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Extinction Rebellion

Started by MoonDust, November 17, 2018, 10:52:14 PM

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garbed_attic

You gotta admit it's a bold choice of shirt against that wall though!

NJ Uncut


garbed_attic

They look alright! A Quaker and a guy who works in an office and plays boardgames in his spare time probably... or possibly her lawyer.

NJ Uncut


chveik


NJ Uncut

Quote from: chveik on October 05, 2019, 09:01:00 PM
so?

Don't act like it's not on your side of the table there chief

Elderly Sumo Prophecy

That's just a picture of a bunch of people sitting around. Obviously being a male chauvinist pig my eyes were immediately drawn to her tits. Is there anything else in the photograph I should be looking at?

bgmnts

Her fanny.

Also, is that one woman covering a yawn or is she shocked to her core?

Elderly Sumo Prophecy

That may not even be a woman.

NJ Uncut

Quote from: Elderly Sumo Prophecy on October 06, 2019, 01:43:09 AM
That's just a picture of a bunch of people sitting around. Obviously being a male chauvinist pig my eyes were immediately drawn to her tits. Is there anything else in the photograph I should be looking at?

It isn't the most influential photo they've sent out in a mailshot

See, I've protested a couple of times. Can be a laugh. Placards, marching, some folk in costume. But the choice of shots they send out seems to have no middle ground. It's either do nothing, sitting on the grass "occupying", or it's balls-to-wall theatrics

Buelligan

What do you think they should be doing to prevent us all dying?  To stop us from destroying the planet?  What are you doing?  What I'm doing is not enough, I hope to change that but, in the meantime, I'm very glad (and rather guilty) that other people have the strength of character to go the extra mile.

NJ Uncut

#311
Quote from: Buelligan on October 06, 2019, 07:41:15 AM
What do you think they should be doing to prevent us all dying?  To stop us from destroying the planet?  What are you doing?  What I'm doing is not enough, I hope to change that but, in the meantime, I'm very glad (and rather guilty) that other people have the strength of character to go the extra mile.

Hiya Buells! Me too actually :)

You're asking the right questions - though some are surely rhetorical; have you met people who might answer "yes, I AM doing enough actually"? World's still fucked mate. They outnumber us hugely and they are absolutely everywhere

I didn't go into XR so I could, in the then-future, poke fun on a forum. I resent the idea they're beyond criticism, or even idle fun though; that's dangerous territory, though you are right to challenge tossers like me who post a photo and go "hurr", with no further indication of my soul.

It was all willingly enough, genuine enough. I'll admit they've soured me a bit on dumb local chapter stuff like moving a meeting location a day, possibly two before by 20 miles, begging the question "how do I, literally, get there?" - hey, even a reply to my query might've helped me feel included? And merging two chapters together, which has muddied things logistically (they've apologised for the fumbling of this, it's not entirely me, swiping lazily) and basically overtaken the content I'm interested in (opportunities, philosophy, direction).

I'll fully admit it's on me to get myself interested and invested; I'm admittedly finding it hard to align my views with my new employment working on an oil site; now, I know that's a stepping stone, and I hauled myself through 3 years of Universal Credit just to swim to a beach covered in Texas Tea, and it's not really aligned I want to do, ethically speaking.

I'm more terrified by what it is and what it means: the sheer fucking infrastructure, powering nearly everything, funding the local economy to a large degree, ingrained and omnipresent in, literally, even the air you breathe. I knew, but I didn't KNOW how titanic the petrochemical industry was. Duh, right?

I asked on the site though about protesters. This site, that has been fined numerous times for various serious environmental breaches including spraying nearly 4 tons of oil into the air, has only had one protest in its history:

100 farmers and truckers blocked the entrance to protest fuel prices.

That's, to me, laughable and interesting and a damning indictment.

Cost this Big Oil site about a million plus change. That's not even a day's work, in case that seems a huge victory; but it's real, shit, someone quoted me the exact number all these years on. And it made me think, when push comes to shove, the occupy style of protesting, is real-world far more valuable.

I get that a large part of it is about visibility and probably the biggest strength of XR is being the de facto place to go to oppose in a battle that has no sidelines.

Personally I'm tired of the big arguments being the immediate go-to; I've not found in my recent life that people misunderstand the gravity or even simple grave reality of climate change; it's whether they care - and there's a lot of reasons why, it's never as simple as "they're a cunt", which is tantamount to dehumanising them, and beware ye who battles monsters etc.

Even you, Buells, boss are you are: your immediate response was to basically frame it for me; to hit me over the head with the sheer unrelenting horror of all this. I mean, what else do you do? Personally, I'm far more sceptical about how you reach people; AFFECT them, hearts n minds and all that.

It's fine to be critical (I'll admit me being bored posting the contents of their newsletters is not in any way "criticism" though I didn't frame it as such). I'm not sure what real-world effects some of XR's wackier stunts simply have - but that's the nature of protesting. I'm really struggling with the idea that it's simply too late - but I'm nothing if not pugnacious, not sure how you "give up" stuff like caring about the planet and life, there isn't a switch you can flick.

I suppose the reality has hit home. It's an incredibly long fight that stretches into the heart of capitalism and severs all of its tentacles - fine with me! - and I find a bit more... direction, leadership, straight-up INSPIRATION... when I read, say, American anarchy groups' lit and about the associated protests. They just seem more targeted, more controlled (in the organisational sense), almost certainly less effective than XR's masses. Though XR does have its creative, occupy-ish ideas and strategies I find very admirable.

It's a double-edged sword for XR, being the default choice; positive because it's a huge victory for organisation, a much-needed identity and potential; but in the year or so I've been signed up and reading about 'em, swelling ranks also means muddier ideas, poorer execution and the co-opting. But, well, that's the nature of groundswell.

Phew, I hope in all that you understand my motivations a bit more, Buells. Idle fun is idle fun, but I've given this more thought than simply "haha, look at those placard waving freaks, going outside to defy the status quo!". #RebelPillows made me laugh today though, in a good way, a delighted laugh.

Edit: Sorry for the length of all this. I told the lads at Big Oil I joined Exctinction Rebellion and they laughed, thinking it was one of my jokes. :/  I've got nowhere to express this!

garbed_attic

Thanks for that NJ - there's a lot of interesting stuff going on there! I also very, very much struggle with the thought of 'but it's probably too late' but it's worth then asking 'probably too late for what?' It's not a binary after all... even if it's too late for humans, I doubt it's too late for continued life on Earth at this stage. There are some astonishingly resilient beasties on this planet. You have to sit with the uncertainty really and act anyway. It's like Camus says, "We must imagine Sisyphus happy".

Buelligan

We must and we must also acknowledge that doing what you believe to be right is necessary whether it gains you prizes or no.  We do it because it's there.

On the questioning of piss-taking, my problem is that I tend to be one of those dumb arses that always gets shot in the head because of standing up to be counted.  Right now, we need enough heads to outnumber the available bullets.  And that's a lot of heads.  So when we indulge in a bit of piss-taking, knowing we're going to poke up fully clear of the parapet whatever, an unintended side effect might well be the discouragement of those wise enough to have burst the seed with a shorter stem, those who might only stick their heads up this high if everyone's doing it.  We don't want to be doing that.  We need all the heads we can get if we're going to do this thing.  And we have to do this thing.

Twed



garbed_attic

#316
Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on October 06, 2019, 06:04:39 PM
This is good.
https://freedomnews.org.uk/a-psa-to-xr-activists-if-you-want-to-keep-protesting-the-climate-crisis-you-need-to-smarten-the-fuck-up/

It works on the assumption that the mass arrests isn't a deliberate tactic though. You may not //agree// with it (either tactically or morally) but it's very disingenuous to write as though this hasn't been expected by XR (or, at the very least, Hallam).

While the most violent threats against us have come from people not on the side of environmental activism, the most persistently disparaging takes have definitely been from left-wing activist groups... some of those, particularly the dominant whiteness of XR and the potential exclusion of disabled activists, are on point and I try to raise them often as issues... which doesn't mean that obvious solutions always present themselves, but I think they're always worth trying to fight for. However, a lot of the critiques of tactics strike me, in part, as sour grapes, especially when coming from groups that are also often pretty damn white themselves, quoting from indigenous activists to mark the fact that if you look into their authors bios they often went to private school or are employed by a Russell Group university!

chveik

quite. Seb is being very naive here.

the whiteness accusations are a bit weird. xr doesn't seem to be excluding anyone, so if there are more white people at protests does it really matter? it seems pretty fucking patronizing to other ethnicities too. it's like those lib cunts talking about the berniebros.

Buelligan

It's almost like they don't understand that this is an actual emergency.  Something that is real.  Like if a terrible fucking murderer was in their house killing their family and they got pissy because the rescue party wasn't their preferred demographic.

garbed_attic

Quote from: chveik on October 06, 2019, 06:34:56 PM
quite. Seb is being very naive here.

the whiteness accusations are a bit weird. xr doesn't seem to be excluding anyone, so if there are more white people at protests does it really matter? it seems pretty fucking patronizing to other ethnicities too. it's like those lib cunts talking about the berniebros.

Welllll... to my knowledge all but one of the XR founders are white and the optics continue to reflect that; the unusual prevalent (in contemporary British protest terms) of rural local groups probably doesn't help with that; also, it's potentially a different kettle of fish (so to speak) asking a white person to put themselves in an arrestable position, compared to a person of colour when we have institutionally racist police forces.

But obvs I don't think these are things that should stop XR from protesting or, indeed, white people like me from being involved. As Buellers says, things are *really* fucking advanced in the emergency stakes.

sirhenry

Quote from: Buelligan on October 06, 2019, 07:41:15 AM
What are you doing?
My worries about XR are mainly centred around the catastrophic message they push. Yes, it's needed but the opposite is also needed - a positive vision of the future that can be used as a lodestone to fight for so that it's not just a fight against our current setup. The damage it's doing to kids is scary; telling them that their world will be one of famine, flooding, death and deprivation.
A lot of folks here (in my time) had depressed teenage years (if not more), so imagine what it's like to be told that your life will be a rapid collapse into armageddon on a regular basis.

I left here to do something, anything to make a difference rather than just endlessly discussing, ridiculing and playing absurd music. It took a while but after a couple of years I've found that the UN is promoting a future which matches the anarchist, anti-consumerist, creative ideal society that I dreamed of in my teenage years back in the 70's. It's taken 40 years for the rest of the world to begin to realise that the hippies , green anarchists and I were right all along but it doesn't feel rewarding or worth celebrating. It just feels surreal and very, very unlikely.

But at least we have a head start and the local education department and council are letting us show people how it could work by doing this: https://www.makertopia.org/
They haven't yet agreed to my favourite policy though - to teach metalwork skills to the unemployed urban youth and showing them how to make caltrops for major roads. All in good time...

It's not enough, but at least it keeps me off the bridges.

(in the days I used to lurk around here, a post like this would engender a page or two of ridicule. I don't fucking care any more)


flotemysost

I went to a sort of 'taster'/intro XR talk a few weeks ago, spotted yer man Morris there in the audience too. Anyway, I really just went out of curiosity, as I was aware of their existence and obviously the main thrust of what they're about, but wanted to know more about how they intend to go about changing things. However the main part of it was essentially a crash course in our current climate situation, and I was already familiar with some of it, but... Christ, it really is very sobering and distressing. As I'm sure many others are thinking, my only (incredibly selfish) comfort is that I'll most likely cark it before things get completely uninhabitable in the Western world, but that's hardly a cheery thought.

As a complete newbie/outsider I found it interesting that they seem far more focused on civil disobedience aimed at government and corporate powers, than individual culpability in terms of lifestyle (e.g. being a vegan or not having kids etc.) - not to say that they wouldn't advocate taking whatever personal measures you feel that you can, but I do agree that so many people simply don't have the time or money to examine every aspect of their lives for its carbon footprint, and there are definitely still barriers to making some parts of that lifestyle accessible.
I mean, I'm a relatively privileged childless city-dwelling twat who can browse Lush for a solid shampoo bar that costs upwards of a fiver if I want to, however if I had to get shampoo for my family in a hurry after the school pickup, on a limited budget, am I going to get the single use plastic option from Poundland or wherever? Of course I fucking am. (Just an example of course, although I suspect this forum's collective carbon footprint from haircare products is laudably negligible.)

They did also acknowledge the fact that people of colour might not necessarily be raring to put themselves in a position where they could get arrested - they're absolutely right to address that but as others have said, I think critics using XR's 'whiteness' as a stick to beat them with is a pretty weak argument, especially as most of the people who are suffering the worst effects of climate change right now are likely to be non-white.

phes

Quote from: flotemysost on October 06, 2019, 11:20:22 PM
As a complete newbie/outsider I found it interesting that they seem far more focused on civil disobedience aimed at government and corporate powers, than individual culpability in terms of lifestyle (e.g. being a vegan or not having kids etc.) - not to say that they wouldn't advocate taking whatever personal measures you feel that you can, but I do agree that so many people simply don't have the time or money to examine every aspect of their lives for its carbon footprint,

Absolutely, and because we mostly operate by choosing from the menu of realistic options that we are offered. And they are inadequate. That link sirhenry posted is excellent and really thrilling for me to see as I studied transport planning (and sustainable land use), but with all the individual will in the world to educate and inspire, the settlements of the future, sympathetic and resilient to energy and climate crisis, will not be realised under the current economic and political systems. There has to be systemic change as well.

It's really quite frightening, to me, the prospect of how this is going to play out as the government and the fossil fuel industry realises the scope of change that the environmental movement and in particular now, XR, is demanding. XR seem still to be growing in numbers and support. They're not going away. As pointed out in that article (that bizarrely or disingenuously completely misunderstands XR's M.O) the police and courts will get progressively more heavy handed. XR know this, and the aim is to expand to a size and to carry enough arrestables, people willing to sacrifice their freedom, that they overwhelm the states ability to suppress them. And a lot of kids are involved.

NJ Uncut

Fuck the police

This Block Westminster plan is interesting and the sort of thing I like

Flatulent Fox

Those well funded and high level media coverage hippys are trying to block roads now.Presumably to let hedgehogs cross.

Perhaps dispersing them using an electric* bulldozer as a token of goodwill could appease them a little?
I imagine these protestors have sent all their phones and computers,laptops and cars off to be recycled to help save this environment too.Be a bit hypocritical not to really.
Wasn't one slogan a while back 'Save the Wales' where they tried in vain to clean up south Wales.


*May contain diesel engine.

NJ Uncut

Quote from: Flatulent Fox on October 07, 2019, 01:17:25 PM
Those well funded and high level media coverage hippys are trying to block roads now.Presumably to let hedgehogs cross.

Perhaps dispersing them using an electric* bulldozer as a token of goodwill could appease them a little?
I imagine these protestors have sent all their phones and computers,laptops and cars off to be recycled to help save this environment too.Be a bit hypocritical not to really.
Wasn't one slogan a while back 'Save the Wales' where they tried in vain to clean up south Wales.


*May contain diesel engine.

And I thought I was being a bit of a tedious edgelord

phes

Police very clearly under more pressure this time to prevent activists from putting down any infrastructure at all that helps extend their stay. Seen a few videos, tempers fraying for police, less organised and more forceful. One post described police are removing gazebos, tressles other bits from the road and as they do so protesters are just swamping them, collecting them from the side of the road and replacing them. Apparently to chants of Extinction Gazebo

Neville Chamberlain

Quote from: Flatulent Fox on October 07, 2019, 01:17:25 PM
Those well funded and high level media coverage hippys are trying to block roads now.Presumably to let hedgehogs cross.

Perhaps dispersing them using an electric* bulldozer as a token of goodwill could appease them a little?
I imagine these protestors have sent all their phones and computers,laptops and cars off to be recycled to help save this environment too.Be a bit hypocritical not to really.
Wasn't one slogan a while back 'Save the Wales' where they tried in vain to clean up south Wales.


*May contain diesel engine.

Hello, Brendan O'Neill!

Buelligan

Still, a brilliant laugh though, eh?

Quote from: NJ Uncut on October 07, 2019, 01:44:12 PM
And I thought I was being a bit of a tedious edgelord

Tish.  You're an ornament.