General Politics Thread

I don’t particularly agree with inconveniencing ordinary people just trying to go about their daily lives (though personally, I’d just see that as a valid excuse to turn up late to work and sit back and wait, rather than physically assaulting someone) but then like I said before, I think quite a bit of damage to the environment is caused by people just going about their daily lives without really considering the impact they’re having globally. So I don’t know how else anyone can really hope to raise awareness except by doing things that force people (both in person and through media reporting) to stop and pay attention, at least I imagine that’s how they see it anyway.

Probably their biggest mistake though is expecting anyone else to see their actions as anything other than just inconveniencing them.
 
Are we sure that they were actually Extinction Rebellion and not insurgents planted there by the government (the way they infiltrated the NUM back in the eighties). Targetting the tube network! What next? Vandalising bicycles? Breaking the legs of people walking to work?

This lot were the thickest climate protestors possible!

Still, the commuters who dragged that one idiot down and gave him a kicking should be behind bars. Louts!
 
Captaaainuniverse said:
I walk to work and now I am worried about the leg breaking...

im just waiting for the moment where the mystery gang unmasks XR as PeTA
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Don't get me started on peta and there founder used to a vet who actually admitted that she enjoyed putting pets to sleep in other words she got off on it the sick psycho.
 
Just Passing Through said:
Are we sure that they were actually Extinction Rebellion and not insurgents planted there by the government (the way they infiltrated the NUM back in the eighties). Targetting the tube network! What next? Vandalising bicycles? Breaking the legs of people walking to work?

This lot were the thickest climate protestors possible!

Still, the commuters who dragged that one idiot down and gave him a kicking should be behind bars. Louts!
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Um he kicked the guy trying to get him down if you want prove I can provide it and yes they went a bit far.
 
Anime1977 said:
Don't get me started on peta and there founder used to a vet who actually admitted that she enjoyed putting pets to sleep in other words she got off on it the sick psycho.
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Might be fake news, but I did read the founder of XR getting the idea from taking a bunch of drugs. If that's true, well, no one should listen to someone who gets the idea from taking a bunch of drugs, not when it comes to social and political stuff anyway, stuff that is far more complex then well, taking a bunch of drugs
 
Just Passing Through said:
Are we sure that they were actually Extinction Rebellion and not insurgents planted there by the government (the way they infiltrated the NUM back in the eighties). Targetting the tube network! What next? Vandalising bicycles? Breaking the legs of people walking to work?
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I don't think the idea was to target the tube because they think it's environmentally unsound (which won't of course stop the media repeating that over and over), I think it was primarily for publicity. You don't get much more disruptive than disrupting the tube at rush hour. And no, I wouldn't put that past the government or security services at all. I wouldn't put much past the government and security services.

Anime1977 said:
Um he kicked the guy trying to get him down if you want prove I can provide it and yes they went a bit far.
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And why did he do that? Because people threw things at him, then someone grabbed his leg and started pulling on it. That in itself is unprovoked assault. He can claim self defence, the guy who started dragging him (and certainly the guy who climbed up and shoved the other guy off) can't. If the police turn up and need to remove them by force they have the authority to do so, but civilians don't. Any attempt to justify vigilante violence against non-violent protesters feels pretty detestable to me. If someone's not committing violence against anyone, I don't think it's ever proportional to commit violence against them.
 
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Yeah, but to be fair, they chose Canning Town as the station to disrupt, so if they didn't expect to be pulled off that train by angry working class Eastenders on the breadline trying to get to work then the protesters were pretty stupid. The choice of station was completely misguided, and only feeds in to the narrative that XR is a movement of privileged middle class white people, potentially further alienating working class people from joining, which is a shame.

Anyway on Brexit, I'm a bit worried Johnson will pull this off. Out of the potential outcomes brexit could have, scumbag Johnson being the PM who "solved it" and potentially riding the success to another four years in power, is definitely one of the worst outcomes I could ever have envisaged. Scary,
 
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Captaaainuniverse said:
Might be fake news, but I did read the founder of XR getting the idea from taking a bunch of drugs. If that's true, well, no one should listen to someone who gets the idea from taking a bunch of drugs, not when it comes to social and political stuff anyway, stuff that is far more complex then well, taking a bunch of drugs
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It's best to apply some general rules of thumb when deciding whether something is fake news and whether it makes sense to spread it.

Does it matter or is it slander for the sake of slander? Whether or not they took drugs in the past (or even the present) genuinely has nothing to do with the purpose of their movement. If we are going to discredit all ideas formed under the influence of substances there isn't going to be a whole lot left - and I say this as someone who has a very negative view of drugs. I don't even know who their founder is; they haven't exactly been front and centre in the clashes and resultant press.

Is the place you read it a reputable source or a glorified fanfic website? Sources matter. If your gut says something might be fake, listen and do some independent fact checking. Think about why they wrote the article and why they posted it when they did.

Does the source have an agenda? The fake news sites like to associate that word with human rights groups to discredit it but they all have a very clear agenda of their own. Personally, I disdain agendas which are obviously designed to divide people.

I don't give a fig about XR, hence not caring what their founder has allegedly done with whom. Their message is something a thousand groups have shouted about in the past and they're just the latest group to be motivated enough to do something about it. Is the 'news' designed to distract readers from that and focus on some irrelevant point as though one person's sin invalidates the whole environmentalist movement? Then it's probably best ignored. Politicians are masters of the 'distract the readers with inflammatory nonsense' tactic to hide up their real problems. Don't fall for their rabble-rousing.

R
 
Vashdaman said:
Yeah, but to be fair, they chose Canning Town as the station to disrupt, so if they didn't expect to be pulled off that train by angry working class Eastenders on the breadline trying to get to work then the protesters were pretty stupid. The choice of station was completely misguided, and only feeds in to the narrative that XR is a movement of privileged middle class white people, potentially further alienating working class people from joining, which is a shame.
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JPT mentioned the strikes of the ‘70s and ‘80s, and it’s probably not a bad comparison. If people had listened to and supported them instead of being fine with the power of unions being eroded because of the personal inconvenience to them, then the working poor might not be in the position they are today. Climate change is likely to have the worst effect on the poorest people, if they choose to do anything about that or not is up to them. I’d like to think we can pull together and help preserve what’s left of our environment, but I’m also ready for the Deus Ex: Invisible War Omar ending which, given people’s attitudes, is probably more likely. And poor people probably aren’t likely to be the ones who can afford to become posthuman.

Speaking of the future of the poor, half the people on that platform probably won’t even have a job in 20 years anyway given accelerating automation, we need to start listening to Andrew Yang (Sanders/Yang 2020, a man can dream).

Vashdaman said:
Anyway on Brexit, I'm a bit worried Johnson will pull this off. Out of the potential outcomes brexit could have, scumbag Johnson being the PM who "solved it" and potentially riding the success to another four years in power, is definitely one of the worst outcomes I could ever have envisaged. Scary,
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I think he’ll have a serious job on to get this deal passed, I don’t think Labour, the Lib Dems or the SNP will feel pressured into supporting it and the DUP have already made their opposition clear (We send Northern Ireland £170 million a week - Half their MPs don’t even turn up and the other half hold the government to ransom, lets fund literally anything else instead).

It seems like the most likely outcome now is it passes with a public vote on the deal attached, and if that’s the case then Johnson hasn’t really won at all, if goes to a referendum with three choices instead of two (Boris Deal, No Deal, Remain) then he’s very much lost since remain would be likely to attract around 50% of the vote while the others would receive around 25% each according to current polling. And if we crash out without a deal he’s going to have to take the blame for something which only has support of a quarter of the electorate rather than 52%. Brexit might mean Brexit but even half the supporters of Brexit didn’t want it to mean no deal.
 
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@ayase
Oh I completely agree about climate change and I absolutely respect people protesting for the cause and trying to gain people's attention, because the situation is of course really urgent and that's an understatement. But I'm just not sure all publicity is good publicity, which presumably is what those tube protesters thought. I think you have to try to get those working people onside, and that stunt won't have achieved that at all, only the reverse I fear.

I hope Johnson's doesn't get his deal, and I hope if there is no deal he does get blamed and electorally punished for it. The latter I'm not entirely confident in though, since they'll try to pin it on Parliment instead won't they, but I hope people see through that.
 
Vashdaman said:
I think you have to try to get those working people onside, and that stunt won't have achieved that at all, only the reverse I fear.
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I think you're absolutely right on both counts, because sadly I think the only people likely to influence the masses are the purveyors of the news media they consume. And most media outlets (with their own agendas and biases, usually those of their very wealthy owners) adopt the same strategy as the politicians they back/who back them of giving people an enemy to point at and say "Thing you don't like? It's their fault, not yours!" because it doesn't involve their audience having to actually do anything except be angry at someone else. It's low effort, which is what most people prefer to actual effort.

Adam-M said:
I do agree with you but that was my favourite ending 😕
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On a similar note, the cynical side of me says that just as people get the governments they deserve (by listening to the aforementioned politicians and media) they'll ultimately get the planet they deserve as well. I mean, I'd like to be optimistic because governments have actually managed to do things in the past like ban DDT and CFCs, but that's almost always been due to the will of those governments to legislate against big business rather than the will of the people - Something I'm not sure they have an appetite for any more thanks to lobbying (otherwise known as legal bribery) and the fact that the business, politics and media elites are now interwoven to such an extent one is never likely to want to do anything that will damage the other.
 
I think DDT and CFC change only happened when the chemical evidence became undeniable I feel we are far away from that in climate change as we need some consensus on the final effect I feel until a massive say famine is fully predicted nothing happens. (I feel famines will increase just saying but nobody seems to care especially in America)
 
thedoctor2016 said:
I think DDT and CFC change only happened when the chemical evidence became undeniable I feel we are far away from that in climate change as we need some consensus
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The problem with the post-truth society is that everything's deniable for ever even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary (See: Trump, Donald, continued popularity of). You're always going to have people like this guy and sadly I feel like he'd probably be a media darling in this day and age.
 
And on this day, perhaps we can put to bed the whole "liberal bias in the media" narrative. Let's take a look at the front pages of the national newspapers and see who they're backing.

Metro: Uncertain. Mail: Tories. Mirror: Labour. Telegraph: Tories. Sun: Tories. FT: Won't come out and say it but it's fairly obvious. Guardian: Still pining for New Labour. Independent: Everybody and Nobody. Express: Tories, because the BUF aren't running. Times: Tories. Star: Roy Chubby Brown.

So yeah, it is going to be a tough battle for Labour and an overwhelmingly hostile press isn't going to help.
 
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