Ruairí Patterson

PhD student studying emotions and personality. Former Middle East and North Africa-focused analyst/writer. Opinions mine.

Free Palestine. No war on Iran.

[Tom Hatfield @WordMercenary]

Nobody voted to slash welfare spending in order to hand gigabucks over to defence companies. It did not win any elections, it was not in the government's manifesto, but the establishment just decided you are getting it, whether you like it or not.

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

The man who recruited Keir Starmer to the Bar and became one of his earliest legal mentors

Has criticised Keir Starmer, Yvette Cooper and Shabana Mahmood over the expansion of terrorism law

Arguing that protesters are being punished as "terrorists" for criminal damage despite terrorism never being charged, put to a jury, or proven

Any plans to to fix this @andyburnham ?

[Aydin Dikerdem @AydinDikerdem]

We are in peak Don’t Look Up era. All experiencing this unprecedented heatwave (‘the coldest summer of the rest of your life’) and yet article after article attacking Net Zero and Ed Miliband

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

Israel is still killing children in Gaza and attacking refugees in tents, and the whole of Western media is still calling this a “ceasefire.”

[Prof Zenkus @anthonyzenkus]

Columbia students were arrested, suspended and expelled for protesting this.

[Reuters @Reuters]

Israel's air and ground operations in Lebanon have hit UNESCO-listed Roman ruins in Tyre, pummeled the Mamluk-era market in Nabatieh and razed centuries-old towns along the southern border https://t.co/cVMpPSom1E

[Alex Taliadoros @AlexCTaliadoros]

You arrested a student for writing a column in her school newspaper.

[Manolo De Los Santos @manolo_realengo]

The US has seized $5.49 billion of Venezuela’s oil revenue in 2026, then offers just $150 million in earthquake aid while the UN estimates $6.7 billion in losses. It’s not relief, it’s extortion. At the same time, US has $30 billion of frozen assets while people are under rubble.

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

Left: Keir Starmer, "I'm stepping down after two years leaving the country in a better position that I found it"

Right: Police arrest an 83-year-old woman for holding a sign, after Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper proscribe a protest group, which Labour's Baron Hain said was shameful in the House of Lords

Under Starmer, the face of terrorism in the UK is elderly old women holding up signs. What a disgraceful legacy

[Novara Media @novaramedia]

A surgeon who had to fight to bring a stethoscope to Gaza blamed the mainstream media for sparse updates on the ongoing genocide.

“You don’t see very much on Gaza in the mainstream media these days,” Nizam Mamode told the BBC.

He cited the latest UN report, which documents overwhelming evidence for Israel’s systematic targeting of children in Palestine, with over 20,000 dead.

[Zarah Sultana MP @zarahsultana]

It’s not a “conflict”, it’s genocide.

Spare us this performative compassion while your government continue to enable it.

[hasanabi @hasanthehun]

one of the protestors got 30 years for carrying zines btw. they weren’t even there.

[Ruairí Patterson @RuairiPatterson]

"As the sole penholder for Sudan at the United Nations Security Council, the UK is responsible for driving international response to the conflict." And in response to intelligence of an impending enormous massacre, it chose to do - nothing.

There is no bottom to the depravity.

[Novara Media @novaramedia]

The UK could have stopped a genocidal massacre in Sudan’s El Fasher but failed to act over concerns it would anger the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a top war crimes expert has told Parliament.

Human rights investigator Nathaniel Raymond said he provided the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) with intelligence for more than two years warning that the fall of El Fasher would unleash “one of the single largest mass casualty events of the 21st century”.

With his warnings ignored, more than 60,000 people were killed when the UAE-backed Rapid Support Forces (RSF) stormed the Northern Darfur state capital last October. The UN has since said the massacre showed “hallmarks of genocide”.

Addressing parliament’s International Development Committee on Tuesday, Raymond said his team from the Yale School of Public Health believed the UK was its “best hope” for stopping the siege. But his team’s warnings were ignored despite two dozen private meetings with the office of then-foreign secretary David Lammy.

He told MPs that Lammy’s officials prioritised the government’s “economic, security, and diplomatic relationships with the UAE” above “the genocidal slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians living in El Fasher and its surrounding communities”.

As the sole penholder for Sudan at the United Nations Security Council, the UK is responsible for driving international response to the conflict.

“They told me that the UK was facing significant private pressure behind the scenes from the UAE limiting its ability to affect the situation,” Raymond told MPs.

“Direct sanctions against UAE officials, at minimum, could have been used to interdict the clandestine UAE pipeline of advanced weaponry flowing to the RSF,” he added.

A UN report published Tuesday found that the RSF is responsible for 87% of verified incidents of rape and sexual slavery in Sudan, including el-Fasher, since the outbreak of violence in 2023.

“The tragedy of El Fasher shows that advanced technology and analysis can provide leaders essential decision support information, but satellite data and computing power cannot by itself generate either political will or moral courage,” said Raymond.

[Diane Abbott @HackneyAbbott]

Whoever the next Labour leader is they will need a complete change in policy on Palestine to have any hope of winning back lost voters.

[Alex Callinicos @alexcallinicos.bsky.social @alex_callinicos]

No brief for Ed Miliband, but the fact that Unite & GMB choose amidst an unprecedented heatwave to lobby to block his appointment as chancellor because he pushes for decarbonisation is the narrowest, most unthinking of what Gramsci described as ‘economic-corporate’ politics.

[Canary @TheCanaryUK]

There are climate activists sitting in jail for warning about this.

[Ken Klippenstein @kenklippenstein]

An American just got sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for moving “Antifa” zines and there’s about 1000x as much media coverage of Trump’s reflecting pool 👍

[Kristyan Benedict @Kristyan_B_]

What justification is there for any Labour MP to still be a member of Labour Friends of Israel?

[Novara Media @novaramedia]

Greta Thunberg has warned that 40C heatwaves in the UK are “only the beginning” and says Britain’s leaders have “their heads completely buried in the sand” regarding climate change.

Her comments follow revelations that Labour ministers met fossil fuel industry lobbyists more than 500 times during the party’s first year in power, while Labour MPs took tens of thousands of pounds in donations from oil and gas lobbyists.

The activist, 23, was speaking as the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) issued a rare red heat-health alert for the first time since 2022, with temperatures forecast to reach as high as 40C later this week.

“This is what experts have been warning about for decades,” Thunberg told Metro. “This is unfortunately only the beginning.”

She added: “We know that the climate crisis is here and now, and not a faraway threat in the future, and those suffering the most are the ones who have contributed the least to cause it.”

The red alert – which indicates heat that is life-threatening for even the healthy population – covers the East and West Midlands, London, and southern and east England from 1am on Wednesday until 11pm on Thursday.

The heatwave could also disrupt transport infrastructure, food and water access, energy supplies and force businesses to close, UKHSA warned.

Thunberg said: “What is most concerning about this is not only that we continuously shatter heat records and destabilise the entire biosphere way faster than models have been predicting, but that it is not treated as the existential crisis it is in media and politics.

“The UK’s responsibility for the climate crisis cannot be overstated, still its leaders continue acting as if there was no tomorrow.”

Research by UKHSA published last year found that as well as the elderly, the very young and people with pre-existing medical conditions, people experiencing poverty, overcrowded housing or difficult economic circumstances are also at far greater risk in the heat.

Thunberg’s comments were echoed by climate scientists, including professor Friederike Otto of Imperial College London, who said politicians had failed to respond to the first red heat-health alert in 2022.

“Our first 40C day was supposed to be a wake-up call, but clearly someone hit snooze,” she said.

[Save the Children UK @savechildrenuk]

There must be full accountability for crimes against children. #StopTheWarOnChildren