may work for and be employed by the United States Congress, our ultimate sworn oath is to the Constitution — to the people of the United States,” he said.
In the wake of the attack on the US Capitol by rioters on Jan. 6, 2021, attitudes began to change toward the culture in Washington, with several groups of aides joining together to form the Congressional Progressive Staff Association demanding safer working conditions. Less than a year later, aides from eight congressional offices began to put in place the framework to establish an official workers union.
In the wake of Israel’s invasion of Gaza, many aides have turned their attention to using the organizations and networks they have established to try to work for a ceasefire from Washington itself, including raising awareness of US arms shipments to Israel used in the campaign.
In a statement on the Congressional Dissent Channel’s webpage, staffers wrote: “We are living through a fraught moment in U.S. foreign policy, one in which American-made bombs — paid for by American tax dollars — are dropped on homes, schools and hospitals.
“Despite the evidence before our eyes, the voices advocating in Congress for the pragmatic and moral solutions that would uphold our treaty obligations and could broker peace are repeatedly sidelined, ignored and maligned.”
The site was launched on Sunday. By Monday morning, six memos from anonymous congressional aides had been published, with those wishing to contribute told to email memos to the channel’s inbox for content evaluation, author identification and publication by a member of the team. Anonymous videos can also be submitted.
LONDON: British radical Islamist preacher Anjem Choudary, whose followers have been linked to numerous plots around the world, was sentenced to life imprisonment on Tuesday for directing a terrorist organization.
Choudary, 57, was convicted last week of directing Al-MuHajjiroun, which was banned as a terrorist organization more than a decade ago, and encouraging others to support the proscribed group.
“Organizations such as yours normalize violence in support of an ideological cause,” Judge Mark Wall told Choudary at London’s Woolwich Crown Court.
“Their existence gives individuals who are members of them the courage to commit acts which otherwise they might not do. They drive wedges between people who otherwise could and would live together in peaceful coexistence.”
Wall imposed a life sentence on Choudary with a minimum term of 28 years before he can be eligible for parole, less just over the year that he has spent in custody since his arrest.
Once Britain’s most high-profile Islamist preacher, Choudary drew attention for praising the men responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and saying he wanted to convert Buckingham Palace into a mosque.
He was previously
imprisoned
in Britain in 2016 for encouraging support for Islamic State, before being released in 2018 after serving half of his five-and-a-half-year sentence.
Prosecutor Tom Little said on Tuesday that Choudary became “the caretaker emir” of Al-MuHajjiroun after fellow Islamist preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed was jailed in Lebanon in 2014.
Choudary’s lawyer Paul Hynes argued that Al-MuHajjiroun was “little more than a husk of an organization” and that almost all terrorist acts linked to the group had already taken place.
But Wall said Al-MuHajjiroun was “a radical organization intent on spreading sharia law to as much of the world as possible, using violent means where necessary.”
Choudary stood trial alongside Canadian citizen Khaled Hussein, 29, who was arrested on the same day as Choudary in 2023 when he arrived on a flight at Heathrow Airport.
Hussein was found guilty of membership of a proscribed organization and sentenced to five years in prison.
KABUL: The Taliban government has severed consular ties with swathes of Afghan embassies in Western countries, Kabul said Tuesday, cutting off diplomats loyal to the former foreign-backed administration.
The 2021 Taliban takeover left diplomats staffing Afghanistan’s foreign missions in limbo, having pledged to serve a government which collapsed in chaos after the withdrawal of US troops.
No country has yet formally recognized the Taliban government but in the past three years the Kabul authorities have installed Taliban ambassadors in some neighboring embassies.
But Afghanistan’s foreign ministry said Tuesday it now “bears no responsibility” for credentials including passports and visas issued by missions out of step with Kabul’s new rulers.
The embassies include those in the cities of London and Berlin as well as the countries of Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, France, Italy, Greece, Poland, Sweden, Norway, Canada and Australia.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has repeatedly urged the Afghan political and consular missions in European countries to engage with Kabul,” a statement said.
“Unfortunately, the actions of most of the missions are carried out arbitrarily, without coordination and in explicit violation of the existing accepted principles.”
The statement said Afghans living abroad should deal instead with missions affiliated with the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan — the self-styled name the Taliban have given the country under their rule.
Pakistan, China and Russia are among Afghan embassies working on order from the Taliban government.
Embassies cut off from Kabul have found themselves in dire financial straits, relying heavily on consular fees to pay staff salaries, rent and bills.
Without that income they may struggle to remain open.
The foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment on its future plans for the ostracized embassies.
Since surging back to power by force after a two-decade insurgency, Taliban officials have campaigned to be Afghanistan’s sole representatives on the international stage.
Considered pariahs over their treatment of women, they have been denied an ambassador to the United Nations.
However at UN-hosted talks in Doha last month they represented Afghanistan — with civil society groups including women’s activists excluded from the main talks.
Analysts, rights campaigners and diplomats are split over whether to engage with the Taliban government in a bid to soften their stance or freeze them out until they backtrack.
