1y ago

Activists spray red paint over billionaire Walmart heiress's superyacht for a second time

www.cnn.com Activists spray red paint over billionaire Walmart heiress's superyacht for a second time | CNN

Spanish climate activists sprayed red paint across a superyacht owned by billionaire Walmart heiress Nancy Walton Laurie in Barcelona on Friday, the second time the yacht has been the target of protests in the past two months.

165 comments

Fire is harder to wash off
- I have an idea. Destroying it probably just gets written off from insurance.
  Wash the boat with undiluted pine sol.
  
  Literally no damage done to the boat will ever actually financially harm the bitchionaire. That's not the goal of protest - though it's certainly a bonus when it's achievable.
  
  So it slips out of the water. Smart.
  
  What does undiluted pinesol do?
  
  They'll sue for emotional damage or some rich person bullshit idk
  
  You're right they shouldn't set fire to the boat
- Cleanse the yacht with holy fire!

Everyone's complaining that this doesn't do anything and is counter productive, but you know what this looks like to me?
Propaganda of the deed. Someone will look at this and think "I know better things to spray her superyacht with than paint..."
- Make sure it's something that will take her servants an extra hard time to clean
  
  The bottom of the ocean would be pretty hard to clean.
  
  As an added bonus lots of chemicals and crap will be put into the environment.
  Yup this sounds productive to vandalize someone's boat.

Good. Symbolic protests are a way to surface issues suppressed by the dominant ideology. If it gets any media coverage it is a success.

All billionaires are ethically in the wrong.
- Not really but this one in particular is the Michael Jordan of drunk driving and I believe got away with manslaughter.
  
  Yes, really. There are no ethically sound reasons for a person to have all this money when there is so much inequality. Moreover, there is no ethical ways to accumulate all this money. If you are billionaire either you or your daddy had to do a lot of explicitly unethical shit, and in order to retain it, you have to do unethical shit, actively, right now.
  
  Expound.

Fuck yeah. They should live in constant and non-stop fear of the people they hoard from
- "Fear"
  You really think they give a shit? About something like this? They just pay someone $200 to clean the yacht. Sink it and they just buy a new one. This isn't anything.
  
  Lol you haven't seen many rich people have you? This is definitely something they fear.
  
  Oh ok. That's fair I guess if you've found a better way. What have you done?
- They SHOULD, but this won't accomplish that.
  Let's think of something better.
  
  Look no further than medieval French engineering!

Governments should stop billionaires. Tax them 100% income tax after a certain amount of income, tax them 50%% of their networth yearly after a certain amount of value.
- The government is now controlled, more or less, by said billionaires - too late?
  
  I don't think there ever was a time where not the richest were in power. From warlords to kings and now politicians in the pockets of CEO's or shareholders by extension, people in power amass riches and with it more power.
  
  Your post makes it sound like it was any different in the past. I certainly don't remember that.
  
  Nah, there's more to tinker with, but fixable.

100% agreed, billionaires should not exist. It's absolutely disgusting that they do. They'll take and take and take and take some more. If you haven't seen it yet, please check out this site visualizing Jeff Bezos' wealth. These people believe that they owe nothing to a society that gave them the tools, infra, security, and workforce for their companies to succeed. The level of excess is really unfathomable, and this chart is like Power of Ten for helping you understand the difference in a few zeros.
https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

it's a great start.

How dare these activists do anything other than overthrowing the government and instituting a socialist utopia. I just can’t support this.

More mandatory overtime for her staff. She'll never know it happened unless one of her social media managers sees it on Twitter and mentions it to her.
- And then they buy more red spray paint on Amazon because Walmart was out .
  Side note, didn't the movie company make bank from people buying those V for Vendetta masks to protest against corporations or something? Vague memory of it
  
  Yeah, between Anonymous and Occupy Wall Street those masks were very profitable for the people being protested against.
  I’m sure their brief and ultimately pointless unpopularity was well compensated for by those extra revenues.
- That's what I don't get.
  The owner of the yacht doesn't give a shit. It's beneath them.
  Those activists just made a headache for the working class crew who run the yacht.
  Good work sticking it to the man's working class employees! /S
  
  They got their message on international news, and they did it targeting the super wealthy instead of blocking traffic or otherwise hindering innocent people. Frankly I don't care if the crew has a 'headache' being paid to clean up some biodegradable paint, they're just being paid for one task instead of another. What actual harm of any kind has this done? The benefit might be small but it's nonzero unlike what most of us are doing.
  
  They're creating jobs by fucking up the yacht aren't they?
  Or is it only billionaires that "create jobs" when they fuck up the entire world?
  
  Because targeted vandalism is easier and more satisfying to animalistic urges than the long work of organizing political backing, running for office, enacting societal change

Let's make it a third time

Scuttle it next time.
- We gotta get the orcas in on this one.

Send in the orcas!

A spokesperson for Marina Port Vell said that the boat had not been damaged in Friday’s action. “After a quick action on behalf of the security team, the incident has been corrected and the boat is now in a perfect state,” the spokesperson told CNN.
Cannot stress enough that a new paint job is not the kind of action that's going to fix jack shit. More than likely, it's barely an annoyance. Few people on the planet have not heard the message already. If you don't want them joyriding a massive yacht everywhere, remove the yacht.
- So, while you're entirely correct, someone on the team of "let's harass the inconceivably wealthy" would probably still appreciate this action because it's better than nothing.
  It's also possible they're trying to get the media to cover it more, rather than cause actual property damage
- Are you volunteering?
  
  Uh. Lemme check. Yes. We're well past the "please stop killing me, it's really mean :(" stage. They know. They are choosing to jetset anyway.
  If the disgustingly rich haven't shifted their focus by now, they've basically made their stance known already and stuff like this strikes me as just toying around. It makes activists feel like they accomplished something, and then it's rectified quite literally the same day and everyone continues about their business.
  Wanna join in or would your parents worry?
- And end up like Will Van Spronsen, who was called a terrorist and demonized by almost everyone for doing good. (Reddit would suspend your account just for mentioning him.)
  The super wealthy's propaganda tools are more powerful than ours because they control the media, and there aren't as many people who are awake to what's happening as you might think. I'm all for direct action like what you describe, but we still need the red paint to make people aware of what's going on. And I promise, it does do something. What do the unlovable rich want that they can't buy? Love and respect. (Look at fucking Elon, that pathetic insect.)
  I recently read a sci-fi book called "Station Six" by an anarchist author who goes by S.J. Klapecki. Let me quote one of the characters:
  He wants to live like good King Arthur, loved and cherished and appreciated by his serfs. I like throwing a wrench into that. I think it's important. And, who knows, maybe the next set of malcontents will learn something from us. I doubt it, but there's my optimism for ya.
  You and I look at the activists pictured and think, "What was the point," but the majority of people are still learning their ABCs of why this whole system is fucked. Sure, I'd have preferred the ship got destroyed completely, but these folks still did a brave act that has hit that sweet spot where it will get media attention without being entirely buried like a Will Van Spronsen (who, for the record, is a god damn hero and I'm not disparaging him at all).
  
  There's quite a difference between destroying a yatch and trying to blow up a building with people in it...
- And yet, here we are talking about it. Sometimes keeping the conversation going is in itself a win.
- Team Orca!

It would be super easy to get away with sinking known billionaire yachts worldwide if you do it right.
- warg into the orcas?
  
  Warm? Nah they've been doing it for fun. Just give them a lot of points for this one.
- ITT: People who don't think $100m+ yachts have countermeasures for attacks like this.
  
  Yeah, one of the big countermeasures being the people who live on board, as in, the crew. I hope they can sleep at night knowing they killed a working class schmuck. Fire, or these more outlandish ideas of explosives and scuba shit, will almost certainly get the crew members if it's enough to actually sink a yacht like this.
  
  Super yachts are built similar to cruise liners. Compartmentalised below the water line. You breach one, it gets detected and will seal it off. They are obviously gonna be connected to several alert systems and will notify the owner or whomever is in charge of maintenance. If anyone does manage to damage the hull, gonna have to do it more than once.
- Scuba certified activists. Sabotage the hull or fuck up the prop.
- How do you sink a boat that big? Get a drill that can work under water? Explosives are too hard to make. Maybe burn it with a Molotov?
  
  For a boat that big, you can get into the idea of an economic loss. For example, flooding the engine room for long enough can ruin the engines, and make the cost and time of repair high enough that you can practically rebuy the boat with the price.
  Obviously it is insured, but insurance goes up when you’re the target of economic terror attacks (To think I live in world where I get to type that sentence). Also there would be the wait for a new vessel. And maybe… just maybe, the Waltons might think, “hey, maybe some people are upset we have a $110 million boat while our employees are on food stamps.”
  
  Underwater cutting torch. Edit: now I’m bullshitting. No idea whether somebody would get sucked into the hole or whether there are underwater cutting rigs that don’t rely on surface support.
  
  Obviously the classics are still known for a reason. Everyone is saying fire but I think if we put our heads together we could summon the kraken.

I love it. God bless us every one.

😎
- 😎🤙
  
  🤞🥵🤙

Video of the first time
- https://invidious.asir.dev/watch?v=jQCF-dUNxRc

Oh No. Anyway

[Everyone liked that]

Oh no you cost them .0000005 seconds of their salary to fix it.
- its about getting eyeballs on their message.
  I've had traffic blocked while I was cycling to work by eco protesters and lamented they were targeting the wrong folks here- so they're doing what they can to target the right folks.
  no matter what people do to try to draw attention to the right focus on the issue, there will always be thumb typers saying its wrong, so good work
  
  Yeah but blocking traffic is just as valid. Frankly too many regular people just don't give a shit about climate change. We need to do anything to spread knowledge.
- With the added bonus of letting these people know that them and their assets aren't as hard to get to as they like to think. Trust that this won't end with paint.
- No joke, it's probably even less than that.

So burn that one too.
- That gets you game over though, long haul strat best strat

"Let them eat Taco Bell."

"Stop doing that or I'll have to cut another $ per hour from all our employees to pay for the damages!"

Here's a personal finance tip: Don't buy a yacht, or any boat, like, ever. If you really want one and have the money, just rent one, these thing costs a ridiculous amount of money to maintain for something that's going to be used like once or twice a year at most.

The owner is such a dumbass he does r even paint the whole thing red lol!

Jealousy becomes vandalism?
I wonder how they feel good themselves if people from Africa came and vandalised their house and say rich people should exist
- There's a difference between working class and a billionaire that exploits millions of workers.
- I believe these activists have probably had empathy for the global poor. This walmart bitch creates the global poor.
  
  They are free to give up their "wealthy" Spanish life and go help those "poor" people get rich.
  More action less talk.
- What does Africa have to do with this, weren't the activists from Spain? 🧐
  
  Comparison. These billionaire compare to average Spaniards are filthy rich.
  These Spaniards are filthy rich compare the most people in African.
  I doubt the action came out of "care", more out of jealousy.

This is entirely unacceptable, that is somebody's hard earned private property and it's never OK to vandalize what isn't yours.
- Hard earned...? There's several angles you might use to condemn this, but suggesting they worked hard for their inherited fortunes is ridiculous.
  
  Somebody hard earned that money even if it wasn't this person it was her father or grandfather
- Oh there's lots of times when it's perfectly ok. Like this one. How many of their employees need government assistance? Fuck this rich lady and her superyacht.
  Edit: it's a SUPERyacht not just a yacht silly me
- That's right, private property has human rights!!
- @MrBusinessMan@lemme.ee, you silly goose! Why do you have to be so evil? Tsk tsk
- That's simply untrue, a yacht like that is a terrible waste of humanities limited resources.

165 comments