Trump DECLARES WAR On Democracy – This Is Not A Drill
Thousands protest Trump in London, voice support for Gaza
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Thousands of demonstrators staged a rally in London on Wednesday to protest US President Donald Trump while chanting pro-Palestine slogans in solidarity with the Gaza Strip
Thousands of demonstrators staged a rally in London on Wednesday to protest US President Donald Trump while chanting pro-Palestine slogans in solidarity with the Gaza Strip, Anadolu reports.
Protesters gathered at Portland Place upon a call by Stop Trump Coalition to oppose Trump’s state visit to the UK and his policies on immigration, climate change and particularly his stance on Gaza.
Carrying various signs, the crowd criticized the British government for the state visit and continued Israeli attacks on Gaza.
Some of the signs read: “Migrants welcome, Trump not welcome” and “No to racism, no to Trump.”
Demonstrators later held a march toward Parliament Square to attend the main rally.
“Donald Trump, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide,” and “Keir Starmer, shame on you” were chanted by demonstrators.
The US president and first lady Melania Trump landed in London late Tuesday for an unprecedented second state visit to Britain.
READ: Thousands in London call for arrest of Israeli president during UK visit
The visit came after an invitation extended by King Charles in February during Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s visit to Washington.
It has already been dubbed “historic” and “unprecedented” as Trump became the first elected political leader in modern times to be hosted for two state visits by a British monarch.
The US president and first lady will be hosted by Charles at Windsor Castle for two days of events.
Trump and Starmer will meet Thursday at Chequers, the official country residence of the UK’s prime minister.
On Tuesday, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory confirmed that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.
The commission’s report concluded that Israel committed four of the five acts of genocide defined in the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”
The Israeli army has killed almost 65,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, in Gaza since October 2023. The relentless bombardment has rendered the enclave uninhabitable and led to starvation and the spread of diseases.
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants last November for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
READ: Qatar, Saudi Arabia denounce Israel’s expanded ground offensive in Gaza City
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
UK Protest Group Condemns ‘Orwellian’ Arrest Over Projected Trump-Epstein Images
Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“We’re constantly told, you know, we need to see peaceful protests,” said one organizer. “Well, here’s a peaceful protest.”
The leaders of the UK-based protest group Led By Donkeys said Wednesday that four of its members remained under arrest for displaying images of US President Donald Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on the side of Windsor Castle ahead of Trump’s second state visit to the United Kingdom.
The widely available images were accompanied by a narration discussing Trump and Epstein’s friendship, as well as pictures of Epstein’s victims, police reports, and news reports about the case.
Trump began his visit, on which he’ll meet with King Charles and other members of the royal family as well as Prime Minister Keir Starmer, amid growing scrutiny of the US Department of Justice’s decision not to release files related to the Epstein case as well as of the release of a letter the president reportedly sent to Epstein containing dialogue between the two men about a “wonderful secret” they shared.
The White House has denied the letter is authentic and Trump has claimed he was unaware of Epstein’s criminal activities during his friendship with him.
Police said they arrested the four Led by Donkeys members on suspicion of “malicious communications” after they displayed the “unauthorized projection.”
A spokesperson for Led By Donkeys told The Guardianthe group has previously displayed “25 or 30 projections” without organizers being arrested.
“Often the police come along and we have a chat to them, and they even have a laugh with us and occasionally tell us to not do it,” the spokesperson said. “But no one’s ever been arrested before, so it is ridiculous that four of our guys have been arrested for malicious communications.”
“Forgive the cliche, but it is rather Orwellian for a piece of journalism, which raises questions about our guest’s relationship with America’s most notorious child sex trafficker, to lead to arrests,” they added.
King Charles’ brother, Prince Andrew, has also been accused of sexually abusing teenage girls during his friendship with Epstein. He settled out of court with Virginia Giuffre, who sued him for allegedly abusing her, in 2022, after being stripped of his royal patronages.
While the projection was taken down and the protesters detained, Trump is unlikely to escape condemnation from members of the British public during his visit.
The group Everyone Hates Elon, which has previously displayed messages denouncing billionaire Trump ally and megadonor Elon Musk at bus stops around London, also unfurled a banner at Windsor Castle showing a picture of Trump and Epstein.
Protesters gathered in London Wednesday for a “Trump Not Welcome” march from Portland Place to Parliament Square, with some displaying the “Trump baby balloon” that became familiar after the president’s first official visit to the UK in 2018, as well as balloons showing a caricature of Vice President JD Vance.
Demonstrators carried signs reading, “No to racism” and “Stop arming Israel,” among other slogans.
“We do not want our government to trade away our democracy and decency,” Zoe Gardner, a spokesperson for the Stop Trump Coalition, told The Washington Post Wednesday.
A rallygoer named Alena Ivanova told the outlet that “there’s a reason” Trump is spending much of his visit outside of the nation’s capital, meeting with Starmer at his country estate and staying at Windsor Castle.
“People on the streets will say what our government seems unable to: Donald Trump is not welcome here,” said Ivanova.
Observers in the UK view the invitation for a state visit as an attempt to appeal to the president as he threatens the country with tariffs and an end to aid for Ukraine.
“We want our government to show some backbone,” Gardner told the BBC, “and have a little bit of pride and represent that huge feeling of disgust at Donald Trump’s politics in the UK.”
The Led By Donkeys spokesperson told The Guardian that the arrest of the four organizers “says a lot more about the policing of Trump’s visit than it does about what we did.”
More than 1,600 police officers have been deployed to respond to protests while Trump is in the UK.
“We’re constantly told, you know, we need to see peaceful protests. Well, here’s a peaceful protest,” said the spokesperson. “We projected a piece of journalism on to a wall and now people have been arrested for malicious communications.”
Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
1,000+ Experts Rip EPA for ‘Reckless Dismissal of Established Climate Science’
Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Repealing the endangerment finding, they wrote, “is contrary to science and the public interest.”
More than 1,000 scientists and other experts on Tuesday sent a letter to US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin explaining why they “strenuously object” to his effort to repeal the EPA’s 2009 “endangerment finding,” which has enabled federal climate regulations over the past 15 years.
Amid mounting fears that he would take such action, Zeldin in late July unveiled the rule to rescind the landmark legal opinion that greenhouse gases endanger public health and the welfare of the American people—part of Republican President Donald Trump’s broader pro-polluter agenda.
“As climate scientists, public health experts, and economists, we can attest to the indisputable scientific evidence of human-caused climate change, its harmful impacts on people’s health and well-being, and the devastating costs it is imposing on communities across the nation and around the world,” states the new letter, organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists. “This explicit attempt to undermine or weaken these findings, as well as the critical regulations linked to them, is contrary to science and the public interest.”
“We also strongly oppose the EPA’s reckless dismissal of established climate science as part of its proposal to repeal the endangerment finding, including the agency’s heavy reliance on an unscientific study commissioned by the Department of Energy. This report is rife with inaccuracies, deliberately cherry-picks and mischaracterizes data, and has not undergone a rigorous scientific review process,” the letter continues, echoing an expert review of the government report from earlier this month.
Citing major US and global analyses, along with thousands of independent, peer-reviewed scientific studies, the letter stresses that “the scientific evidence on human-caused climate change and its consequences was unequivocal in 2009 and, since that time, has become even more dire and compelling.”
It says that “based on the best available science,” scientists know:
- Climate change poses severe harms to human health and well-being;
- Climate change is clearly increasing the likelihood of extreme events; and
- The economic toll of climate change is rising.
Harms to human health and well-being include higher rates of heat-related deaths, increased spread of some infectious diseases, and decreased food and water safety due to climate-fueled extreme weather events, the letter says. It also highlights that, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), “billion-dollar disasters in the United States are on the rise, driven by a combination of climate factors and increased development in disaster-prone areas.”
Despite such findings, the Trump administration is making various moves to boost the planet-wrecking fossil fuel industry and the president withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement—again—when he returned to office in January. Parties to the 2015 climate agreement aim to limit global temperature rise this century to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.
“The world stands on the cusp of breaching the 1.5°C (2.7°F) mark on a long-term basis, the global average temperature increase above preindustrial levels that scientists have long warned about,” the experts noted Tuesday. “Communities across the nation are already dealing with devastating and costly climate impacts, that are set to worsen as global warming accelerates. Humanity’s window to act to stave off some of the worst impacts of climate change is fast closing; any further delay is harmful and costly.”
“We urge you to stop dismantling critical climate regulations and evading EPA’s responsibility by pushing disinformation about climate science and impacts,” they concluded. “Instead, we call on you to act with urgency to help address this pressing challenge by limiting heat-trapping emissions. People across the nation are relying on the EPA to fulfill its mission to protect public health and the environment.”
Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
- In ‘Giant Gift’ to Big Oil, EPA to Repeal Climate Finding That Underpins Regulations ›
- Ignoring ‘Science and the Law,’ Trump EPA Readies Chainsaw for Key Climate Finding ›
- ‘Exceptionally Dangerous’: Trump EPA Targets Endangerment Finding That Enables Climate Rules ›
- Any Trump EPA Attempt to Stop Regulating Climate Pollution Won’t Stand up to the Facts ›
- Will the EPA’s Zeldin Uphold His Agency’s Mission or Reverse the Endangerment Finding? ›