Activist group Youth Demand protest at Keir Starmer’s home
Protesters use children’s shoes to make powerful statement at Keir Starmer’s home
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.
Record hot March caps warmest 12 months on record — report
https://www.dw.com/en/record-hot-march-caps-warmest-12-months-on-record-report/a-68772772
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.
Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said on Tuesday that March 2024 was the warmest on record, making it the tenth consecutive month to break heat records.
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.
https://www.dw.com/en/record-hot-march-caps-warmest-12-months-on-record-report/a-68772772
Earth, we have a problem
The plan is to feature Roger Hallam and myself in an audio podcast ‘Talking about a Revolution’ on 1 May 2024 7pm BST (GMT +1). Part of the advice for preparing for a podcast or interview is “Read the book” i.e. you’re expected to read the book if they’ve published one. I’ve been following that advice and here’s a small section of Roger Hallam’s book ‘COMMON SENSE FOR THE 21st CENTURY’ (2019).
[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.