i'm after a 13 year watching another lockdown edition of going underground of the u.k. so-called mainstream media journalists claim that britain on sunday sor some of the worst scenes of violence against the police for years the protest in question took place just near where a statue celebrating a slave trade was torn down last year and concerned new laws being introduced on the freedom to demonstrate in part 2 we'll investigate freedom from a quantum of perspective but 1st let's go straight to the director of n.-g. o. plan b. tim crossland who is in london tim thanks so much for coming on what do you make of the scenes were silver bristol there's a unity across all of civic society that it's terrible what's been done in bristol i think the 1st thing to say ashton as we understand it being people who been injured on all sides of this some of them seriously in the 1st thing is to express sympathy for those people and for their families and to wish them a quick recovery and let's not forget that that's the 1st thing to say and of

course the reason that the protesters say they had to go to the streets was that a bill may pass parliament soon which they say curbs the very right to protest in this country well that's absolutely correct. until recently penalty for obstructing the highway was a fine of maybe a 1000 pounds and this proposed legislation says the penalty for struck to the highway or some other right is 10 years in prison it's an extraordinary thing now this moment of intercepting crises for society when we see nurses come into the streets in protest against a low inflation pay rise while they've seen billionaires doubling their profits with a pandemic. when we see men and women come onto the streets in protest against police

killing men and women and of those when we see young people taking a stand for their future because they see that future disappearing as the government fails to apps and in other ways advances the climate crisis and the only on so the government has this to law to mark for 10 years said complete failure of political imagination it's a distraction from the real crises that we face and one thing i can tell you from a more pragmatic point of view nonviolence has been at the heart of extinction rebellion protests but that's not an easy discipline it's not an easy discipline when people are feeling left behind when they're feeling abandoned by their government is not an easy discipline in the heat of protest when confronted by police violence it's a mom's. steward's it demands people deescalating people who are trained to

deescalate what this legislation does is it makes people stand to organize protest in a disciplined way when it's not him easy to have discipline arguably that's why a maximum 10 year sentence is being brought in so we don't seen extinction rebellion on our streets and of course the police deny any wrongdoing whatsoever they've issued an inquiry as regards the alleged against women after the commemoration of sarah who was killed in south london. well the police can say what they like to what we're seeing and anyone you know with their eyes open can see right across society people from all sectors says society that the people on the front line who be working in our health service. farmers young people they ground parents their parents coming on to the streets because the government is failing to deal with these very obvious crises that we face and it

just cannot be the onset that we're just going to lock them all up we're just going to use force and intimidation to beat them back how can the onset of peaceful protests be 10 years imprisonment that is north or a tarion state ironic that the catalyst was the extinction rebellion protests and of course coronavirus is credited by some to deforestation which is one of the. aims and one of the concerns of extinction rebellion well that's absolutely right david attenborough who is you know why the respected in the u.k. is made that point very clearly the pandemic is the foothills of the why do ecological emergency so it's a taste of what's to come you know we're seeing case we have the u.n. warning in 2016 that if government didn't take action on the biodiversity and the climate crises we would see more and more pandemics we would see existing diseases spread and get worse including malaria and dengue fever and those warnings have

been ignored the science has been ignored so far so as not to law can't the people who draw attention to the government's inaction of course some of the government might say they will need to log anyone up because this bill will provide an effective deterrent to anyone thinking of demonstrating against climate catastrophe as they see it. well absolutely that is the logic of fear is the logic of intimidation and it's the logic of repressing your society so people don't speak out when the injustice against to munge a healthy convert in society is you know proud of its active political citizens not that represses that because the violence will break out over then surely in some form we need the wisdom of our society we need the wisdom across different generations we can't just slam it down. there's no future in balance and we see

what happens in the u.s. when when politicians tend to stoke culture wars instead of dealing with the real crises and just remember how our politicians here in the u.k. how quickly they. try to disentangle themselves from their relationship with donald trump when we saw those scenes in the capital in washington and we're seeing in the u.k. politicians play exactly that same game with society in such a fragile state instead of coming to trying healing coming to build bridges stoking not the culture wars the war on wolk as they call it you know this this is the way to foment division and to stir up tension and that's the last thing we need right now although in fairness to the united states they do technically have a constitution so that we know 10 year sentences just for protesting i think just

take me through your case because you're a you're a barrister and i understand the proceedings in may against you that may concern a lot of activists who feel passionately about causes what what's your situation is very briefly yes the one that's right so i was one of the lawyers in the case against heathrow expansion. and the situation in one case was there was uncontested evidence before the court that he drove expansion with main 40000000 tonnes of carbon dioxide just from u.k. aviation by 2058 there was uncontested evidence before the cold that made the paris temperature limit of one point font to graze the whole world would have to hit 0 carbon before 2050 and there was uncontested evidence before the cold that if we bridge that limit the consequences for the whole of humanity will be dire where

young people on the global south in the front line and with all the contested evidence before the kolbs the court said it is ok heathrow expansion compare sede the paris agreement is not legally binding because it's an international instrument . and to my mind that was such an immoral verdict the consequence is a so graeme of setting that precedent not just in the u.k. but for other jurisdictions to follow which respects u.k. lowell that it seemed to me absolutely necessary to sound the alarm to say something is going to eat the wrong here when our courts or our holding a principle that spells disaster not only for our country but for the international community which depends on that arris limit so to my mind that was the only thing the only moral thing to do to take a stand to break breached the cotton bongo on the judgement day before it was due

out so i will be trying for that in may double be my opportunity to get the court to confront the implications of this judgement and of course the judgment with one of the court of appeal the tax for his money was spent by the government fighting these sorts of ideas that the past climate deal has any thing to do with the u.k. legislation do you think you think the supreme court will understand that the you're talking about the end of the world and home as it happens i think that it's just a very difficult thing for anyone to really understand and that's the problem the science is clear the message is you know unequivocal. and yet somehow people are so stark in their way of doing things that the growth of airports growth of business as usual is just can reconcile it with what the science

has saying so you're absolutely right that is what we're being told and we're being told it repeatedly will the supremes court really digest that really understand the harm of their own judgments have the humility to acknowledge that well that's a different question isn't it but we will have to wait we'll have to wait for a may for that the government of course is giving a 1000000000 pounds allocated to d. carbon izing industry actually but at the same time it said it's going to increase the number of nuclear warheads by 40 percent do you think hanging over the top $26.00 more than ever will be a much more imminent than ever idea about the end of humanity i do think so because it isn't just rhetoric anymore people are seeing through the pandemic how fragile we are now seeing how vulnerable we are too to nature's laws

so i think even in the global know where we're used to these quite insulated lives as opposed to the global south where life can be much more precarious you know in places like the philippines where you know tens of thousands of people are being have lost their lives millions are being displaced to harkens. attributable to climate change and as for a protest itself is it the only thing that stands between politicians and the lobbyists who. paid to oppose the kind of views you've been giving me today. protest is an important spot in the works of this juggernaut that is taking us ever and you have to close it to the abbess it slows things down it directs the conversation to other places clearly it's not a panacea but it gives people cause 1st thought it gets people talking about what may or may not be going wrong and it has changed the conversation we've seen how

the protests have gone people talking about the climate emergency we've seen how the black lives matter protests have been influential and changed the discussion around systemic racial injustice we've seen how powerful the me too movement has been so actually when it comes to these major shifts in our culture in our politics it isn't just reasoned argument it's not enough just to be logical it's not enough just to quote the science it needs to come together in a just a standard mistreats and so it's a crucial part of changing this disastrous trajectory we're on to cross and thank you after the break how a barren island in the north sea blown up by the british navy held the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe and perhaps ending all life in it.

join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to get out of the world of politics or business i'm show business i'll see that. actually as a financial survival guide let's learn about let's say i'm a troika and you're angry stump bank of the flight. thank you for. the story 6 that's right. slavery. welcome back in part one we talked about the potential destruction of the earth whether through climate destruction or nuclear annihilation but the science that led to boris johnson's new trident warheads also saved millions of lives alone gave

us the modern computing that allows me to talk to you now the new book helgoland tracks and explains quantum physics from its communist origins to its place now as the cornerstone of our modern understanding of the universe it's all of a renowned theoretical physicist color revelli joins me from ontario in canada carla thanks so much for coming back on the show if remotely before we even get to the book although it's mentioned in the book tell me about your concerns about pseudo science given the low vaccine take up in supposedly sophisticated western european nations. thank you for having me back it's a real pleasure and very happy yes in fact in my book there are pages about come on people don't believe in. sin trust trust the experts books about quantum mechanics and they so much want to stuff out there quantum medicine quantum these clinton that. please listen to the people who know these things go rescale a life when it's about medicine. yeah but you say people don't trust x.

words although i. can't come with being an expert himself given how your book opens up in this barren island in the northeast 23 years old and he formulates a theory that you say has never been wrong tell me about what helgoland the title of your book what it what is it. yeah. well heisenberg was an expert he was 23 years old but he was totally merce totally merged in the problem and in this little island then there in the north and sea helgoland is the title of the book he gave the key step to one of the greatest revolution one of the great science history of human kind which is the discovery of quantum theory the discovery of quantum mechanics here the right idea he was totally immersed in this problem because he had been you know spending his studying years trying to understand it and nobody could do that and i think when you're young you know the great ideas and

he got the great idea that started quantum theory which is a basic of all modern science if i would say and so a lot of ordering technology it's based on quoting siri but is still mysterious because he's changed enormously the way we look about reality and he did it a lot in this little island 23 years old or totally immersed in his calculation is a beautiful page of his diary that's how the be the book opens in which 23 years old or. spend the night calculating something and then in the night goes up on a rock looking at the ocean and waits for the sunrise or because he has seen something completely new about the universe. i mean the fact that everyone in the world now uses the products of quantum theory apart from say some isolated communities in the rainforest perhaps is one thing but i mean if even you in the book says nobody

understands quantum that's what richard feynman like you one of the great science communicators said how can any of us understand it then. well that's it that's the beauty of the story somehow that's a beauty of this this chapter of science and it works fantastically well it's like you know a machine that allows us to compute things but we don't understand exactly what is telling us about reality it's telling us that things are not localized of will open up like waves and then and then and then again becomes a point in astronomy in a strange way and in fact it tells us that reality is far more complicated than what we think and we shouldn't think as matter as a concrete piece of things moving around things more complicated and it's a use discussion that goes back. was strongly influenced by philosophers and.

choirs to change a philosophical understanding what is matter get on to one of the philosophers that you speak of and the political links they're better on the purely geopolitical links directly and one of the biggest conventional explosions ever when the royal navy nearly blew the whole thing up and as regards your cost niels bohr kidnapped you say and brought to churchill to design nuclear weapons. yeah that's a great story and it is this group of kids who invented quantum mechanics they're all young niels bohr also the father of what school to them are they invented this incredible syria and soon it was understood that it could be used for doing for doing a super powerful bomb in there and the. new one was in fact kidnapped by the british which is a court he was he was ok with that. too to start a construction of the tonic bank in bombay in america while of the germans

heisenberg which started quantum mechanics are. always said to someone he trusted the western. allied air not to do the bomb and he said that he didn't want to do the bomb for the germans now this is dispute is not true but this is all sure that is true but that's the power of the new physics atomic bomb comes out of of that now in fairness we often talk about the destructive power nuclear weapons and nuclear geopolitics that continues in the world today would you say that millions have been saved also by quantum theory. is that m.r.i. m.r.i. is i presume why you say millions have been saved by quantum theory let alone the threat that hangs over us from the atomic bomb well search center m.r.i. and in fact contrary it comes up out of the works of the medical the. great scientists there who are already earlier in the 1st very very 1st steps of

understand the quanta world did the x. rays out of for. work already activity which is a quantum phenomena. saw all the medical modern tools for seeing what happens in our body rooted in quantum phenomena. and you talk about schrodinger's cat of course now that's passed into arguable common common knowledge even of many people may not understand the difference implications of it but with certainly unconventional you say how did his wave mistakes pave the way for all of this. i think it was one of the players and in quantum mechanics 11 of the people who contributed a deep thinker about it but he did use to introduce a way function this idea that particles are open up in in space and becomes ways

which is passionate tool but not gretly to cradle sort of confusion i mean i'll let mentally particles particles or really waves i think be able to play the awakes too seriously even today in some way some manners in which quantum mechanics talked the way he's given to too much importance but the point is that you know particle cannot just being one point they can be 2 point to the same time many points the same time and shooting into this little story with the cats. to make it visible i mean you can put a cat in which is into position the same time which is seeping in also wake of the same time or dead or alive at the same time and this happens in the theory and this shows how strange this year because it forces us to think that to think the things are not definite in their positions in their properties somehow the properties come out only when they ate in relation to one another now the implications of this of

course are huge tell me how communist theorists. they they separated you say lenin lenin was against the kind of ideas that would inspire mark who would inspire these scientists i want to see communists rejected that not at all in fact the russian school of quantum mechanics has been one of the most productive one of the greatest in the world i've learnt quantum mechanics from russian land out which one of the clearest thinking thinkers in through a tickle physics. but these are marvelous discussion which happens at the time of the russian revolution among the russian intellectuals some strictly connected to the birth of quantum mechanics which is a discussion to millenia bogdanoff bugs and of was another of the main people in the in the bolshevik leadership and is a fantastic intellectual whose greatness i think is not appreciated entirely lenny

rolt his book famous book material. and in pure criticisms to criticize bob dylan of ideas but i think bogdanov had much clearer understanding of the new white philosophical ideas which are the same ideas which were the root of quantum theory so boggan of i.d.'s and heisenberg step toward quantum mechanics are very close to one another and the discussion. leaning in bogdan of them and. by quite a lot the current discussion about what is reality at the light of quantum theory i think we should all go back to bach then of modern of has been ignored both in the sort of the in soviet russia and in the west. because he was too radical for both sides of their own currently curtin i think. but has been a. very deep thinker who i think has got some of the key ideas behind.

the to play a role in quantum theory i mean maybe the pandemic to learn the climate crisis has given some kind of lie to the idea we're all individuals in the in the fatter right as margaret thatcher would have it but in quantum theory this this interrelationship is so crucial in as you describe it in this book. that's a key point i think that the correct understanding went in syria what is really telling us about the walser and it's it's in a sense or the one that in bogland of a radical general to a tickle in the standing plays a role which is exactly what you said we understand things better not in terms of individuals that do stuff each one i mean one particle one atom one person one society but in terms of how things relate to one another that's best way of understanding bubble of will say how they get organized how they work together for

doing things and if we and if we think of the world in terms of relations in terms of structure in terms of organisation rather than in terms of individuals we understand it much more deeply i think that's a core message general message which goes far beyond quantum theory of course but is a way that allows us to understand quantum theory better. and i would say this is it way that understand how us understand many theories many things better you know i don't know about god i was paraphrasing marx saying the individual is a. fetish but on the practical concerns in the book. using quantum entanglement to teleport particles i mean the other practical implications apart from of me being able to speak to right now teleportation and multi-verse is you don't favor as a theory. no i don't think about the universe and it is speculation of some of my

colleagues they may be right but they're not convinced. applications are from the laser from. a lot of modern technology one of the things which is growing is quantum computing. saw it my year evolution ice computing we don't know there is a lot of investment right now to compare construct computers that were fixed to city using the quantum phenomena like the shooting a cat's right is is half dead half life and the computer does one calculation of the calculation the same time so it's a computer that can split up compute many things in parallel and then converge and give us the result. there are already some quantum computers functioning but for the moment very small nobody knows really if they can be scaled up and become effective for teleportation. well. let me put it this way we know how to do teleportation of an electron of a small thing from there to do

a teleportation of a human beings like you know in the in the science fiction movies it's long way i don't think we are any way far from from from going there and you think it's over simplistic to draw the parallel of how an observer to arrange is the observed to journalism. and to history you know is not over simplistic of course is an analogy right but it's a general way of thinking the way we do things are the way they interact so. of course descriptions which are more correct than this could show her a lie but he's also true that there is no reality directly outside descriptions so joyner. the job you're doing the job you do is crucial is the ice we have on the walls and the design the walls and doing journalism in different ways means

changing the world in the good and in the bed so please do it well. thank you wonderful was a pleasure to talk to you. is available to buy in the u.k. for a job or a that's it for this year we are trying to do it well. i'm going to trust my. purpose of. bringing the viewers or true longer. pointing in the news that those. who are. not. going to sound like your work and still can always. skew things up and begin it with it might be us. you naturally precised.

janish. can boy get him on the menu on. the new beers in the video feed create. a job blog get a 6 all extremists all of which i don't know much you. new top of that if you should get a bill be you are you able review. in the store and. buying me a copy of nice. piece of work and let him know that you can be born in. during the trump administration the us agreed to leave afghanistan by may 1st the biden ministry sion is wavering over this commitment they claim the conditions on the ground are not favorable for withdrawal this begs the question what can be done now that has not been tried in the house 20.

this mistake is my mistake i regret and apologize to all citizens. concedes it was a mistake. to be wrong president. 3 weeks. president of burden as the country sets new records for the year of the government's response people bewildered. hate speech facebook is sued for repeatedly allowing journalists.