UK Climate Campaigners Get 'Utterly Disproportionate' Sentences
UK Climate Campaigners Get 'Utterly Disproportionate' Sentences
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UK Climate Campaigners Get 'Utterly Disproportionate' Sentences | Common Dreams
108 comments
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So our prisons are so overfilled that we're letting some people out early, but we have space for this?
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Well obviously.. What's more important? The well being of the population, or the ability of the ruling class to suppress any resistance? Gotta keep those oil barons happy!
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“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable“ - John F. Kennedy
I want a peaceful revolution more than anything, but it’s clear that it’s impossible. Join the IWW today.
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I don't know what the laws are like in the UK concerning firearm ownership, but I can't imagine they're on the side of arming the peasantry.
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So you've tried basically nothing and are ready to reach for a gun?
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I’m doing a lot, I’m a trained union representative in the IWW and I’ve been active for a few years there. Lots of grass roots organising and direct action. But this isn’t about me, it’s about systemic issues and those in power aren’t going to be willing to give up that power without a fight. We have to be ready for that fight or we will lose and have to deal with the consequences. Do you think violence was justified against fascism in the 20th century? If so, why not in the 21st?
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Please stop using that phrase. It's now used by everyone and their grandmother to promote their little evil extremist shtick.
We want gays and LGBT imprisoned or executed! If you don't make my peaceful revolution possible you make a violent revolution inevitable!
Edit: the paragraph above is an paraphrased example of how right wing extremists talk. I've hung around in conservative areas on reddit, and people quite literally talk like that.
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Let's say we stop using that phrase. Everyone and their grandmother with evil extremist shticks keep using it.
... how is that better?
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You do know that Stonewall was a riot right? LGBT rights were not achieved by hanging some rainbow flags from a truck and drinking champagne in a topless outfit
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i don't understand your second paragraph at all. sounds like you don't know what peaceful means.
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It’s in the nature of the far-right to co-opt the language and aesthetics of others, especially the left. That’s why the nazi party called themselves national socialists.
But ultimately, they’re right - if we remain placid in the face of the erasure of the rights of minorities, they will have their way. The media and electoral politics have been fully captured by the ruling elite, who would rather have an authoritarian theocratic dictatorship than an equitable world. Our only option is a revolution at this point - as peaceful as we can make it, by withholding the working class’s labour from the elite while supporting one-another - but it is almost entirely impossible that they would allow our revolution to remain peaceful. Therefore, those of us who can must be ready and willing to fight on the behalf of those who can not.
I am going to continue to use the phrase because it contains a powerful truth, my hope is that people who see it and hear it will move even slightly more towards accepting the reality of the situation that we’re all in, and start working on building solidarity, mutual aid, and getting involved in activism outside the realm of electoral politics.
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The article seems poorly worded as it did happen: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c880xjx54mpo
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Even then it looks like the police stopped the traffic. The protestors were just up in the sign poles holding their own signs for people to read. It's not safe but to blame them for the actions of the police? That's crazy town.
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I've seen people caught in paedophile hunter sting operations get less prison time than Just Stop Oil did.
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the people who give the sentences can only sympathize with one of these groups.
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"Just fight for the government you want" says the liberals ignoring that every time anyone even tries to think about changing things this happens.
Nothing can change while those ruling think keeping order and decorum is better than having to listen and change.
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Oh fun, cause a serious ecological disaster and give the ultra rich an excuse to take even more money from the government for repairs plus they get to ratchet up security using our money, probably let them silence meaningful arguments by labeling people terrorists too.
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How to Blow Up a Pipeline (film):
[...] to prevent local pollution by shutting off the pipeline flow [...]
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You can hit, rape, and kill other peasants but god forbid you dare touch the profits of our owners.
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Nylon rope ✅ Polyester harness ✅ Plastic hardhat ✅
Oil stopped ❌
Anyone participating who are pro vaccination are also pro oil as there are chemicals made from the petroleum industry used as agents in vaccines.
You don't want to stop oil. You want to be more critical of how we use it. Oil is great. Plastic wrapping on everything and unnecessary travel for bullshit work assignments are bad.
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You can be critical to the society you live in, while still living in it. Doing otherwise would require suicide or get you jailee by said society.
You can't be against the resources that you are positive to use. You should take the straws from the last guy and build yourself another strawman somewhere else.
If you want modern medicine, you want oil. Doesn't mean you want private jets and cruise ships too.
But you know best since you know everything.
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"The sentences handed to the five Just Stop Oil campaigners are utterly disproportionate," environmentalist and author George Monbiot wrote on social media. "Four and five years in prison for peaceful protest? This is what you might expect in Russia or Egypt, not in a supposed democracy."
due to a four-day direct action protest on the M25 that Just Stop Oil ultimately held in November 2022.
They aren't being penalized for the content of their speech. If they wanted to run around with signs that argued their point, nobody would have blinked an eye. They're being penalized for dicking up British transport.
You can say what you want; that's your political speech. You cannot try and disrupt the country if it isn't doing what you want.
Russia's going to go after you for criticizing the war. They have a problem with the political message. What you're getting in trouble for here is for the disruption, not the message's content.
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A protest without making waves is just farting in the wind. Even if they do stand in the road, that's not deserving of multiple years in prison.
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Okay, ignore the protest part for a moment and look at the crime...
A group conspire to intentionally disrupt a major highway, breaking multiple violations including endangerment of motorists, major disruption of public and emergency services, and recruitment of 45 others to aid the intent, causing~ $3M in damages. And, yes, people of the publiic obviously sustained injuries but there is fortunately no known causation of death. This for 4 days resulting in over 700,000 people impacted and an estimated loss of 50,000 hours to the public.
Now that could be for whatever reason. The Tories, MAGA supporters, West Ham losing, or YouTubers; doesn't matter. The law shows no bias or care and these actions, especially the conspiring and collusion, are certainly multi-year crimes.
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It's deserving of being forcibly dragged off the street and chained to a lamp post for a couple days...
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You're against democracy then? You're advertising anarchy.
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You cannot try and disrupt the country if it isn't doing what you want.
That's the only kind of protest that works ffs! Banning and criminalizing disruptive protests is a means of silencing dissent and always has been.
What you're getting in trouble for here is for the disruption, not the message's content.
That's what the liberals said to the original Italian antifascists too. And what "regular white people" in India and South Africa said to Gandhi. And what American liberals said to Martin Luther King.
You may think you're being magnanimous by supporting their right to silently protest in a corner where nobody notices them, but by advocating against effective means, you're squarely on the side of the politicians and corporations that they're protesting against and victimized you.
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This kind of disruption is exactly what climate change is doing - negativity affecting people just trying to go about their lives and make ends meet. Dumb decisions are being made which causes people with no choice in the matter to suffer.
The question is - why are you angry when poor people do it (on a limited scale, for a few hours) but not angry when rich & powerful people do it (to everyone, forever)?
That's the genius of this kind of protest.
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Your take is however literally madness. It would be like you protesting on here that somone trying to get people medicine to survive if they raced across town disrupting traffic and you supported them being jailed.
I hope they can keep it up. The stupid attached to people not understating the impacts of climate change is appalling and will collapse civilisation. That's literally what XR, JSO etal want to try and do, prevent the collapse of civilisation and raise awareness of that so we do something. And people be like "my Uber Eats driver delivered me a cold buger, jail those protestors for life!!!?"
I get you're not brave enough to do this yourself but you'd think you'd at least support those who are!
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Good - these people are a fucking menace. Their antics are potentially putting lives at risk (re blocking emergency services). Personally these groups should be classified as a terrorist organisation and dealt with accordingly.
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What puts more lives at risk, protests or the massive global famine that the climate is rapidly headed towards causing?
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Oh for the record I was involved with Just Stop Oil but left two years ago - I realised the the organisers actually don't care about climate change but simply won't to cause disruption.
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According to the BBC it was actually the police who stopped traffic. All these guys did was hang out up by the route signs with some signs of their own.
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lmao
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Good.
Edit:
On Thursday, Judge Christopher Hehir sentenced Hallam to five years in prison and Shaw, Lancaster, De Abreu, and Gethin to four each.
That's it?
Gonna switch my "Good" to "Well, I guess it's a start".
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Did an oil derrick write this?
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That's it?
My assumption is that they're aiming for a penalty sufficient to get people to stop doing stuff like this. You don't punish for the sake of punishment, but to deter. If they stop, there's no reason to have more-severe penalties. If people keep doing it anyway, consider the penalties not a deterrent, then I'd assume that sentences will increase in severity.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c880xjx54mpo
The sentences are the longest since the introduction by the last government of the new law of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance, in a bid to clamp down on disruptive protests.
The court heard the intention was to block most of the M25, preventing traffic from other roads from joining the motorway.
The action resulted in chaos on the M25 over four successive days, causing nearly 51,000 hours of driver delays, the court heard. The protests closed parts of the motorway in Kent, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire.
People missed flights, medical appointments and exams. Two lorries collided, and a police motorcyclist came off his bike during one of the protests on 9 November 2022 while trying to bring traffic to a halt in a “rolling road block”.
Prosecutors alleged the protests led to an economic cost of at least £765,000, while the cost to the Metropolitan Police was put at more than £1.1m.
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Yeah, it's good rhet we stop people from trying to stop Humanities end. climate change will fuck you and your children for the next multi digit generations and frankly I wonder if there will be humans left when this is over, but sure... Lets celebrate jailing those that are trying to stop it.
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108 comments