Extinction Rebellion and the Undeniable Power of Non-Violent Revolutionary Change

Extinction Rebellion campaigners outside Downing Street on October 8, 2019 (Photo: Andy Worthington).

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As the environmental campaigning group Extinction Rebellion begins the second week of its International Rebellion, it is worth reflecting on how much they — and the Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, who initiated a rolling global climate strike by schoolchildren that, last month, saw millions of schoolchildren and supportive adults take to the streets in 185 countries around the world — have shifted the terms of the debate on climate change over the last twelve months.

As the Guardian explained in an editorial last week, “Ipsos Mori reports that its latest poll found that 78% of Britons believe the planet is ‘heading for disaster’, up from 59% in 2013.” The actions of Thunberg and XR amplifyied the messages of doom put forward by scientists — in particular, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s landmark report, last October, in which, as the Guardian described it, “The world’s leading climate scientists have warned there is only a dozen years [now just eleven] for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people”, adding added that “urgent and unprecedented changes are needed to reach the target”, which they called “affordable and feasible although it lies at the most ambitious end of the [2015] Paris agreement pledge to keep temperatures between 1.5C and 2C.” Since then, the doomsday message has been reinforced by the likes of Sir David Attenborough, via his hard-hitting BBC documentary, ‘Climate Change: The Facts’, and the combined weight of all these actions has led politicians to acknowledge the scale of the unprecedented man-made crisis faced by the whole of humanity.

Under Theresa May, the UK government declared a climate emergency and committed to a 2050 target for zero carbon emissions, and last month the Labour party conference took an important additional step, adopting 2030 as the intended zero carbon date.

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First Photos Published of Shaker Aamer Since His Release from Guantánamo

Shaker Aamer photographed in London on November 10, 2015 (Photo credit: Eddie Mulholland/The Telegraph).This afternoon, the first photos appeared in the British media of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident held at Guantánamo, following his release from the prison on October 30. The photos appear to have been taken by paparazzi near his family home in London — and while I think it’s a pity that those close to Shaker didn’t issue a photo themselves, I’m delighted to see Shaker looking so well, just eleven days after his release.

The photo I’ve posted here was published on the website of the Daily Telegraph, and other photos were on the website of the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror.

Unfortunately, although the photos show an evidently likeable person, and hint at the indomitable spirit that kept him going throughout his long ordeal in US custody, the text accompanying the photos was not always supportive — and the online comments, of course, are best avoided completely. Read the rest of this entry »

Support Hoxton’s New Era Estate Tenants in Their Struggle Against Rapacious US Landlord Westbrook Partners

The two young women in the centre and the right of this photo live on the New Era Estate in Hoxton, and were part of a group of protestors that, on December 1, 2014, had just handed in a petition - of nearly 300,000 signatures - calling on David Cameron to protect them from the rapacious US property developers (Westbrook Holdings) who bought their estate earlier this year and now want to remove the tenants from the flats in which many have lived for decades, paying rents similar to those in council housing or housing associations. If evicted, many of these hardworking people will have to leave London entirely, because of the rampant greed in the capital that shows no sign of abating (Photo by Andy Worthington).Congratulations to the tenants of the New Era Estate in Hoxton for mounting a major campaign to oppose attempts by the US property company that bought up their homes to price them out, in an act of naked greed that ought to make any decent person feel rather queazy about how greed has become the sole measure by which society as a whole measures success.

The New Era Estate — home to 93 families in several blocks of flats in Hoxton, where London’s hipsters mix with council tenants — was built in the 1930s as workers’ housing, a private enterprise by a socially responsible family whose activities echoed what was being undertaken at the time by the London County Council. The Lever family, which built the estate, ran it through a trust — and kept the rents genuinely affordable — until March this year, when it was sold to a consortium, led by the US firm Westbrook Holdings, in which Tory MP Richard Benyon’s family firm also had a stake — and the Benyons, it transpired, took over the running of the estate.

In June, the Daily Mirror reported how rents had already been put up by 10% and how, at a meeting with tenants — many of whom have lived on the estate for decades — Richard Benyon’s brother Edward “announced plans to ­refurbish the 1930s homes and build more flats on the roof,” as the Mirror put it.

“The goal, which is something I have had to say to all of you, is the fact that the rents will be going to market value,” he said, meaning, quite possibly, a tripling or quadrupling of the existing rents, because of the hipness of Hoxton and the complete absence of any kind of rent control. Landlords, if they can get away with it, can charge £2000 a month for flats whether they are new, refurbished or run-down (making a total of £24,000 a year), even though the average income in the UK is only £27,000. Read the rest of this entry »

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Andy Worthington

Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker. Also, photo-journalist (The State of London), and singer and songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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