HA HAD YOU THERE From Iraq to Climate Change – YOU ARE POWERLESS! And if you think buying Rage Against The Machine just shows how fucking feckless and brain dead we have become, do not get me wrong I love killing in the name off, but it is the consumerism that is killing the planet.

On February 15, 2003 coordinated anti-war protests across the world against the imminent invasion of Iraq saw the largest protest in human history. Millions of people took to the streets in approximately 800 cities around the world. According to the BBC (always conservative in their estimations) between six and ten million people took part in protests in up to sixty countries over the weekend of the 15th and 16th; other estimates range from eight million to thirty million. The BBC figures seem less likely when you consider that the protest in Rome alone involved around 3 million people, and is listed in the 2004 Guinness Book of World Records as the largest anti-war rally in history.

The Iraq war went ahead regardless.

Last week in Copenhagen world leaders gathered to discuss acting on potentially the most pressing problem humans have ever faced, climate change.

With the future of six billion people in the balance the proceedings ground to a halt thanks to the ineptitude of a few old men who frankly will be dead soon and have little to worry about in the immediate future except for keeping a tight hold on their obscene power and wealth (excuse our ageism, but we’re rather pissed!). But the latest scientific evidence suggests that everyone below the age of fifty will live to suffer the effects of an increasingly more treacherous and unpredictable climate.
As Henry wisely observed on Ian Bone’s blog…

The share holders thank you, Mr President, but the polar bears think you’re a twat.
To call this state of affairs democratic is an insult to 99.9% of the human race. We need real change, and we need it now. We’ve said it before and we’ll keep saying it, the infrastructure and technology exists to do away with the aged (oops, sorry, there goes the ageism again) and corrupt political systems that serves the interests of banks and corporations instead of people and planet.

The celebrity freaks who claim to be our ‘leaders’ have proved themselves to be inept and should be abandoned completely. But we also need to question the fact that these leaders are drawn from people unqualified for the job in hand; if your boiler blows you don’t vote for the bloke with the whitest smile, you get the guy with the right training. We have the technology (see, we told you we’d keep saying it) to ensure that the right minds are applied to the right problems - now we just need the balls to make it happen!

love and rage from barnsdale/underclassrising