Alphabet (GOOGLE) delivers wireless Internet over light beams from 20km away

IT'S A QUANTUM UNIVERSE
Wireless network in Kenya to use light beams, like fiber but without the cables.

JON BRODKIN - 11/10/2020, 12:29 PM

Enlarge / Piloting Taara’s wireless optical communication links in Kenya.


Alphabet will soon deliver wireless Internet over light beams in Kenya using a technology that can cover distances of up to 20km. Alphabet's Project Taara, unveiled under a different name in 2017, conducted a series of pilots in Kenya last year and is now partnering with a telecom company to deliver Internet access in remote parts of Africa.

Kenya will get the technology first, with other countries in sub-Saharan Africa to follow. Project Taara General Manager Mahesh Krishnaswamy described the project in an announcement from Alphabet today:


Project Taara is now working with Econet and its subsidiaries, Liquid Telecom and Econet Group, to expand and enhance affordable, high-speed Internet to communities across their networks in Sub-Saharan Africa. Taara's links will begin rolling out across Liquid Telecom's networks in Kenya first, and will help provide high-speed connectivity in places where it's challenging to lay fiber cables, or where deploying fiber might be too costly or dangerous—for example over rivers, across national parks, or in post-conflict zones.
Like fiber, without cables
Illustration of a Project Taara terminal delivering Internet access from a tall building to a remote area.
Alphabet

Similar to fiber-optic cables, Taara's technology uses light to transmit data, but without the cables. Krishnaswamy continued:

In the same way traditional fiber uses light to carry data through cables in the ground, Taara uses light to transmit information at very high speeds as a very narrow, invisible beam. This beam is sent between two small Taara terminals to create a link. A single Taara link can cover distances up to 20km and can transmit bandwidth of up to 20Gbps+—that's enough connectivity for thousands of people to be watching YouTube at the same time.

By creating a series of links from our partner's fiber-optic network over ground to underserved areas, Taara's links can relay high-speed, high-quality Internet to people without the time, cost, and hassle involved in digging trenches or stringing cables along poles.

The technology requires line-of-sight connections, so Alphabet deploys the terminals "high up on towers, poles, or rooftops." Krishnaswamy wrote that Taara links can "offer a cost-effective and quickly deployable way to bring high-speed Internet access to remote areas and help plug critical gaps to major access points, like cell towers and Wi-Fi hotspots." Alphabet encouraged other ISPs and mobile network operators to get in touch about deploying Taara in additional areas.Advertisement

Project Taara is one of the "moonshots" developed at Alphabet's X subsidiary (formerly known as Google X). Taara grew out of X's Project Loon, which had developed a balloon-based network to cover remote areas.

As Alphabet explains, "the Loon team needed to figure out a way to create a data link between balloons that were flying over 100km apart" and thus "investigated the use of FSOC (Free Space Optical Communications) technology to establish high-throughput links between balloons." After using those links to send data between balloons in the stratosphere, Loon engineers wondered if they could "apply some of that science to solve connectivity problems down a little closer to Earth," and Project Taara was born.

TikTok users troll Trump “voter fraud” reporting hotline en masse

The Trump admin has heavily targeted TikTok... and users are hitting right back.

KATE COX - 11/9/2020

Enlarge / A phone, earbuds, a pen, and a laptop: the full "prank call the president's campaign" kit. Mateusz Slodkowski | SOPA Images | LightRocket | Getty Images203WITH 109 POSTERS PA

If you've turned on a radio, television, or Internet-connected device since last Monday, you've probably heard that there was a federal election in the United States this past week. After waiting through four days of election officials nationwide working to tally up ballots as fast as they could, all major media outlets on Saturday agreed that the Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, won the election, paving the path for him to be sworn in as our 46th president in January.

One key figure, however, has yet to accept the outcome: the loser of the race, incumbent President Donald Trump. Trump made clear in September that he had no intent of conceding should he lose the election. He has followed through on that threat, filing a dozen lawsuits in at least five states so far, making baseless allegations of fraud and seeking to have ballots thrown out or recounted.

As part of this effort, Trump administration officials and their allies, such as the president's adult sons, took to social media asking anyone with suspicions or evidence of voter fraud to call a specific hotline number. The Internet has responded to the existence of this hotline exactly as one might expect: with maximum trolling.
Prank calls gone public

ABC News was first to report that staffers at the campaign's Arlington, Virginia, headquarters have been inundated with prank calls—and that recordings of those calls have become a popular trend on short-form video sharing social media platform TikTok.

One user, for example, recorded her call in which she quoted CNN's Anderson Cooper, saying she found an "obese turtle" overturned on is back in the sun. Another, unable to keep from laughing for the full duration of her call, claimed to have seen individuals "literally spreading poop" on their ballots.

Playing an anti-Trump rap, "FDT," was one popular tactic. (The "F" stands for exactly what you think it does, and the audio is not safe for most workplaces.) And music also formed the backdrop for another prank, in which the caller told the Trump campaign that she was a voter in Georgia, "in line to vote, and there was this guy there... and he challenged me to a fiddle contest?" while playing "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" in the background.

Twitter, too, has proven a popular platform for callers to share their own variations on the genre. Alex Hirsch, creator of the Disney show Gravity Falls, went above and beyond in his call, using the voices of two Gravity Falls characters to describe The Hamburglar in great detail and then encouraging followers of his Twitter feed to follow in his path.
Does TikTok strike again?

This is not the first time that trolling Trump has become a TikTok trend. There is a popular theory that keeps circulating that teens using TikTok managed to artificially depress the turnout to a Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June and that the Trump administration developed a vendetta against the app as a result.

Reality, however, is both more complicated and less tidy. First, the TikTok campaign probably didn't have a major effect on turnout at that rally. And second: regulators first began their national security investigation into TikTok more than eight months before that rally, at the behest of Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).Advertisement

The White House's rhetoric against TikTok did heat up in July, however, when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an interview the administration was considering a ban on several China-based apps, beginning but not ending with the short-form video platform. The Trump administration followed through on that threat in August, with the president issuing executive orders that declared both WeChat and TikTok to be national security threats and issuing bans that would go into effect in September.

Those plans, however, have been repeatedly foiled in the courts. Different judges granted injunctions putting the bans on hold in lawsuits filed by both TikTok creators and WeChat users. Several lawsuits on behalf of both apps continue to wind their way through the courts and will likely be doing so for quite some time.

Meanwhile, Oracle nominally won out over Microsoft in a bid to buy TikTok's US operations from Chinese owner ByteDance back in September. The terms of that transaction, though, seem to be a mess at best, and the deal has not yet reached any resolution.

TikTok says it’s been waiting weeks for a Trump response on US ban

TikTok parent ByteDance is asking a court to block Trump’s TikTok ban.

TIMOTHY B. LEE - 11/11/2020, 10:27 AM

Enlarge / TikTok headquarters in Culver City, California.
AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images

ByteDance on Tuesday appealed to a federal appellate court seeking to overturn a sweeping Trump administration order requiring the company to divest itself of its popular TikTok platform—at least in the United States. The order is scheduled to take effect tomorrow. But ByteDance says that it has been weeks since it has heard from the government's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States about ByteDance's plan to address the government's concerns without shutting TikTok down.

ByteDance has proposed selling a share of TikTok to Oracle and giving the company's US division more autonomy. These changes were designed to address the government concerns that American TikTok users could be subjected to Chinese government surveillance or other meddling.

FURTHER READING Judge: Trump admin‘s TikTok ban would cause “irreparable harm” to creators

“For a year, TikTok has actively engaged with CFIUS in good faith to address its national security concerns, even as we disagree with its assessment,” TikTok said in a media statement. “In the nearly two months since the president gave his preliminary approval to our proposal to satisfy those concerns, we have offered detailed solutions to finalize that agreement—but have received no substantive feedback on our extensive data privacy and security framework.”

The August 14 order establishing tomorrow's November 12 deadline allowed ByteDance to seek a further 30-day extension. ByteDance says it requested an extension but hasn't received an answer. So it's now asking the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on the issue.

Trump has actually issued two different orders purporting to ban TikTok—one on August 6 and the other on August 14. The orders haven't fared well in court so far. A federal judge blocked enforcement of the first order in September. Last month, a Pennsylvania federal judge blocked the enforcement of the second order in response to a lawsuit brought by several TikTok users.

TikTok's own challenge to the August 14 order is ongoing before a trial judge in DC, but TikTok is now seeking to escalate its challenge to the appellate court level.Advertisement

ByteDance’s legal arguments

ByteDance argues that Trump's divestiture order exceeds the president's authority to review mergers involving foreign companies. In 2017, ByteDance acquired a video-sharing company called Musical.ly and rebranded it as TikTok. President Trump argues that he has the power to retroactively block the Musical.ly acquisition and thereby force ByteDance to spin off or shut down all of TikTok's US operations.

But ByteDance argues the government is overstating Musical.ly's role in TikTok's creation. ByteDance says it launched TikTok before acquiring Musical.ly and that key aspects of TikTok's technology—including its powerful recommendation algorithm—were developed in-house, not acquired from Musical.ly.

ByteDance also says the vast majority of TikTok's current users were acquired after the Musical.ly acquisition. So ByteDance argues that even if the president has the power to force a divestiture of Musical.ly, that wouldn't justify forcing ByteDance to spin off or shut down TikTok altogether.

ByteDance also charges that the Trump administration has failed to seriously consider ByteDance's proposals to address the government's concerns—including its proposal to sell a share of the company to Oracle.

All of this means that TikTok's fate is up in the air. TikTok likely won't be forced into an immediate divestiture while the courts consider the company's legal challenges. If TikTok can drag the proceedings out until January, it might find that the new Biden administration is more accommodating. President-elect Joe Biden hasn't said whether he will continue Trump's war on TikTok or pursue a more lenient approach.

Historical detectives discover more first editions of Isaac Newton’s Principia

New census more than doubles count of known surviving copies—and there could be more.

JENNIFER OUELLETTE - 11/11/2020

Enlarge / A copy of Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, one of the most important scientific works ever written, housed at the Science Museum Library and Archives in Swindon, England.

Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (known by its shortened Latin name, the Principia) is a massive, three-volume 17th-century treatise that is one of the most influential scientific books ever written. The famed 18th-century mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange described it as "the greatest production of a human mind." Science historians have long debated just how many copies were produced during the book's first print run.

Thanks to two intrepid researchers who spent more than a decade scouring records and archives across the globe, it now seems there could be more than twice as many surviving first editions as the long-accepted prior best estimates. They described the findings of their census in a new paper published in the journal Annals of Science.

As a young man, Newton attended Cambridge University, earning his undergraduate degree in science and math in 1665. His graduate studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the plague in Cambridge. Students and professors alike fled the city, and Newton returned home for the ensuing year, until the danger had passed. In that one year, he laid the groundwork for revolutionary ideas that would change the course of scientific history.Advertisement

Over the next two decades, Newton expanded and codified his insights into three basic physical laws, and he set up numerous intricate experiments involving weights, pulleys, and pendulums, for instance, to test his mathematical predictions, all duly recorded in his notebooks. But it wasn't until a 1684 visit from astronomer Edmund Halley (of Halley's Comet fame) that he was inspired to refine and collect his calculations into a book that summed up everything he had discovered. Halley asked Newton to calculate the elliptical orbits of bodies in the Solar System and was so impressed with the results that he funded the publication of the book's first edition himself.

Always a workaholic, Newton toiled like a man possessed to complete the manuscript over the course of three years, rarely venturing out, taking meals in his rooms, and often writing while standing up at his desk. It was not uncommon for him to leave a dinner party to get more wine and be found, hours later, slaving over an unfinished proof, both wine and friends forgotten.

A scientific sensation

The Principia caused quite a stir when it was finally published in July 1687, and justly so. (Newton's final treatise, Opticks, appeared in 1704 and, according to the new paper, suffered the fate of most sequels. The English astronomer John Flamsteed declared that it "makes no noise in town," unlike when the Principia was published.) A jubilant Halley distributed the bulk of the copies as gifts in Newton's name. Lucky recipients included Samuel Pepys, Robert Boyle, Christiaan Huygens, the Royal Society, and King James II, to whom the book was dedicated.

A 1953 census of first-edition owners by Henry Macomber identified 187 copies. Based on this, he estimated the first run to have been quite small, on the order of 250 copies. That has been the broadly accepted estimate since, although other scholars proposed higher numbers, most notably science historian Owen Gingerich, who has proposed there could be between 600 and 750 first editions of the Principia.

Caltech's Mordechai Feingold and his former student Andrej Svorenčík (now at the University of Mannheim in Germany)—co-authors of the new paper—also suspected that more first-edition copies might be lurking in archives and private collections around the world. Svorenčík was particularly struck by the absence in Macomber's census of any copies from Eastern Europe, notably Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, or Hungary. It was an understandable omission, according to Svorenčík, given that the Iron Curtain was in place at the time Macomber conducted his census, making tracing copies in those countries very difficult.

Caltech's own copy of the first edition of the Principia is part of the Institute's Archives and Special Collections. The white, weighted cloth seen at left helps hold the pages down.
Caltech Archives

Pages from Caltech's copy of the Principia, owned in the 18th century by French mathematician and natural philosopher Jean-Jacques d'Ortous de Mairan.
Caltech Archives

Corollary 1, Axioms, or the Laws of Motion: "A body acted on by [two] forces acting jointly describes the diagonal of a parallelogram in the same time in which it would describe the sides if the forces were acting separately."
SSPL/Getty Images

Proposition 41, Problem 21: "To determine the trajectory of a comet moving in a parabola, from three given observations."
SSPL/Getty Images




Proposition 1, Theorem 1, to find centripetal forces: "The areas which bodies made to move in orbits describe by radii drawn to an unmoving centre of forces lie in unmoving planes and are proportional to the times."


This suspicion was confirmed in summer 2008, when Svorenčík located several copies in Eastern Europe. That prompted a years-long search through library catalogs, as well as poring over auction records and contacting booksellers and rare book dealers in hopes of finding privately owned copies. The researchers completed much of that work within a few years, but lack of funding slowed down the final stage of the process, which involved personally inspecting each and every copy they found to determine its condition, binding, its provenance, and any scribbled marginalia.

All told, Feingold and Svorenčík identified 387 copies in 27 countries, which suggests a first print run of between 600 and 650 copies, roughly doubling the number in Macomber's census. There may be as many as 750 first editions, on par with the second print run for the Principia and close to Gingerich's estimate.

"We keep collecting data about the copies we have found, and we keep finding new copies," Svorenčík told Ars, and he is confident they will find even more copies within the next few years.

A book nobody read?

One reason for the lower estimates was the assumption that there simply wasn't much of a market for highly technical treatises involving advanced mathematics at the time the Principia was published. In their paper, Feingold and Svorenčík noted a 1672 exchange between Newton and the mathematician John Collins, in which Collins—clearly disillusioned with the marketplace—informed the scientist that "Latin booksellers [in London] are averse to ye Printing of Mathematicall Bookes." And the Principia is a notoriously difficult book. One popular anecdote tells of a Cambridge student spotting Newton on campus and quipping, "There goes the man that writt a book that neither he nor any body else understands."

Based on their analysis of ownership marks, notes scribbled in the margins, and letters and other documents, Feingold and Svorenčík concluded that the Principia was much more widely read than historians have previously assumed. "People seem to think that if a book lacks a notation, it is likely that no reading was involved, or very little of it," Feingold told Ars. "The problem is that with a book like Newton's, you have to sit with a stack of papers behind you in order to do the calculations necessary, and the margins are insufficient for such work."

Feingold said that many people underestimate the mathematical knowledge of the educated class in the 17th and early 18th century. "We discovered, not only by looking at copies of the book, but also pursuing personal papers, that the book was actually read although there were different levels of comprehension," he said. The philosopher John Locke, for instance, did not possess sufficient mathematical expertise when he was asked to write a review of the Principia and verified its accuracy with Christian Huygens before writing a glowing review focusing on the concepts. One can also assume there would be multiple readers for each copy, since books were typically shared in that period, according to Feingold, who believes the transmission of the book and its ideas spread far more quickly and broadly than previously assumed.


“Still new things to discover”

Those insights are a solid validation of the importance of studying the history of science, which has proven less appealing to various funding agencies in recent years, in favor of studies on contemporary policy or ethics. That's one reason the researchers found it difficult at times to obtain funding for their census.

"We tried various avenues, but the result was always the same," said Svorenčík. "We were told that the area of Newton studies had been worked to death and there's not much else to find. Our work shows quite the opposite—that there are still new things to discover."

DOI: Annals of Science, 2020. 10.1080/00033790.2020.1808700 (About DOIs).

Jim Bridenstine is leaving NASA. How should we assess his 30-month tenure?
“I think he’s exceeded anyone’s expectations in the position.”

ERIC BERGER - 11/11/2020, ARS TECHNICA


Enlarge / NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine testifies before a US Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee on September 30, 2020.
Nicholas Kamm-Pool/Getty Images
HE IS PRO P3'S HENCE THE BRANDING WITH MOUNTAIN DEW AT HEARING TO SHOW UP IN PHOTOS

The first thing to know about James Frederick Bridenstine, who has served as NASA's administrator for a little more than 30 months, is that he was not staying on as the space agency's leader regardless of the presidential election results.

Not that he wants out of the job. Bridenstine has relished the challenge of leading NASA through troubling times and overcoming initial concerns about his partisanship to lead NASA—all of NASA—through the turbulent years of the Trump administration. Nor is it because he has failed. Bridenstine has largely succeeded in pushing the agency forward and will leave it better than he found it.

But the reality is that a Democratic president was never going to keep Bridenstine, who has a political rather than a technical background, on as administrator. And he knew this. He said as much this week, telling Aviation Week that a new president would probably want someone else, someone fully trusted. After all, he had previously introduced legislation to remove Earth science from NASA's mission statement, and he criticized same-sex marriages. Bridenstine will resign his position on January 20.

However, he would not have come back for a second Trump administration, either. During his tenure as NASA administrator, which began in April of 2018, Bridenstine embraced climate science and supported Earth science missions. Moreover, the president's advisers wanted Bridenstine to bash his predecessors more, to contrast the "success" of the Trump space program with the "failure" of President Obama's. But Bridenstine more or less held the line, crediting his predecessors for creating and funding the commercial crew program that led to SpaceX's dramatic crewed flight in May.

"He has been a NASA administrator, not a Trump representative at NASA," said John Logsdon, a historian who has known all of the agency's administrators since its inception in 1958.

Multiple sources have confirmed that Bridenstine would have stepped down or been moved aside had Trump been reelected. He had legitimate family reasons for doing so—the 45-year-old has a young and growing family and a desire to spend more time with them in Oklahoma. But there were also clear signals that a second Trump administration would have turned the apolitical NASA into a more political agency.

For example, within the coming months, the agency planned to hold an elaborate ceremony to formally rename the NASA Headquarters after "Hidden Figure" Mary Jackson. The event was to feature Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter. Along these lines, NASA would get a new leader as well—not so much a NASA administrator, but a Trump representative at the space agency.

Assessing his tenure

In an interview, Logsdon said he rated Bridenstine's term at NASA a success. "I think he’s exceeded anyone’s expectations in the position," the historian and expert in presidential space politics said.

Logsdon cited two primary successes. One, he said, is that Bridenstine stabilized the agency's programs. In particular, with the Artemis Program, Bridenstine has built bipartisan support for a plan to send humans back to the Moon and eventually on to Mars. He has also engendered support within much of the industry for this idea and began to bring international partners on board with important commitments.


FURTHER READING Seven countries join NASA to explore the Moon peacefully, transparently

Bridenstine also did this while managing perceptions that Artemis was a "political" program, with a convenient target date of 2024 for landing humans on the Moon—what would have been the final year of a second Trump term. Logsdon said he believes it is reasonable to expect that Artemis will continue in some form under President-elect Joe Biden's administration, although the first Moon landing is unlikely before the second half of the 2020s.

Logsdon also credited Bridenstine with recognizing the changing times in space—commercial companies, led by SpaceX, are contributing more private money and ideas to exploration—and embraced them. "He’s led the transition from old NASA to new NASA, in particular with the emphasis on public-private partnerships, and the engagement of the US private sector, more strongly than any of his predecessors."

Bridenstine has not been perfect, of course. Areas outside of human exploration within the agency have at times felt largely ignored by Bridenstine. Some in the astronaut office, too, have felt politicized by their appearances at the White House and other events for the benefit of the Trump administration. Bridenstine also had help: a supportive vice president in Mike Pence and a National Space Council led by Scott Pace. But Bridenstine was the public face of NASA, leading the charge.
Public excitement

There can be little doubt that Bridenstine and his team have sought to improve NASA and put it on a sustainable course.

"He came into the conversation having just rolled out the American Space Renaissance Act, which was a huge collection of thoughts on space policy," said Anthony Colangelo, founder of the Main Engine Cutoff Podcast. "It generally sounded like a collation of all the ideas that space enthusiasts had been discussing and debating and circling around for the past few years. To see those forward-looking policy ideas thrown into the Congressional mix really got people excited."

Bridenstine's genuine enthusiasm for space also helped win over space fans and observers like Colangelo. Bridenstine would talk about these topics with the same passion as fans. He drank Mountain Dew at congressional hearings. "He sounded like he could have been right alongside us talking and arguing about space issues on Twitter or Reddit or NASASpaceflight forums or on your favorite podcast," Colangelo said.

Among people who already care about space, this enthusiasm was infectious. The real question is whether this desire for exploration beyond low-Earth orbit can be extended beyond the space community. The best test of this is whether Congress ultimately funds the Artemis Program. NASA sought more than $3 billion for a Human Landing System in the fiscal year 2021 budget, but it now looks like Congress will provide $600 million to $1 billion. Although this is considerably less, it might still be seen as a baseline commitment to funding the lunar program, albeit on a slower timeline.

Ultimately, Jim Bridenstine's legacy will probably depend on whether such funding proves transitory or ultimately does in fact lead to the first woman and the next man landing on the Moon in NASA spacesuits.

Georgia to conduct a full recount of US presidential election ballots

ITS PROCESS

Trump supporters gather at the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta after Joe Biden's election victory. Photo: Megan Varner/Getty
LIBERALISM IS LIBERTY; READ YOUR JOHN STEWART MILL

Independent.ie Newsdesk

November 11 2020 04:10 PM

Georgia's top election official on Wednesday said the state will conduct a recount of all paper ballots cast in the US presidential election.

"Mathematically, you actually have to do a full hand-by-hand recount of all because the margin is so close," Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said at a news conference. "We want to start this before the week is up."


Joe Biden: I'm telling world leaders that America is back

It comes as Republican Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska won re-election, Edison Research projected on Wednesday, leaving control of the Senate to be determined in January by two runoff elections in Georgia.

Sullivan, 55, defeated Al Gross, an independent who ran as a Democrat in an election that some political analysts had seen as a potential opportunity for Democrats to capture a Republican seat.

Coming a day after Republican Senator Thom Tillis won re-election in North Carolina, Sullivan's victory confirms that Democratic hopes of winning a majority of seats, and with it the power to support Democratic President-elect Joe Biden's agenda, will come down to two Georgia elections scheduled for Jan. 5.

With Biden's White House victory, Democrats need to pick up three Republican Senate seats to hold 50 Senate seats, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris wielding the tie-breaking vote.

Biden has surpassed the 270 Electoral College votes needed to defeat Republican incumbent President Donald Trump.

Democrats won Republican seats in Arizona and Colorado in last week's election. But they lost a seat in Alabama, reducing their gain to a single seat.

In Georgia, Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler face challenges from Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, respectively.


Reuters

UK

Extinction Rebellion criticised for 'profoundly disrespectful' protest at Cenotaph on Remembrance Day
IT WAS ANYTHING BUT
The Labour leader's spokesman says "no-one can doubt how serious the climate crisis is" but the protest was "wrong"

PROTEST IS NEVER WRONG INCLUDING BURNING THE FLAG

By Alan McGuinness, political reporter
SKY NEWS RIGHT WING VIEWS
Wednesday 11 November 2020  UK

EXTINCTION REBELLION


Play Video - Extinction Rebellion's Cenotaph protest
The action has drawn widespread criticism for demonstrating a lack of respect to the fallen.

Extinction Rebellion has been condemned by politicians for staging a protest at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Day.

Protesters from the group unveiled a banner stating "Honour Their Sacrifice, Climate Change Means War" at the memorial on Whitehall.


British Army veteran and Extinction Rebellion member Donald Bell, who helped display the banner, observed a two-minute silence before hanging a wreath of poppies with the message "Act now".

British Army veteran and Extinction Rebellion member Donald Bell hangs a wreath of poppies with the message 'Act now'

The protest has attracted criticism, with Boris Johnson's spokesman saying it was "profoundly disrespectful".

"The Cenotaph is a memorial to those who fought and died to preserve all our freedoms," the prime minister's spokesman said.

"On today, of all days, when we join together to pay tribute to our war dead, this action was profoundly disrespectful."

Veterans minister Johnny Mercer said: "Climate change matters, but the Cenotaph on Armistice day should be about one thing only - showing our respect for the sacrifice of the fallen who died to protect our freedoms today."

A spokesman for the Royal British Legion said: "While we respect the right of others to express their opinions within the law, we believe the Poppy Appeal is a time for remembrance, and not for political protest."

And Sir Keir Starmer joined the criticism, with the Labour leader's spokesman telling journalists: "No-one can doubt how serious the climate crisis is but the protests at the Cenotaph today were wrong and we do not support them."

Mr Bell, who completed four tours in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, said he knew he would be criticised for his actions.

"I knew that I would be accused of being disrespectful and hated by many for speaking out in this way," the 64-year-old said.

"Remembrance Day is never an easy time for veterans and this was not an easy decision for me to make.

"This government's own climate advisers, the Committee on Climate Change, said last year that they have a 'Dad's Army' approach to protecting British people from the impacts of climate change.

"Their report in June this year showed that the government has failed to meet all but two of the 31 milestones it set itself for reducing emissions.

"This government is criminally negligent and young people today will pay the price for their failure."

Extinction Rebellion UK 

@XRebellionUK

Today, #RemembranceDay, British Army veteran and member of #ExtinctionRebellion, Donald Bell, called on the government to honour the sacrifice of those who gave their lives is past wars by acting to prevent #ClimateConflict. https://bit.ly/3pfAA2d

1:43 AM · Nov 11, 2020

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