Extinction Rebellion

[Svartalf]

you mean cremated alive with a fire made of their own product?

[rainbow]

you mean cremated alive with a fire made of their own product?

No that would cause noxious emissions. Send them to Africa as missionaries.

[Brian Peacock]

I do wonder whether it is a good idea to disrupt "ordinary" folk. In London commuters cracked the shits and attacked the guy holding up their train. I can't help thinking that we should be targeting fossil fuel interests and the government directly. You don't want the protests to backfire.

I tend to agree. I think the action was regrettable in the circumstances - particularly after the Met Police had essentially used anti-terror laws to ban XR demos from the entirety of the London Metropolitan area and were coming in for some sticky criticism for a heavy-handed, disproportional approach to peaceful protests. The tube action targetted the wrong people and the wrong kind of transport. Still, the protestor didn't deserve a shoeing.

Extinction Rebellion has built up so much goodwill. It mustn’t throw that away


Early in the morning, the sky still dark behind him, a man climbs on to a tube train in one of the less wealthy patches of east London and prepares to make a stand. After weeks of climate protests across the capital, its commuters have arguably grown used to navigating scenes such as this. But what happens next, in the footage shot by an ITV journalist and spread virally across social media, is disturbing on many levels.

Passengers on the packed platform, sensing they’re now going nowhere, react furiously. A voice can be heard shouting: “I need to get to work! I have to feed my kids!” One man, boosted by the crowd, grabs for the protester’s legs; the protester appears to kick out towards his head. The protester is white. The man below him is black. The protester is quickly dragged down into a surging crowd, rescued only by the intervention of other passengers and a London Underground worker. And suddenly, we are a long way from cheering scenes of giant pink octopuses being escorted down Whitehall, or grey-haired pensioners submitting courteously to arrest...

(+video)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... off-people

[JimC]

Well, we had our XR stall at the local council spring festival. Lots of people showed interest, and we'd had 15 people sign up for the email newsletter by the time I did my morning stint, with hopefully more in the afternoon, so it was definitely worth it.

[Brian Peacock]

Robert Possnett: "My statement to the court resulting in a commendation from the judge for my stance"
(Text transcribed from the images here: https://twitter.com/robertpossnett1/sta ... 19712?s=19 )

Your honour, after much soul searching, I am here to plead guilty and to accept the full punishment of the Law for what was to me the highest duty of a citizen and also a deliberate crime.
As a young person I was brought up in stories of the Second World War, of how the British had resolutely stood up to evil and finally triumphed. I heard about the Nuremberg trials and how simply following orders or obeying the law was not a defence. In other words, there are principles higher than the existing laws of the land. At age 16 I enlisted in HM Forces, the Parachute Regiment and served my country for a period of seven years at the height of the Cold War, and was taught that even in the heat of battle there are principles and rules that should be followed.

I understand following orders, I understand what it is to conform and follow the law but I also understand that following laws in not necessarily akin to following a moral path. After leaving the armed forces I completed both a BA and MA in philosophy as well as an MBA where I further developed my critical abilities and my moral stance in life and as a result have spent most of my working life in trying to improve the life chances of others in projects ranging from the resettlement of refugees to access to Justice programs in the Sudan.

Recently I, and many other worldwide, have come to the conclusion that a great crime is being carried out under the banner of our existing political and economic structures.

I was arrested on Easter Sunday, the day that Polly Higgins died. Polly Higgins was a barrister who gave up a lucrative career in order to get the crime of ecocide into international law, much like Raphael Lemkin who campaigned for and eventually succeeded in getting genocide recognised as a crime.
Ecocide was defined by Polly as "The extensive damage to, destruction of or loss of ecosystems of a given territory... to such an extent that peaceful employment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished."

Just as the Armenian massacres and the Second World War holocaust happened before they were regarded as crimes against humanity, I too believe that serious wrongs are occurring today. The science of global warming and biodiversity loss, as well as some of the possible outcomes have been apparent for some time. The fact that governments and corporations continue a business as usual approach, I believe, constitutes a wrong which I believe should be classed as a criminal act. Your honour, recklessness can be defined in law as "not taking sufficient care in order to ensure that outcome X did not occur". At the very least our Government's actions are reckless. And as I'm sure you are aware, recklessness establishes guilt.

I therefore feel honoured to stand here before you and show my dissent to the system that perpetuates these crimes. Indeed I believe that it is a moral virtue, indeed, a moral duty, to dissent. And as a member of the Extinction Rebellion I have declared open rebellion against a system that supports behaviour, what I believe should be classed as crimes against humanity.

Your honour, time is literally running out. All avenues of change have been stymied by vested interests. And while the Statute of Rome makes acts, ecocidal in nature, a crime in wartime, in peacetime, ecocide is not a crime... regardless that the outcome may well be more destructive and impact more people than those who have been committed in wartime. For that reason I am a member of mission lifeforce(?) and a registered conscientious protector. I am therefore proud that, on the day of Polly Higgins' death, I was able to make a conscientious stand and continue to try to ensure that one day ecocide is recognised as a crime even in peacetime.

Your honour, my commitment to non-violent action also commits me, in the words of Gandhi, "to invite and submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is a deliberate crime, and what [also] appears to me as the highest duty of a citizen".
Your honour, Edmund Burke once said: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing." I believe that moral codes supersedes law. Indeed moral codes are what international law is based upon. As you are aware your honour, international criminal law basically grew out of the trials at Nuremberg. These trials showed, that it is not enough to say that one was merely following orders, or the law.

I decided to deliberately break the law in order to highlight wrongs that are being committed by our government and corporations. That was a difficult decision.

You are therefore placed in a position of moral difficulty your honour similar to myself.
You can enforce the law if you believe that the system of law that protects this larger crime against humanity is to be rightfully employed. However, I would argue, even in pleading guilty, that there is a moral difficulty for you, for by enforcing the law you become an accomplice in the greater crime I have described and would be ignoring your moral compass. As I've mentioned, history teaches crimes against humanity are not conducted necessarily by consciously "evil" people, but by people doing their job and keeping heads down or pursuing their careers.

Alternatively, your honour, you can dissociate yourself if you believe that the law is unjust in allowing and protecting these the highest of crimes against humanity. Taking that action however would mean you should completely disassociate yourself from that which perpetrates the greater harm, i.e. you should resign.

Your honour, I intend to continue my course of non violent civil disobedience for as long as I have a breath in my body, because I believe that it is the moral and correct course of action. As Martin Luther said, "I stand here, I can do no other", whereas you, your honour, are left with a choice. Either accept your role as an accomplice in the greatest crime against humanity and bring the full weight of the law against me, to which I will happily submit again and again, or take a moral stance and resign.

[JimC]

A very passionate speech, but somewhat unfair on the judge, I think, particularly the phrase "accept your role as an accomplice in the greatest crime against humanity". Judges need to impartially impose the law as it stands. It could be reasonable for a judge to mention in his sentencing that the motives of the defendant were highly ethical, and possibly to take that into account, but not in terms of guilt or innocence of a specified charge.

[Brian Peacock]

Aye, judges apply (not impose) and administer the law in light of the individual circumstances of a particular case. If it were otherwise then there would be little need for judges, or trials. As Mr Possnett pointed out, "I am only doing what the law tells me to" is the argument of someone who has outsourced their personal moral responsibility to an external authority. Justice does not consists of mere statutes that must be adhered to in order to avoid the retribution of the state.

[JimC]

The main freedom judges have is in sentencing, and they often do (and should) take into account individual circumstances and the motivation of the accused. Having said that, I stand by my opinion that he was harsh on the judge...

[Brian Peacock]

I don't think he was necessarily harsh towards the judge for pointing out that judges must sometimes undertake moral deliberations as well as deliberations in law. If the law is always and only ever the law, and therefore breaking the law is always and only ever a punishable crime, then we have merely instituted the kind of command ethics usually favoured by dogmatists and ideologues.

I think any citizen, whether up before the beak or otherwise, should have the freedom to challenge the validity of the law and the authority of the courts. So if we are to accept that something being legal, or at least not illegal, does not always mean it is right, then we must also acknowledge that something which is illegal may not always mean it is wrong. We've seen similar challenges here in the last few years around the issues of assisted suicide for example, and before that we have the well-documented challenges to restrictions on the civil liberties of migrants, BAME groups, the LGTB community etc. And only 100 years ago and women's suffrage movement was presenting similar challenges to the police, the law, the courts and the government as XR is doing today. We're lucky that we still have an independent judiciary in the this country because it means the courts are free to play a role in balancing the interests of the citizen against those of the government of the day.

[JimC]

Sure, some laws are unjust, and need to be challenged. Sometimes, part of such a challenge is deliberate civil disobedience, and will involve protests against a given law. What happens then, however, is not up to the judiciary, but politicians legislating to alter laws that have passed their usefulness and are no longer a reasonable part of the current zeitgeist. Until that happens, those who deliberately and knowingly break laws based on their conscience have to "cop it sweet" as we Aussies say - which the XR bloke who gave the speech seemed to imply...

...We're lucky that we still have an independent judiciary in the this country because it means the courts are free to play a role in balancing the interests of the citizen against those of the government of the day...

Typically that involves the judiciary (and defence lawyers) finding against government overreach based on existing laws which protect the individual, not a judge deciding not to apply the law of the land because of political or even moral considerations. What they can do is to consider the ethics involved when sentencing.

[Brian Peacock]

We're in danger of splitting the issue here. Judges have independence when it comes to the application of the law as well as in their role as the administrators of Justice. As such they are free to make a public interest decision based on any factors they consider relevant - this might range from ruling on the validity of proceedings, charges or evidences, to directing juries, to sentencing. Their role in determining and representing the public interest places them in a unique moral as well as legal position, particularly in the assessment of relative harms and the balancing of interests. It's fair for Mr Possnett to draw attention to that, to frame the inaction of government on environmental issues as harmful to the public interests, to frame his own actions as opposing or resistant to those stated harms, and to argue that the judiciary should consider its position with regards to whose interests they're ultimately representing.

To be honest I might not be getting your point here Jim because I'm still responding to your comment implying that a judge's role is to dispassionately impose the conditions of laws as they stand. In my view justice is more than the impartial application of law - it has a bottom-up element as well as a top-down element, and the judiciary have the unenviable task of navigating that swampy ground in the middle.

While I'm sure Mr Possnett fully understood he was probably going to be bound over for a period, fined, and have costs imposted, his argument is now a matter of public record. He was 'throwing himself on the mercy of the court' and asking the judge to consider the simplest of moral arguments; that given the known facts, don't we all bear a responsibility for the consequences of our personal and collective actions, and our inactions on the environment(?)

[Brian Peacock]

Really interesting article from a couple of scientists at the Melbourne-based Breakthrough institute calling for a risk management approach to communicating global heating...

What Lies Beneath - Spratt and Dunlop (PDF, 44 pages)

[JimC]

Saved to my desktop, Brian - I'll read it later, when I return from today's terrorising of mining companies...

[pErvinalia]

Really interesting article from a couple of scientists globalist illuminati at the Melbourne-based Breakthrough institute calling for a risk management approach to communicating global heating...

What Lies Beneath - Spratt and Dunlop (PDF, 44 pages)

[Brian Peacock]

rEv's been mind-wiped by the Galaxians!