Huda Ammori and Richard Barnard were not even in Leicestershire, but were arrested elsewhere without explanation and handed over to Leicestershire Police use ‘intimidation and blanket detention’ at Elbit demo
A Palestine Action protester faces police at Elbit in Leicester
Armed police have used ‘intimidation and blanket detention’ to break up a peaceful protest at the Leicester factory of Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems. According to organisers Palestine Action (PA), Leicestershire police used indiscriminate arrest – detaining even bystanders – despite the protest passing peacefully since it began on Monday.
And PA’s co-founders were arrested despite not being at the demo – or even in Leicestershire. A PA statement explains further:
An unprecedented 33 arrests were made yesterday at the site of the Palestine Action siege, as Leicestershire Police took disproportionate measures using unjustifiable force against individuals who had turned out in opposition to Israel’s arms trade. The siege continues into its third day, a mass mobilisation against the UAV Tactical Systems drone factory in Leicester – owned by Israel’s largest weapons company, Elbit Systems.
Leicestershire Police, having witnessed the speeches, workshops, dance, and community mobilisation that have characterised The Siege thus far, stepped in with all of the force at their disposal to intimidate and detain those standing against Elbit. Throughout yesterday, arrests were made indiscriminately, without evidence and with the clear motivation to repress the growing mobilisation. Police, who arrived with armed units yesterday, have deployed tactics including kettling, property seizure, breaking and entering cars, the raiding of homes and the dismantling of encampments. Of the 33 arrested, the majority were taken to Euston Street station, released on bail overnight.
Police arrested a score of those who had populated a woodland camp adjacent to the site, along with four who had locked-on to each other in the road, and supporters and bystanders. As reported by Leicester Mercury, the action throughout Monday, where 250 people had assembled, had “passed peacefully”, with Police were not offering any reason for their encroachment into the camp.
The arrests included two co-founders of Palestine Action, Huda Ammori and Richard Barnard, taken into custody for reasons as of yet unclear, arrested in a different jurisdiction and transferred to Leicester early this morning. The pair’s arrest, unconnected to any events at the site of the factory, demonstrate that the police strategy is one of intimidation and blanket detention.
The activist network Palestine Action have committed to mobilising against UAV Tactical Systems, and this mass action will persist regardless of underhand, unjustified aggression that the police undertake on behalf of Elbit Systems. And the community is onside: after the police seized the tents, blankets, food and possessions of those camped at the site, the Leicester community turned up to donate blankets, sleeping bags, food and other necessities that the police had deprived protestors of. Joining the site of the siege last night for Janazah Salah (funeral prayers) in solidarity with hunger striker Khader Adnan, Leicester residents have made clear that Israel’s war machine is not welcome on their streets.
Last night’s bombing raids on Gaza, along with the death-in-unlawful-custody of Adnan, underscore the purpose of the siege: ridding Leicester of the stain of complicity in Israel’s crimes. A Palestine Action spokesperson has stated:
“The Siege of UAV Tactical Systems has so far proved successful: successful in laying bare the reality of police ‘protection’ – their aggressive tactics and arbitrary arrests being used to protect the interests and reputation of a murderous weapons company. The success also lies in the response we have seen: people stand defiant in the face of police repression, a community unifying in opposition to Israel’s arms trade. As stated, we intend to see UAV Tactical Systems shut down”.
In Leicester and across Elbit’s other 7 remaining sites in Britain, military technologies are manufactured for export directly to Israel. The UAV Tactical Systems site regularly sends drones and drone technologies to Israel, where Elbit’s drone products brutally enforce the Israeli occupation of Palestine. UAV Tactical Systems’ flagship drone, the Watchkeeper, has been used by the British military in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the English Channel – but is itself modelled on the notorious and deadly Hermes drone, after the latter was ‘battle-tested’ on Palestinians. Elbit, Israel’s largest weapons company, supplies 85% of Israel’s drones, and 85% of its land based military equipment. Its products, including the Hermes, have been linked to documented attrocities by the Israeli state
Major disruption to Barclays AGM by Money Rebellion and other activist groups with searching questions, songs and Shakespeare
A major bank funding our extinction by pouring billions of pounds into new fossil fuel projects was left in disarray today as activists linked to a huge new climate crisis coalition disrupted their Annual General Meeting headquarters in the City of London.
The board of directors faced constant interruption and challenge making it almost impossible for the AGM to continue. When Barclays chairman Nigel Higgins tried to outline the bank’s own climate commitments, a protester shouted “bullshit.”
At 11am teams of activists infiltrated the AGM of Europe’s biggest funder of fossil fuels, Barclays. A 70-strong Climate Choir sang a climate crisis version of the Spice Girls “Stop Right Now” to bank board members. Further disruption followed as other shareholders from Fossil Free London, with a Shakespearean condemnation of Barclays as being on the wrong side of history.
Pulling out hidden ruffs and quills, they performed Shakespeare-based lines generated by ChatGPT about the bank’s funding of fossil fuels. Lines included: “The people thee harm, and our air thou pollute! And yet, there is more, I tell you this day, For Barclays is guilty in a vile way. Thou art on the wrong side of history, I say!”
At the action, Claude Fourcroy, of Money Rebellion, an off-shoot of Extinction Rebellion, said: “We need UK banks to stop funding fossil fuels today, but instead they are profiting from a rigged system where bankers sacrifice people and planet to make vast fortunes. This is why we have chosen to target these vastly wealthy and powerful establishments, in the interests of the public – because time for humanity and every other species on the planet is running out.
“These banks boast about being part of the solution to the climate and ecological emergency while taking baby steps toward pulling funding for the worst fossil fuel criminals, making empty promises full of loopholes, and greenwashing on an industrial scale
“The government and Bank of England are failing to challenge or regulate the power of the banks. But people power can and will stop them. No more carbon bombs, no more genocide and no more displacement. Until the banks stop funding new fossil fuels, we will use every tool in the box to stop them, including building the biggest bank boycott in history to hit them where it hurts – in their pockets.”
Extinction Rebellion co-founder Clare Farrell said: “These Money Rebellion actions disrupting financial power holders are just the start of an unprecedented movement of movements stepping up to challenge the corrupt elite in order to drive the urgent changes we need for survival of life on this planet.”
“In this new phase of Extinction Rebellion, we are connecting across groups to build a stronger climate alliance aimed at community resilience, inclusivity and fairness for all living beings. By linking up everyone who stands for a just and rapid response to the climate crisis we will create a formidable opposition. People are determined to challenge the misuse of power which threatens to bring an end to all life if we do not stop it.”
Barclays’ AGM was targeted by activists because the bank is the largest financier of fossil fuel expansion, heavily funding new fossil fuel exploration and drilling, while issuing net zero pledges.
According to Rainforest Action Network and Greenpeace since 2016 Barclays has been the worst bank in Europe for fossil fuel financing. In 2022 alone, the bank provided over $16 billion to coal, oil, and gas companies, and $190 billion since the Paris Agreement, making it the seventh largest fossil fuel funder in the world.
Barclays has said it is committed to aligning its financed emissions with the goals of the Paris Agreement, but in reality the bank has no policy dictating how it should reduce its financing of the oil and gas sector. Barclays is one of the only major UK banks which has not started the process of restricting financing for new oil and gas, putting it at odds with competitors HSBC, Lloyds, and NatWest.
Andrew Taylor from Money Rebellion, an offshoot of Extinction Rebellion, added: “As the UN Secretary General António Guterres has said, we have reached a tipping point on the need for climate action. The disruption to our climate and our planet is already worse than we thought, and it is moving faster than predicted. And what is the reaction of these banks to this frightening scenario?
“According to the London School of Economics and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment Barclays scores 0% on its commitment to achieve net-zero emissions from its financing activities by 2050 or sooner, consistent with a 1.5°C scenario. It also scores 0% on climate policy engagement.
“A more accurate title for these AGMs would be Annual Greenwash Meetings.”
The future oil and gas extraction plans of just 25 companies are set to blow the world’s 1.5°C carbon budget, finds a new Energy Monitor investigation. The Net Zero by 2050 pathway from the International Energy Agency, published in 2021, concluded there should be no development of new oil and gas fields if the world is to reach net zero by 2050 and limit global warming to 1.5°C.
Energy Monitor maps out the data behind this recommendation, showing just how extensive the climate impact of the world’s biggest oil and gas producers is likely to be.
Our analysis shows that the world’s 25 leading oil and gas producers are extracting oil and gas from more than 3,700 fields around the world, with a further 300 planned in the immediate future. These fields collectively contain 500 billion barrels of oil and around 2,300 trillion cubic feet of gas, according to analysis of thousands of exclusive data points from our parent company GlobalData.
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“This [GlobalData] data confirms what investors have known for some time: that a business-as-usual approach by the oil sector is bad for investors and catastrophic for the planet,” Andrew Logan, senior director of oil and gas at the US climate think tank Ceres, told Energy Monitor. “The industry needs to focus on accelerating the transition to a low-carbon future, not investing in carbon-intensive assets that the world won’t need, and the climate can’t afford.”
The Existing, not Living report, commissioned by Scotland’s largest social landlord, the Wheatley Group, spoke to tenants around the country to look at the impact of the social security system on their lives.
The research showed that 65 per cent of claimants believed that UC payment failed to give them enough money to cover the basics of life.
One tenant said of her situation: “Trying to live on £243 per month, that’s horrible.
“I’m expected to pay my council tax, gas and electricity, pay debt and rent arrears.
“It’s physically impossible to pay for all that and, of course, also your internet or some kind of mobile phone with internet, which you need to have if on UC.”
THREE major unions will be launching a joint campaign to halt social care privatisation in West Lothian, they announced over the weekend.
Following the integration of health and social care in Scotland in 2014, local integration joint boards (IJBs) have run social care, with council social work departments relegated to the status of “contractor.”
The boards are made up of health board members and local councillors.
West Lothian IJB, which operates in a locale with the fastest-growing elderly population in Scotland, is considering forcing the privatisation of four care homes for the elderly, according to the Unite, GMB and Unison unions.
The government has quietly published plans to effectively legalise “hazardous” accommodation for thousands of asylum seekers in England.
In a move labelled “shameful” and an “assault on human rights” by housing and refugee charities, a new draft law proposes removing landlords’ obligation to get a HMO (house in multiple occupation) licence if they are providing accommodation to vulnerable asylum seekers.
Campaigners say HMO licences are the primary way authorities currently ensure homes filled with large numbers of people they were not initially designed to fit do not become a major fire risk. They are normally required for all private rented properties that house five or more people from multiple households and are granted by councils if inspectors are satisfied that the building meets government guidelines, including that it isn’t dangerously overcrowded, in disrepair, damp or mouldy.
OIL and gas giants were accused of “grotesque profiteering” today after BP reported that it had raked in an eye-watering £4 billion in just three months.
The mammoth profit total for the first quarter of 2023 was down from the near £5bn the energy firm pocketed in the same period last year following Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
But the combined profits of both BP and Shell have now hit a whopping £55bn over the last year as gas and electricity bills have more than doubled for Britons already struggling with 40-year high inflation and plummeting take-home pay.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “BP’s grotesque profiteering is continuing at pace.
“Profiteering is a blight on the economy which is driving prices higher, leaving workers poorer while businesses struggle to keep the lights on.”
UNISON is challenging the Tory government’s latest attack on the right to strike in a two-day High Court hearing starting on Wednesday.
The public-sector union’s case was prompted by then prime minister Boris Johnson’s decision to scrap decades-old regulations preventing bosses from employing agency workers to break industrial action.
Last July’s widely condemned action was “unlawful and violates fundamental trade union rights,” Unison argued.
General secretary Christina McAnea said: “Breaking strikes with unqualified and ill-experienced agency workers doesn’t address the root causes of why people are striking and it only puts the public in danger.”
THE TUC is calling today for solidarity in defence of democracy and against racism and extremism to mark the day 90 years ago that trade unions were banned in Nazi Germany.
Union offices were raided and officials and activists rounded up on May 2 1933; some were tortured and some died in concentration camps in the years that followed.
Independent trade unions were replaced with the Nazi-controlled German Labour Front, a propaganda tool for the regime and its hate-filled anti-semitic ideology.
“Trade unions are a bastion of democracy and freedom against authoritarian and violent regimes,” said the TUC, which is providing training and resources for union activists to counter racism, including anti-semitism, and attempts by the far right to recruit in workplaces.
Persecution of trade unionists continues around the world, the union body said.
The Electoral Commission has admitted it will ‘not be possible to accurately quantify’ the impact of the new rules by counting who does or doesn’t have ID at the ballot box
The number of people turned away at polling stations because they do not have Voter ID will never be known, the elections watchdog has admitted.
People will be required to show photographic ID for the first time at polling stations on Thursday.
But the Electoral Commission has admitted it will “not be possible to accurately quantify” the impact of the new rules by counting who does or doesn’t have ID at the ballot box.
Data reveals the world’s leading oil and gas majors continue risk-laden, global expansion, despite net-zero pledges.
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Analysis of exclusive fields data from GlobalData, Energy Monitor’s parent company, shows that the world’s five largest Western oil majors by revenue – BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and TotalEnergies – are planning for a future misaligned with a net-zero pathway, as outlined by the IEA.
The findings come despite the fact that all five companies have pledged on paper to reach net zero by 2050, and they are all based in countries that hold similar pledges on a national level. The findings also come on top of an earlier Energy Monitor investigation, which found that the oil and gas extraction plans of just 25 oil majors will produce carbon emissions that use up 90% of the world’s remaining 1.5°C carbon budget.
In the case of the five Western oil majors, the first key net-zero misalignment is the sheer size of the companies’ expansion plans. Rather than entering the period of managed decline that the IEA recommends should occur to be aligned with net zero by 2050, data shows that the five companies are in the process of developing 157 new fields, on top of the 1,350 they already operate. These upcoming fields would add a massive 122 billion barrels of oil equivalent (bboe) to the 299 bboe remaining in the five companies’ already-operating fields.
A motorist drove through Just Stop Oil protesters blocking a road in north London on Tuesday morning (2 May), colliding with a person.
“It went over my foot,” a member of the group can be heard saying.
The demonstration was part of Just Stop Oil’s vow to march every weekday and on Saturdays from 24 April to call on the government to stop licensing any new fossil fuel projects in the UK.
The car wasn’t hanging around for Just Stop Oil’s protest. Credit: Twitter/Just Stop Oil
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A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police told LADbible: “Police are appealing for witnesses and dash cam footage after a person was involved in a collision with a vehicle on Holloway Road, Islington, whilst engaged in a protest, at around 10:00hrs, today Tuesday 2 May.
“The incident was brought to police attention after being circulated on social media and shows the person being involved in collision with a grey Renault Megane.
“If you were the person or have any information about the incident please report by calling 101, tweeting @MetCC or online at www.met.police.uk/.”
After the footage went viral, Just Stop Oil shared the video and commented how they believe that ‘inflammatory language’ from politicians and commentators has caused this end result.
The group tweeted: “After weeks of inflammatory language from politicians and right-wing media personalities, a car has finally rammed into a peaceful protest.
“Are you about to comment ‘Good!’ or ‘Stay out of the road?’
“Are you sure that the side you want to pick is the side of violence, of the repression of protest?
Since mid-March, the world’s oceans have been hotter than at anytime since at least 1982, raising concerns among some climate experts about accelerated warming.
Why it matters: Hotter oceans are hugely consequential for land areas, since they can contribute to more frequent and severe extreme weather and climate events, from deluges to heat waves.
In addition, the temperature spike could be a sign that warming is speeding up in ways that climate models failed to anticipate.
The situation has also driven conflict, with more than four million people now in need of humanitarian aid.
A cohort of 19 researchers from seven countries studied if climate change was to blame, ruling that the longer rainy season has become drier, while the short rainy season has become wetter all due to changes in global temperatures.
They branded the drought “one of a kind”, adding that climtae change had made agricultural drought one hundred times more likely.
Left wing faction Momentum compared Starmer’s shifting position to that of Nick Clegg, who famously went into the 2010 general election pledging to abolish tuition fees only to triple them when in government. A spokesperson for Momentum said: “This move wouldn’t just fly in the face of party democracy and the wishes of Labour Students. It would be a betrayal of millions of young people in desperate need of hope. The Labour leadership should learn from Nick Clegg’s failure, not repeat it.”
The former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn made similar comments. He tweeted: “Young people should not be saddled with a lifetime of debt just because they want to get an education. Abolish tuition fees, restore maintenance grants and deliver free education for all.”
Cullen commented that, although the outcome of today’s meeting appeared to be set, nurses will remain in dispute with the government over pay and staffing.
“Tuesday’s meeting with Steve Barclay appears a foregone conclusion,” said Cullen. “Different unions and different professions came to different, but respectable, conclusions on this pay offer.
“The deal being accepted by others does not alter the clear fact that nursing staff, as the largest part of the NHS workforce, remain in dispute with the government over unfair pay and unsafe staffing.”
And Cardwell exposed his link to the account when he tweeted one message pretending to be Gorst, thenimmediately deleted it and was stupid enough to put the same message out on the ‘Spam’ account moments later
Right-wing Labour MP Jess Phillips has deleted a tweet in which she said she bought her first home at the age of twenty and described how it changed her and her children’s ‘fortune’
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Phillips has previously told the Financial Times, presumably in an oddly-placed effort to boost her working-class credentials, that at age 22 she was living in a ‘squat’
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