Category: Uncategorized

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The rebellion is almost over. Did it succeed in raising awareness and action against climate catastrophe or was it destroyed by indifference and public outrage? From the #extinctinctionrebellionlondon feed on twitter throughout the last two weeks I would say, like most polarising political events in this day and age, it was about 50/50. They have however attracted significantly more animosity in the last 24 hours due to the incident at Canning Town, where a protestor got on the roof of a tube train and was subsequently pulled off by angry commuters and physically attacked. Were they wrong to do it? Has it cancelled out all the good will and support they had received so far? Has it instead endangered the very cause they seek to promote?

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I don’t personally think any of these questions are really relevant. It doesn’t actually matter what they do. They have created disruptions and delays in people’s everyday lives, they were never going to be loved for it. That’s not the point. These are just desperate actions by desperate people in a desperate situation and all they are trying to do is to wake the public up, create media attention and force Government to take action where there is none.

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The XR story in the press has focussed on the people in the rebellion and their actions but they are, in some ways, the least relevant bit of this story. The focus shouldn’t be on what they are doing or who they are but WHY are they are doing these things? What drives normal people to agree to civil disobedience and risk arrest? The answer is a problem so paramount and pressing that no-one can actually deal with it and so they instead keep their attention on the messengers rather than the message.

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When the media did decide to report the rebellion they dwelt mostly on the actions of single individuals: the 91 year old, the Paralympian, the ex-police officer, George Monbiot. This is because we find it very difficult to relate to things en masse but give us the plight of one human being and everyone pays attention. If thousands die in an earthquake, its just a statistic, we can’t emote, but if we read a story about one person trapped under rubble, we are connected, we care. This is just how our brains and emotions work. We can’t really do anything about this but it is one of the main reasons that the climate crisis is not taking hold in people’s minds in the way it desperately needs to. We need to see beyond others or ourselves as individuals and understand this is a crisis that requires us to see it as a problem that affects us all. We need to do this in order for us to have a chance in hell of reducing the disastrous impact it will have on everyone.

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And so you can dwell on the people in the XR and their motives and you can dismiss the entire organisation for its actions but it does not change the situation. It might allow the governments of this world to condemn and subsequently ignore what they are demanding. It might absolve you of action yourself and convince you that it is not the way forward but everything they are trying to highlight is still happening and still needs to be dealt with. And it isn’t. Not by a long shot.

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I have tried to document and highlight their actions and support what they do because in a world where nothing is really being done of any real significance they are doing something. It has created a discussion where there was none. It has stimulated policy when there was just lip service. It has generated action when there was just paralysis. Are we any closer to the level of engagement this existential threat requires? Not by a long shot.

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I always thought of the Extinction Rebellion as an idea rather than a group of people. I didn’t care who they were. Crusties, middle class do gooders, eco terrorists, they just seemed like labels that were being put on them so that people could distance themselves from what they are doing. I just see it as a concept we could all get behind. Something that would actually remove the relevance of our personal identity and background. I see it as a symbol that could eventually unite everyone because none of us want extinction, for us or for the millions of species that are currently in jeopardy. We want to survive, we want life to continue on this planet. So we are all in the Extinction Rebellion regardless, whether you like it or not.

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Normal service will resume next week…

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“This is what democracy looks like” is one of the chants of the XR. And seeing their decentralised autonomous way of organisation in action, which allows everyone to contribute, where leaders and followers are as one, you realise that it genuinely is.

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These shots were taken at yesterday’s citizen’s assembly in Trafalgar Square where thousands turned up, despite the police ban making this gathering unlawful, to discuss the movement and where it goes from here. To create these assemblies is one of their key demands of XR and they would be formed to discuss and decide on climate action in direct conjunction with the government.

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They had these assemblies at the last rebellion and what struck me then, and what I witnessed again yesterday, is that people talk and people actually listen. Not just wait for their turn to speak. No-one is hogging the mike so to speak. No-one is trying to dominate or push their own agenda or try to impress or ingratiate themselves to those around them. They simply discuss the matters in hand and make recommendations accordingly. And as I continue to show in my documentation of this movement the accusations of a singular demographic within the XR is false. Watching this cross section collection of like-minded folk I wasn’t sure I had ever seen such a mix of all ages & backgrounds, all together, talking as one.

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There was a relatively heavy police presence but they did not interfere because, even though they had declared exactly this sort of meeting illegal, even they knew to arrest people for chatting quietly in circles was ridiculous. As it states in the pavement chalk graffiti: “You can’t police peace”. And it’s a very good point. And even the Met are starting to realise it. These are not people who require policing. Not even close.

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There are activists that have been killed all over the world for their attempts to protect the environment and we should feel incredibly lucky that we live in a country where that does not happen. Even though the police have been a little more heavy handed than last time they have still showed incredible restraint and respect compared to their counterparts in other countries. In Brussels just on Saturday their police force used water cannons and tear gas to dispel their XR protestors.

And yet, and maybe because of this, their have been as many arrests in the U.K during this rebellion as there have been everywhere else in the world combined. (up to 1400 in U.K). This is because “This is what democracy looks like” and we must never take it for granted. And we must fight for it at all times because otherwise it will be taken from us.

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A few of the rebels yesterday had taped up their mouths in protest at the police ban and what they consider to be an affront on their freedom of speech and it is without a shadow of a doubt. But as you can see it was not being enforced in any way. They know deep down that this affects them too and are off the record in support of the movement. Even ex-police officers such as John Curran, a former detective with the Met have joined and was arrested last week. And as another XR chant declares “Who’s police force? Our police force!”

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Britain has been a bit shit of late. We have propelled ourselves into a shitstorm that has rendered us both divided & deflated. And yet, amidst all of the carnage of Referendumitis (can’t even bear to write the B word anymore) we have somehow led the way in a global uprising to rise up against the governments of this world and demand they actually do something about this threat, not just to our way of life, but to life itself.

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The Extinction Rebellion, which was born in the U.K, has succeeded where pretty much every other avenue had failed before. It has managed to get the climate crisis to the top of the topic agenda and inspire people from all over the world to no longer sit back and accept the false promises their elected reps have been dishing out with no genuine intention to carry any of it out.

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The rebellion returned at a time when there is little cause for optimism, both in this country and globally. And yet, when you are part of it, and you see how strong people can be when they join forces, how energising & empowering it is to have a collective purpose, it creates that most inspiring and positive feeling on Earth: hope. And without it we have nothing.

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A lot of the criticism of the XR is that they are comprised mostly of white privileged middle class people and yet all I have seen is that it is now made up of people from all over the world, who are now united in a single purpose which dwarfs their tribal origins. Differences have been put aside in acknowledgement of the severity of the problem and we are starting to see that the climate crisis is rapidly becoming the common enemy the human race needed to create a sense of unity, And we will desperately need it if we are going to have any chance of successfully dealing with the far reaching ramifications of climate breakdown.

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If you still don’t feel you associate with the type of people in the XR then the easiest way is to join and to get people like you to join and that will solve that problem. Then eventually it will comprise of everyone and we will have sufficient strength in numbers to take on the government’s failure to provide concrete actions to drastically reduce our ever-increasing emissions and to demand they do what is required, not just what they think they can get away with. We also need to find new leaders, ones that will lead the way, not get in the way.

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The rebellion is now drawing to a close in this country but this is not the end, this is still just the very beginning of this fight. The pictures above were taken at Buckingham palace yesterday when I was with the XR Grandparents who were protesting outside the gates. As I was there I found out that the police had declared any protest or congregation of any kind to do with the XR was now unlawful which, ironically, in itself is utterly unlawful, as it is a direct breach of our human rights to peacefully protest.

I stood their with the older generation, out in force for the sake of their grandkids and future generations and they clearly had no intention of giving up and so to make criminals of these people and everyone else involved is just a waste of time and resources which could be better spent tackling the problem they are ignoring. Stop shooting the messengers and start listening to the message: this is NOT going away. The powers that be need to recognise that we are not the enemy. Inaction is.

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I believe this is a demand for the top polluters (just 100 companies, almost entirely comprised of the fossil fuel industry, are responsible for 70% of all emissions) to stop destroying habitat for profit and committing ecocide, which is going to eventually make this planet uninhabitable for our species.

However I do think it is worth pointing out that this isn’t our planet. We just live on it. It wasn’t built for us, we evolved around it and as we alter the atmosphere, it will soon become far less compatible to the human race. Truth is, if any species is going to claim this spinning ball it should be the jellyfish. They have been here for over 700 million years and as the waters warm, their populations are booming. They are also (fairly scarily) getting bigger. This pic below, which you may have seen, was not taken in some far flung tropical place but off the coast of Cornwall. Eek.

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So I think we need to accept that, despite having spread across every corner of its surface, this living organism that we live on was not designed with us in mind and we are altering it to such a degree that, in this rapidly approaching feedback loop fuelled future, we will need to drastically adapt to survive on it.

But let’s be honest, we have been utterly shit tenants until now. We’ve made the mutha of all messes and if we had been in an Airbnb we would get the worst rating of all time and be barred from ever renting anywhere ever again in the entire known universe. And rightly so.

And in the scheme of things we are relatively new residents and the changing conditions are now actually becoming favourable to previous rulers and occupants. Not only are the jellyfish back in abundance but the lizards , the descendants of the dinosaurs, must be licking their lips (if they had any) because they will also thrive in a warmer climate. But we won’t. And all because the fossil fuel industry has deliberately suppressed information about global warming for decades and lent on governments to continue with their oil dependant economies.

I watched ‘Vice’, the biopic about Dick Cheney last night and there was this chilling scene when the first act of Ronald Regan as president was to tear down and destroy the solar panels on top of the white house that Jimmy Carter had erected when he came to power. That was when oil officially moved into the White House and it has been dictating policy ever since. And it made me realise that it could all have been very different and if common sense had prevailed instead of greed, we might now not be staring extinction in the face.

The U.K gov and investment banks are still pumping billions of subsidies into the fossil fuel industry. We have to continue to put pressure on them to stop. It is most definitely in our interest.

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These shots were taken at the XR blockade of BBC HQ in Portland Place on Friday as they demanded that the BBC face up to their responsibility to ‘Tell the Truth’ on the Climate Emergency we are facing. Protesters feel that the BBC have failed in their duty to inform and educate us and to provide the necessary information on this ever-worsening situation.

Over the last decade the BBC have significantly sidelined the issue of Climate change and withheld and suppressed stories that would have revealed the true extent of the problem. It is only recently that they have started to report it in any real way at all and they are still dragging their heels on it when they should be shouting it from the roof, and two of the protestors actually got on top of to do just that. (see above)

It is not just the U.K that looks to the BBC to be the bastion of factual and unbiased information but the whole world and they have been so concerned to appear ‘inpartial’ they did not want to appear to be fighting the climate corner for fear they would be accused of a liberal agenda. Even though, despite its appropriation, is NOT a political issue. And so whenever they did report anything to do with global warming etc they felt the need to be balanced by having a climate ‘denier’ on at the same time. But with 97% of the scientific community now in full agreement and with all the mountains of evidence proving that it is actually happening, there is no need to provide both sides of the argument because this is now fact and longer up for dispute. And this is not in the future but right now and so they need to step up their coverage and their commitment to their remit which is to inform and educate. And shouldn’t it be then up to us to decide whether we want to hear it or not? Why are they making that decision on our behalf? And why do they think that they we wouldn’t want to hear about this gargantuan problem that is going to affect us all? Surely we would want to know?

The Rebellion were there the entire day and despite a heavy police presence who were trying to coerce them into leaving they stayed strong. Some were glued to the doors, whilst everyone else held their ground in support and spent the day keeping morale up by singing songs and giving speeches whilst reps of the rebels tried to negotiate with the BBC to get them to talk to them. The really twisted irony was that the rebellion were there because they were not reporting Climate change and the BBC were not even reporting the occupation of their own building . It took a camera crew from ITV to turn up at 6pm to get it on the news which to me just said it all.

The rebellion is a genuine democracy and everything is voted on and conducted as a unified action. They chose to sit it out and not give up and held their ground, despite risking arrest. They kept each other going by sharing out their food and it is really so heartening to see a genuine community at work, where they are concerned for the collective good rather than just for themselves as individuals. You feel the strength and positivity of collective action and unity and it is very powerful and uplifting and shows that together we are not only infinitely more capable but happier too, even in such dismal circumstance. The XR are not just a protest group, they are a template to show how we could live differently, where the society itself is the most important thing, not just your standing within it.

The rebellion is now in its 2nd week. They lost all of their blockades from last week but more disruption is planned for today and on into the week. If you want to find out the latest actions you can find them on the Telegram app which gives out the latest information. You can join here to see:

https://t.me/rebellionbroadcast

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Over 1000 arrests have already been made at the latest Extinction Rebellion shutdown of London. Everyone in these shots has been or is willing to be arrested for the cause. The cause is simply to get the government to act accordingly to their own self-declared climate emergency, the emergency that we and everyone on this planet is now facing. ‘They’ (which can only include anyone who has a vested interest in preventing action) say that the XR are being alarmist but they are simply the only ones who are responding appropriately to what the 100% corroborated scientific research is telling them.

What is alarming is not that people are acting on their fears and anxieties but that our politicians are not responding to what they are being told. They have stopped listening to the ‘experts’. But why? They’re not idiots. They must be fully aware of the implications of their inaction. They know what will happen if they don’t do anything and yet still they shunt it. And so that is why it is left to normal people who have realised that we cannot rely on them to do the right thing. We must continue to exert pressure on them and show them that the ‘will of the people’ is to tackle this mutha of all problems. Don’t say you’re on it, don’t pay lip service to it like so many other perceived performance policies, actually fucking do it.. There is no time left to fanny around any further.

The people who have joined the XR are just ordinary law abiding citizens of this country. They are not trouble makers. They are not part of the criminal underworld. Most of them have never done anything like this in their lives. Do you think they wanted to put themselves in this position? Do you think they wanted to bolt and glue themselves to the ground so that they can sleep on the streets? Do you think they wanted to risk a criminal record? Look at the people in these pictures. Kids. Parents. Grannies and Grandads. Disabled people in wheelchairs surrounded by police like they were dangerous criminals. Do they look like wrong’uns? No, they are your friends, your family, your neighbours. They are you.

They just feel they have no other choice. Its this or nothing. And to simply do nothing when their children and grandchildren are petrified of what is to come? How can they? How can they stand back and allow this level of irresponsibility from their government who continue to ignore everything they are being told? These people have resorted to civil disobedience because it is the only thing that is left that might generate a response from our elected representatives. Everything else has been tried and everything else has failed.

And so, it is very easy for people to distance themselves from these activists who are sacrificing so much with dismissive (and inaccurate) generalisations about who they are or where they are from or what they are doing but this is so that they can justify their own inaction.

I have been with these protestors and they all come across as the most decent down to earth caring people you could ever meet. But they are afraid of what is to come based on the evidence presented to them and so they act. They refuse to stand by idly as we head ever closer to a much grimmer future, which can be avoided if we just accept the facts and accept the need to alter the way we live. None of us want to but there is no choice. There is no other option. And you can choose to not believe the science, to not take the warnings seriously, to think that life can just carry on as normal, but it can’t. And this is going to happen regardless of whether you accept that or not.

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My day started watching George Monbiot give a speech to a packed tent in St. James Park which is now home to a Rebel village of sorts. I read ‘Heat’ by Monbiot when it came out in 2007 and it all made perfect but horrific sense and knew there and then we had to change the way we lived. In the book he was calling for a 90% reduction in emissions way back then and the tragedy is that nothing of any real significance has been implemented in the last 12 years. 12 years we badly needed to initiate policies that would put ourselves on a sustainable path.

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Fast forward to 2019 and we are now in the midst of another shutdown of the capital city because the powers that be are still dragging their heels on the action that is so desperately required. And we now have to resort to desperate measures which means people from all over our country have descended on the capital to enact their right to protest and to implement acts of civil disobedience, not because they want to, but because they feel there is nothing else to try to convince our government to step up action that will be fitting of the climate emergency that they declared is happening.

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The atmosphere was incredible yesterday and was blown away by the sheer numbers in force in so many different locations, the insane amount of organisation that has gone into bringing about this operation and the phenomenal amount of people that are prepared to get arrested in order to sustain this rebellion so that it has a great a chance as possible to influence increased and vital action to prevent climate catastrophe.

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But if felt so wrong to watch as elderly people are carted off by the police. Decent, normal retired citizens who have never broke the law before and never ever wanted to sacrificing themselves for future generations because they feel there is no other choice.

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Each time the rebellion has arrived in London it has come at a time when I was most despondent about our future and each time it energises me and gives me hope and optimism that if we continue to put pressure on our elected reps they will eventually step up and do the right thing.

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What is incredible is that even though all the banners are brutal fatalistic pessimism the atmosphere everywhere is one of sheer positivity. This paradox is at the heart of the rebellion and shows that we can accept the harsh realities of what’s to come without losing hope, without giving up, without descending into apathy and debilitating anxiety. We can instead join together and create a new path that is not a dead end.

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Soz but me posts are gonna all be late this week as I document the rebellion…please do not adjust your sets….The revolution will be televised! (Well internetised but that doesn’t sound quite as good.)

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The latest Extinction Rebellion has begun. I was down at several of the sites yesterday and despite some horrendous weather there was an air of resilience and defiance from the rebels who had camped out in Whitehall, Trafalfar Square, the Mall and outside the Deparment of Transport. The mood did however feel more sombre than the previous rebellion but that might have been to do with the heavy downpours but also because things have got worse since the last one and still nothing is really being done.

I got back last night and went onto twitter to see what people were saying and was staggered at the amount of hostility towards the rebels and so many disparaging remarks about the kind of people they were or desperately trying to flag up some hypocritical angle, like they travelled down on a bus that uses petrol to get there. You can dwell on that if you like but that is not the relevant bit of this. It doesn’t matter what these people do in their lives or what their carbon footprint is. They are demanding massive systemic change because they know that is the only thing that is going to save us.

And from what I saw is that that the only thing in common with all of the people involved in the rebellion is that they give a shit and can’t stand back and do nothing whilst our government does nothing. And it does not matter where they come from or who they are. It doesn’t matter what class or colour they are. It wouldn’t even matter if they had green goo coming out of their ears and horns out of their head, they are there for the right reasons and their message is true and correct and backed by the entire scientific community of the world.

You can have a problem with who you think they are or their methods but it doesn’t not change anything. Just like people have major issue with Greta Thunberg because they say she is brainwashed, or manipulated or spoilt or whatever they wish to tarnish her with just so they don’t have to listen to what she is saying. Even if all of the above were true, and even if all the rebels were crusties or even fucking martians, none of this matters. The messenger is not important. And there is no point shooting them because the reality of this situation will not go away if you do.

We need to stop focussing on who is talking or protesting and concentrate on what is being said. That is the only thing that matters, the only thing you need to pay attention to. If you go down to one of the sites across London you will see for your own eyes (and hopefully what I have shown in the above pictures) is that it is just a massive cross section of like-minded people and as this is now a global movement happening everywhere it seems kinda pointless to still be dwelling on who these people are and if they are ‘your’ kind of people. It does not matter. Get on board. They need your support. And we all need to show our commitment to change if we have any chance of convincing our elected representatives to crank up activity and to do what is required, which is definitely a fuck sight more than they are currently doing. They are still subsidising fossil fuels to the tune of billions and billions of pounds every year whilst slashing investment in renewables. And that is NOT the way forward.

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All shots this week are part of an ongoing series (which started last week) which encapsulates multiple lives within a moment in time. All taken on the same day and all within minutes of each other. I will explain more when the series has finished (more to come) but I ask you, for now, to think of all the different people you have seen in the photographs in the last two weeks and ask yourself, are we all leading interconnected lives or are we in fact, utterly disconnected, sharing the same temporal and geographical space but experiencing entirely different and unrelated existences?

And while you’re at it, look around you as you go about your day, at the people surrounding you and ask yourself the same question. Are we like seperate bubbles in a drink that just occasionally collide or are we the liquid and all part of the same thing?

Obviously you don’t have to do this. Its not compulsory. I won’t be sending the thought police round or anything so there will be no way to check. This is just an exercise to ultimately to try to determine what is most relevant and importants, the life we live on the inside or the life we lead on the outside? Are we in this together or is that just an illusion and we are in fact alone in our own constructed universe?

Also: I somehow managed to have lost a post. #MYLDN (1337) is M.I.A. It made it on to my Instagram feed last week but it doesn’t appear to be on the pages of this blog anymore which is quite unfathomable and no idea how that could have happened unless I accidentally deleted it. So here it is but if you did see this here b4 someone please let me know so I can avert further madness)

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