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‘For health’s sake- Just Stop Oil!’- Health professionals paint replicated dinosaur, demanding an end to new oil and gas

Health Professionals associated with Just Stop Oil protests at the Natural History Museum 26 Oct 2023.
Health Professionals associated with Just Stop Oil protests at the Natural History Museum 26 Oct 2023.

Two senior medical professionals have painted a dinosaur at the Natural History Museum in London. They are demanding the government halt all new oil and gas projects in the UK and are calling on health professionals and the public to march in London from the 30th October to campaign for this.

This afternoon Will Stableforth, a consultant gastroenterologist and Steve Fay, a senior physiotherapist, used a children’s powder-paint fountain to cover a reproduction Titanosaur skeleton in orange cornstarch. The two then displayed a banner which read ‘For health’s sake- Just Stop Oil.’ The two then sat and waited for police to arrive. Fifteen officers have attended the scene and arrested both men.

Speaking before the action, Will Stableforth from Truro, in Cornwall, said

“As an NHS medical consultant I’ve spent many years looking after patients with diseases which, at their root, are caused by fossil fuels. I have done everything legal I can to get our message across. Most of that has been ineffective; so it’s time to break the law. I cannot see another way at this time.”

“The climate crisis is a healthcare emergency for every single one of us. We demand an end to any new fossil fuels and immediate climate action prioritising public health rather than big business.”

This morning, over 200 health journals from around the world, have urged the World Health Organization to declare the deadly climate and nature crises as a global health emergency. The journals have come together to simultaneously publish an editorial calling on world leaders and health professionals to treat the climate and and nature crises as one indivisible crisis that must be tackled together in order to preserve health and avoid catastrophe.

Just Stop Oil

Continue Reading‘For health’s sake- Just Stop Oil!’- Health professionals paint replicated dinosaur, demanding an end to new oil and gas

Reeves’s new book lifts whole Wikipedia sections

Rachel Reeves engages in a New Labour tradition of plaguarism in her book. Tony ‘c********r’ Blair and Alastair Campbell engaged in huge plaguarism in drafting the Dodgy dossier and were also found out in short order.

Original article republished from the Skwawkbox.

Shadow Chancellor denies plagiarism, but at least twenty sections are identical to Wikipedia entries or slightly reworded

Rachel Reeves seriously plaguarised wikipedia in her book. Image thanks to the Skwawkbox.
Rachel Reeves seriously plaguarised wikipedia in her book. Image thanks to the Skwawkbox.

Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s new book is littered with examples of text lifted exactly, or very nearly, from Wikipedia, according to the Financial Times.

The paper identified at least twenty examples, with some exact and others only slightly modified, including this lengthy passage:

Rachel Reeves seriously plaguarises wikipedia. Image thanks to The Skwawkbox.
Rachel Reeves seriously plaguarises wikipedia. Image thanks to The Skwawkbox.

Ironically, a theme of the book is others taking credit for the work of women.

The publisher admitted that sections had been included without modification, but ‘allies’ of Reeves denied plagiarism. Her spokesperson said to the FT:

We strongly refute the accusation that has been put to us by this newspaper. These were inadvertent mistakes and will be rectified in future reprints.

Original article republished from the Skwawkbox.

Continue ReadingReeves’s new book lifts whole Wikipedia sections

Braverman faces fresh legal challenge over treatment of asylum seekers

image of Home Secretary Suella 'Sue-Ellen' Braverman
image of Home Secretary Suella ‘Sue-Ellen’ Braverman

Original article by Nandini Archer republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Refugee charity Care4Calais is seeking to sue the government for ‘segregating’ asylum seekers at RAF Wethersfield

Suella Braverman faces a fresh legal challenge over the government’s treatment of asylum seekers held at a former RAF base that has been compared to “a military-style prison camp”.

Refugee charity Care4Calais is seeking to sue the government over its policy of warehousing asylum seekers at RAF Wethersfield, which it claims amounts to a form of “segregation” and “quasi detention”.

The legal challenge comes weeks after asylum seekers at Wethersfield – a remote, 800-acre site in Essex, ringed by security fences, guards and CCTV – told openDemocracy they had been “locked up” in solitary confinement for complaining of depression.

In a private press briefing attended by openDemocracy today, Care4Calais said it is bringing the legal challenge after hearing testimonies from its clients living at the barracks.

A pre-action protocol letter issued by lawyers representing the charity accuses the home secretary of failing to fulfil her obligations of “ensuring an adequate standard of living and health for asylum seekers” under the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999.

The letter states that “measures short of 24-hour physical confinement, where they substantively deprive a person of their liberty, may amount to detention at common law.”

Ali*, 24, who escaped the Taliban earlier this year, told openDemocracy that staff at Wethersfield locked him up in a room for two days after he complained that being held there was causing him to be depressed. “They’ve done this to me twice,” he said, adding that it has “happened to other people too”.

He continued: “If they go and tell [staff] they don’t feel well or they have depression… they lock them in a room for 48 hours and make them quarantine – and they’re not allowed out.  

“Wethersfield is like a prison. It doesn’t feel like we’re in any kind of home or hotel room – we’ve just been thrown into a military-style prison camp.”

Two other men living at the barracks told this website of “prison-like conditions” that are affecting their mental health. 

Braverman is accused of separating “asylum seekers, all or most of whom are non-British, and many of whom are also from ethnic minorities or non-white, from the wider UK population”.

Care4Calais’ legal challenge also raises the absence of an effective screening process for asylum seekers due to be accommodated at Wethersfield. 

Survivors of torture and modern slavery, or those who suffer from serious mental health conditions, are routinely sent to the barracks, the charity said, but are transferred to hotels when their cases are individually raised in individual pre-action protocol letters.

In its press briefing today, Care4Calais said this has happened up to 20 times in the past few months. 

Wethersfield is already the subject of a legal challenge from Braintree District Council, which objects to the Home Office’s plans to expand the site’s capacity. A High Court case brought by the council on 31 October will also hear evidence about the inappropriate use of the RAF base Scampton in Lincolnshire – which is due to open in weeks and house up to 2,000 men.

The government has until 7 November to respond to the letter, before proceedings for a full judicial review are initiated. 

Original article by Nandini Archer republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Image quoting Suella 'Sue-Ellen' Braverman reads ‘Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati’.
Image quoting Suella ‘Sue-Ellen’ Braverman reads ‘Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati’.
Continue ReadingBraverman faces fresh legal challenge over treatment of asylum seekers

Just Stop Oil deliver an Open Letter to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley

Just Stop Oil delivers an open letter to the Metropolitan Police urging them to prosecute politician climate criminals and to investigate others. Image: Just Stop Oil assumed.
Just Stop Oil delivers an open letter to the Metropolitan Police urging them to prosecute politician climate criminals and to investigate others. Image: Just Stop Oil assumed.

Climate activist group Just Stop Oil have delivered an open letter to the Metropolitan Police calling for the prosecution of politician climate criminals.

[email protected]
26th October 2023

Dear Sir Mark Rowley,

Just Stop Oil supporters will remain in civil resistance until you prosecute the criminals responsible for crimes against humanity and acts of genocide

The facts are clear. New oil and gas licensing in 2023 will kill hundreds of millions of people, adding to the already mounting global death toll from climate breakdown. It will push our climate, oceans and the living world beyond the point of no return, triggering runaway global heating and setting in motion an unstoppable process of global societal collapse. To know these facts and still encourage drilling for UK new oil and gas is reckless and immoral. There can be no greater crime. 

Of course, the politicians planning to max out the UK’s oil and gas reserves are not directly seeking mass death, neither are those executives signing off on plans to drill for new oil and gas or finance and insure new oil exploration. The primary aim of their support for fossil fuels is profit and power. To them, it’s an inconvenient side effect that millions and eventually billions of people will die when carbon emissions from new oil and gas cause heat waves, drought and crop failure.

But under International Criminal Law, this is no mere side effect: it is murder by oblique intent. Under Article 30 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, death or harm doesn’t have to be a primary intention for someone to be held criminally responsible. They simply have to be ‘aware that it will occur in the ordinary course of events’.

Since 2021 when the International Energy Agency (“IEA”) declared that there could be no new oil, gas or coal if we want an even chance of limiting global temperature rise in line with the Paris Agreement, it has been abundantly clear that new oil and gas will lead to mass death. 

In 2022 you received a dossier of evidence requesting you investigate and charge five top British politicians for crimes against humanity and genocide. You have declined to do so.

We say to you now that you already have all the evidence you need to prosecute those politicians and to launch an investigation into those executives signing off on plans to drill for new oil and gas or to finance and insure new oil exploration. If you are uncertain who they are, Just Stop Oil will be publishing a list on Sunday 29th October to assist in your enquiries.

Failure to act will force Just Stop Oil into full non-compliance with the police and judicial system and we will remain in civil resistance until such time as you launch an investigation and bring charges.  

As Metropolitan Police Commissioner you promised to police “without favour or prejudice”. We are asking you now to uphold your oath and uphold the law: it is a matter of life and death.

Respectfully yours,

Just Stop Oil

Continue ReadingJust Stop Oil deliver an Open Letter to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley

Oxfam Accuses Israel of ‘Using Starvation as Weapon of War’ in Gaza

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

“Millions of civilians are being collectively punished in full view of the world,” said Oxfam International’s regional Middle East director.

The humanitarian group Oxfam International on Wednesday accused Israel of “using starvation as a weapon of war” in the besieged Gaza Strip, where hunger and thirst are growing rapidly as just a trickle of aid has been allowed to enter the territory amid the Israeli military’s relentless bombing campaign.

Citing United Nations data, Oxfam said in a statement that just 2% of the food that would have been delivered to Gaza prior to Israel’s latest assault has been able to enter the strip since October 9, when the Israeli government announced a total blockade of the strip.

International law prohibits the use of starvation as a method of warfare.

In recent days, Israel has allowed several truck convoys carrying food, drinking water, and medical supplies to reach southern Gaza through the Egyptian border, but U.N. officials said that’s nowhere near enough to meet the growing needs of Gazans, more than a million of whom have been displaced by Israeli airstrikes.

“The aid which resumed from Egypt over the weekend is a mere drop in the ocean of what is needed,” Jeremy Laurence, spokesperson for the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said Tuesday.

Oxfam noted Wednesday that “despite 62 trucks of aid being allowed to enter southern Gaza via the Rafah crossing since the weekend, only 30 contained food and in some cases, not exclusively so.”

“This amounts to just one truck every three hours and 12 minutes since Saturday,” the group said.

Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam’s regional Middle East director, said in a statement that the situation in Gaza “is nothing short of horrific.”

“Where is humanity?” she asked. “Millions of civilians are being collectively punished in full view of the world, there can be no justification for using starvation as a weapon of war. World leaders cannot continue to sit back and watch, they have an obligation to act and to act now.”

The United Nations estimates that more than 1.6 million people in Gaza—roughly 70% of the enclave’s population—are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. Brian Lander, deputy head of emergencies at the World Food Program, toldReuters earlier this week that around 465 trucks of aid per day are necessary to help desperate Gazans who have resorted to drinking sewage-contaminated water and frequently skipping meals.

At best, according to Lander, 20 trucks of aid are reaching Gaza each day.

“Every day the situation worsens… How much more are Gazans expected to endure?”

Oxfam said Wednesday that while some food items such as flour, oil, and sugar are stocked in intact Gaza warehouses, “many of them are located in Gaza City,” making it “physically impossible to deliver items due to the lack of fuel, damaged roads, and risks from airstrikes.”

Israel has been accused of bombing Gaza bakeries, where people have lined up in recent days to buy bread—sometimes waiting for hours just to get a loaf.

“The electricity blackout has also disrupted food supplies by affecting refrigeration, crop irrigation, and crop incubation devices,” the group said. “Over 15,000 farmers have lost their crop production and 10,000 livestock breeders have little access to fodder, with many having lost their animals.”

Oxfam implored the United Nations and U.N. member states to “prevent the situation from deteriorating even further” by backing an immediate cease-fire and allowing “unfettered, equitable access to the entire Gaza Strip for humanitarian aid.”

“Every day the situation worsens,” said Abi Khalil. “Children are experiencing severe trauma from the constant bombardment, their drinking water is polluted or rationed and soon families may not be able to feed them too. How much more are Gazans expected to endure?”

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingOxfam Accuses Israel of ‘Using Starvation as Weapon of War’ in Gaza