Sign the Open Letter
Actions planned in London in the coming months on the unprecedented global climate emergency, by Extinction Rebellion and other environmental campaigners, will represent the first real test of new police powers to impose aggressive protest restrictions that came into effect in June.
17 November 2020 — Media Lens
The Roman poet Horace famously declared:
‘Dulce et decorum est pro patrie mori.’
It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. Wilfred Owen, the great English poet of the First World War, described this phrase as ‘the old Lie’ in his famous war poem, ‘Dulce et decorum est’. Patriotism so often means ‘honouring’ those who ‘fell in service to this country’, grand ceremonies at war memorials, feasts of royal pageantry. And then sending yet more generations of men and women to fight in yet more wars.
8 November 2019 — Fightback by Benoît Tanguay
In the past year, we have seen an explosion of the environmental movement. Through the global climate strike and mass demonstrations for the planet launched by Greta Thunberg, an entire generation has gotten a taste of political action, understanding the need for dramatic change to deal with environmental degradation. It is in this context that the group Extinction Rebellion (XR) has struck a chord. For many, both young and old, the urgency of the situation requires drastic solutions, and many have therefore been seduced by the group’s actions and its calls for immediate measures to save our planet. But are XR’s methods what the climate movement needs? What exactly does XR stand for?
Continue reading
4 November 2019 — Red Flag
James Plested
Around 7am on the fourth day of Extinction Rebellion’s (XR) “Spring Rebellion” in Melbourne in early October the clouds to the east cleared enough for the first bright rays of sun to penetrate through to a city centre still shrouded in a cold, misty rain. A dazzling rainbow appeared above the skyline – arching over the grey and blue forest of skyscrapers as members of XR huddled in a laneway below for a briefing on that morning’s action.
31 October 2019 — Rebel News
With Extinction Rebellion growing rapidly across the world in the fight against climate change, John Molyneux gives his perspective on how socialists should respond to this phenomenon.
16 October 2019 — True Publica
By TruePublica Editor: The Met Police is facing a growing backlash following its decision to ban Extinction Rebellion protests across London last Monday. In reality, this is about the government losing control.
16 October 2019 — WSWS
Extinction Rebellion (XR) activists yesterday defied a London-wide ban on protests by the Metropolitan Police (Met). The basis cited for the ban Monday evening was a revised Section 14 order, of the Public Order Act, stipulating that by 9:00 p.m., “any assembly linked to the Extinction Rebellion ‘autumn uprising’…must now cease their protests within London.”
12 October 2019 — Extinction/Rebellion
[I thought a note on police activities re Extinction/Rebellion is worth publicising to a wider audience. WB]
PLEASE CIRCULATE WIDELY
ARE YOU BEING STOPPED AND SEARCHED?
– Ask ‘Am I being detained or am I free to leave?’
IF you are told you are detained, this means you are being stopped and searched. OTHERWISE, you are able to walk away.
9 October 2019 — WSWS
The number of arrests of Extinction Rebellion (XR) climate protestors in London topped 500 yesterday, in a naked display of state repression designed to intimidate and silence political and social opposition among much broader layers.
30 September 2019 — Counter Currents
by Phil Rockstroh and Kenn Orphan
[An ‘alternate’ take on Greta Thunberg @ the UNGA. Long but worth reading I think. WB]
PR: Kenn, recently, this observation of mine provoked a measure of ire: Street demonstrations, even large ones, are apropos of nothing as long as they are manifested as de facto state sanctioned protests. A march proceeds, chants are cast into indifferent air, speechifying comes to pass by the usual gasbags then the assembled head home and carry on as usual. Conversely, a strike means job walk-offs — until the strikers demands are met — not walking out and walking back in the next day.
1 October 2019 — WSWS
Last week’s climate strikes, in which more than 7.6 million people participated in international protests September 20-27, reveal the willingness among broad masses of young people to fight for their future, that of Earth and of humanity.
30 September 2019 — Media Lens
Reality clashed with the BBC version of false consensus in a remarkable edition of HardTalk last month. Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, was starkly honest about humanity’s extreme predicament in the face of climate breakdown and refused to buckle under host Stephen Sackur’s incredulous questioning. Sackur’s inability to grasp that we are already in a climate emergency, and that massive changes are necessary now to avoid societal collapse, was clear for all to see. His line of questioning attempted to present Hallam to the BBC audience as a dangerous revolutionary, trying to destroy capitalism for twisted ideological reasons.
Sackur: ‘You want to bring down the capitalist system as we know it, is that correct?
Hallam: ‘The capitalist system is going to be brought down by itself. The capitalist system is eating itself.’
20 September 2019 — Global Research
On 20 September students will be mobilizing in a global protest against climate change.
Who is supporting this Worldwide endeavour, who is funding it?
Is this a real rebellion?
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30 August 2019 — Counter Currents
The rise of ‘Extinction Rebellion’ signals that climate activism is moving up a gear. Further radicalisation is probably inevitable.
6 August 2019 — Climate & Capitalism
The real power of mass civil disobedience is not its ability to shock the powerful into listening, but rather its potential to draw masses of people into action.
Pip Hinman is a a leader of the Socialist Alliance in Sydney, Australia, and a founding member of Stop Coal Seam Gas Sydney.
by Pip Hinman
Green Left Weekly, August 2, 2019
We live in a dystopian age. Governments have known since at least the mid-’90s about the potentially devastating impact of human-induced climate change. But for the most part they have either disputed and denied this, or pretended to be responding to scientists’ findings.
17 July 2019 — Netpol
PHOTO: Julia Hawkins on Flickr
The report published today by conservative think-tank Policy Exchange, attacking campaigners from Extinction Rebellion, is a direct call for expanding surveillance on “far left, anarchist and environmentalist extremism”.
18 July 2019 — Investigating Imperialism
I am nothing if not an optimist, a trait that most on the Left seem to share. A belief in the future, that there is one that includes us. That things, eventually, get better, if we fight for it. ‘Unrealistic’, I hear you say, what is there to be optimistic about? The planet is going to hell and taking us all with it, and there’s nothing we can do about it! Well, maybe so, then this happened, a small event, minute even, in the scheme of things but somehow it triggered a response in me that I could not ignore and which I had to address:
4 July 2019 — The Ecologist
Extinction Rebellion (XR) is a direct action group organised on a global scale. The main target of their protests is are national governments who have demonstrated extreme inaction in the face of climate breakdown, despite stark warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
28 June 2019 — InvestigatingImperialism
Apparently, if we add up all the ‘values’ that make up Planet Earth, we arrive at the figure of $5 quadrillion [1]! We’ve reduced the irreducible to the level of an accountant’s spreadsheet. Yet, it’s exactly this kind of thinking that’s created the disaster that, forget 10 years, it’s already with us and it’s been building to this since the start of the Industrial Revolution approximately 200 years ago.
27 June 2019 — Greanville Post
Environmental activists have a tough time attracting serious and consistent media attention. And we know what the media does do with its time. (WWF, via flickr)
“The more reified the world becomes, the thicker the veil cast upon nature, the more the thinking weaving that veil in its turn claims ideologically to be nature, primordial experience.” — Theodor Adorno (Critical Models)
“Nature contains, though often unnoticed, an extraordinary amount of human history.” — Raymond Williams (Culture and Materialism, 2005)
“It is obvious that an imagined world, however different it may be from the real one, must have something — a form — in common with it.” — Wittgenstein (Tractatus)
“Year after year
On the monkey’s face:
A monkey’s face.”
— Basho
What I am seeing of late is that the Climate Crisis is destroying environmentalism. What I consider real environmentalism. The Climate discourse is quickly being taken over by monied interests whose desire is to save capitalism before they save the planet. They fly (in jets, often private) to conferences in which avocados (or whatever) are flown in from California (or wherever). And there is aristocracy, literally, in attendance. It feels almost required. The British or Dutch Royals, if we’re talking carbon footprints, are tracking in with size 12 Florsheims– while the indigenous activists who toil and are persecuted in places such as Honduras, or Colombia, are not invited. They are of an other way of life, the life of actual concern for nature. These conferences are a kind of ceremonial environmentalism.
The New Dark Age 