This is partly for all those “I’m all right” Jacks whose only concern about climate change protest is that they don’t end up being delayed on their way to work.
But it’s mostly for those government ministers who put their heads in the sand whenever a fat fossil fuel firm flings money at them to continue letting greenhouse gases stink up – and heat up – our air, without a single thought for the future.
And its for those corporate chiefs who don’t realise that, after we hit the tipping-point, their money won’t save them and it certainly won’t save their children.
So… I don’t know… why not try putting this clip in front of those people?
Go on. It isn’t very long:
Oh yeah – the video was made in support of Extinction Rebellion, those hand-glueing hippies who the Tory government wants to hide away from the rest of us.
Makes you wonder whether your leaders really have your best interests at heart, doesn’t it?
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Targeted: Extinction Rebellion members – here protesting at a Murdoch print works – were briefly defined as an extremist group. Although they have now been removed from the list, Home Secretary Priti Patel has continued to refer to climate protesters as “criminals”.
A Tory crackdown on legal political protest was devised by a right-wing think tank that is funded by the US fossil fuel corporation ExxonMobil, it has been alleged.
And it is easy to see the reason: it removes the right of ordinary citizens to protest against the climate-wrecking policies followed by the oil industry.
According to Open Democracy,
Policy Exchange explicitly said the government should pass legislation to target Extinction Rebellion (XR) in a 2019 report that got the attention of Tory MPs and peers.
The report called for protest laws to be “urgently reformed in order to strengthen the ability of police to place restrictions on planned protest and deal more effectively with mass law-breaking tactics”.
Sections of Priti Patel’s controversial policing bill, which became the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, appear directly inspired by the Policy Exchange report.
The Policy Exchange report that appears to have contained the seeds of the policing bill was later cited in the House of Commons by Tory MP Steve Baker, who urged ministers to read it, and in the Lords by Tory peer Matt Ridley. Baker is a trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a climate sceptic group that has received money from groups with oil interests in the US. Ridley is a member of the group’s academic advisory council.
Patel said openly that the legislation was intended to stop tactics used by Extinction Rebellion. The home secretary first pledged to introduce the bill just over a year after the Policy Exchange report was published.
Policy Exchange does not disclose its donors, but openDemocracy has uncovered that ExxonMobil Corporation donated $30,000 to its American fundraising arm in 2017.
There is much more information on the Open Democracy site (link below).
Circumstantial evidence?
Maybe – but then it isn’t likely that the Conservative Party, Policy Exchange and ExxonMobil are ever going to admit conspiring to silence legitimate political protest.
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After scientists said the UK is already suffering disruptive climate change, six pregnant women held a powerful demonstration demanding an end to fossil fuel use.
The latest UK State of the Climate report states that 2020 was the third warmest, fifth wettest and eighth sunniest on record; no other year is in the top 10 on all three criteria.
Within 30 years, the UK has become 0.9C warmer and six per cent wetter.
Fossil fuel use is widely considered to be responsible – and that’s why six women stood, bellies bared, in Piccadilly Circus, on the morning of July 31, drawing attention to Extinction Rebellion’s demand for an immediate ban on all new fossil fuel projects.
The words ‘My Future’ were printed on their bumps and they held a giant ‘umbilical cord’, connected to a petrol pump and nozzle as they made their demand for a cleaner world for their unborn children.
Many people attack XR because the organisation’s demonstrations are often highly disruptive (the point being that climate change – if allowed to go unchecked – is even more disruptive). But these mums-to-be have a point, don’t they?
Tiger Lily Raphael, who is nine months pregnant, said: “I am crippled with concern for the state of my unborn child’s world. It feels like my child is being failed before their life has even begun because of the lack of meaningful Government action on the climate and ecological crisis.
“The climate is changing because we continue to burn fossil fuels, but the UK Government currently has no policies in place to end them.
“I am accountable as a parent and a citizen and so I am here demanding that the Government use their power to stop the harm by putting an immediate ban on all new fossil fuel projects.
“Public money should be spent on protecting us and our children. Please don’t let our children suffer the consequences of Boris’ lack of action.”
XR’s article about the protest said there will be an opportunity to make significant change at the COP 26 summit this year:
“The UK will host the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow on 1 – 12 November 2021.
“At the summit, delegates including heads of state, climate experts and negotiators will come together to agree coordinated action to tackle climate change.
“The COP26 homepage states: ‘Temperatures are soaring. Storms are raging. And crops are failing. If we do not take this chance, every single one of us will be affected.’
“This reality is known to the UK government, which holds the presidency of the COP26 Global Climate Summit in November, but it has failed to act with the urgency dictated by the crisis.
“Extreme weather is becoming the norm and the UK is not prepared. Babies and children are particularly vulnerable.
“The World Health Organization estimates that over 80 per cent of the illnesses, injuries, and deaths occurring due to climate change are in children, particularly those living in poor and under-served areas.
“Climate change threatens children’s futures around the world.”
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Yes: the attack on a statue by police fulfils at least two of the 14 signs of fascism: protection of corporate power, and disdain for intellectuals and the arts.
It seems attacking statues is only bad if it represents something the Conservatives support – like slavery.
A statue that was adopted by Extinction Rebellion in the campaign group’s protest and blockading of printing plants owned by Rupert Murdoch’s media organisations last Autumn is fair game, it seems –
– even when it is displayed as part of an arts charity’s competition.
The police were called in – and more than 40 personnel broke into the building where the statue had been installed.
Here’s artist Damien Meade with the story:
You get 10 years in prison for protest of historical statues, but someone erects something subversive and the full muscle of the state comes knocking.
The building was ransacked and three people were arrested, but released without charge the following day.
The structure was designed by the collective @probunnyrabbit who submitted it for the annual @antepavilion annual architectural open competition, and it is installed on the roof as part of that competition.
XR were planning further protests against Murdoch last weekend. The police intended to remove it (but failed). It takes a certain skill-set to erect it, and anyone with such skills would have been a target of the raid.
The Police were simply operating as stooges for Murdoch.
When the owner of docks came to complain about the raid on our premises, he was promptly arrested and charged with "attempted assault" and "dangerous driving". He was not be released till 5am the next morning! #PoliceBrutality#art#hackneycanal#canalartpic.twitter.com/BRghc4T8fL
All this happened at the beginning of the month but This Writer didn’t hear about it until today.
It remains well worth reporting because of the Tory hypocrisy evident in the raid, and the suggestion that both the police and the Conservative government were acting for a media corporation rather than upholding any law.
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Dictator: despotic governments attack press freedom – and they do it quietly, while claiming to be doing the exact opposite. That’s exactly what your Boris Johnson-led government has done – and why this image is appropriate.
So much for Boris Johnson’s (and Priti Patel’s) comments about the Extinction Rebellion blockade for Rupert Murdoch’s print works being an attack on the ‘free press’.
On the day before they were making these attacks, the Council of Europe – that the UK founded – issued a formal warning that the Conservative government is a threat to the freedom of the press:
The Council of Europe issued the Level 2 “media freedom alert” after Ministry of Defence press officers refused to deal with Declassified UK, a website focusing on foreign and defence policy stories.
The new alert, issued by the organisation on Friday, was classified by the watchdog as an “act having a chilling effect on media freedom” and put under the “state” category – because the British state was the source of the threat.
It seems the only reason the government was refusing to comment to Declassified is that the Tories were retaliating against previous reporting that was critical of the government’s use of its armed forces.
Writing to urge the government into a rethink, the International Press Institute stated:
“It goes without saying that the exclusion of a media publication by a government ministry due to its investigative reporting would undermine press freedom and set a worrying precedent for other journalists whose job it is to report in the public interest on the British military. Criticism should be no reason to discriminate against a media publication.
“In contrast, tough journalism by outlets such as Declassified UK on matters such as the UK’s foreign and military affairs, uncomfortable though it often may be for those in power, is crucial for a transparent and functioning democracy.”
So your Tory government had deliberately and silently sabotaged the workings of “transparent and functioning democracy” by restricting press freedom on the day before it accused XR of the same thing with a public and popular demonstration.
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Blockade: Extinction Rebellion members at a Murdoch print works.
Could you feel the Establishment rage at being told its propaganda mouthpieces aren’t providing us with the news?
It seems 72 members of Extinction Rebellion did, after they were arrested in protests targeting three printing installations owned by Rupert Murdoch.
Why does he need three? Because he owns too many newspapers and they all print what he wants – not what the people need to know.
So the disruption at Broxbourne in Hertfordshire, Knowsley in Merseyside, and near Motherwell, North Lanarkshire hit the distribution of his publications including The Sun, The Times, The Scottish Sun, along with those belonging to some of the few other billionaires who own the UK’s national press, including the Daily Telegraph (Barclay brothers), Daily Mail (Jonathan Harmsworth – Viscount Rothermere), and the Evening Standard (Evgeny Lebedev).
Do you really think any of these moguls will let their papers publish anything they don’t want you to think?
This Writer is reminded of the words of the late, great Tony Benn – that nobody should be allowed to own more than one newspaper. Then we would at least have a more free press than we have now.
Further to this, consider the onslaught under which those of us in the social media have to work every day. We don’t have the massive advertising resources of the Murdochs of this world, so we have to rely on organisations like Twitter and Facebook to spread our message virally.
And organisations like Facebook and Twitter respond by suppressing us. Facebook has an algorithm designed to push posts from left-wing news sites down people’s newsfeeds so they don’t see them.
This Site is currently having to cope with an 84 per cent drop in income due to its articles being suppressed in this way. One commenter on the Vox Political Facebook page said it had been so long since they had seen a link to one of my articles, they thought I had given up!
But if you check the “Archives” list to the left of these words, you’ll see that Vox Political has been publishing articles continuously – every day, barring a few rare exceptions – for years.
The only reason people don’t see links to my posts is because somebody else doesn’t want them to.
Yet Boris Johnson and all the other hypocrites only complain about attacks on the “free press” when their propaganda sheets take the hit.
Just look at the nonsense spoken about this by the Establishment stooges quoted in the BBC’s story – and where possible, let’s contrast it with what Extinction Rebellion has to say about these people:
Boris Johnson said on Twitter: “A free press is vital in holding the government and other powerful institutions to account on issues critical for the future of our country, including the fight against climate change.
“It is completely unacceptable to seek to limit the public’s access to news in this way.”
Have you seen that from the Murdoch press, the Torygraph, the Heil and the Standard in response to the decisions of his government – the worst Tory government ever to blight the United Kingdom? No.
Shadow Secretary of State for Digital Culture, Media and Sport, Jo Stephens, said: “People have the right to read the newspapers they want.
“Stopping them from being distributed and printers from doing their jobs is wrong.”
People also deserve to be told what their money is supporting, though. It isn’t fair to let them go on paying these propagandists without knowing exactly what they’re buying.
ER has been scathing about Starmer Labour’s “business as usual” approach:
Actually, let’s go into this a bit because Labour’s position, under Keir Starmer, frankly, stinks.
Dawn Butler, Labour’s Brent MP who has suffered racism from the police, from her own constituents, and from members of her own party (if a certain leaked report is to be believed – and I do), tweeted in support of XR – and was then ordered to take it down by Starmer’s minions:
Could anything demonstrate Starmer’s Establishment credentials better? He must not be allowed to get anywhere near 10 Downing Street because he’ll only stamp on all our faces harder than Johnson (to paraphrase Orwell).
Here’s what Starmer’s – and Labour’s – response to her tweet should have been:
During the leadership contest, Keir Starmer talked up his taking part in protests outside Murdoch’s Wapping print plant to stop his papers being printed. Now this. Tell me he’s not a moral vacuum. https://t.co/y71dpcHjF2
And Home Secretary Priti Patel tweeted the overnight action by XR was an “attack on democracy”.
Obviously there are too many sharp responses to Patel for me to publish here, so I’ll restrict myself to pointing out that she has nothing to say about attacks on the left-wing social media – which would be an “attack on democracy” by the same token.
Here’s ER:
When @pritipatel talks about #freepress, she means freedom for the press to do whatever they want. The freedom to buy a country. The freedom to stir division and hate. Our action is for the freedom of ordinary people who want a safe planet to live on #WeWantToLive#FreeTheTruthpic.twitter.com/WASkUcVhCG
The bosses and editors of the newspapers involved have all condemned the action; they would, though, wouldn’t they? I see no reason to comment on their words.
Extinction Rebellion itself has made it clear that the blockade was a response to the so-called ‘free press’ suppressing reports on climate change and the ecological emergency it represents.
A report on its own website states: “The groups are using disruption to expose the failure of these corporations to accurately report on the climate & ecological emergency, and their consistent manipulatIon of the truth to suit their own personal and political agendas.
“The right wing media is a barrier to the truth, failing to reflect the scale and urgency of the crisis and hold governments to account. Coverage in many of the newspapers printed here is polluting national debate on climate change, immigration policy, the rights and treatment of minority groups, and on dozens of other issues. They distract us with hate and maintain their own power and wealth, profiting from our division. We can’t move forward until this barrier falls.
“Five billionaires are the majority voting shareholders for most of the UK national newspapers, with a combined weekly readership of 49million. Three companies alone (News UK, DMG and Reach) dominate 83% of the national newspaper market (up from 71% in 2015). This small group of extremely powerful people manipulate the media narrative to serve their own ends.”
Is it really a free press if it is only used to put us in chains?
The response on the social media has been very clear on that:
#Murdoch has done more to undermine democracy in the West than the Soviet Union or Putin.
— John Smith (son of Harry Leslie Smith) (@Harryslaststand) September 5, 2020
I am quite sure more people would rather see Rupert Murdoch in jail than Extinction Rebellion. https://t.co/8iZNKmRUbm
Lord Beaverbrook, responding to questions from the Royal Commission on the Press in 1947, said his intention in buying the Express more than three decades earlier had been, “to set up a propaganda paper and I have never departed from that purpose”.https://t.co/95w7X9MGUJ
The UK press is far from a “free press”. People who claim so are disingenuously omitting the history of press barons and how they used their publications as propaganda machines for political gain.
Press barons have always had (& still have) close relationships with politicians.
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“Tell the truth”: The ‘pink boat’ at Oxford Circus became a symbol of the Extinction Rebellion protest.
It turns out Michael Gove didn’t “get the message” after all.
The nation’s Environment Secretary has done nothing to respond to the environmental catastrophe highlighted by the Extinction Rebellion protests in London over the last two weeks.
Instead it has fallen to Jeremy Corbyn – much-maligned by dimwits – to bring the matter to Parliament for a vote.
I was talking about this issue with a friend last week, and he said that people here in the United Kingdom think they are insulated from climate crisis – that we live in a society that is well-enough ordered that it can survive an emergency. That they didn’t “get the message” either.
Because if the climate emergency goes much further, supplies of food will break down. Crops will fail; even more animals will die (half of the world’s species have already gone, within This Writer’s lifetime).
Even here in the UK, my friend said, people will be fighting each other on the streets for the last precious morsels of food.
That’s if this goes too far.
The message to humanity is simple: Change or die.
But people like Mr Gove, and the big business interests he prefers to represent instead of the people who elected him, still need to “get the message”.
Perhaps it is time to put the “rebellion” into the name of Extinction Rebellion.
Perhaps it is time to make a list of the people who are perpetuating the climate catastrophe; the people responsible for the planet’s sixth extinction event (which is what we’re going through right now). They are the worst mass-murderers in history so we really do need to record their names in our history books.
And perhaps it is time to put them up against a wall and put the message to them in the bluntest, most immediate terms: “Change or die.”
I know. It’s an unusual comment for This Writer. Usually I am the strongest advocate of peaceful methods. But “Change or die” – right?
Perhaps we could start with Mr Gove.
Labour will force a vote on Wednesday to try to make the UK the world’s first country to declare a climate emergency.
Senior party figures confirmed they will use their opposition day in the Commons to move the environment to the top of the agenda.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the Extinction Rebellion protests in London and other cities, in which 1,100 were arrested, had been a “wake up call” and he would urge the Government to act.
He said: “Only concerted government intervention through a Green Industrial Revolution can deliver this scale of change. We can and will harness the power of new technologies for social and environmental justice.”
Extra: Here are a few more names to add to the list – the leaders of the company that has been given oil-drilling rights in the Golan Heights by Israel, which has been illegally occupying this part of Syria for decades.
Here they are:
This lot are the true danger to our planet and civilised society. Not immigrants Not socialism Not Muslims. Vote @UKLabour if you want a leader with the guts to stand to to Big Business and promote world peace.#VoteLabourMay2pic.twitter.com/RLFGJqllwu
That’s Genie Energy: Dick Cheney, Rupert Murdoch, James Woolsey, Bill Richardson, Larry Summers, Michael Steinhardt and Jacob Rothschild.
Hmm. A Rothschild – the name that has become synonymous with the anti-Semitic stereotype about Jews being in control of the world’s money, or some such nonsense.
Do you think he’s on that board so its critics can be accused of anti-Semitism?
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