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Climate Camp & Violence

Freedom of Speech | 01.11.2007 16:38 | Climate Chaos

The National Gathering at Oxford this weekend should condemn these acts of violence by Bristol based 'activists' and exclude those responsible from Climate Camp.

Climate Camp needs to condemn and distance itself from these acts of violence by Bristol based 'activists'. Silence on this issue is support for violence. These dangerous people should be excluded from our movement ASAP. Violence is unacceptable. The National Climate Camp Gathering in Oxford should condemn these acts and exclude those responsible.

http://www.bristol.indymedia.org/newswire.php?story_id=26739&search_text=Pipe

http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/5050

Freedom of Speech

Comments

Hide the following 8 comments

Get lost

01.11.2007 16:59

What you disingenuously call 'violent acts' appear to be nothing more than minor acts of criminal damage otherwise known as economic sabotage.

Parts of 3 golf courses dug up...
"a message was sprayed up near the club house reading 'Decadent waste of water'."

"mobile phone mast... sabotaged."

A non-passenger line transporting cars and fossil fuel from docks sabotaged

"tyres punctured on 40 4x4s in and around Bristol."

vehicles spray painted "4-play - blow-job the planet".

Get real, these have been standard tactics for the radical eco direct action movement for years and cause no physical injury to anybody.

BTW. This non-news thread should be hidden.

you fool

Please provide correct links

01.11.2007 17:15

as neither of the ones you give lead to any information about violence?????

Puzzled

I totally disagree

01.11.2007 17:19

Violence? Are you mental? Violence is killing the planet for profit. Grow up 'freedom of speech'. You think yourself a liberal just because you are vaguely against war and bad things happening. I applaud this action.

Well done!

Property damage is not violence.

01.11.2007 17:54

To consider the destruction of property "violence" is to suffer a dismal lack of critical thinking. The application of human attributes and "rights" to corporate property is a symptom of the system we are fighting to overturn. If we are to get anywhere as a movement, we have to at least grasp that the commodity economy is something we seek to destroy and replace with community. Failiure to see accept this is just more dull-as-fuck liberalism.

Autonomous acts of sabotage are something which should spread throughout the movement and intensify.

Captain Swing

Define "Violence"

01.11.2007 18:08

Based on the links you posted I'm not sure either of those actions was violent. They were confrontational, certainly, but just because an act falls outside marches, rallies and camps an extends to smashing stuff up, is that necessarily a violent act?

If your answer to the above is "yes", then where do you draw the line? Were the women who cut through the fences at Greenham Common being violent when they did so? What about when that barge was smashed up during the Loch Goil action? All of the paticipants were committed to nonviolence, but it's a very difficult term to define.

Hmmm

non violence protects the state.

01.11.2007 18:36

apologies if this is a double post but its appears to have not worked the first time i posted.

Please read End Game by Derrick Jensen or How Nonviolence Protects the State by Peter Gelderloos before you make any more foolish comments on this topic.

nausea

01.11.2007 18:38

thank god for the comments above as the opening post made me feel sick.

violence is something suffered by people, not inanimate objects.

I could tolerate a debate about the morality or even just the strategic wisdom of criminal damage, but to call it violence is utter bullshit.

It is a separate debate as to whether violence is an appropriate weapon in the fight against global warming, but as yet I cannot remember anyone ever suggesting it.

pete

not violent, just a bit crap

01.11.2007 23:14

These actions weren't violent, just pointless.

Direct Action has its place, but not when it's pure adventure with no point other than to look cool. Eco destruction is usually down to specific social relations, in our context capitalism. You can't break capitalism with a few bits of minor vandalism any more than you can shop your way out of it.

We need a mass movement and a clear understanding of who our enemies are. With this direct action will be an important tool. A lot of the time now though it just makes us look like knobs. Sometimes doing nothing is better than doing something counterproductive.

Mark