Just Stop Oil paint the Teslabot 12 March 2025. Image: Jamie Lowe
Two Just Stop Oil supporters have poured orange liquid latex over an Optimus robot at the Westfield Tesla store in London yesterday. They are demanding the UK government phase out fossil fuel burning by 2030.
At around 10:15am, the pair climbed onto a podium display and poured the liquid latex over the life sized humanoid robot. They unfurled a Just Stop Oil banner and spoke:
“Shut down the fascists! The government is failing to protect our democracy from fossil fuel companies and power hungry billionaires. I will not stand by and let the climate crisis cause global food destruction, mass starvation and the collapse of civil society. Shut down the fascists.
“While the rich dream of Nazi robots and swasti-cars, what the the rest of us need is warm housing, clean affordable energy and cheap public transport. Don’t let billionaires decide your future. Lets reclaim democracy. Join us this Spring in Parliament Square as we demand an emergency plan to Just Stop Oil by 2030. Shut down the fascists!”
One of those taking action yesterday was Catherine Rennie Nash, 74, a grandmother and retired teacher from Cumbria. She said:
“Billionaire Elon Musk likes to punch down. Instead of using his wealth to help solve the climate crisis, reduce world hunger or find a cure for cancer, he is throwing hundreds of thousands of people out of work, jeopardising climate science and denying healthcare to vulnerable people. He thinks empathy is a weakness and uses his social media platform to amplify climate denial, extreme prejudice and hate. He and his billionaire pals are looking to destroy democracy and he is bringing this to the UK. If you want to fight it you better learn how to resist. Sign up for action.”
Also taking action was Nigel Fleming, 63, a grandfather and retired tax adviser from London. He said:
“Even the actuaries are saying that immediate action is required to mitigate the risks of catastrophic climate impacts occuring well before 2050. We’re talking crop failure and starvation driving mass migration and civil unrest, the loss of whole nations beneath the waves, our homes, livelihoods and pensions at risk. We don’t have time to mess around with denial and delay. We need an emergency plan to get the economy off oil and gas by 2030. So frankly, fuck Musk. Join us in Parliament Square from April to demand that Kier Starmer gets on with the job.”
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Emissions billow from the Phillips 66 refinery in Linden, New Jersey, on 6 February 2024. Photograph: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images
Donald Trump’s administration is to reconsider the official finding that greenhouse gases are harmful to public health, a move that threatens to rip apart the foundation of the US’s climate laws, amid a stunning barrage of actions to weaken or repeal a host of pollution limits upon power plants, cars and waterways.
Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an extraordinary cavalcade of pollution rule rollbacks on Wednesday, led by the announcement it would potentially scrap a landmark 2009 finding by the US government that planet-heating gases, such carbon dioxide, pose a threat to human health.
The so-called endangerment finding, which followed a supreme court ruling that the EPA could regulate greenhouse gases, provides the underpinning for all rules aimed at cutting the pollution that scientists have unequivocally found is worsening the climate crisis.
Despite the enormous and growing body of evidence of devastation caused by rising emissions, including trillions of dollars in economic costs, Trump has called the climate crisis a “hoax” and dismissed those concerned by its worsening impacts as “climate lunatics”.
Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, said the agency would reconsider the endangerment finding due to concerns that it had spawned “an agenda that throttles our industries, our mobility, and our consumer choice while benefiting adversaries overseas”.
…
Environmentalists reacted with horror to the announcement and vowed to defend the overwhelming findings of science and the US’s ability to address the climate crisis through the courts, which regularly struck down Trump’s rollbacks in his first term. “The Trump administration’s ignorance is trumped only by its malice toward the planet,” said Jason Rylander, legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.
“Come hell or high water, raging fires and deadly heatwaves, Trump and his cronies are bent on putting polluter profits ahead of people’s lives. This move won’t stand up in court. We’re going to fight it every step of the way.”
In all, the EPA issued 31 announcements within just a few hours that take aim at almost every major environmental rule designed to protect Americans’ clean air and water, as well as a livable climate.
Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Palestine Actionists blockade the entrance roadway at the research centre of Israel weapons producer Elbit Systems at Filton, Bristol. Martin Pope/Reuters
Emma, a small business-owner living in Wales, said riot police raided her home without a warrant, despite having already arrested her daughter. “I was half naked [when they came in],” she said “They seized my work laptop, and my 16-year-old’s school laptop, handcuffed me and then led me away.”
Emma was kept by the police in solitary confinement for five days. “I disappeared from my family almost a week before they released me without charge and without apology, my life and my business upside down. I was left traumatised, in prison scrubs, 150 miles from my home, feeling like an animal. [My crime] was raising a young woman with a great moral compass.”
A spokesperson for South Wales Police said: “A complaint against police has been made which remains under investigation.”
Punished without trial.
Emma’s daughter is one of over 40 political prisoners identified by campaign group Defend Our Juries who have been jailed in the UK since July. The case of the Filton 18 has become emblematic of the UK’s increasingly repressive relationship with political activism. Advocates for the activists say the group is effectively being punished through the UK government’s abuse of counter-terrorism measures in a desperate bid to deter Palestine Action from targeting Elbit.
The controversy has reached parliament. In a Westminster Hall debate in December, John McDonnell MP made a rare, impassioned intervention on the Filton 18’s behalf, saying: “A number of them most probably will be proved innocent, but they’ll have served nearly two years in prison – for what? For trying to do what we’re failing to do – preventing this government supplying arms to a regime that’s killing children.”
In November, United Nations observers wrote to the head of the UK Mission to the UN in Geneva, Simon Manley, about the case. The activists appear to have been arrested under counter-terrorism legislation “for conduct that appears to be in the nature of ordinary criminal offences and does not appear to be genuinely ‘terrorist’ according to international standards”, the observers said. In late January, the government responded saying it would not be appropriate to comment while criminal proceedings are ongoing.
The measures taken against the Filton 18 are an escalation from the British state, especially with regards to Palestine Action. For four years, actions by those associated with the group were prosecuted using non-terrorism related charges, meaning they were released on bail before their trial. “[But now that] they’re being tagged and held in remand in connection to terrorism, suddenly the courts are very cautious of giving bail,” said Simon Pook, a lawyer at Robert Lizar, the firm defending the Filton 18. Pook spoke with Novara Media in general terms, not specifically about the Filton 18.
“When people are arrested under terrorist legislation, they are held in a remand space that is separate from the standard criminal cell. It’s very sterile and intentionally isolating, detaining you in confinement for up to seven days in what I view to be an immensely tortured position,” said Pook.
…
For Pook, there’s a concerning continuity between the overzealous anti-protest laws brought in by the previous Tory administration and the current Labour one. “Our civil liberties are in grave danger under the current process that is labelling activist groups as terrorist suspects, as first rolled out by the Conservatives and now Labour,” he said.
While the Filton 18 languish in prison being treated like terrorists, they will not be charged for terrorism, per se. The CPS intends instead to argue a “link with terrorism”. This loose “link with terrorism” charge is a new development in the UK’s legal landscape, but one that echoes the mistreatment of the Irish community in the 70s, 80s and 90s. “It’s a very chilling moment,” said Pook.
“I remember when the UK government called the Irish a ‘suspect community’. They were labelled as terrorists through similar processes we’re seeing today, detained at airports and ferry ports under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The UK government is moving us to the point where activists are suspects, criminalising the rights of protest. This causes me grave concern.”
Pook also points to the lobbying power of the arms and fossil fuel industries – and the geopolitical interests attached to those mammoth sectors. “If the government wants those industries to develop, they’ve got to curtail opposition to it.”
Freedom of Information disclosures show that in recent years, Elbit held multiple meetings and conversations with UK ministers and the attorney general’s office (AGO), which oversees the CPS. (The AGO told Novara Media: “We do not provide a running commentary on who the AGO holds meetings with or how many.”)
Keir Starmer with Home Secretary Yvette Cooper. (Photo: Benjamin Cremel / Alamy)
DECLASSIFIED UK Exclusive: Home Office met with Elbit Systems amid crackdown on Palestine Action, documents reveal.
Keir Starmer’s government held a private meeting with Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons company, Declassified has found.
The meeting occurred in December 2024 and was attended by three representatives from Elbit Systems and three officials from Yvette Cooper’s Home Office.
It took place months after Israeli forces used an Elbit drone to kill three British military veterans in Gaza who were protecting a humanitarian aid convoy.
The revelation comes in documents obtained by Declassified through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.
Under the previous Conservative government, the Home Office also met with Elbit Systems and attempted to encourage the UK police to crack down on pro-Palestine activism.
Elbit’s efforts to counter Palestine Action in Britain seem to have gone even further.
Documents seen by Declassified reveal the company has its own “intelligence cell” and shares “information with the [UK] police across the country on a two weekly basis”.
The Home Office is refusing to release details about its most recent meeting with Elbit Systems, including which officials were present and what was discussed.
It said that a recording of the meeting was made “but by mutual agreement [with Elbit] this was agreed… not to be released” through FOI.
Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori told Declassified: “There is clear evidence of collusion between government, prosecutors, police, the Israeli government and Elbit Systems in a bid to crackdown on Palestine Action’s relentless direct action campaign.
“Such collusion likely amounts to political and foreign interference in our judicial system, a potential abuse of process in prosecutions against Palestine Action”.
…
Palestine Action’s Huda Ammori added: “Eighteen Palestine Action prisoners are detained under counter-terrorism powers in an unprecedented crackdown against anti-genocide activists.
“There must be full transparency of meetings with the government which reference Palestine Action, and an independent investigation into the validity of prosecutions against us, given the evidence of judicial interference”.
The Home Office and Elbit did not respond to a request for comment.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Palestinians wait in long queues to receive pots of food as they face food crisis following the end of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, which lasted for 42 days, Israel stopped all humanitarian aid supplies from entering the Gaza Strip at the Jabalia Refugee Camp in Gaza Strip on March 11, 2025 [Mahmoud İssa/Anadolu Agency]
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has condemned Israel’s “use of aid as a tool of war in Gaza.”
In a statement released yesterday, the medical organisation said it “strongly condemns” the Israeli-imposed siege on the Gaza Strip, which deprives Palestinian civilians of basic services and vital supplies, “including access to water by cutting electricity”.
Israel is using “collective punishment” and has “instrumentalised humanitarian needs by using it as a bargaining chip” during a period when negotiations are due to be held on the second phase of the ceasefire deal.
“Israeli authorities are yet again normalising the use of aid as a negotiation tool. This is outrageous. Humanitarian aid should never be used as a bargaining chip in war,” said Myriam Laaroussi, MSF emergency coordinator. “The blockade on all supplies is inevitably hurting hundreds of thousands of people and is having deadly consequences.”
“A ceasefire without scaling up humanitarian aid is contradictory,” she warned, adding that the group’s hands would be tied if fuel isn’t allowed into the enclave.
MSF called on “Israeli authorities to respect international humanitarian law and uphold its responsibilities as an occupying power, and to end this inhumane blockade of the Strip.”
Adding that Israel’s allies, who have “ignored this grave violation of international humanitarian law” must “refrain from normalising such actions” and act “to prevent Gaza from plunging further into devastation.”
On 2 March, when the ceasefire deal was due to go into its second phase, Israel announced that it had closed all crossings into Gaza, besieging the devastated Strip. One week later it cut the electricity supply to Gaza’s last remaining desalination plant leaving Palestinians with no way to access clean water.
Critics have warned that Israel is trying to force Palestinians to extend the first phase of the ceasefire deal, see the release of the Israeli captives held in Gaza in return for no concessions from the occupation state. It would then return to bombing the enclave in an effort to force Palestinians out of it.
