Pro-Palestine protesters have staged a demonstration outside Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer‘s home, in a move which has been condemned by the Prime Minister.
The group, known as Youth Demand, describe themselves as a ‘new youth resistance campaign fighting for an end to genocide’.
The demonstrators hung a banner outside Sir Keir’s house that read: ‘Starmer stop the killing’ surrounded by red hand prints.
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Protesters then laid rows of children’s shoes in front of the Labour leader’s door, a tactic that has been utilised at a number of pro-Palestine protests to signify children killed in Gaza.
Rishi Sunak, who’s own home in North Yorkshire was the target of climate protesters in 2023, said such incidents would not be tolerated.
In a post to X the Prime Minister said: ‘I don’t care what your politics are, no MP should be harassed at their own home.
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Well feck you Rishi “no MP should be harassed at their own home” Sunak. These people are responding to you and similar politician cnuts aiding and abetting genocide. You should reflect on your own and your mate Keir Starmer’s actions supporting Israel’s genocide.
Since June 2023, every month has been the “hottest ever” on record. Image: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire/empics/picture alliance.
The past 10 months have all been the hottest on record. The average global temperature in March was 1.68 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial average.
Last month was 0.1 degrees Celsius warmer than the previous March, and 1.68 degrees Celsius hotter than an average March between the years 1850-1900, the reference period for the pre-industrial era.
Above-average temperatures were recorded in parts of Africa, South America, Greenland and Antarctica. Sea surface temperatures also hit a “shocking new high,” the report said.
Hottest 12-month period
The average temperature for the 12-month period ending in March was 1.58 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial average, making it the warmest 12-month period on record.
This record warmth does not necessarily mean that global temperatures have broken the 1.5-degree limit set by world leaders in Paris in 2015 as such measurements are taken in decades rather than individual years, but it does show a general trend in that direction.
“It’s the long-term trend with exceptional records that has us very concerned,” Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S told Reuters news agency.
“Seeing records like this — month in, month out — really shows us that our climate is changing, is changing rapidly,” she added.
Climate change and its effects have been seen across the globe. This year itself, Venezuela saw a record number of wildfires, and southern Africa has faced drought conditions. Warm waters in the southern hemisphere are causing a mass coral bleaching event.
[ed: I did provide a link but it should be available to subscribers to https://rogerhallam.com only]
Earth, we have a problem
Societies around the world did not allow the current ecological collapse. Governments did. Since the 1990s, a false narrative was promoted around the world that individuals should take responsibility for their ‘carbon footprint’. Or that ‘it’s the corporations’, the fossil fuel and other polluting industries that are to blame. Yet governments are the only institutions with the power, and the responsibility, to protect us from harm. But they haven’t used that power.
In the UK and around the globe, people have inherited a government system and a civil society community of environmental NGOs unable to address the threat we now face to the continued existence of humankind. Government is something created by society to protect us from such threats. Yet it has failed.
We need to rescue the concept of revolution from left wing political ideology into a more classical 19th century tradition where we’ve had enough of corruption and the gross abuse of power. The challenge we face with the climate emergency is to promote the message that climate change affects us all and so we all need to act.
There is no avoiding the following analysis: that the world’s political systems which have facilitated a 60% increase in global emissions since the beginning of the crisis in 1990 have no ability to stop a continued rise in CO2,
let alone create the political will to massively reduce levels (40% in the next ten years according to the UN October report ).
This leads us to the grave conclusion that the probability of organising a political revolution to remove the corrupt political class has a higher chance (if small/indeterminate) than the chance that the political class will respond to the climate crisis (effectively zero, as evidenced by the last 30 years). This then is the central meta strategic point of this paper.
Pro-Palestine protestors calling for an arms embargo on Israel have doused the Labour Party’s headquarters in red paint in a protest against the party’s stance on the war in Gaza.
Demonstrators from the Youth Demand group insisted both the government and official opposition should commit to preventing the supply of weapons to the country.
The group wrote on social media: “Labour has blood on their hands. They are complicit in the murder of Palestinians, and millions of people around the world, as they continue to drive genocide.”
The Metropolitan Police confirmed 12 people had been arrested over the protest.
📢 Labour has blood on their hands. They are complicit in the murder of Palestinians, and millions of people around the world, as they continue to drive genocide.
Rallies for Palestinian Children’s Day were held across Brazil, including in São Paulo. Photo: Priscila Ramos
Over 14,000 children have been killed and nearly 17,000 others have lost at least one or both of their parents in the Israeli bombings or ground offensives in the last six months in Gaza
Israel has killed 14,350 Palestinian children between October 7 and April 4. This means children account for 44% of all Palestinians killed in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) said in a press release ahead of Palestinian Children’s Day.
Women and children constitute nearly 70% of over 7,000 additional persons missing in the same period, and the majority of the over 75,000 wounded Palestinians are women and children.
Out of a total of 455 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank by the Israeli forces in the same period, 117 were children.
Over 17,000 Palestinian children have also been orphaned as a result of Israel’s genocidal attacks, according to UNICEF data, after either both or one of their parents were killed in the Israeli bombings and ground offensives since October 7.
Palestinians celebrate Children’s Day on April 5 every year. Human rights groups such as Defense of Children International Palestine, Palestinian Network for Children’s Rights (PNCR) and others mark the day as International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian Children in order to highlight Israel’s systematic crimes against them.
Israel starves Palestinian children to death
At least 31 Palestinian children have been starved to death in Gaza in the last couple of months. The starvation is a product of the deliberate blockade and restrictions imposed by the Israeli forces on the delivery and distribution of food and other humanitarian aid in the besieged territory. The entire population of Gaza is now facing acute levels of food insecurity.
A large number of pregnant women in Gaza are deprived of adequate medical care as well, due to the genocide and Israel’s repeated attacks on the health facilities and workers.
According to the PCBS, by the middle of this year, there would be around 2.4 million children below the age of 18 in the occupied Palestinian territories, 43% of the total Palestinian population in West Bank and Gaza. The population of children in Palestine is almost equally divided between the West Bank (over 1.3 million) and Gaza (over 1 million).
Around 816,000 children in Gaza need psychological assistance due to trauma caused by the ongoing genocide. Around 620,000 have been out of school, with eight out of ten schools destroyed by the invading Israeli forces in indiscriminate bombings on civilian infrastructures and deliberate acts of sabotage. Another 133 schools are used as temporary shelters for displaced people.
The child prisoners of Palestine
Though since October 7, Israeli forces detained over 500 Palestinian children, some were released later. However, still there are over 200 Palestinian children in different Israeli jails. According to Addameer, 41 Palestinian child prisoners are being kept under administrative detainees.
Palestinians children detained by the Israeli forces have often been subjected to torture and abuse both during their arrests and in the prison. In a large number of cases, Palestinian children have been treated like criminals when arrested by Israeli forces with their hands tied, blindfolded. They are often tried in military courts.
In a report submitted last year by Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, claimed that over “10,000 Palestinian children have experienced institutionalized ill treatment during arrests, prosecutions, sentencing and consequent traumas on themselves and their families.”
Some children released from Israeli prison recently have also testified that they were isolated in the prison and tortured and severely beaten, Addameerclaimed.
