111–120 of 260 posts
If the goal is simply to disrupt air travel, why not just call in a bomb threat?
Because they're not terrorists. Terrorists use violence (and credible threats of violence) against civilians to achieve political ends. Instead, the activists here are disrupting air traffic using nonviolent means.
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The article is unclear - but I think you've got the wrong end of the stick. The subhead in the Economist article doesn't say anything about drones either.
What impression do you think someone might receive from that byline should they have not been keeping track? Especially given the headlines from last year pointing the finger at eco-protestors before that random guy got arrested? For added comedy points, there has still been no evidence presented that there ever was a drone in that case, but our press still ran headlines about who the culprits were.
The level of negativity and hostility in the comments here is really disappointing to me. I agree that XR are definitely pushing the envelope on what we consider to be reasonable activism and protest. However, I also think that the old adage "desperate times call for desperate measures" applies here. Yes, there are plenty of actions being taken to combat the damage we're inflicting to this little wet rock we all call…
It should be treated as a serious crime.
>"Protesters plan a return to the airport—and there is very little the authorities can do" This line is curious. When was the first one? I mean there was the shenanigans where nobody was sure if there was even a drone, but there was in that case, as far as I am aware, no evidence for any activism beyond people saying that it might be activists. I am dubious about this reporting. If someone can show me something from…
I tend to agree. It makes no sense. If you're an activist, and you live in a democracy, why wouldn't you affect change more meaningfully by participating in the democracy you live in? Why would you buy something that itself has a carbon footprint (manufacturing, distribution) and that will only serve to politically damage the cause you purport to care about? What do you want people to do, fly only battery-powered pas…
There is a logical fallacy to what you are trying to say there. My advice - stay away from logical fallacies.
I am no fan of XR and their tactics. I recommend to anyone that they investigate XR a bit more to see what is going on with them. However, on this occasion they get a free pass from me, even if they are going to waste a lot of police resources with their publicity seeking.
The reason why I give them a free pass is because something has to be said about excessive flying. Rather than the facile black and white 'battery powered planes' nonsense, what it comes down to is this - excessive flying, by business primarily and also for tourism.
I know someone who flies every week from Scotland to London to sit at a desk doing green energy projects. This is absurd as it gets. He is not alone.
If your grandfather in Australia has died and the funeral is next week then I am not going to be berating you for your carbon footprint - you have got to go.
But, if you are hopping on a plane to go to an afternoon meeting in Europe from Heathrow and you are in the habit of flying on a weekly basis then you are probably overdoing it.
Many companies have merged to end up with curious company structures, so a team can be dotted out over several continents with several micro-managers having to jet around the world to have one to one meetings with their hires. It is all rather expensive but there is a whole class of people who just go around from one allegedly important meeting to another. They aren't the people doing the real work, they have people who don't fly for doing that. The people who aren't flying do all their communication over email, Slack and ye-olde-telephone.
We have all seen how these meetings go. There is a name for the culture that goes with this - 'jollies'. I mean, who wouldn't want a nice hotel for a couple of nights, the feeling of being someone that comes with being in a business class seat and everything expenses paid? It is all work and you can grumble about how gruelling the flight is and what a hardship it is to be away from the family.
I heard a manager once say how he had spent eighty hours flying that month. This was to deliver oral presentations for sales purposes. I appreciate sales have got to do what they have to do but this manager was doing old school travelling salesman stuff. The game really has moved on. Customer service on the web and the sales channels there is where the real magic happens, not with some guy shuttling around the world on a plane. If this manager had got his presentation out of PowerPoint and onto the web then he could have saved himself at least half his flying time. But no, some people are stuck in the past. Doing HTML is hard work and needs skill, going on jollies to present Powerpoint presentations is de-rigeur.
It is very hard to challenge the culture of excess flying in the UK. The people doing it have huge carbon footprints in the rest of their lives, with their homes, their cars and everything they consume. I know a weekend isn't peak time for business travel but activism often has to be at weekends because activists have jobs too. But, if XR do disrupt flying and that results in one sales person doing stupid flights thinking 'maybe I will put my powerpoint slides online and put together a really useful enquiry form' then that is a win.
The level of negativity and hostility in the comments here is really disappointing to me. I agree that XR are definitely pushing the envelope on what we consider to be reasonable activism and protest. However, I also think that the old adage "desperate times call for desperate measures" applies here. Yes, there are plenty of actions being taken to combat the damage we're inflicting to this little wet rock we all call…
Looking at this from another country, I would expect nothing else except blow back. My first thought is are we dealing with idiots, a false flag, or trolls. If this is where 'desperate measures' has led too, they are better off doing nothing. This sort of strike action isn't going to get the general population to vote green, but vote fascist.
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Um, yes, this is a nominally capitalist nation. In a socialized or communist nation, you would expect all national infrastructure, if not all means of production, to be nationalized, i.e., owned & run by the govt. In a capitalist society, not only the means of production but many critical national infrastructure structures and services can be owned and run privately. E.g., power & telecom companies are regulated mono…
> In a socialized or communist nation, you would expect all national infrastructure, if not all means of production, to be nationalized, i.e., owned & run by the govt. While the gist of your point is correct, I feel I should mention that socialism or communism doesn't necessitate that the means of production is nationalized and government owned. The means of production could just as well be owned by the workers, not…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course, you are completely entitled to your opinions, but I'm not going to engage them because I don't think you're really interested in having an open discussion about this. Why do I say that? Because in response to a pre-planned demonstration from a group that has made abundantly clear that they intend to engage in acts of civil disobedience that are 100% non violent, you have used the words "drone attack", "ter…
I respect people with different opinions. I do not respect people who try to impose their opinions through criminal and reckless actions. By the way, I have not likened their actions to the IRA's, the article does that based on fact. That's obviously a very disturbing and inconvenient fact to you but that's a fact nonetheless. Again, what they are doing is not civil disobedience and has no place in a democratic count…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In a socialized or communist nation, you would expect all national infrastructure, if not all means of production, to be nationalized, i.e., owned & run by the govt. While the gist of your point is correct, I feel I should mention that socialism or communism doesn't necessitate that the means of production is nationalized and government owned. The means of production could just as well be owned by the workers, not…
You mean rather like the workers who ran the USSR in its heyday. And if you believe that ...
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There certainly are wrong and undemocratic ways to "participate". Breaking the law, causing public nuisance (to say the least), putting aircrafts are risk are not acceptable.
Without breaking laws and causing public nuisance India would still be part of the British Empire and African Americans would still be second class citizens. Climate change is a vastly more serious problem than either of those two.
Every protest isn't the equivalent of India fighting for independence.
>Climate change is a vastly more serious problem than either of those two.
Fortunately, you don't get to decide which issues are "most important" to other people.