Several of the sources, who spoke to +972 and Local Call on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that the Israeli army has files on the vast majority of potential targets in Gaza — including homes — which stipulate the number of civilians who are likely to be killed in an attack on a particular target. This number is calculated and known in advance to the army’s intelligence units, who also know shortly before carrying out an attack roughly how many civilians are certain to be killed.

[...] Although it is unprecedented for the Israeli army to attack more than 1,000 power targets in five days, the idea of causing mass devastation to civilian areas for strategic purposes was formulated in previous military operations in Gaza, honed by the so-called “Dahiya Doctrine” from the Second Lebanon War of 2006.

According to the doctrine — developed by former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot, who is now a Knesset member and part of the current war cabinet — in a war against guerrilla groups such as Hamas or Hezbollah, Israel must use disproportionate and overwhelming force while targeting civilian and government infrastructure in order to establish deterrence and force the civilian population to pressure the groups to end their attacks.

[...] Why, then, after nearly two months, has the Israeli army not yet run out of targets in the current war?

The answer may lie in a statement from the IDF Spokesperson on Nov. 2, according to which it is using the AI system Habsora (“The Gospel”), which the spokesperson says “enables the use of automatic tools to produce targets at a fast pace, and works by improving accurate and high-quality intelligence material according to [operational] needs.”

[...] A senior military official in charge of the target bank told the Jerusalem Post earlier this year that, thanks to the army’s AI systems, for the first time the military can generate new targets at a faster rate than it attacks.

[...] A senior military official in charge of the target bank told the Jerusalem Post earlier this year that, thanks to the army’s AI systems, for the first time the military can generate new targets at a faster rate than it attacks.

https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/

Europe’s right is stealing both internationalism and thinkers, tools and strategic capacity, from the Left. Through think tanks and satellite organizations, right-wingers have built a network spreading Budapest to Rome and Brussels; they reproduce the same tactics, whether it is an attack on green policies, migrants, or LGBTQ rights. Members of this network, such as the French xenophobic politician Éric Zemmour, explicitly refer to Antonio Gramsci: “I am waging an ideological, or Gramscian, battle,” he says. There is a hegemonic aspiration, and paradoxically it comes from the opposite side of history.

https://jacobin.com/2023/11/european-left-parties-eu-parliamentary-election-strategy-unity-far-right-defeat/

No relationship exists between national population and global environmental footprint (earths required), whilst a clear and strong relationship exists with GDP per capita.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320722003949

A joint study by think tanks IPPR and Common Wealth found profiteering by some of the world’s biggest companies forced prices up significantly higher than costs during 2022.

[...] In April, Société Générale economist Albert Edwards released a scathing note saying he hadn’t seen anything like the current levels of corporate greed in his four decades working in finance. He said companies were using the war in Ukraine as an excuse to hike prices in search of profits.

https://fortune.com/europe/2023/12/08/greedflation-study/

" In a counterfactual exercise estimating CO2 emissions with and without subways, we find they have reduced population-related CO2 emissions by about 50 % for the 192 cities and about 11 % globally. Extending the analysis to future subways for other cities, we estimate the magnitude and social value of CO2 emissions reductions with conservative assumptions about population and income growth and a range of values for the social cost of carbon and investment costs. Even under pessimistic assumptions for these costs, we find that hundreds of cities realize a significant climate co-benefit, along with benefits from reduced traffic congestion and local air pollution, which have traditionally motivated subway construction. Under more moderate assumptions, we find that, on climate grounds alone, hundreds of cities realize high enough social rates of return to warrant subway construction."

https://twitter.com/DavidZipper/status/1656647542610751499

Mining quantities for low-carbon energy is hundreds to thousands of times lower than mining for fossil fuels

We currently mine around 7 million tonnes of minerals for low-carbon technologies every year.1

That includes all of the minerals for solar panels, wind energy, geothermal, concentrating solar power, hydropower, nuclear, electric vehicles, battery storage, and changes to electricity grids. I’ve included a complete list of the minerals included in the footnote.2

But we need to deploy more low-carbon energy, fast. This will need to increase. How much will be mining once the low-carbon transition really picks up speed?

The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that in 2040 we will need 28 million tonnes. This is in its ‘Sustainable Development Scenario’, which assumes a fast deployment of low-carbon energy.3

That’s a lot of stuff to be digging out of the earth. Until we compare it to what we’re moving away from: fossil fuels.

Every year we produce the equivalent of 15 billion tonnes of coal, oil, and gas. This comparison is shown in the chart.

[...] recycling and repurposing of these minerals.

With the right comparison, it’s easy to make renewables, electric vehicles and nuclear energy look bad. Just frame it as “low-carbon energy needs millions of tonnes of minerals”. They look bad because they’re comparing it to a world of zero impact. But this is not realistic. We can't build low-carbon energy without digging minerals out of the earth. We have to compare it to the problem that we’re trying to solve.

I see these dodgy framings everywhere. Take the safety of renewables and nuclear energy. Newspapers report an accident at a solar or wind plant, and people assume that these sources are dangerous. What they’re forgetting is that fossil fuels kill millions every year from air pollution. Nuclear and renewables are not perfect, but they are hundreds to thousands of times safer, even without considering climate change.

https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/mining-low-carbon-vs-fossil

This paper estimates a global CO2 emissions model using satellite data at 25 km resolution. [...] We find highly significant effects with the expected signs for all model variables, including subways. In a counterfactual exercise estimating CO2 emissions with and without subways, we find they have reduced population-related CO2 emissions by about 50 % for the 192 cities and about 11 % globally. [...] Even under pessimistic assumptions for these costs, we find that hundreds of cities realize a significant climate co-benefit, along with benefits from reduced traffic congestion and local air pollution, which have traditionally motivated subway construction. Under more moderate assumptions, we find that, on climate grounds alone, hundreds of cities realize high enough social rates of return to warrant subway construction.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969723023124?via%3Dihub

From 1981 to 1990, when most of China’s socialist provisioning systems were still in place, the country’s extreme poverty rate was on average only 5.6 per cent, substantially lower than in capitalist economies of comparable size and income at the time: 51 per cent in India, 36.5 per cent in Indonesia, and 29.5 per cent in Brazil. China's comparatively strong performance is corroborated by data on other social indicators. Moreover, extreme poverty in China increased during the capitalist reforms of the 1990s, reaching a peak of 68 per cent, as privatisation inflated the prices of essential goods and thus deflated the incomes of the working classes. These results indicate that socialist provisioning policies can be effective at preventing extreme poverty, while market reforms may threaten people's ability to meet basic needs.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epub/10.1080/13563467.2023.2217087?needAccess=true&role=button