Extinction Rebellion Skåne 💚🦋⌛️

XR Skåne är Extinction Rebellion i Skåne. We are the Extinction Rebellion of Skåne, we want action, we want climate justice! - Join the xr! Swish: 1231600063

[Extinction Rebellion Skåne 💚🦋⌛️ @xrskane]

NU FINNS XR:s BOK "Tid för uppror" UTE I HANDELN!

Pontus och hans dotter Thea har skrivit varsitt kapitel. Theas handlar om ockupationen av Sveaskogs huvudkontor. Pontus' om tankar som kom när han stängde ner en flygplats.
#tidföruppror #bokenomXR #vaktelförlag #klimatalliansen

[Extinction Rebellion Skåne 💚🦋⌛️ @xrskane]

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Naturskyddsföreningen, FFF, Klimataktion Skåne och Ta tillbaka framtiden har bekräftat att de kommer att delta. Fler organisationer som borde vara med? Tipsa!!

[Extinction Rebellion Skåne 💚🦋⌛️ @xrskane]

VISA att vi är över 70% av befolkningen som vill ha en mer kraftfull klimatomställning och menar allvar.
Praktisk info:
📷📷Malmös politiker får krisbroschyr nu på torsdag 27/3📷📷 Visst ses vi där?
NÄR: 27 mars kl 12-14 (samling kl 11.30)
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[Extinction Rebellion Skåne 💚🦋⌛️ @xrskane]

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VAR: Malmö, Rådhuset vid Stortorget
VAD: Vi delar ut vår krisfolder till Malmöpolitiker på väg in till Kommunfullmäktiges sammanträde.
VEM: Det är Rebellmammorna och XR i Malmö som står bakom aktionen. samt:

[Roger Hallam @RogerHallamCS21]

1. "I was jailed for four years for a non-violent climate protest – this is my prison diary", Louise Lancaster, @JustStop_Oil

@Sir_David_King "On our current path, civilisation as we know it will disappear." Guardian May 2024.

https://t.co/3rwQqTXQNB

[Roger Hallam @RogerHallamCS21]

I ploughed through Iain McGilchrist’s 1,500-page The Matter with Things on the recommendation of fellow Extinction Rebellion co-founder Gail Bradbrook.
As people say in the quotes, this book is "an event". For the green movements, it could well be what Capital (Das Kapital) was for communism. But the thing about The Matter with Things is that it is radically incomplete - like Marx’s weighty tome.

McGilchrist’s work is a wonderful sourcebook for our crying-out need to start thinking in terms of processes rather than “things,” to look at the whole rather than the parts.

But, like just about all such books, it is about theory rather than practice—how things need to be, without anything on how to get there. Marx was famously hopeless on what actually needs to happen, and McGilchrist follows in the same great male thinker tradition.

You know how it is: you read the book, you have that warm, glowing feeling about now being so smart about the world. And then what? Nothing changes because, well, what do you do next? Write a book maybe? Meanwhile, the bad guys are still doing their thing—burn, baby, burn.

There is something about the very act of reading that is implicitly unecological in McGilchrist’s critical sense of our separation from the whole. What reading has come to mean in our culture is separate from acting.

There is reading, and then there is acting—separate, atomised, in their own nice, neat silos. The author is not someone real, speaking to you, making demands of you. They are some sort of abstraction.

In “serious” writing, the author is supposed to entirely disappear. It’s all in the third person. It’s all part of that “don’t show feelings,” “keep it rational” b*****ks culture that enables our societies to exploit Nature to the point of extinction and think it’s basically no big deal. Separation enables extraction, which leads to suicide. A process, not a bunch of things.

So, it’s time for a new process. No more of this reading another nice article and then business as usual. I am going to give you an ultimatum—this is direct action time. We need to connect!

If I am going to carry on writing for The Ecologist, then I need at least 100 of you, dear readers, to commit several hours of your time to running a mini-assembly.

It’s genuinely no big deal. You get together, on or offline, with a few friends and chat about the state of the world, and then you feed into what will be a global assembly process.
As I hope to show, if I do continue to write articles, this will lead to a world revolution. We have to aim high. It’s the end of the world.

Of course, I could ask nicely, but, as some of you know, that is not really my style—not least because it doesn’t work.

All real change requires real risk. Disruption, we have to understand, is the means to creating connection. Being nice means continuing with separation. We all know this from our personal relationships if we’re honest.

So, I want you to trust me and just do it. And, as I say, it’s not a massive thing. I’m not asking you to go to prison - not yet, anyway. But seriously, if we are to get through the next few decades together, we need to start trusting each other and acting with each other, not just reading.

So, please sign up and share it. Otherwise, my illustrious journalism career with The Ecologist will have come to a premature halt. Life will go on, I suppose. At least for a while.

Sign up at https://t.co/wjMMC7DFXw

[Robin Boardman @RobinBoardmanUK]

I visited @RogerHallamCS21 in prison today. He’s serving a 5-year prison sentence for organising a peaceful protest against climate collapse. That’s the longest sentence for nonviolent action since WW2.

After working through the cold halls and sniffer dogs, I found him in the visitors' area as chipper and visionary as ever. He would quickly dismiss the hardships of prison life - no glasses, no paracetamol for the flu, TVs blaring all night - as “no big shakes” compared to the horrors we face. He takes prison in his stride as a resistor.

The criminalisation of protest in the UK and across the world is eroding our democracy. It’s a toxic limitation on our rights and freedoms. However, Roger doesn’t want your sympathy or any Free Roger campaigns. This is his 7th time inside, and he remains laser-focused on the mission at hand. He wants people to go into resistance. Only people power will shake the behemoth of the oligarchy.

He laid out his vision for a new society built on cooperation, assemblies, and mutual aid. The climate and social shocks are now locked in. The Institute of Actuaries predicts 4 billion deaths at 3C warming in the following decades. All else now pales to the horror we face.

Roger isn’t an easy person to work with. He moves like fire, igniting and burning movements with his endless energy. Those close to him know what pain this can leave in its wake. What always draws me back to him, though, is his determination to spark a revolutionary moment.

This is what we dream of—a new society based on care and compassion to ward off the worst of social breakdown. Yes, that’s fascism and genocide, in case you’ve missed it. Every right and dignity we win now is a step towards that progressive revolution.

To be part of it, join the 1000+ people outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Jan 29th and 30 from 9-5 to demand the release of all political prisoners. We will resist. If you can't make it, donate to @defendourjuries, and you'll be there in spirit.

This is our moment to check the creep of authoritarianism. Don’t miss it, or you’ll be next in the cells..

[DarkMountainProject @darkmtn]

'Which is more likely to enable us to find pathways through what is coming: reading the latest IPCC report, or a truly immersive piece of climate fiction?’

@GreenRupertRead explores what is ‘extraordinary and likely prophetic’ about ‘The Deluge’.

https://t.co/JRv6G2Z4xJ

[Extinction Rebellion Skåne 💚🦋⌛️ @xrskane]

Asks the man who think moving to a planet which, instead of oxygen, has about 95% carbon dioxide.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government

[Extinction Rebellion Skåne 💚🦋⌛️ @xrskane]

@elonmusk Asks the man who think moving to a planet which, instead of oxygen, has about 95% carbon dioxide.

[Mike Hudema @MikeHudema]

A habitable planet is more important than the profits of a few fossil fuel companies.

Pass it on.

#ActOnClimate

[Scientist Rebellion @ScientistRebel1]

Scientists Rose (@ultracricket) and Peter (@ClimateHuman) took part in the @_oilkills action at @BostonLogan Airport demanding an end to the fossil fuel economy and for a global treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Fossil Fuels. #OilKills #KeepThemInTheGround

[Just Stop Oil @JustStop_Oil]

🔥 "The other evening we were waltzing round our cell to music playing on our little plastic television."

🧡 Listen to Cressie reading a joint statement written by her and Lucia from prison.

➡️ Sign up to the solidarity rally, Sat 3rd August — https://t.co/T4HM3i0ykI

[Roger Hallam @RogerHallamCS21]

Audio from my prison cell.
https://t.co/sSC7WBmAyk

[Just Stop Oil @JustStop_Oil]

🚨 BREAKING: JUST STOP OIL SUPPORTERS IMPRISONED

✈️ Yesterday, 10 people were arrested as the UK joined other countries with @_oilkills in demanding an end to the extraction and burning of fossil fuels by 2030.

⚖️ Today they appeared in court. [thread]

[Extinction Rebellion Sverige @ExtinctionR_SV]

"När statens allt tyngre apparat sätts in mot det modiga fåtal som vågar offra sig själva ska vi andra förmås vandra med jämnmod mot avgrunden. Kolla vilka störande fanatiker. Allt är normalt. Och nu tittar solen fram!"
https://t.co/U16Jpub0fx

[Återställ Våtmarker @vatmarker]

⚠️Idag ska inte Neova få riva sönder våra pluggar. Det har Ebba & Anna sett till genom att låsa fast sig i båda maskinerna🔒
HJÄLP OSS GENOM ATT DONERA https://t.co/QowANrDa7v
Så kan vi köpa in fler lås som stoppar maskinerna och mer virke till naturreservatet.
@a22network

[Extinction Rebellion Danmark @ExtinctionRDK]

Sikke en skandale! 4 års fængsel for ikke-voldelig civil ulydighed! 😳#RightToProtest #WholeTruthFive #JustStopOil #FreeSpeech

[Media Tell The Truth XR @TTTMediaXR]

This is a thread looking at sentences handed down by Judge Christopher Hehir. 🧵

[Roger Hallam @RogerHallamCS21]

I've just been sentenced to 5 years in prison.

The longest ever for nonviolent action.

The 'crime'?

Giving a talk on civil disobedience as an effective, evidence-based method for stopping the elite from putting enough carbon in the atmosphere to send us to extinction.

I have given hundreds of similar speeches encouraging nonviolent action and have never been arrested for it. This time I was an advisor to the M25 motorway disruption, recommending the action to go ahead to wake up the British public to societal collapse.

I was not part of the planning or action itself.

In the trial, I swore before God to tell the truth. The truth is the science. The science is clear. We're heading for billions of deaths and ecological collapse. To prove this, I presented the jury with a 250-page dossier of leading scientists' research as evidence in my defence. This was denied by the judge as an invalid - climate science is now illegal in the British courtroom.

I then began to speak about the apocalyptic conditions humanity faces - floods, wildfires, mass heat deaths - and was silenced by the judge. He sent out the jury and threatened to arrest me if I didn't stop. Instead, I stayed in the dock and argued that until I was given the right to complete my defence – I would not move. Even the prosecution tried to argue in my defence and the judge let me continue.

When the jury had shuffled in again, I spoke about the legal concept of “equality of arms” – that as the prosecution had had a right to lay facts over a whole week, I also wanted an equal opportunity. I spoke of various cases where juries had acquitted defendants when they had heard the facts, such as the Extinction Rebellion cracking of Shell's windows in 2018 as a reasonable action against criminal destruction. The Dutch Supreme Court has even said that all governments have a legal obligation to prevent the emission of greenhouse gases. Whilst the prosecution accepted that emissions pose an existential threat, for the first time in British history no less, they still tried to convict us for public nuisance rather than praise us for trying to stop those emissions. Given the objectivity of existential threat, there were overwhelming grounds to be involved in a plan to cause some disruption to the M25.

In the British law on public nuisance, there is a ‘reasonable excuse’ clause. Science says there is an overwhelming threat to my life, my children, you and your children. To argue there is not a reasonable excuse directly defies the wish of this legislation. Things are happening that cause harm – people are engaged in physical acts to stop that harm – it doesn’t matter whether it’s a protest or not.

As I began to offer up some case law, the judge kept intervening telling me I was “wasting my time” and ordering the jury to disregard me. To illustrate that I was not talking about my motivations but speaking about real necessity, I referred to a famous case over a decision to operate on conjoined twins with the likelihood that one would die. In this dilemma, I quoted the 19th Century principle that the action was necessary if the threat faced was inevitable and irrevocable, that no more should be done than essential, and that it must be proportionate. I argued that there was a “duress of circumstances” including the objective danger I’ve experienced as a farmer unable to grow food, and the global significance of “food insecurity” – a euphemism for famine and starvation.

There has never been a moment in history where ‘necessity’ has been more supported by objective facts – more than 10,000 scientific and peer-reviewed papers, indicating an outcome of mass starvation and death from man-made climate collapse.

In response, Judge Hehir called for an early lunch and dismissed the jury. He turned to me and warned that I wasn't a lawyer and that “this is not the Roger Hallam show”.

He then gave me just 15 more minutes to put forward my “beliefs” - a totally fucking incoherent statement. This isn’t belief - it’s the objective threat of destruction of property and livelihoods of billions of people and the secondary effects of famine i.e. war, rape, and torture.

I outlined four characteristics of the effects of emitting greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere, describing them as easy to understand, but unique to human experience and so horrific that they are impossible to assimilate.

1. They have universal effects – what’s emitted in India affects the USA, a melting Arctic affects Argentina and so on.

2. The ultimate consequence of GHGs in the atmosphere is that you destroy the basis of life – some experts say for 100,000 years, others 50 million, and some say the Earth will simply become like Venus. In other words, for the first time in human history, a group of people, namely a 1% of wealthy elites, are responsible for destroying everything forever.

3. The Earth has reached a 1.5˚C rise in temperature already and at some point in the next decade we’ll have triggered geological tipping points – regardless of any action, we’ll have started unstoppable change. In other words, we don’t have time to not pull that person from in front of the lorry, if we don’t act now it will be too late. Some scientists contend it’s already too late – the UN has said we have two years in which to make radical changes – so we’re not just trying to stop people from doing bad things, but to prevent them from doing bad things which will create badness forever.

4. There is not an insubstantial possibility of entire human extinction as a result of pumping GHGs into the atmosphere, we’re talking about a crime fundamentally different from any other in history. This, I said, is why I want to be able to show the jury expert evidence.

The judge, showing obvious disinterest, told me to wrap up in a few minutes.

Returning to the idea of ‘necessity’, I gave more examples. We agree that if a man pulls a dagger out in a pub and someone else pushes him and disarms him then there would be no question of prosecution.

In Ireland, a cyclist who stopped and intervened when an immigrant was being attacked became a national hero. But what if someone plants a bomb under the table in a pub, set to explode in 30 minutes? If you push him over, grab the bomb and take it out to the police, you wouldn’t be prosecuted, even though the harm you’re trying to prevent is in the future.

And what about those people pulling down houses in the Great Fire Of London? Their action was to try and prevent harm in other parts of London if the fire had spread. So just because something causes damage over a long time or space is irrelevant – it comes down to causality. The fact that emissions will cause damage across the planet for millions of years is not a reason to stop it from coming into court. In fact, the massive extent of the time and space is the very reason it should be in every court.

At this point, the judge sent the jury home, and again scoffed at me for defending myself as an “amateur lawyer” getting “amateur results”.

The next day reminded the courtroom that I was under oath to tell the whole truth and would continue with my evidence. The judge immediately ordered the jury out, and when I continued to declare I was under an obligation to continue, the public gallery was cleared and I was warned he would be arrested if he didn’t return to his seat.

Then three police officers arrived. I said I would not resist, but also would not assist in my own arrest. As they forcibly dragged me towards the prisoner dock I announced to the observing journalists that this was “Democracy in Action” - Nonviolent resistance to a grossly unjust system. This obscene miscarriage of justice happened to me five times throughout the trial. What a fucking indignity.

I received no good reason why I could not tell the jury what is blindingly obvious - that the elite putting carbon in the atmosphere will kill billions.

Without the whole truth, it is not a fair trial.

If thousands of people were going to die further up that motorway, we would have a reasonable excuse to disrupt it. Except it's not further up the motorway - it's everyone, all around us. Humanity, gone forever.

The judge began the next morning by bizarrely reading out my Twitter feed, which alerted my followers to the fact I wasn’t allowed to give my whole defence and called for support for a presence outside the court. But then he moved on to gleefully recounting some of the various trolls – why this was any part of a serious trial, no one could fathom. I was ordered to take them down by lunchtime or I’d be in contempt of court. This is a British judge in 2024.

Meanwhile, the UN special rapporteur for Environmental Defenders, Michel Forst sat in the gallery, watching. He had previously put out a statement on the injustice of our treatment. It states that the UK could be breaking international law on the rights of environmental protesters. A repressed, UN phrase for trying to stop the carbon elite from killing us all.

I stood up and told the jury that after they’d been ejected yesterday, I had been arrested and removed, but that they had a right to hear my evidence. Once again, the judge ordered the jury and forcibly removed me. The UN guy watched as I was dragged away. I was sent to prison and couldn’t hear the rest of the day’s trial.

Afterwards, the judge falsely claimed that I was behind the jury protection campaign, Defend Our Juries, and had ‘conned’ vulnerable people into coming to the court. No evidence was given. Fair, right?

The next day I again explained that blocking motorways has direct effects on society e.g. the farmers’ protests quickly changed EU policy, and road protests held fuel prices down. The judge dismissed this by asking whether the action had any effect on global temperatures and told me to sit down. I stayed standing and the judge just left the courtroom. What the fuck? I even looked to the prosecution for help again against the judge’s incoherent madness.

When he came back, he started quoting his favourite movie, Goodfellas, and asked me “What are you still doing here?”. Then he ordered me arrested and sent to prison, again.

Whilst I was jailed, the judge gave my friends a pathetic 15 minutes each to defend themselves. When they also spoke of the necessity for action against mass death from carbon emissions, the judge ordered them all to be arrested. After this gagging, people began to call us the #WholeTruthFive.

Finally, we came to the prosecution's closing statement, where, I kid you not, they argued that the jury must take direction from the judge, that the rule of law keeps our society free from collapse, and that climate change is irrelevant. I, of course, was dismissed as someone who “waffles about the cause”. Not a cofounder of the most influential climate movements in the world and academic on social change. Show trials are about lies, remember?

In response I gave my final statement, from behind the glass panel of the dock, reminding jurors they must be sure, not almost sure or on the verge of being sure, and that they must consider ALL the evidence and make a decision that they have actually been given all the evidence. I reminded them of the placard in the Old Bailey that confirms they can acquit based on their conscience without having to give an explanation and without any legal repercussions.

There are two elements to the indictment - conspiracy and disruption. The prosecution had presented what they say is ‘powerful evidence’ of involvement in the plan, but this is not the same as ‘conclusive evidence’. I was there to make arguments for action, and not directly involved in actual planning.

What does it say about civil liberties if people are imprisoned for making speeches? I offered an alternative explanation for what happened – that a Murdoch-owned newspaper, the Sun, had a journalist who just wanted to make a film of my arrest and so recorded and leaked the public Zoom meeting to the police.

Let me remind you that for this I have already been to prison for four months in 2022 without a trial and have been tagged with an 11pm curfew ever since.

Even during my closing statement, the judge tried to shut me down but I went on. I argued that I just wanted the jury to hear the defendants for a few hours and to present them with three or four expert witnesses to give the whole evidence.

Of course, I wasn’t allowed to mention the ‘C-word’ but the jury had heard the undisputed facts of existential threats – which between them describe an unimaginable harm lasting tens of thousands of years. I simply asked them to consider doing what many other juries have done, let good people go free when they are persecuted by the state.

This was about facts, not beliefs. Without facts, this is not a ‘functioning democracy’ but a government that is facilitating the destruction and death of our population. That’s why UN people sat in on the trial – because we do NOT have a functioning democratic state. If you go and ask people in the street, many would laugh at the idea that they have a say in how this country is run. Plenty of expert witnesses would come and tell us we live in a capitalist democracy, a democracy for the rich. In other words no kind of democracy at all.

In the end, I said to the jury that if I speak the truth to them I may end up in prison. If the lawyers speak the truth to them they may lose their jobs. If the jury speaks the truth, nothing will happen to them. I begged them to consult their conscience and ask themselves if they were really sure we didn’t have a reasonable excuse.

The result of this kangaroo court?

You have guessed it. The jury representative stood up the next day, and one by one gave guilty verdicts for all of us, all unanimous.

After the verdict, the judge accused me of fraud and ‘grifting’ because my social media post asked for donations towards ‘court fees’. A slight miswording by my friend who writes the posts, as there were no such fees in this trial. But of course, there are massive costs around the whole legal team supporting us and the consequences of going to prison. Please donate towards them at https://t.co/Wa0nZ20WDu.

The judge then slandered me by proposing to the jurors that if I was telling lies to obtain money, I might be telling people other lies, and maybe other protesters outside the court were being told lies. He said one of them had been an elderly man hard of hearing and was worried I was exploiting vulnerable people. The public gallery gasped. The man in question was a retired GP in full possession of his faculties with a keen knowledge of the issues – what an insult, and what baseless accusations.

To top it off, he said I was 'incapable of introspection'. Guess I’ll have plenty of time for that now…

The judge finished his attacks by then personally thanking the jury for not being ‘intimidated’ and said “Well done”. He said he didn’t care what we thought of him. He was just 'doing his job'.

This is the banality of evil all over again.

He claimed our conviction was just a result of our “single issue fanaticism”. Again, no bias there from a judge who is planning to fly off on holiday when @JustStop_Oil are planning to disrupt airports…

Repression is increasing around the world. Amnesty just put out a report on the systematic state attacks on peaceful protest. Look it up.

Either we resist the the carbon elites' repression and build a true democracy, led by ordinary people in Citizen’s Assemblies, or Covid-like, ecological and economic shocks spark chaos and fascism. We've seen it over and over again.

It's time to say never again.

Never again will we let fascism produce a holocaust.

Never again we will fail to tell the whole truth: that we face the greatest holocaust ever known, a worldwide gas chamber of carbon that could kill us all.

Today it was me imprisoned for telling the truth.

Next, it could be you.

Join the resistance at https://t.co/PYjMdWeLBh before it’s too late.

[Roger Hallam @RogerHallamCS21]

The first time you go hungry will be when the European crop totally fails - combined with a bad year for wheat and rice (staples). The presents odds for this are, not unreasonably, within 10 yrs. Get it - climate is not an "issue" - it is a matter of life or death - your life or death.