Daily Archives: 8 February 2024

Workers and students stage mass walk out to demand permanent ceasefire in Gaza

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/workers-and-students-stage-mass-walk-out-demand-permanent-ceasefire-gaza

Protesters outside the University of Manchester Photo: Neil Terry Photography

WORKERS and students walked out across the country today to demand the government back a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, as the death toll climbs to over 27,000.

As part of the day of strike action, called by the Stop the War Coalition and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, workers gathered for a lunchtime rally outside Parliament organised by civil servants’ union PCS. Members of NEU and the UCU also walked out across the country.

Media workers protested outside BBC headquarters over its coverage of Israel’s war crimes as the death toll for journalists tops 85.

A Media Workers for Palestine spokesperson said: “A number of the BBC’s own journalists have accused the corporation of investing greater effort in humanising Israeli victims of the war compared with Palestinians and failing to provide key historical context in its coverage.

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Students and lecturers joined the action and walked out of universities across the country including in Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow and Manchester.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/workers-and-students-stage-mass-walk-out-demand-permanent-ceasefire-gaza

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Barclays’ HQ blockaded as activists declare profits ‘covered in Palestinian blood’

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/barclays-hq-blockaded-activists-declare-profits-covered-palestinian-blood

HUNDREDS of activists blocked the Barclays headquarters in Canary Wharf today, protesting against the bank’s involvement in Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza.

The protest comes amid growing pressure for a permanent ceasefire as the Palestinian death toll exceeds over 27,000.

According to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), Barclays has invested over £1 billion in companies supplying weapons and military technology to Israel.

The campaigners say the bank also provides the firms with over £3bn in loans and underwriting.

Rallying in front of the bank’s headquarters, a coalition of protesters from London for a Free Palestine, the Palestinian Youth Movement, Queers for Palestine and Black Lives Matter told passers-by to close their bank accounts and “stop banking on apartheid.”

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London For a Free Palestine activist Rebecca Rumford said: “British people cannot continue banking with Barclays as it actively funds the genocide on Palestinians.

“We ask everyone with a Barclays account to close it this February 9, until the bank cuts ties with Israel.”

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/barclays-hq-blockaded-activists-declare-profits-covered-palestinian-blood

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Greenpeace activists scale Unilever HQ in plastic pollution protest

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/greenpeace-activists-scale-unilever-hq-plastic-pollution-protest

Greenpeace UK scale the company’s HQ by Blackfriars Bridge in London and unveil a huge banner reading PROFIT WARNING – Plastic Polluted Money Photo: © Kristian Buus / Greenpeace

GREENPEACE activists scaled Unilever’s London headquarters on the eve of its profit announcement today.

The activists unfurled a banner reading “Profit Warning — Plastic Polluted Money” in protest against the company’s destructive use of environmentally harmful packaging.

The protesters then set up a pollution warning zone around the entrance to the headquarters, warning passers-by about the company’s overwhelming plastic pollution problem.

A previous Greenpeace investigation revealed the consumer goods giant as the biggest seller of some of the worst polluting packaging, multilayered plastic sachets. According to the report, Unilever sells 1,700 sachets every second.

The sachets are typically used to package products such as soap, shampoo and laundry detergent, and are virtually impossible to recycle.

Greenpeace say they exacerbate devastating floods when they enter the environment as they jam local waste systems and waterways.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/greenpeace-activists-scale-unilever-hq-plastic-pollution-protest

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World ‘not prepared’ for climate disasters after warmest ever January

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Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/06/world-not-prepared-for-climate-disasters-after-warmest-ever-january Jonathan Watts

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“Fuelled by extreme weather and climate extremes, the frequency of climate-related disasters has dramatically risen in recent years,” said Raul Cordero, a climate professor at the University of Groningen and the University of Santiago. “In some regions of the world, we are facing climate-fuelled disasters for which we are not prepared, and it is unlikely that we will be able to fully adapt to them.”

Richard Betts, of the Met Office’s Hadley Centre in the UK, said many extremes, including longer heatwaves, heavier rainfall, increased drought and more fire weather, were becoming more severe due to human-caused climate change.

“We can still limit the extent to which extremes get worse if we urgently reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero – but with global emissions still rising, it’s hard not to be increasingly concerned about how we will deal with what’s coming,” Betts said. “We already need to adapt to the changes that we’ve already caused, and adaptation will become increasingly difficult the longer we leave it to reduce emissions.”

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Francesca Guglielmo, a senior scientist at the EU’s Copernicus satellite monitoring service, said 2024 had started as 2023 ended, with “exceptional temperatures and many extreme events”.

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Guglielmo said scientists were now considering risks that had been unthinkable until recently. “2023 has broken so many records that a number of new hypotheses, including the dawn of a new phase in the global warming rate, have been floated. These hypotheses were not nearly as prevalent a year ago.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/06/world-not-prepared-for-climate-disasters-after-warmest-ever-january Jonathan Watts

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South Africa to file legal action with ICJ against UK, US, for war crime complicity

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Article republished from the Skwawkbox

South Africa’s legal team at the ICJ last month

Nation whose case put Israel formally on trial for genocide joins Nicaragua in turning its sights on accomplices in genocide

A team of almost fifty South African lawyers is preparing a legal case to bring to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’ top court, against the US and UK, for their complicity in Israel’s array of war crimes in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

South Africa’s successful ICJ case against Israel last month led to Israel being put formally on trial for genocide and resulted in a string of binding orders on Israel to stop its slaughter of Gazans and even to protect Palestinians from harm, as well as to ensure adequate aid reaches the strip’s 2.5 million people, many of whom are now starving and homeless.

Israel has flouted the rulings, continuing and even intensifying the mass murder and blockade, and is being supported in its flagrant disregard for international law by the UK and US, who are providing both material and financial aid, and giving political cover by refusing to condemn Israel’s actions or to call its crimes what they are, instead casting doubt on the mass deaths and brutality and denigrating the Court’s ruling.

South Africa joins Nicaragua in taking action against the UK and US. The Central American nation has also filed a case against Germany, Canada and the Netherlands.

The team of lawyers, which already numbers around fifty, is likely to grow further as more lawyers are set to join from other nations. Wikus van Rensburg, who is leading the action, said that it was time for the US and other complicit nations to “be held responsible for [their] crimes”.

Article republished from the Skwawkbox

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