5mo ago

Climate protesters are taking action against Big Oil. UK courts are handing them prison terms akin to rapists and thieves

www.cnn.com Climate protesters are taking action against Big Oil. UK courts are handing them prison terms akin to rapists and thieves | CNN

The sentences are believed to be the longest in the UK’s history for non-violent protest and were delivered under two new controversial laws that supercharged policing powers.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/13315099

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5mo ago

Climate protesters are taking action against Big Oil. UK courts are handing them prison terms akin to rapists and thieves

www.cnn.com /2024/09/14/climate/uk-climate-protests-policing-laws-prison-intl/index.html

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91 comments

I wonder if they understand what they’re encouraging by making the punishment for protests harsher than the punishments for direct action…not that that’s any of my business…
- Future excuses to crack down on “ecoterrorrists”?
- arson time :)))) (in minecraft)

Huh, up to 10 years for disruptive protest? Looks like it's only 8 years for a planned arson as long as you don't hurt anyone.
- In minecraft, that might send the wrong message.
  
  Eh, I'm sure that my FBI guy and my Met guy have coffee together anyway.
- So, if you plan an arson as a protest, is that 8 years or 18 years?
  
  woah woah woah! I don't see a protest around here!
  
  It's not a protest, I just felt like burning down some Big Oil headquarters! Those are two totally different things, I promise!

This is just one of countless examples that we live in capitalist plutocracies — ruled by corporations and the richest family dynasties who make up their majority shareholders — masquerading as "democracies". Sure, you can vote, but your only options are pre-approved.
When the people causing genocide, war, and ecocide are untouchable, their entire rule of law is invalid.
- FPTP-voting was designed by wealthy romans for the benefit of wealthy romans millenia ago and that people accept this type of democracy today is just bonkers to me.

Humanity is in mortal danger because of conservatism. If you aren't fighting conservatism, you aren't fighting climate change.
- To be fair, liberalism, while far better isn't remotely close to being an adequate solution, but we all need to kick the can down the road by picking whatever least bad option is available to us.
  
  Well, that's the funny bit: the government in the UK aren't the Conservatives, they're New Labour who are Neoliberals, by the standards of the rest of Europe they're even Hard Neoliberals.
  Nowadays the difference between Conservatives and Liberals is really just the subset of Morality that's used in Identity Politics. They're certainly not different on Economics, not on Quality Of Life for the many, not on a good Future for our Children (which provides a Selfishness-driven reason be an Environmentalist, which is better than nothing) and certainly not on Environmentalism as a Moral posture.
  We get some loud confrontational bullshit from both around various "-isms" all the while they're both doing what's best for the most wealthy of society and screw the rest (both present and future) and definitely screw anybody or anything that has no money and no capability for action, such as Nature.
  You see that exact same shit in the US, by they way, as well as (in not quite as extreme form) in most of Europe.
- Neolibs sell us out to big oil just as much as neocons do. The root problem is capitalism. You cannot fight against climate change without fighting against capitalism
  
  Neoliberals are conservatives. Sadly, we do not have a progressive party in the U.S., so we must choose one of the conservative parties.
- If you aren't fighting conservatism you are actively destroying the planet.

If you KILL these Big Oil people you'll get the SAME Amount of Prison time!
- (If the FBI sees this I’m joking)

Totally approrpiate, since they're terrorists endangering the well-being of everyone and the planet. Wait...
- I thought that was final Fantasy vii...

Meanwhile the UK still keeps on sending weapon shipments to an actively Genocidal Israel (they recently stopped but 20 out of 300 kinds of such exports).
It didn't took long to disprove the hopes of anybody who thought New Labour would be anything but a slightly less hard Right than the Tories.
- There could be a feel good story about a kitten being saved from a well and you’d somehow tie it in to gaza.
  
  Nice, an Appeal To Absurd Falacy in the wild.
  Hadn't see one of those in a day or two.
  It says a lot that you went for making fantastical claims about the messenger rather than for disproving the message.

Bruh, I misread the title at first and thought Big Oil was sentenced but the reality is just sad and angering.
- We can dream...

The police and army do not protect the lives and freedom of individuals and they never have. They exist to create the conditions for business to do business. The law barely cares if you rape and murder some poor, powerless individual. But cause a big business some serious property damage? Oh no we can’t have that. Time to make an example of you.

when society turns on the people with a conscience, the people with a conscience should turn on society. stop playing nice.
- stop playing nice.
  What's your next move, hot shot?
  
  not being trolled by lemmy d list celebrities, and then, i don't know, maybe i'll smoke a joint.

I would be more likely to sympathize with JSO if they engaged in direct action against the oil industry instead of the general public. Stopping ambulances and electric cars in traffic does not get the world to abandon oil.
If you're going to commit a criminal offense regardless, at least target something that actively supports or benefits from the oil industry. They could go full Robin Hood, robbing businesses that support the oil industry and anonymously donating the proceeds to environmental causes. They could threaten car dealerships that sell ICE vehicles. While it is certainly illegal to burn down a gas station, at least that would be an attack on the object of their protests rather than the general public.
Nothing wrong with their stated cause, but their actions don't support that cause.
- Evidence suggests that disruptive protests actually help, rather than hinder organisations like JSO:
  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/07/disruptive-protest-helps-not-hinders-activists-cause-experts-say
  https://theconversation.com/climate-change-radical-activists-benefit-social-movements-history-shows-why-181977
  https://theconversation.com/radical-environmentalists-are-fighting-climate-change-so-why-are-they-persecuted-107211
  It's all about raising awareness and facilitating discussions.
  
  It would be in the oil industries interest to fund agent provocateurs to become lightning rods for both willing protestors and public anger.
  Just Stop Oil's primary source of funding was donations from the US-based Climate Emergency Fund. Through that fund, a notable donor to the group has been Aileen Getty, a descendant of the Getty family which founded the Getty Oil company.
  
  They would raise more awareness and facilitate more productive discussion and alienate fewer people and have a tangible, measurable effect by taking direct action against car dealership and gas stations.
  The kind of "discussion" they have most "facilitated" is how to increase the penalties for impeding traffic. Their only "success" has been winning enough support for legislators to increase penalties and enforcement for "impeding traffic"
- I can't imagine their prison sentences if they were actually thieves. Look at what they're getting for doing peaceful protests. People freak out when property is disturbed.
  
  People freak out when travel is disturbed. They freak out quite a bit less when a big corporation that everyone hates happens to get targeted by environmental activists.
- "do something, anything as long as it doesn't affect me"
  
  "do something, anything as long as it ~~doesn't affect me~~ actually targets the oil industry.
  FTFY.
- Personally, I believe that criticising the efforts of activists with whom you share a cause is one of the lowest things you can do.
  If I think there’s a better way, then I go do it, or at the very least I would participate in that group and try to bring them around to my way of thinking.
  I definitely would not publicly criticise them because that doesn’t actually help the cause, it just damages it.
  But of course, I can’t hold people to the same high expectations I hold of myself.
  
  Their actions are damaging the cause. They are making it harder for environmental activism to be taken seriously. Now, actual activism has to fight not just the oil industry, but also everyone that JSO has pissed off.
- There have been direct actions recently - they get subjected to media blackout. If you want to shift public sentiment, you need eyeballs - they get eyeballs, and while responses are obviously mixed, they lean positive over time.
- They literally DID. The fact you don't know about it shows why they also do their publicity stunts.
  
  I heard about a car dealership and gas stations being lit on fire by protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin. When did JSO protesters do something similar?

Kinda relevant: from the latest Private Eye. Just a little insight to the background of the people pushing for this outcome.
The Heritage Foundation who would have guessed it would be in the mix.

I wonder what will happen to those prisoners once climate change gets even worse
- Texas inmates are being ‘cooked to death’ in extreme heat, complaint alleges
  With the threat of another hot summer ahead, advocates asked a federal judge to declare 100-degree-plus conditions in uncooled Texas facilities unconstitutional.
  ...
  The filing came from four nonprofit organizations who are joining a lawsuit originally filed last August by Bernie Tiede, an inmate who suffered a medical crisis after being housed in a Huntsville cell that reached temperatures exceeding 110 degrees. Tiede, a well-known offender whose 1996 murder of a wealthy widow inspired the film “Bernie,” was moved to an air-conditioned cell following a court order but he’s not guaranteed to stay there this year.
  Concentration Camps.

Oh those damn Conservatives, such things would never happen under the rule of the Labour Party.
Right?
- Hey good thing is people are not as numb to the class warfare nowadays as before so your coy attempt to make this partisan isn't as effective.
  
  Ah, yes. Thank you for reiterating my point by using instead of sarcasm the always very funny false accusation method.

I wish for the responsible judges, politicians and CEOs to get spat in the face by their own children for being the disgusting vile pieces of shit that they are. Sadly, too often, the apple does not fall far enough from the tree.

If you are getting life in prison, might as well blow up an oil rig or something right?
If they go the route of severe punishment for not severe crimes

Good, they are part of the problem.
Proof

Media Bias Fact Check | bot support

Disruptive protests are annoying and the best way to get people to hate your agenda. In Finland there's a group that actively protests climate stuff by taking control of the streets, making people getting to and off from work just annoyed.
You don't achieve change and can't further your goals by being a prick to the normal everyday people. All you achieve is them wanting nothing to do with what you are peddling.
- Imagine this comment existing before woman's suffrage.
  Mass protests are how change has always happened to the oppressed. The oppressed have always continued to be oppressed when they take the stance of your comment.
  
  Quite a bridge there, to compare governments and companies ruining our habitat to women's suffrage. Holy hell.
  9 to 5 Joe is't making the decisions and won't be able to affect the situation apart from voting and activism, and these protests I talked about are only annoying the people the activists should be trying to win over, to be able to make a change.
  Suffrage wasn't about profit driven business, it was people being shit to people, the poor and the rich all together, if we simplify it to the root.

91 comments