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Half a million solar panels were installed every day in 2015.

by ShannaRobertson Posted on October 25, 2016

According to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), renewable energy, mostly solar and wind, accounted for more than half of all new electric capacity added in the world last year, a 15 percent jump from 2014. Globally, there is now more renewable power capacity than coal power capacity.

Clean energy growth was especially high in China, which was responsible for about 40 percent of all new clean energy capacity. Get this: In China in 2015, two wind turbines were installed every hour.

This surge in renewables, according to the IEA, can be attributed to policy changes, lowered costs, and improvements in technology.

So renewable energy hit some big milestones last year, but it’s still just the beginning: The IEA — which has been accused of underestimating the growth of renewables — expects 28 percent of electricity to come from renewables by 2021, up from 23 percent today.

“I am pleased to see that last year was one of records for renewables and that our projections for growth over the next five years are more optimistic,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. “However, even these higher expectations remain modest compared with the huge untapped potential of renewables.”

So let’s keep this moving, folks.

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Half a million solar panels were installed every day in 2015.

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Mike Pence Insists He and Trump Totally Agree on Syria

by GeraldiUlz Posted on October 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Sunday night, Donald Trump made headlines by saying he disagreed with Mike Pence on Syria. By Monday morning, the Trump campaign was desperately insisting there was no disagreement at all.

At last week’s vice presidential debate, Pence stunned viewers by saying that Russia is helping the Syrian government kill civilians in Aleppo—and that the United States should be ready to use force against the Syrian regime. It was a sharp turn away from Trump’s previous comments, in which the real estate mogul has praised Syria and Russia for allegedly attacking ISIS.

At Sunday’s presidential debate, it was Trump’s turn to contradict Pence. “He and I haven’t spoken, and I disagree. I disagree,” Trump replied icily when asked about Pence’s comments. “I think you have to knock out ISIS.”

The contrast was obvious, but now Pence and Trump are pretending it never happened.

Pence appeared on all the major cable news networks Monday morning and claimed that ABC’s Martha Raddatz, who co-moderated Sunday’s debate, had “mischaracterized” his position on Syria. Pence said last week that “if Russia chooses to be involved…in this barbaric attack on civilians in Aleppo, the United States of America should be prepared to use military force to strike military targets of the Assad regime to prevent them from this humanitarian crisis that is taking place in Aleppo.” On Monday, he claimed his statement had been narrowly focused on Aleppo and that Raddatz had wrongly implied he wanted take on Syria and Russia in general. “The way Martha presented that question last night was to suggest that Russian provocation broadly and that of the Assad regime should be met with military force,” he said on MSNBC.

In fact, during Sunday’s debate, Raddatz asked both Clinton and Trump specifically about the crisis in Aleppo. “If you were president, what would you do about Syria and the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo?” Raddatz asked Trump. Immediately after saying that, Raddatz described Pence’s comments nearly verbatim: “And I want to remind you what your running mate said. He said provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength and that if Russia continues to be involved in airstrikes along with the Syrian government forces of Assad, the United States of America should be prepared to use military force to strike the military targets of the Assad regime.”

Trump then said twice that he and Pence disagreed. Trump went on to falsely suggest that Aleppo “basically has fallen.” He also praised the Syrian government’s alleged actions against ISIS. “Right now, Syria is fighting ISIS,” he said. That claim is also false: The Syrian government and its allies, including Russia, have overwhelmingly attacked rebel groups and civilians rather than ISIS. In fact, the Syrian regime abetted the rise of ISIS and has even struck oil deals with the terrorist group.

Pence isn’t the only member of the Trump campaign struggling to answer questions about the GOP candidate’s disagreement on Aleppo. Former CIA Director James Woolsey, a national security adviser to the Trump campaign, was asked on CNN Monday what the campaign’s policy on Syria actually is. Woolsey refused to even answer the question.

“But, wait, Mr. Director,” said Kate Bolduan, a CNN anchor who was visibly baffled by Woolsey’s attempts to dodge the issue. “You’re the former CIA director. You’re a national security adviser to the Donald Trump campaign. When it comes to a key policy position that you would assume would be a unified position of the campaign, I would also assume you would know what it is and be able to voice it.”

“I’m not telling you one way or the other,” Woolsey replied. “The candidates are the ones who are going to communicate the policy decisions to the public, not me.”

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Mike Pence Insists He and Trump Totally Agree on Syria

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McDonald’s Asked Teachers to Serve Fries for Free. Now the Teachers Are Fighting Back.

by ArielleRosales Posted on September 28, 2016

Mother Jones

Ah, McTeacher’s Night—the occasion for kids to watch their teachers peddle burgers, fries, and sugary drinks. In these tie-ups between schools and the fast-food giant, teachers encourage their students and their families to visit a McDonald’s outlet on a particular evening, and then work behind the counter (uncompensated) in McDonald’s t-shirts. A portion of the night’s sales are donated to the school. The above video depicts one such event held for an Illinois high school in 2012.

Sound like an edifying spectacle for youth? A labor union called United Teachers Los Angeles thinks not. In a blistering letter recently published in its union newspaper, UTLA vice president Cecily Myart-Cruz lays out the case against McTeacher’s Night. She claims that the events amount to “predatory marketing of fast food to children,” “exploits the trust between teachers and students to promote its junk food,” and “often raise as little as $1 per student, a ridiculously small amount compared to the time teachers must spend participating and recruiting their students to attend.”

In an emailed statement, a McDonald’s spokesperson defended the program:

McTeacher’s Night is an optional community-based program that supports schools seeking financial support for initiatives like sports equipment, band uniforms, iPads for the classroom, field trips and other programs. It is not a corporate mandated program, but a way our company-owned and franchised restaurants support the communities they serve at the request of and in partnership with local schools.

Like the sweet sauce that tops a soft-serve sundae, the LA teachers union critique comes after a campaign launched last year to kibosh McTeacher’s Nights, led by advocacy groups Corporate Accountability International and Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and and supported by 50 national, state and local teachers unions.

A spokesperson for Corporate Accountability International pointed out to me in an email that McTeacher’s Night events contradict sponsorship guidelines (downloadable here) issued by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) in 2011. The guidelines state: “Keep in mind we may not accept donations from or promote organizations that market, sell or produce products that may be harmful to children including but not limited to, tobacco, alcohol, firearms, gambling, or high fat and calorie foods and drinks.”

Using Freedom of Information Act requests, Corporate Accountability International and Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood have documented more than 120 McTeacher nights in greater LA since the start of 2013, including four this year. Their research suggests that the funds these events raise tend to be paltry. They obtained fundraising totals for around 30 LA-area McTeacher nights, for which the cash haul ranged from $67 to $1,000. Nationwide, the groups have counted more than 600 McTeacher Nights since 2013.

On Monday, the UTLA announced a formal policy “calling on McDonald’s to end these disrespectful marketing gimmicks once and for all,” Myart-Cruz said in a statement.

Like a class clown who doesn’t know when to stop, Ronald McDonald would appear to be no longer welcome as a fixture in LA public schools.

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McDonald’s Asked Teachers to Serve Fries for Free. Now the Teachers Are Fighting Back.

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US Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia Will Continue, Despite Allegations of War Crimes

by FelipaCajigas6 Posted on September 22, 2016

Mother Jones

“The United States is at war in Yemen today,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) during a Senate debate this morning over a bipartisan resolution seeking to block a $1.15 billion arms deal that would supply Saudi Arabia with Abrams tanks and an assortment other weaponry.

While the resolution was voted down, 71 to 21, it marked the first time that members of Congress have publicly debated the wisdom of the United States’ role in a conflict that’s left thousands of civilians dead and millions on the verge of starvation. “There is a US imprint on every civilian death inside Yemen, which is radicalizing the people of Yemen against the United States,” Murphy said in support of the resolution. “There really is no way this bombing campaign could happen without United States participation…And this Congress has not debated this engagement.”

For the past year and a half, a Saudi-led coalition of Gulf States has been bombing Yemen, supposedly targeting the Houthi rebels who ousted Yemen’s president in March 2015. But more than a third of the airstrikes have hit civilian targets, including hospitals, schools, and places of worship. The United States has been providing the Saudis with bombs, intelligence, and aerial refueling for its jets.

Senators who opposed the resolution focused more on Iran than Saudi Arabia or Yemen. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) argued that the recent US-Iranian nuclear deal enhanced Iran’s status as regional power, and that the resolution would “further damage our alliance and our partnership with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.” Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) played up the relationship between the Yemeni rebels and Iran and glossed over Saudi Arabia’s actions in Yemen (which include allegations of war crimes) as “imperfect.” “If we say no to the Saudis, not only will that be seen as a slight by the Saudis, they’ll buy the arms somewhere else,” he warned.

Some observers don’t find those arguments very compelling. “It’s discouraging that the arguments are more about Iran than Saudi Arabia,” says Cole Bockenfeld, the deputy director for policy at the Project on Middle East Democracy. “A lot of this is tied to reassuring the Gulf countries after the Iran deal.” Scott Paul, Oxfam’s senior humanitarian policy advisor, says it’s not accurate to see Yemen’s Houthi rebels as proxies for Iran. “They’re unique to Yemen and have uniquely Yemeni ambitions and grievances,” he says. “They’re doing so in an incredibly problematic way, but they are not under the command or control of Tehran by any stretch of the imagination.”

Sources: Congressional Research Service, Department of Defense Fiscal Year Series, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Defense Security Cooperation Agency

McConnell also said that shutting off the Saudis from American arms would send them looking elsewhere for weaponry. “They don’t have to buy this equipment from us; they can buy it from somebody else,” he said. He added that there’s no evidence that the Saudis have used tanks on the ground in Yemen. However, the Saudis have hinted that they’re prepared to launch a ground attack on the Yemeni capital, Sanaa. Plus, the Saudis can’t easily turn to the Russians, Chinese, or European countries to buy these types of weapons systems. “Almost all of their equipment is US-manufactured,” says Bockenfeld. “For them to transition over to an entirely different kind of weapon from a different country would take several years and billions of dollars—a massive undertaking. Beyond the costs, frankly the US equipment is sought after not just to please and maintain the alliance, but also because it’s the best.”

Graham insisted that such arms transfers—Washington and Riyadh have inked weapons deals worth more than $100 billion since the beginning of the Obama administration—help Saudi Arabia attack Al Qaeda and ISIS. Yet, as Murphy observed, “None of the Saudi bombs are dropping on AQAP Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula; they are all dropping on Houthi targets and civilian targets.”

Despite the resolution’s failure, lawmakers and observers maintain that the vote sent a strong message: that the longstanding US-Saudi relationship is under more scrutiny than ever before. But for now, the flow of arms will not be interrupted.

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US Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia Will Continue, Despite Allegations of War Crimes

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3 Key Facts About the Charlotte Police Shooting

by LilyCurrie Posted on September 21, 2016

Mother Jones

Violent protests erupted in Charlotte late Tuesday night after a police officer fatally shot Keith Lamont Scott, a 43-year-old black man, in the parking lot of an apartment complex earlier in the day. Sixteen police officers were injured during the protests, which included demonstrators blockading a busy highway and looting tractor trailers and a Walmart.

At a Wednesday news conference, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney said they’d been searching for a person with an outstanding warrant when they noticed Scott leaving his car with a gun in hand. After officers approached and gave him verbal warnings, police said that Scott left the car and posed “an imminent deadly threat.” He was then shot by a black officer named Brentley Vinson, who was not wearing a body camera at the time. In a video later posted on social media, a woman claiming to be Scott’s daughter said that he was unarmed and was instead holding a book. Putney rejected that claim, saying that officers recovered a gun at the scene, not a book. (Meanwhile, Vinson has been placed on administrative leave while the department investigates.)

The mood was quiet on Wednesday afternoon, though officials anticipated another tense evening. Scott’s shooting came just four days after Terrence Crutcher, a 40-year-old unarmed black man, was fatally shot outside his vehicle by a Tulsa police officer. The Justice Department opened a civil rights investigation into Crutcher’s death, and on Wednesday, US Attorney General Lorretta Lynch said in remarks at the International Bar Association annual conference that the department was “assessing” the incident surrounding Scott’s death.

Here are three things to know about the Scott shooting and the fallout on Wednesday:

Body cam footage: Last September, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police announced it would issue body cameras to all patrol officers in an attempt to increase transparency during confrontations. The directive granted exceptions for officers on the SWAT team and those in tactical units who apprehend violent criminals, citing cost and safety concerns. The Charlotte Observer reported that Charlotte-Mecklenburg officers had fatally shot four people between September 2015 and May 2016, yet only one of those incidents was caught on camera.

Putney told reporters at Wednesday’s press conference that dashcam footage was under review and had recorded parts of the police confrontation with Scott. Because it was part of the investigation, he said, the department wouldn’t release the footage at this time.

In July, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed into law a bill that made it more difficult to get public access to such footage. Local police departments can decide to release recordings if they want, but if they decline to do so a judge’s order is required. The American Civil Liberties Union’s North Carolina chapter has called on Charlotte police to release the footage from the scene, arguing that the new law doesn’t go into effect until October 1.

Charlotte police’s recent history: In September 2013, a white Charlotte police officer named Randall Kerrick shot and killed Jonathan Ferrell, a 24-year-old unarmed black man and former college football player, while he was looking for help after a car accident. Kerrick was charged with voluntary manslaughter. Last August, a North Carolina judge declared a mistrial after four days of jury deliberation, and authorities opted not to pursue a retrial.

Meanwhile, as my former colleague Jaeah Lee wrote in our May/June 2016 issue, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg PD has been part of a University of Chicago experiment that uses data to identify troublesome cops—those who are likely to abuse their power or break the law—and anticipate future police misconduct.

Calls for an economic boycott: At a press conference on Wednesday, a group of civil rights activists questioned the police’s narrative of events. B.J. Murphy, a representative of the Nation of Islam and longtime Charlotte resident, called on black Charlotte residents to boycott local businesses to “let everybody feel the pain economically of what we feel physically when you kill us.”

“Since black lives do not matter for this city, then our black dollars shouldn’t matter,” Murphy said. “We’re watching a modern-day lynching on social media, on television, and it is affecting the psyche of black people. That’s what you saw last night.”

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3 Key Facts About the Charlotte Police Shooting

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Wave power has finally come to the United States.

by EssieCajigas Posted on September 21, 2016

This weekend, Máxima Acuña, winner of the 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize, was assaulted on her property in Peru. Since 2011, Acuña has resisted the development of the Conga gold mine by U.S.-based Newmont Mining by refusing to vacate her home — and, for that, has faced both legal prosecution and physical intimidation.

As a result of the attack, allegedly perpetrated by agents of Minera Yanacocha (Newmont’s Peruvian subsidiary), Acuña is now in the hospital and her family’s crops are destroyed, according to Amnesty International.

Nor, tragically, is this attack an isolated instance of violence against indigenous women protecting their land. Earlier this year, Berta Cáceres — winner of the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize for her efforts in blocking hydroelectric developments on Lenca land in Honduras — was murdered at home, allegedly by employees of DESA, the developer behind the proposed dams.

When we spoke to Acuña in April, she told us, with eerie foresight: “Because these businesses are very powerful, I don’t know what awaits me when I get back [home]. But this isn’t a cause of fear for me – it’s not a motive for us to stop fighting, to stop defending.”

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Wave power has finally come to the United States.

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The federal government is investigating ExxonMobil’s accounting related to climate change.

by AltonMast09011 Posted on September 21, 2016

This weekend, Máxima Acuña, winner of the 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize, was assaulted on her property in Peru. Since 2011, Acuña has resisted the development of the Conga gold mine by U.S.-based Newmont Mining by refusing to vacate her home — and, for that, has faced both legal prosecution and physical intimidation.

As a result of the attack, allegedly perpetrated by agents of Minera Yanacocha (Newmont’s Peruvian subsidiary), Acuña is now in the hospital and her family’s crops are destroyed, according to Amnesty International.

Nor, tragically, is this attack an isolated instance of violence against indigenous women protecting their land. Earlier this year, Berta Cáceres — winner of the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize for her efforts in blocking hydroelectric developments on Lenca land in Honduras — was murdered at home, allegedly by employees of DESA, the developer behind the proposed dams.

When we spoke to Acuña in April, she told us, with eerie foresight: “Because these businesses are very powerful, I don’t know what awaits me when I get back [home]. But this isn’t a cause of fear for me – it’s not a motive for us to stop fighting, to stop defending.”

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The federal government is investigating ExxonMobil’s accounting related to climate change.

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Bombs and Backbiting: The Syrian Cease-fire Is Off to a Great Start

by HoseaO868858 Posted on September 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Saturday, just hours after Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov announced an imminent cease-fire in Syria, government planes bombed a crowded marketplace killing 61 and wounding 100 more. By weekend’s end, at least 90 people had died in regime airstrikes, including 28 children. Today, President Bashar al-Assad publicly vowed to “recover every inch of Syria from the terrorists” and decried those in the opposition who “were betting on promises from foreign powers, which will result in nothing.”

In other words, the long-awaited Syrian cease-fire appears to be off to a great start.

The agreement, which was announced early Saturday morning in Geneva, officially began at sundown today. It comes after 10 months of failed attempts to reach a political settlement to a conflict that’s killed nearly half a million people and spawned the largest refugee crisis since World War II. While some observers argue that the cease-fire is the best opportunity to bring a pause to the violence, the plan has been greeted mostly with skepticism.

If the truce endures for a week and humanitarian aid begins to flow into besieged areas, the United States and Russia say they will put aside their differences over the legitimacy of the Assad regime and work to target two jihadist groups, ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, the former Al Qaeda-affiliate that recently rebranded as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS).

In theory, the cease-fire deal prohibits the Syrian Air Force from flying raids over opposition-held areas, except for those controlled by ISIS or JFS. Kerry called this “the bedrock of the agreement,” labeling the Syrian Air Force the “main driver of civilian casualties.” But as Michael Weiss of The Daily Beast writes, outside of excluding ISIS and JFS, the deal does not clearly define the ideologically mixed groups that make up the Syrian opposition forces.

As part of the agreement, more moderate rebel groups must distance themselves from JFS or risk being targeted. But Syria’s mainstream armed opposition forces, as Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, puts it, “are extensively ‘marbled’ or ‘coupled’ with JFS forces…This is not a reflection of ideological affinity as much as it is merely a military necessity.” Lister wrote on Saturday that “not a single one has suggested any willingness to withdraw from the frontlines on which JFS is present. To them, doing so means effectively ceding territory to the regime, as they have little faith in a long-term cessation of hostilities holding.”

Under the new deal, the Syrian government is only banned from striking areas agreed to by both Russia and the United States, and the Assad regime and Russia are permitted to strike JFS (the group formerly known as Nusra) without prior American consent if it’s in response to “imminent threats.” Weiss asks, “What is to stop Damascus and Moscow from suddenly finding ‘imminent threats’ everywhere against parties they insist are Nusra or Nusra-affiliated before Washington can concur?”

Bloomberg columnist Eli Lake points out that the Pentagon and the US intelligence community are deeply skeptical about sharing intelligence with the Russians on Syria. Even if the first week’s truce holds, he writes, “is it even desirable for US intelligence officers to be sharing the locations of US-backed rebels in Syria with a Russian Air Force that has been bombing them for nearly a year?”

On Sunday, rebel groups sent a letter to the United States agreeing to “cooperate positively” with the cease-fire. But they added that they have deep concerns “linked to our survival and continuation as a revolution.” Among their top concerns: The agreement neglects many besieged areas outside of Aleppo, lacks guarantees or sanctions against violations, and doesn’t ban Syrian jets from flying for up to nine days following the beginning of the cease-fire. It also called the exclusion of JFS, but not Iranian-backed Shiite militias, a double standard. One American-backed rebel faction has already called the deal a “trap.”

Perhaps to no one’s surprise, reports of alleged cease-fire violations emerged within one hour of its official start on Monday night, as the Assad regime launched artillery strikes on Al-Hara and dropped a barrel bomb on Aleppo.

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Bombs and Backbiting: The Syrian Cease-fire Is Off to a Great Start

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Venezuela Is Descending Into Chaos. Now This Issue Is on America’s Doorstep.

by Adan Baird Posted on August 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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Earlier this year, Venezuelan journalist and political scientist Francisco Toro described his home country as “the world’s most visibly failing state.” And now, amid a worsening economic crisis, a crackdown on political opposition, and increasing violent crime, more and more of his countrymen are seeking haven in the United States.

Over the past year, the United States has experienced a surge in asylum applications from Venezuela, according to new data from the Pew Research Center. So far in fiscal 2016, applications from Venezuela soared past 10,000, an increase of 168 percent compared with the fiscal year 2015.

Venezuela’s economic collapse has been making headlines for more than a year. Oil prices plummeted, and price controls led to shortages of basic staples like food and medicine. A recent study from Simón Bolívar University found that 9 out of 10 Venezuelans can no longer afford to buy enough food. Now, people wait in line for hours for essentials like rice and cooking oil, sometimes even fending off armed thieves. As food riots became a daily occurrence, President Nicolás Maduro—who succeeded Hugo Chávez after his death in 2013—put the army in charge of rationing. Food is now transported by armed guards, and police protect against looters. The International Monetary Fund has estimated that Venezuela’s inflation rate will reach 480 percent this year, and more than 1,600 percent next year. Unemployment is around 17 percent and is expected to grow to a quarter over the next three years.

On top of all that, Maduro has been cracking down on his political opponents. In December, the opposition coalition won a major victory, securing a majority of seats in parliament for the first time since Chávez came to power in 1999. After that, Maduro intensified his crackdown. The Venezuelan Penal Forum, which tracks human rights abuses, counted 96 political prisoners in June, compared with just 11 when Maduro became president. Meanwhile, election officials signaled earlier this week that a long-promised recall election to oust Maduro would have to wait until 2017.

This combination of food and medicine shortages, political instability, and increasing violent crime is driving Venezuelans out of the country, according to Julio Henriquez, director of the Boston-based nonprofit Refugee Freedom Program, which currently focuses on helping Venezuelan asylum seekers. “There was a lot of hope that the new parliament would make a big difference in the human rights conditions,” he says, “but human rights conditions have worsened.”

So far, Henriquez says, most of the Venezuelan asylum seekers he’s encountered have been middle-class people who’ve come to the United States via a student or tourist visa and then applied for asylum after their arrival. It’s quite a contrast to the Central American families showing up at the US-Mexico border, a situation which advocates have warned for years amounts to a refugee crisis.

Faye Hipsman, an analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, says some Venezuelan asylum applicants may be taking advantage of excessive backlogs in the application process—delays that allow applicants to stay in the United States for years pending the outcome of their claim. And while many are likely fleeing poverty, hunger, and general violence, Hipsman says, it’s often not enough to qualify for asylum, which requires applicants to prove that they risk persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or social group.

“A share of these people have legitimate asylum claims,” she says. “But there’s a lot of concern that for legitimate reasons, people don’t want to go back to Venezuela because it’s dangerous there—and the circumstances are really bad.”

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Venezuela Is Descending Into Chaos. Now This Issue Is on America’s Doorstep.

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The Rise of Syria’s Brutal Chemical Attacks on Civilians

by TawannaAraujo Posted on August 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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For the third time in just two weeks, chemical weapons were reportedly used against civilians in northern Syria. The United Nations is investigating the most recent case, which came Wednesday when barrel bombs thought to contain chlorine gas dropped on the rebel-controlled neighborhood of Zubdiya in eastern Aleppo, killing at least four people, including a mother and her two children, and wounding around 60 more.

Both the Assad regime and opposition forces have denied responsibility, but several witnesses and monitoring groups have said that helicopters dropped explosive barrel bombs on the affected neighborhood. Opposition forces, it bears noting, do not have helicopters.

Staffan de Mistura, UN special envoy for Syria, told reporters yesterday that there is “a lot of evidence” that the attack took place, and if confirmed, would amount to a war crime. Images from the alleged attack, showing men and young children being fitted with oxygen masks, circulated widely on social media.

A doctor in Aleppo told Amnesty International that the victims “were all suffering from the same symptoms, mainly coughing and shortness of breath. I could easily smell chlorine on people’s clothes.” And Hamza Khatib, the manager of Aleppo’s Al Quds hospital, told Reuters on Wednesday that he was preserving fragments from the bombs and pieces of clothing to submit as evidence.

Chlorine gas is classified as a choking agent, and when inhaled, fills the lungs with liquid and can lead to asphyxiation. Using it in a weapon is banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention, which the Assad regime agreed to join after a 2013 UN investigation found that the nerve agent Sarin was used against civilians in Eastern Ghouta, killing 1,429 people, more than 400 of them children. The Syrian government subsequently turned over thousands of tons of chemical agents, but chlorine, because of its necessary and legal use in other areas, was not among the chemicals that had to be destroyed. Since then, there have been dozens of chlorine gas attacks that have not been countered with any repercussions from the international community.

This latest example comes shortly after rebel forces—led largely by hardline jihadi groups including Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly known as the Al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra)—broke the Syrian government’s siege of Aleppo. The siege had cut off the city’s last supply lines, subjecting the 250,000 residents remaining in the rebel-held east to a lack of food, water, and medical supplies. Shortly after the siege broke, doctors warned of revenge air strikes, including a fear that the regime would resort to chemical weapons.

“Looking at the regime’s track record, they are ready to do anything to try to win back power,” Zaher Sahloul, a Syrian-American doctor who was recently in Aleppo, told the Telegraph. “We expect more bombing…They know that the world will not respond.”

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The Rise of Syria’s Brutal Chemical Attacks on Civilians

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