Yearly Archives: 2024

All the pesky, woke scientists and experts against Rishi Sunak’s catastrophic oil and gas bill

Spread the love

https://www.bigissue.com/news/environment/rishi-sunak-oil-gas-bill-science-north-sea/


The government says new oil and gas projects will leave the country less reliant on foreign energy. Image: Unsplash

MPs will vote on Rishi Sunak’s Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill. But the scientific opposition is already overwhelming

…

New oil and gas fields are incompatible with the 1.5C threshold

“No new oil and gas development is possible if the world is to stay with the Paris Agreement temperature limits,” said the International Institute for Sustainable Development last year.

“Governments should stop awarding licences and permits to explore for or develop new oil and gas fields or coal mines, or other long-term infrastructure to produce, transport, or consume fossil fuels,” the report said, highlighting what needs to be done to stay within 1.5C threshold of warming.

Every country must stop licensing new oil and gas, says the head of the UN

“Every country must be part of the solution,” said UN secretary general António Guterres after the release of last year’s IPCC report. “In short, our world needs climate action on all fronts – everything, everywhere, all at once.”

As part of this action, Guterres made “ceasing all licensing or funding of new oil and gas” a fundamental part of the “Acceleration Agenda” – and encouraged all nations to sign up.

New investments in oil and gas show governments aren’t serious about the climate crisis

In 2021, the International Energy Agency said new oil and gas should stop that year. Three years on, Rishi Sunak’s government is planning to go full steam ahead.

“If governments are serious about the climate crisis, there can be no new investments in oil, gas and coal, from now – from this year,” IEA director Fatih Birol told the Guardian at the time.

Fresh fossil fuel investments ‘undermine’ UK leadership on climate change

Successive governments have claimed the UK is a leader in climate change. But in a March 2023 letter from 700 UK-based experts, Rishi Sunak was warned: ”If the UK allows any new development of oil and gas fields, it will severely undermine those claims of leadership by contributing to further oversupply of fossil fuels, and making it more difficult for the world to limit warming to 1.5°C”

…

https://www.bigissue.com/news/environment/rishi-sunak-oil-gas-bill-science-north-sea/

Continue ReadingAll the pesky, woke scientists and experts against Rishi Sunak’s catastrophic oil and gas bill

UK accused of hypocrisy in not backing claim of genocide in Gaza before ICJ

Spread the love

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2024/jan/07/uk-accused-of-hypocrisy-in-not-backing-claim-of-genocide-in-gaza-before-icj

Palestinians inspect the damage caused by an Israeli airstrike on Khan Younis on 7 January. Photograph: Mohammed Dahman/AP

Experts say submission to international court of justice on Myanmar six weeks ago makes stance ‘wholly disingenuous’

The UK is facing accusations of double standards after formally submitting detailed legal arguments to the international court of justice in The Hague six weeks ago to support claims that Myanmar committed genocide against the Rohingya ethnic group through its mass mistreatment of children and systematically depriving people of their homes and food.

…

Tayab Ali, the head of international law at Bindmans, said the significance of the UK’s submission on Myanmar “lay in showing the importance the UK attaches to adherence to the [UN] Genocide Convention and in showing the UK took a wide, and not a narrow, definition of acts of genocide, and the intent to commit genocide. It also made clear that the court should take into account risks to life after a ceasefire caused by disabilities, inability to reside in their homes and wider injustices.

“It would be wholly disingenuous if the UK, six week after advancing such a significant and broad definition of genocide in the case of Myanmar, now adopts a narrow one in the case of Israel.”

South Africa is likely to highlight the UK’s arguments about Myanmar, submitted in conjunction with Canada, Germany, Denmark, France and the Netherlands, when it makes its high-stakes accusation of genocide against Israel.

…

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2024/jan/07/uk-accused-of-hypocrisy-in-not-backing-claim-of-genocide-in-gaza-before-icj

Continue ReadingUK accused of hypocrisy in not backing claim of genocide in Gaza before ICJ

Fury after former Labour MP threatens ‘hundreds of years of the right to protest’

Spread the love

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/fury-after-former-labour-mp-threatens-hundreds-of-years-of-the-right-to-protest

Protesters block Westminster Bridge during a Free Palestine Coalition demonstration in central London, January 6, 2024

PALESTINE campaigners responded with fury today after peer and former Labour MP John Woodcock said protest organisers should foot the bill for policing their demonstrations.

As thousands once again thronged the streets of towns and cities across Britain demanding an end to the slaughter in Gaza, Mr Woodcock, now known as Lord Walney, the government’s independent adviser on “political violence and disruption,” made the call for police costs to be dumped on organisers in a review carried out for the Home Office.

He specifically targeted protests by Palestine supporters who have campaigned tirelessly against Israel’s murderous actions for three months.

The Stop the War Coalition (StWC) accused Lord Walney of attempting to end “hundreds of years of the right to protest” and said it was the police themselves who chose to mobilise thousands of officers for the protests.

Stop the War co-convener Lindsey German told the Morning Star: “This is just the latest scheme to stop the demonstrations.

“The government, the police and Lord Whatever should be clear that the demonstrations will continue as part of our democratic rights.

“We completely reject the idea that we should be paying for the police. We do not ask the police to turn out. We police our demonstrations ourselves.”

…

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/fury-after-former-labour-mp-threatens-hundreds-of-years-of-the-right-to-protest

Morning Star: Labour turncoat Woodcock wants to ban protest by the back door

BRITISH democracy is under attack. The threat comes not from foreign bogeymen but from our own overbearing state.

Lord Walney — as hard-right ex-Labour MP John Woodcock renamed himself after his ennoblement for services against Jeremy Corbyn — wants to ban protests, at least if they aren’t bankrolled by the rich.

The demand that protest organisers meet the cost of policing demonstrations is as dangerous as it is dishonest.

Woodcock claims “disorder” at Palestine demos justifies billing the organisers.

In fact the mass peace demonstrations (which Woodcock, who called on the public to vote for Boris Johnson in 2019 to dash prospects of a socialist government, terms “anti-Israel marches”) have been strikingly peaceful.

Clashes with police, where they have occurred at all, have taken place away from the main demonstrations and certainly beyond the reach of the organisers’ stewards. They have been rare, with most arrests taking place for allegedly hateful speech or signage rather than violence or vandalism.

It adds insult to injury that Lord Walney advises the Home Office to start charging people to protest when the most serious recent disorder on our streets featured far-right hooligans incited to mob the Cenotaph on November 11 by the then home secretary herself.

…

Palestine demos are huge because Westminster is at loggerheads with the people it claims to represent. There is a gulf between the government and opposition’s endorsement of Israel’s murderous war and the popular demand for peace.

…

Woodcock was made a lord precisely for betraying his party to help defeat that movement, something Lord Rooker (another ex-Labour MP) described as a “national service.” He was tasked by the serial liar he backed for PM with advising the British state on how to stop such movements arising again.

…

Morning Star: Labour turncoat Woodcock wants to ban protest by the back door

Image of Fascists Mussolini and Hitler
Woodcock gets saluted by Fascists. Image of Fascists Mussolini and Hitler

Continue ReadingFury after former Labour MP threatens ‘hundreds of years of the right to protest’

Global Muslim lawyer group condemns war crimes in Gaza and calls on governments to stop the sale of weapons to warring parties

Spread the love

https://leftfootforward.org/2024/01/global-muslim-lawyer-group-condemns-war-crimes-in-gaza-and-calls-on-governments-to-stop-the-sale-of-weapons-to-warring-parties/

IAMLA joins UN agencies, UN experts and other lawyers in expressing deep concern that serious violations of international law are being committed in the Middle East conflict.

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Lawyers Association (IAMLA), a global body comprising of more than 900 lawyers, former judges, and legal academics, has condemned the mass killing of innocent civilians in the ongoing conflict between Hamas and Israel.

As part of the Voices for Peace campaign, an initiative to raise voices on behalf of the oppressed and encourage world peace, the Muslim lawyers sent a letter to world leaders in December. The letter calls on all states to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza and warns of serious violations of international law in the commission of war crimes in the conflict. The group says it condemns the ‘abhorrent murder and hostage-taking of innocent civilians by Hamas forces on 07 October as unlawful and contrary to the teachings of Islam.’

They continue how the violations of international law by Hamas forces do not justify violations by Israeli forces.

“We are horrified by the grossly disproportionate bombardment of Gaza by Israeli forces which has killed more than 20,000 people, about 70% of whom are said to be women and children,” the lawyers continue. 

…

https://leftfootforward.org/2024/01/global-muslim-lawyer-group-condemns-war-crimes-in-gaza-and-calls-on-governments-to-stop-the-sale-of-weapons-to-warring-parties/

Continue ReadingGlobal Muslim lawyer group condemns war crimes in Gaza and calls on governments to stop the sale of weapons to warring parties

Tory MP predicts ‘obliteration’ for his party at the general election after leaving country in ‘worse state since 2010’

Spread the love

https://leftfootforward.org/2024/01/tory-mp-predicts-obliteration-for-his-party-at-the-general-election-after-leaving-country-in-worse-state-since-2010/

Despite Rishi Sunak’s attempts to rally his troops behind his plan and belief that there is a narrow path to victory, one Tory backbencher has candidly admitted that the Tories face ‘obliteration’ at the next general election.

Danny Kruger, the MP for Devizes, and founder of the New Conservatives Group, told a private event of Tory members organised by the thinktank ResPublica last October that the Tories had left the country ‘sadder, less united and less Conservative than we found it.”

The Guardian reported that he told the meeting: “The narrative that the public has now firmly adopted – that over 13 years things have got worse – is one we just have to acknowledge and admit.”

He added: “Some things have been done right and well. The free school movement that Michael Gove oversaw, and universal credit – and Brexit, even though it was in the teeth of the Tory party hierarchy itself, and mismanaged – nevertheless Brexit will be the great standing achievement of our time in office.

…

https://leftfootforward.org/2024/01/tory-mp-predicts-obliteration-for-his-party-at-the-general-election-after-leaving-country-in-worse-state-since-2010/

Continue ReadingTory MP predicts ‘obliteration’ for his party at the general election after leaving country in ‘worse state since 2010’