I was one of a group of Just Stop Oil activists given the longest-ever UK sentences for peaceful motorway. Six months into my incarceration, this is what I have learned
Not directly related to climate change, but Just Stop Oil has been in the news a lot.
Seems like the lesson is “Don’t bother doing non-violent protest. You’ll go to jail anyway. Shoot a CEO, become a hero.”
Seems we’re heading that way and it’s not regular people’s fault
Are you sure you couldn’t have voted harder or something?
I mean I printed the mail in ballot like 6x and mailed them, but unfortunately I stopped at 6 votes.
So yes, I could’ve voted harder and am sad I didn’t.
(Just kidding, for you dainbramaged conservatives out there)
In the following days, we are sickened by the racially motivated hate riots whipped up by social media posts and exacerbated by irresponsible political rhetoric. Later, those arrested for violent assault and arson will be sentenced to an average of two years. The contrast between their sentences and my own feels grim and stark. Fellow prisoners tell me they are shocked by the discrepancy.
disgusting
Mild inconvenience apparentl is worse than fucking arson.
Well, I guess the lesson to learn here is to commit arson instead…
Isn’t it “funny” how I read the title and instantly knew it was the UK?
Same thing happens in Germany. Though I think the sentences are shorter
Meanwhile the yatchs of oil billionaires sit in the waters you can dive in. With trivial dive training and basic equipment (an underwater propulsion Device, and an underwater drill with a lock hole cutting bit attached), you could probably send some of them under.
There’s a whole bunch of relatively harmless but quite symbolic targets out there if you’re creative and inconspicuous enough.
You’re not sinking a large yacht with a drill, they have watertight compartments and massive bilge pumps.
I’m pretty sure you’d need more than a hole saw to sink a megayacht*. The hole would need to be big enough to overwhelm the bilge pumps.
*
Side note: the definition of “yacht” includes basically any boat with a cabin for sleeping and cooking, and can be 10m or even smaller. A lot of people with “yachts” are far from millionaires, let alone billionaires, and in fact many of them are basically hobos living aboard as their only residence and doing the nautical equivalent of #vanlife (which IMO is a very “solarpunk” lifestyle, BTW). Whenever we’re talking in the context of sabotaging the billionaires, we really should be talking specifically about superyachts or megayachts. (This is also why we shouldn’t actually be rooting for the orcas, as they are almost exclusively attacking small yachts, which aren’t the correct target.)
I’d assume it depends on how many holes per battery charge and how many batteries you can carry.
I think it would also depend on the speed one could drill holes with an underwater drill, as opposed to cutting them with some other tool (like an underwater sawzall, if such a thing exists), or making them with another method entirely. After all, it’s not just an issue of battery life, it’s an issue of finishing quickly so as not to get caught or give the crew time to stop/repair the damage.
Maybe a battery powered hammer and a 6" nail? Probably a lot faster, though more holes would be needed.
Need more info to make this math happen…
No no no. Most of these yachts are aluminum hull. What you need is a scraper for the paint and a syringe full of gallium. Actually you could probably just scratch up a hull with a soap block of gallium and it’d do the trick. Gallium eats aluminum like cancer.
Are you sure about that? Because almost every displacement hull vessel is steel.
Also, just do it properly and build a bomb. That’s a proven solution.
A bomb with a timer seems much safer. Diving near a mega yacht that’s taking on water seems dangerous. The pressure differential could make it difficult to swim away and if it actually starts to sink while you’re nearby, you could get pulled under. (I’m not a diving expert but this is definitely something that would require actual expertise)
Oh, imagine getting sucked into the hole.
If there’s a big enough pressure difference, a human will be sucked through even a very small hole. Even just being stuck there until your air ran out wouldn’t be fun.
Username checks out
Hmm, I forgot about this.
You’d be doing them a favor because they would just get an insurance payout.
The way these protesters is a disgrace for our democracies. Why are there no riots? Why are we so numb towards these injustices?
Why are there no riots? Why are we so numb towards these injustices?
Because most of the outrage is downplayed as whackjobs and is downranked by social media companies so exposure is always low.
Why do you think the government either controls the social media networks or have internet bot farms (50 Cent Army, Hasbara, Indian IT cell, )?
US Air force was the most active city in reddit in 2013. I’m sure they were doing nothing nefarious at all, but reddit had to scrap the city reveal after that. hmm…
They shape the narrative they like, anything else is shoved into the dark corner.
Why do you think the government either controls the social media networks
I think you’ll find, in 2025, it’s social media that controls the government.
¿Porque no los dos? It’s an ouroboros of propaganda and corruption.
Because we don’t have the kind organizing that sparks riots. We have a bunch of nonviolent civil disobedience instead.
Oh we do. You just have to say a brown asylum seeker murdered the girls in Southport and you get weeks of it.
for peaceful motorway
Standard Grauniad proof reading…
good
I’m glad you were put in prison. Go protest in front of where politicians live or in front of the parlament. Don’t inconvenience normal people.
Best case scenario, you achieved to piss of a bunch of random people. Worst case you killed someone who was having a heart attack and being rushed to the hospital.
Nonviolent protest should never be treated with prison.
Depends how you interpret violence. Blocking the freeway is essentially holding people hostage for as long as you’re blocking it.
I think 5 years is extremely harsh but I do think a shorter prison sentence is a fair punishment.
You could be putting people’s lives in danger by doing it and even if you aren’t, you have no right to stop other people from going where they’re going.
If someone stopped me on the streets and refused to let me walk down a public street, that to me would be trying to hold me hostage and I’d react accordingly.
Blocking the freeway is essentially holding people hostage for as long as you’re blocking it.
I can see an argument there, only because people can’t just pack up their cars and walk away. With your later example of walking down the street, that isn’t the case. You can just walk away and are in no way being held hostage.
you have no right to stop other people from going where they’re going.
“No right” != violent
I have no right to tear down public advertisements that are polluting my view, but that doesn’t make it violent.
One of these will make the news and one wouldn’t. If the goal of a protest is to spread awareness and draw attention, going to where politicians live will probably get you a restraining order and a cozy ride in the back of a police vehicle and the protest will likely go unnoticed.
Not saying these types of protests are not necessary or unhelpful! I’m just saying that, in order to draw the most attention to your cause, you inconvenience daily lives. Those are the things that make headlines and viral posts, not a secluded protest on private property.
What does attention in this case help other than more people saying “look at those idiots blocking the road”…in my opinion it may even detract from the cause…
On the other hand, if the CEOs of the companies who are polluting our world and the politicians they’re successfully lobbying have to live in fear in their own homes, shit starts to change quick.
I mean, if you could find a way to make it impactful, sure. However, people with large amounts of power are not often going to live in fear because there are angry people outside. If shit were to really change quick because people protest outside of politicians houses, they would have changed quickly by now because people have done this for a long time.
As I said previously, I don’t disregard these protests, in fact I still support them. But the reality is, politicians and CEOs often have security details, and protesters frequently disrupting the city’s infrastructure (traffic issues, disruption of business, chaos in general) are equally as likely to attract the attention of politicians and policy makers.
As a side note, someone seeing people fight for a cause and their only thought being “great now I’m going to have to take a detour!!!” indicates that they probably weren’t the type of person the protest is targeted towards, or who will care about a bigger cause than their commute to work.
Go protest in front of a politicians house yourself!
I will if I feel like our politicians deserve it. I definitely won’t hold people hostage to try and get them to sympathise with me…
Nobody wants your sympathy, you selfish prick. Politicians will never change their minds, oligarchs will never change their minds. Begging selfish idiots on the internet to please consider changing their minds doesn’t work either. Direct action, it’s all anyone has left.
You support stopping random people from going where they’re going but I’m the selfish prick…
Edit: I’m not begging anyone to do anything. I’m arguing with logic… That seems to be aggrevating to people like you.
Edit2: also I’m not trying to get people’s sympathy. The people protesting are…
Wasn’t Just Stop Oil that one movement mainly funded by an oil company?
I don’t have any facts, so I’m very prepared to be wrong about that
If I recall recall correctly the daughter of some oil barron has developed a conscious and is spending daddies money on sensible causes, like envirmental Organisations, Just Stop Oil beeing among them.
It got spun into “funded by the oil Industrie” to discredit them, but that has no base in reality.
Edit:
Jup.
Funding
Just Stop Oil reports that all their funding is through donations,[12] with the group accepting both traditional currency and cryptocurrencies.[14] In April 2022, it was reported that Just Stop Oil’s primary source of funding was donations from the US-based Climate Emergency Fund.[15] 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.[16] In response, the Climate Emergency Fund stated that Getty did not work in the fossil fuel industry herself.[8]
Thanks for fact checking me, good stuff
I think the reason that conspiracy theory has gained so much traction, is Just Stop Oil have been so incompetent, so annoying, and have pissed off so many people, all while completely failing to even slow down oil.
I can see why people would think they’re double agents.
