I find this rather amusing
God, I wish I had the video of this…
Caught this yesterday.
The Greenpeace Message Board:
What do you mean? They just did.
So if some Mormons came into your Dojo and disrupted class, claiming you promote violence and make a profit off it, you would just sit there and let them have run of your school? Right…
Whooaaa, slow down Tex! If some Mormons came and disrupted some organized activity that I was in, and I flipped out and beat the shit out of them, and then the news covered the event, then I would look worse than the Mormons. If conversely the Mormons beat the shit out of me, then they would look bad.
It’s like what Ghandi did. By having his nonviolent followers get royally smacked down by the British government he made the British look very very bad in the eyes of the world.
I’m not saying anything about what the traders should or should not have done. You’re getting all spastic and imagining things that I haven’t said. Why don’t you sit down and have a glass of water?
Greenpussies just ran into actual opposition and didn’t like because they can’t stand people not being intimidated by them. It makes Greenpeace feel insecure when people stand up for themselves instead of being pushovers.
You really seem to have your finger on the pulse of Greenpeace. I trust you’ve come by this opinion due to surveys and research, and not just kneejerk sterotyping, right?
I don’t really care one way or the other about Greenpeace, but I’m not going to pretend that I know what they’re thinking.
Kudos to the Oil Traders for not taking shit from Green"Peace". I hope those protester get jail time.
They might but considering the injuries caused they could probably get some of the oil traders in more trouble for assault.
But Morons aren’t disrupting just some organized activity they would be attacking my livelyhood. You don’t attack someone’s livelyhood without expecting a fight.
No, its not the same as what Ghandi did because Ghandi never went around and tried to shut down other people businesses by trespassing and trashing places of work.
The only thing you said is that the traders looked bad. I’m saying I don’t agree and why I don’t agree.
I don’t need surveys and research to confirm that people who are always making public displays of themselves do so because they desire attention. The physchology of career protesters is well known and I shouldn’t need to cited it everytime one of these protest groups goes out protesting. Its Greenpeace for God’s sake.
Dude, its basic basic psychology here: You don’t parade yourself around in public unless you want to be seen, you want to be seen because you think that will give you recognition that you want. You want recognition because you think you are important.
They’re not philosophically or morally the same thing as Ghandi. That’s not what I was saying. What I am saying is that by doing things like this and getting beat they can use the media to make people they don’t like look bad.
See, you keep bringing in all these issues that I’m not talking about.
The only thing you said is that the traders looked bad. I’m saying I don’t agree and why I don’t agree.
I know they don’t look bad to you. But generally speaking if the public sees you beating the shit out of someone on camera or hear you beat the shit out of someone they tend to not like you. If this wasn’t the case, Rodney King never would have been a big deal.
The problem is that I’m talking about image, and you’re talking about what would happen if the entire world was made up entirely of people like you.
I don’t need surveys and research to confirm that people who are always making public displays of themselves do so because they desire attention. The physchology of career protesters is well known and I shouldn’t need to cited it everytime one of these protest groups goes out protesting. Its Greenpeace for God’s sake.
Wow, what a well balanced and profound understanding! Thank you King Solomon.
Dude, its basic basic psychology here: You don’t parade yourself around in public unless you want to be seen, you want to be seen because you think that will give you recognition that you want. You want recognition because you think you are important.
So, it’s not even a small possibility that they might, you know, care about the environment?
I think you’re just dismissing a group of people you don’t like in an intellectually lazy manner.
So call the cops and have them kicked out. Initiating violence is not a good solution.
First, there wasn’t any video tape so there is no image to exploit. It looks bad if depending on how the story is presented. I can easily make any footage look bad for any party invovled in a violence incident with proper editing skills.
Once again there is no image just the written account. Based on the written account, any clear thinking person wouldn’t say that Greenpeace where innocent victims.
I never said they didn’t care about the environment. I’m saying that the environment isn’t their primary concern. The psychological need for self-promotion is more important.
Let’s think this through: If Greenpeacers don’t like people using oil because using oil hurts the environment then the logical thing to do is make it so that people don’t use oil.
But there is a problem. People want oil because it has use-value. Therefore by the law of supply and demand people will use oil until it there is no demend for it.
So how do you reduce demand for the product? Let’s look at the three options:
- Become a scientist/ inventor/businessman and make products that reduce the need for oil. i.e. become a functional member of society.
- Lobby the Government legislate that the laws of economics disappear by become socialist politician/lobbyist/lawyer i.e become non productive leech.
- Hold a meaningless protest on private property and try to stop people from buying oil for a few hours before the cops show up and cart your stupid ass to prison. i.e. waste everbody’s time and resources with NO meanful effect.
As you can see number 3 is the least effective but most immediately satisfying course of action on the psychological level because you feel like you are helping but in reality the effect it to marginalize yourself which makes you feel unheard and thus the need to for more self-display is instilled and a cycle of dependancy is created. So before you know you are a professional protestor. aka “activist” and all of your time is spent planing the next thing to protest. Its very distructive behavior.
You may actually care about the causes you are demonstrating about the cause is
second to the demonstration.
I agree that initiating violence isn’t a good thing and this which is why Greenpeace shouldn’t have stormed the building and done “violence” to the property rights of the Oil Traders. Greenpeace had already been asked to leave and they didn’t. Forced removal was the only option. The only question is who should remove the protesters from the property.
You say call the cops i.e. only the Government has the authority to protect people’s property which means the right of ownership actually belongs to the State.
I doubt you would follow this principle within your own circumstances. Please consider the following example:
You are self-employed and have an office at your house. One day you wake up to find a Greenpeace protester sitting across from your bed. You inquire as to his business invading your home. They say to you that your business is distroying the planet and they will not leave until you find yourself a new line of work. Naturally, you disagree and ask him to leave and he declines.
Question: Do you have the right to forcibly removing him from your home or does only the State have the right? And if only the State has that right then by what standard can you call your house your own as it is the State who determines who gets to stay in that house?
You’re confused. In the US self-defense rights are different depending on whether you’re inside or outside of your home. The workplace is not your home. Therefore your analogy is retarded because there’s a legal difference between being at home or at work.
Yeeees, video footage can be edited. Everyone knows that. Dosen’t change the underlying point about how if someone does violence on film that makes them look bad, whether or not the film has been edited.
Once again there is no image just the written account. Based on the written account, any clear thinking person wouldn’t say that Greenpeace where innocent victims.
Unlike you most people abhor violence. A lot of people would say, “Greenpeace may have been out of line but that dosen’t make it right for you to beat them up and give them serious injuries.”
This is the social and legal reality. Ignore it if you like while pretending you’re better than whiny protestors, but it dosen’t change the fact that what was done was illegal, and that you will find a lot of people who don’t approve of asskickings.
I never said they didn’t care about the environment. I’m saying that the environment isn’t their primary concern. The psychological need for self-promotion is more important.
Let’s think this through: If Greenpeacers don’t like people using oil because using oil hurts the environment then the logical thing to do is make it so that people don’t use oil.
But there is a problem. People want oil because it has use-value. Therefore by the law of supply and demand people will use oil until it there is no demend for it.
So how do you reduce demand for the product? Let’s look at the three options:
- Become a scientist/ inventor/businessman and make products that reduce the need for oil. i.e. become a functional member of society.
- Lobby the Government legislate that the laws of economics disappear by become socialist politician/lobbyist/lawyer i.e become non productive leech.
- Hold a meaningless protest on private property and try to stop people from buying oil for a few hours before the cops show up and cart your stupid ass to prison. i.e. waste everbody’s time and resources with NO meanful effect.
As you can see number 3 is the least effective but most immediately satisfying course of action on the psychological level because you feel like you are helping but in reality the effect it to marginalize yourself which makes you feel unheard and thus the need to for more self-display is instilled and a cycle of dependancy is created. So before you know you are a professional protestor. aka “activist” and all of your time is spent planing the next thing to protest. Its very distructive behavior.
You may actually care about the causes you are demonstrating about the cause is
second to the demonstration.
Actually, I think that the greenpeacers are so cynical about society and the government that they don’t see 1 and 2 as viable options. I think they do number 3 because they’re not very well educated and see it as the only constructive thing they do.
Now, if it were me, I’d agree with you. 1 or 2 makes a lot more sense. But I think it’s at least possible that someone might be upset enough or ignorant enough that they don’t see 1 or 2 as a good choice.
If you have to anthropomorphize something like property rights in order to continue your argument, there may be something wrong with it.
Imo, Greenpeace protestors are nothing more than bums, thugs and terrorists. I do agree, however, that in soliciting a reaction from the Oil Traders, those devious bums acheived a measure of success. According to The Guardian, all those arrested were believed to be demonstrators. Perhaps the oil traders managed to deliver some ass kicking and get away with it. GJ!!! 
Yea…Way to fuck up your employability Bitch!
i dont give a shit about oil traders at all. They are lower than lawyers in my book.
Terrorists? I see, and when was the last time they blew up a federal building, filled a subway car with sarin gas, or made the WTC fall down?
First, off this was in London not the US so US self-defense laws aren’t invovled.
Second, my analogy had nothing to do with “self-defense” because the Greenpeacer how invaded my home never threaten pyshical harm to my person or family. What he did was violate my property and so called “privacy rights.”
Third, the question is about is not so much about self defense rights but property rights…i.e. can I kick trespassers off my land? Its my fundamental right as a property owner to determine who can or cannot use my damn stuff. I determine who uses my property not the the government because I own my property.
- I disagree. There is such thing as a video that looks inheirantly bad. If I show the video to some primative tribe in the Amazon I have no clue as to how they would interpet it. It order for something to look bad one has to interpet the images within a context. Its true that is such a film only showed Greenpeace having the crap kicked out of them and I have no understanding of the background of Greenpeace and fundamental facts of this case I would have an emotional reaction of poor guys getting beating for no reason. But the reaction is entirely based on my ignorance.
Here’s where you and I fundamentally disagree. You said “I actually respect the Greenpeace guys for not fighting back in this case, and actually managing to make the traders look like thugs, as opposed to it being the other way around.”
The only way for them to “make the traders look like thugs” is to make an emotional appeal to pity and leave out or minimize the facts. I do no think that an appeal to ignorance and blind emotion is worthy of respect but rather of disgust.
But seening as there not such film the point is moot as nether you nor I can make any claim as the emotional effect of a non-existant video.
Uh no. Wrong. People love violence. We watch it all the time. We train at our mcdojos because the idea of being able to command power in violence conflict appeals to us. We revel in violence and conflict. What people abhor is the use of violence without a context with which they can empathize. Give them a context or knowlegde and people will quickly pick out the heros and villians.
I am better than the protesters in that my job in a single day does more good for the environmant than a 1000 Greanpeace protests. Second, how do you know what was done was illegal? Doesn’t a judge have to rule on such matter before such jugdments can be made? Since neither you nor I are British criminal lawyers I think we refain from making such pronoucements.
- I agree that they may be cynical. But cynicism is hardly to be praised and I think is a fundamentally immature way of looking at life as it leads to self pity.
- Where do you get the idea that they aren’t very well educated? I it my understand that Greenpeacer are over respresented by students and others in academia. I think being a dumbass is genetic and mostly not related to education.
But we are talking about Greenpeace. i.e. professional protest attacks squads. They have been doing this for a long long time and to no effect. No one can be that stupid, dense, or angry for that long. Me thinks they protest because they like to protest.
Don’t like rhetoric? If the arugment is false point, could you please out where? You can’t so you criticism rhetorical style. Many rights are personal in nature and its only natural to anthropomorphize something you value. Are you saying people shouldn’t value their rights?
Your user name suits you well.