Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland, who threw soup over Vincent van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ in October 2022 Photo: Just Stop Oil
TWO Just Stop Oil (JSO) activists who threw soup over Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting have been found guilty of criminal damage and told to expect jail time.
Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland threw two tins of Heinz tomato soup over the painting, which is protected by glass, in October 2022.
The pair then glued themselves beneath the artwork in an action to demand the then-Tory government halt all new oil and gas projects.
Although Labour agreed with the ban and implemented it when it took government, the two activists have been told to expect prison time.
The trial at Southwark Crown Court was overseen by Judge Christopher Hehir, who handed out record sentences totalling 21 years to five activists from the group this month.
On Thursday, he found the pair guilty of criminal damage exceeding £5,000.
The National Gallery, where the artwork was displayed, previously said that there was “minor damage” to the frame, but the painting was unharmed.
At Southwark Crown Court, Judge Christopher Hehir told the pair to be “prepared in practical and emotional terms to go to prison” when they are sentenced on 27 September.
Judge Hehir said they “came within the width of a pane of glass of destroying one of the most valuable artworks in the world”.
He set bail conditions for Plummer, of Clapham in south-west London, and Holland, of Newcastle, which stipulate they must not carry glue, paint or any adhesive substance in a public place, and must not visit any galleries or museums.
The court heard how Plummer said in front of the painting in 2022: “What is worth more, art or life? Is it worth more than food? Worth more than justice?
“Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting, or the protection of our planet and people?
“The cost-of-living crisis is part of the cost-of-oil crisis.”
Palestinians wounded by Israeli attacks are brought to Nasser Hospital for medical treatment in Khan Younis, Gaza on July 22, 2024. (Photo: Doaa Albaz/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“Every day that we continue supplying weapons and munitions to Israel is another day that women are shredded by our bombs and children are murdered with our bullets.”
As President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Thursday, dozens of American healthcare workers who recently volunteered in the Gaza Strip urged the U.S. leaders to do everything in their power to end Israel’s assault on the enclave, citing the horrors they witnessed firsthand.
In an open letter addressed to Biden, Harris, and First Lady Jill Biden, 45 physicians, surgeons, and nurses wrote that “we wish you could see the nightmares that plague so many of us since we have returned: dreams of children maimed and mutilated by our weapons, and their inconsolable mothers begging us to save them.”
“We wish you could hear the cries and screams our consciences will not let us forget,” the letter reads. “We cannot believe that anyone would continue arming the country that is deliberately killing these children after seeing what we have seen.”
The healthcare workers called on the Biden administration to “withhold military, economic, and diplomatic support from the state of Israel and to participate in an international arms embargo of both Israel and all Palestinian armed groups until a permanent cease-fire is established, and until good-faith negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians lead to a permanent resolution of the conflict.”
“We are not politicians. We do not claim to have all the answers,” they continued. “We are simply physicians and nurses who cannot remain silent about what we saw in Gaza. Every day that we continue supplying weapons and munitions to Israel is another day that women are shredded by our bombs and children are murdered with our bullets. President Biden and Vice President Harris, we urge you: End this madness now!”
This is an open letter addressed to @POTUS, @VP , and @FLOTUS signed by 45 American physicians and nurses, about what we saw while working in Gaza. Please feel free to distribute. A PDF can be downloaded from the link and/or QR code on page 1. pic.twitter.com/LHVvmeAFad
The letter was released as Netanyahu, fresh off his widely condemned address to the U.S. Congress, met separately on Thursday with Biden and Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
In remarks following her meeting with Netanyahu, Harris said that “what has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating,” pointing to “the images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third, or fourth time.”
“We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies,” the vice president added. “We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent.”
Harris said she told Netanyahu directly to “get this deal done”—referring to a cease-fire agreement with Hamas—but, as expected, she did not break with the administration on supplying arms to the Israeli military.
While there has been no obvious policy change from the administration now that Harris has taken over for Biden at the top of the Democratic Party’s presidential ticket, Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft argued that the vice president “clearly broke with Biden on Israel in terms of rhetoric and tone.”
Parsi also contended that there was “a substance shift.”
“Biden has disingenuously claimed that Hamas blocked a cease-fire deal,” Parsi wrote on social media. “By saying that she urged Netanyahu ‘to clinch the deal,’ Kamala pointed to the real obstacle.”
BREAKING: VP Harris speaks after meeting with Israeli PM Netanyahu
Harris calling for an immediate cease-fire deal to free the hostages.
The VP saying she “will not be silent" about the suffering in Gaza, the "devastating" loss of life and the "dire" humanitarian crisis. pic.twitter.com/Fe5QPoOuFh
In their letter to Harris and Biden, the healthcare workers wrote that Israel “has directly targeted and deliberately devastated Gaza’s entire healthcare system” and “targeted our colleagues in Gaza for death, disappearance, and torture.” According to figures from the United Nations Human Rights Office, Israeli forces have killed one in every 40 healthcare workers in the Palestinian territory since October as diseases spread and the number of Gazans killed or wounded continues to grow by the hour.
The healthcare workers expressed the view that—based on available evidence and their experiences—”the death toll from this conflictis many times higher than what is reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health,” which currently stands at over 39,100.
“We also believe this is probative evidence of widespread violations of American laws governing the use of American weapons abroad, and of international humanitarian law,” they continued. “We cannot forget the scenes of unbearable cruelty directed at women and children that we witnessed ourselves.”
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres delivers a special address on climate action in New York in June 2024. (Photo: Fatih Aktas/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“I must call out the flood of fossil fuel expansion we are seeing in some of the world’s wealthiest countries,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said. “Countries must phaseout fossil fuels—fast and fairly.”
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Thursday criticized the world’s wealthiest countries for expanding fossil fuel production, one day after an analysis in The Guardian showed that five Western countries are leading a global surge in oil and gas development.
Guterres’ remarks came as part of a “call to action” on extreme heat at a press conference in New York, after record-setting world temperatures earlier in the week and a series of deadly heatwaves across the world this year.
Guterres, who has long been outspoken on the need for climate action, called extreme heat one of the “symptoms” of a “disease” that is the “addiction” to fossil fuels.
“I must call out the flood of fossil fuel expansion we are seeing in some of the world’s wealthiest countries,” he said nine minutes and 53 seconds into his remarks. “In signing such a surge of new oil and gas licenses, they are signing away our future. The leadership of those with the greatest capabilities and capacities is essential. Countries must phaseout fossil fuels—fast and fairly.”
The U.N. chief’s comments may have been based on Wednesday’s findings that five Western countries—the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Norway—have significantly scaled up oil and gas licensing this year, despite their international climate commitments. The findings came from an analysis of industry data conducted by the International Institute for Sustainable Development and published in The Guardian.
The analysis found that the five countries together have licensed or plan to license projects in 2024 that will emit 11.9 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions over their lifetimes. The news renewed discussions about whether countries such as the U.S., though they claim to be climate leaders, should be considered “petrostates“—a contemptuous term formerly reserved for countries such as Saudi Arabia and Russia.
Guterres has long been outspoken on the issue of fossil fuels. At the COP28 U.N. climate change summit in Dubai last year, he spoke forcefully about the need for phasing them out and meeting the 1.5°C target set in the Paris agreement.
“The 1.5°C limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels,” he said. “Not reduce. Not abate. Phase out—with a clear timeframe aligned with 1.5°C.”
The loophole-ridden deal that emerged from Dubai didn’t match Guterres’ ambitions, but did call for “transitioning away from fossil fuels.”
His call to action on Thursday included a four-part plan for dealing with extreme heat: caring for the most vulnerable, protecting workers, boosting resilience, and limiting further temperature rise by phasing out fossil fuels and scaling up renewables.
Leaders across the board must wake up and step up their #ClimateAction.
That means governments – especially #G20 countries – as well as the private sector, cities and regions.
They must #ActNow as though our future depends on it – because it does.
Guterres warned that 70% of the global workforce—over 2.4 billion people—is at substantial risk of experiencing extreme heat, and the situation is especially dire for workers in Africa and the Middle East. He called for strong laws to protect workers, which some countries are enacting. The Biden administration recently moved to set the first national workplace heat safety protections in the U.S.
Republican vice presidential nominee and U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) speaks at a campaign rally at Radford University on July 22, 2024 in Radford, Virginia. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Vance “meant no disrespect to cats, but he did mean to demean women and still holds the view in 2024 that they should be punished for not having children.”
After days of condemnation from critics including actress Jennifer Aniston and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, U.S. Sen. JD Vance was given the opportunity on Thursday to clarify his remarks from 2021 in which he said the Democratic Party was run by “childless cat ladies.”
Instead, the Ohio Republican and running mate of former President Donald Trump assured SiriusXM host Megyn Kelly on “The Megyn Kelly Show” that while he has “nothing against cats,” he meant what he said in terms of “the substance” of his argument.
Vance made it clear, said Aaron Fritschner, deputy chief of staff for Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), “that he meant no disrespect to cats, but he did mean to demean women and still holds the view in 2024 that they should be punished for not having children.”
The comments in question were made by Vance to then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson when Vance was running for the Senate.
Calling out Buttigieg—who, the secretary disclosed this week, was struggling at the time to adopt a child with his husband—and Vice President Kamala Harris, a stepmother of two and the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Vance said people without biological children “don’t really have a direct stake in” the future of the country and therefore shouldn’t hold higher office.
In separate remarks that same year, Vance said parents should “have more power” at the voting booth and that “if you don’t have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn’t get nearly the same voice.”
He also specifically categorized people who don’t have children as “bad” in an interview in 2021, saying the government should “reward the things that we think are good” and “punish the things that we think are bad,” with people taxed at a lower rate if they have children.
While a spokesperson for Vance told ABC News that the senator’s taxation proposal was “basically no different” than the child tax credit supported by the Democratic Party, Democrats who have pushed for the credit have heralded its proven ability to slash child poverty rates and help families afford groceries, childcare, and other essentials, rather than viewing the tax savings as a way to reward people for procreating.
In his interview with Kelly on Thursday, Vance attempted to pivot away from his own comments, saying his point was to criticize “the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child” and claiming without evidence that the Harris campaign had “come out against the child tax credit”—a signature policy of the Biden-Harris administration.
“I’m proud to stand for parents and I hope that parents out there recognize that I’m a guy who wants to fight for you,” said Vance. “The Democrats, in the past five, 10 years, Megyn, they have become anti-family. It’s built into their policy, it’s built into the way they talk about parents and children. I don’t think we should back down from it, I think we should be honest about the problem.”
Vance and Kelly went on to lament the anxiety “hardcore environmentalists” and progressive lawmakers such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have expressed about the damage fossil fuel extraction is doing the planet, accusing them of pushing people to forgo having families—but said nothing about Republican policies that have made child-rearing less accessible.
In recent years, the entire Republican caucus in Congress was joined by conservative then-Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia in blocking the extension of the enhanced child tax credit, which had been credited with cutting the national child poverty rate in half. Republicans also allowed a pandemic-era universal school meal program to expire, while several Democratic-led states have passed state-level programs to ensure all children can have meals at school, regardless of their family’s income.
Under Republican abortion bans, numerous stories have cropped up of pregnant people who have been forced to carry pregnancies to term despite finding out that their fetuses had fatal abnormalities and would die soon after birth—as have stories of children who were forced to give birth or had to cross state lines in order to get abortion care.
As with his position that nonparents should be “punished” for not having children, “who else does ‘pro-child/family’ Vance think should ‘face consequences and reality’ by way of curtailing choices, rights, and freedoms?” asked writer Alheli Picazo. “Women and girls who become pregnant through rape/incest.”
University of North Carolina law professor Carissa Byrne Hessick said that one could test “empirically” Vance’s claim that Democratic policies are anti-family.
“But I haven’t heard the GOP talk much about things that would help my family and my kids,” she said, “like reducing childcare and tuition costs.”
Emmanuel Macron continues to stall the post-election process in France, ignoring the New Popular Front’s calls to nominate their prime ministerial candidate
Nearly a month after the snap election in France, President Emmanuel Macron continues to delay recognizing the electoral victory of the left-progressive alliance New Popular Front (NFP). Following extensive consultations, the NFP recently named Lucie Castets as their prime ministerial candidate, urging Macron to formally nominate her. Instead, Macron has called for a “political pause” until mid-August, apparently to allow the nation to focus on the Olympic Games.
Castets, a 37-year-old expert in tax evasion and fraud intelligence, expressed her determination to see the nomination through. Even more than her economic expertise, her dedication to public services and opposition to privatization make her a logical choice for the NFP. Reacting to the NFP nomination, she stated that she would fully implement the coalition’s program of rupture, ending cuts imposed by Macron over the years.
As a member of the collective Our Public Services, Castets analyzed parties’ programs during the last election. Reflecting on the materials collected throughout this process, she vocally criticized the far-right National Assembly, debunking claims that their program would benefit the working class. On the contrary, the collective’s report indicated that the course would remain largely unchanged by what was set by Macron’s liberals. This would lead to further reductions in access to essential services and cuts targeting migrants in particular.
Castets also said she aims to repeal Macron’s controversial pension reform. NFP parliamentarians have already submitted a bill to reverse the rising retirement age, in line with announcements made during the election campaign.
Despite having the largest number of representatives in the National Assembly, the NFP faces challenges to consolidate their power as President Macron continues to exercise his executive power to block them. The president has not only avoided recognizing the left’s victory and kept former PM Gabriel Attal in a caretaker role while calling for the “political pause,” but Macron’s liberals also collaborated with the right-wing Republicans to re-elect Yaël Braun-Pivet as president of the National Assembly, a move criticized by progressive circles. However, most new parliamentary functionaries are from the NFP, giving the coalition significant leverage for future discussions.
France Unbowed criticized Macron for “confiscating” democracy. “The theft of democracy we are witnessing risks putting into power a hard-right coalition aligned with the Macronists, paving the way for the National Rally and resulting in deeply antisocial policies that are hostile to workers and trade unions,” the party wrote following Macron’s refusal to nominate Castets.
