George Monbiot

Just received news that 27 people have been arrested in Parliament Square under the Terrorism Act 2000 for holding signs saying "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action".
This is real police state behaviour.

How much more evidence do we need? The ultra-rich and the governments supporting them will destroy everything for the sake of profit, power and pride. Nothing is precious to them - not human life, not the living world - except their own wealth and status. Our survival depends on resisting them.

Almost everything we argue about is a substitute for the thing we should be arguing about: the immense wealth & power of an oligarchic class, which captures governments, ruins lives and wrecks the living planet.
This class redirects our rage at scapegoats. To resist its lies is to resist its power.

Whatever you might think of Maduro, the seizure and kidnapping of a head of state takes us to a very dark place. Vast, arbitrary, extra-legal power, which could be exercised almost anywhere, regardless of the character of the target government.

Here's one of the warnings I gave in an article before the US election. It's devastating to see it all happening.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Why, you might ask, do the BBC and Sky News, casting their editorial guidelines to the wind, keep giving massive airtime to the far right, while shutting out leftwing voices? Don't their bosses understand the likely consequences?
Only one explanation now remains.
They do.
And it is what they want.

Please spread this far and wide, as stories don't get much bigger than this. When the government blocks even the intelligence services from telling us we're heading for environmental catastrophe, you know we have a problem. A very big problem.
Thank you.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The UK government didn't want you to see this report on ecosystem collapse. I'm not surprised | George Monbiot

It took an FOI request to bring this national security assessment to light. For ‘doomsayers’ like us, it is the ultimate vindication, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

How privatisation works (and Thames Water is just the latest example).
1. A government takes a national asset built up with taxpayers' money and the work of public servants over many years, and hands it, for a fraction of its value, to a private company.
2. In doing so, it creates a monopoly.
🧵

A violent criminal? A threat to society? A danger to democracy? No, no and no. This is someone being punished again and again for giving a damn about humanity and the living world.
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Just Stop Oil protester, 78, has jail term extended after no suitable tag found

Exclusive: Gaie Delap told she will have to serve 20 more days that correspond to period of time at home after recall

A gobsmacking story. Water companies let toxic waste disposers, for cash, dump their loads into sewage farms. The sewage sludge is then spread, untested, on farmland, potentially poisoning vast areas, entire ecosystems and the people (you and me) eating the food.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

What’s in the millions of tonnes of sludge sprayed on to farmland? The answer won’t make you happy | George Monbiot

Thanks to breathtaking negligence, the liquid fertiliser used to help grow our food bubbles with a lethal cocktail of toxins, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

1. Yesterday, 86 people were arrested in the UK under the Terrorism Act 2000 for holding signs saying "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action."
They are the opposite of terrorists. They were protesting *against* terrorism. 🧵

This point needs to be made over and again:
The main purpose of wealth taxes should not be to raise revenue. That's a small and secondary benefit. The main purpose should be to *reduce the fortunes of the ultrarich*. Why? Because those fortunes present a massive threat to democracy and public life.

These people have a funny way of saying "Environmentalists have been proved right yet again."

When did you ever hear the BBC stating that it must alter “story selection” and “other types of output, such as drama”, to win the trust of Green voters, or of unrepresented people on the left?
All the shifts are in just one direction.
bylinetimes.com/2025/06/09/b...

BBC Bosses Draw Up Plans to Win Over Reform Voters by Changing News and Drama Output

The Director General Tim Davie and other executives discussed altering BBC “story selection” in order to secure the "trust" of supporters of Nigel Farage’s party

1. The difference so far (and for god's sake let's keep it that way) between X and Bluesky is not between right and left but between abuse and respect.
A good society is built on mutual respect. But what does this mean?
A short thread.🧵

We must stand in solidarity with Jews being attacked by antisemitic criminals and terrorists: no ifs or buts. We must stand in solidarity with Palestinians being murdered by the Israeli government: no ifs or buts. These are not contradictory positions. They are consistent ones. 🧵1/5

Today the order banning #PalestineAction as "terrorists" came into effect. But they are not terrorists. They are protesters trying to stop a genocide. This is a "first they came for ..." situation. Unless we stand in solidarity against this assault on our freedom, they will pick us off one by one.

The more we discover, the worse it gets. Now we learn the water companies wrote the guidance ensuring sewage sludge is not tested for the vast majority of contaminants before being spread on farmland. They gave themselves a free licence to dump hazardous waste. 🧵
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Environment Agency insider alleges ‘cover-up’ over sewage sludge on farmland

Regulator and government accused of colluding with water industry to dump potentially toxic waste without oversight

Trump never had a peace plan for Ukraine. He had a plan for Ukraine's surrender, with a colonial resource grab. As Zelenskyy rightly refused it, or to cooperate in Trump's TV spectacular, the US has now cut Ukraine off.
That's what blackmail looks like.
That's what the world is up against.

It's not asylum seekers who jack up rents, undermine the NHS, hold down wages and keep people insecure.
It's capital.
The role of the far right is to shift the blame for decades of economic attacks by the rich and powerful onto powerless people who have only just arrived here.

If the Palestine Action hunger strikers die - which they could do at any moment, as they are now very close to the end - it will be the government that killed them. Today’s column explains why. Please share, and write urgently to your MP.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Let’s be clear: if the Palestine Action hunger strikers die, the government will bear moral responsibility | George Monbiot

The three remaining hunger strikers have been convicted of nothing. Yet with astonishing cruelty, ministers refuse to listen to their reasonable demands, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

Brainwashing, 2026 edition. This paper shows how X's algorithmic feed shifts people's views rightwards. It's a sophisticated, highly effective form of reorientation. And it is utterly chilling.
If you're still on that platform, unhook yourself now.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The political effects of X’s feed algorithm - Nature

Among users initially on a chronological feed, 7 weeks of exposure to X’s algorithmic feed in 2023 shifted political attitudes and account-following behaviour in a more conservative direction compared...

If you say "I support Palestine Action", they might put you in jail.
If you incite a racist riot, they put you on the news.