Wings Over the Pyre -

08:16 pm

Technorati Tags: Kyoto, protests, IPE, London, UK, violence

There are certain people you should simply avoid pissing off. The secretary. The janitor. Your doctor. People whose ability to put a big ol' dirty boot into your delicate rectal passage exceeds your ability for meaningful reprisal.

Likewise, folks selling oil in an exchange, apparently. Or so suggests events in London, according to the Times:

Kyoto protest beaten back by inflamed petrol traders
By Laura Peek and Liz Chong

When 35 Greenpeace protesters stormed the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) yesterday they had planned the operation in great detail.

What they were not prepared for was the post-prandial aggression of oil traders who kicked and punched them back on to the pavement.

“We bit off more than we could chew. They were just Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs,” one protester said, rubbing his bruised skull. “I’ve never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view.”

Another said: “I took on a Texan Swat team at Esso last year and they were angels compared with this lot.” Behind him, on the balcony of the pub opposite the IPE, a bleary-eyed trader, pint in hand, yelled: “Sod off, Swampy.”

Greenpeace had hoped to paralyse oil trading at the exchange in the City near Tower Bridge on the day that the Kyoto Protocol came into force. “The Kyoto Protocol has modest aims to improve the climate and we need huge aims,” a spokesman said.

So, let me get this right ... they charged in with the idea of disrupting a perfectly legitimate business, deliberately with destruction on their mind, then look disturbingly surprised when the young bucks making big money on the trading floor get inflamed and charge the poor pathetic "protesters," kicking their pasty white asses from the trading floor all the way back out into the street like some perverse comedy? What could possibly engender such hostility?

“They grabbed us and started kicking and punching. Then when we were on the floor they tried to push huge filing cabinets on top of us to crush us.” When a trader left the building shortly before 2pm, using a security swipe card, a protester dropped some coins on the floor and, as he bent down to pick them up, put his boot in the door to keep it open.

Two minutes later, three Greenpeace vans pulled up and another 30 protesters leapt out and were let in by the others.

They made their way to the trading floor, blowing whistles and sounding fog horns, encountering little resistance from security guards. Rape alarms were tied to helium balloons to float to the ceiling and create noise out of reach. The IPE conducts “open outcry” trading where deals are shouted across the pit. By making so much noise, the protesters hoped to paralyse trading.

But they were set upon by traders, most of whom were under the age of 25. “They were kicking and punching men and women indiscriminately,” a photographer said. “It was really ugly, but Greenpeace did not fight back.”

So, boy, what you're saying is that you broke into a secure installation with an orchestrated, violent action, and subsequently engaged in activity that even those who might agree with your spit-soddened wretched philosophy would refer to as terrorist? That pretty much sum it up? Because the alternative to referring to it as terrorist activity is active, willful criminal trespass and warcraft.

And you have the nerve to say "Greenpeace did not fight back?" So, you're hardcore enough to barge into their place of business and release screamers to the ceiling, but you're just too soft-hearted to throw a retaliatory punch? Why is it I make my roll to disbelieve, here?

It becomes more and more readily obvious, even to the most disinterested observer, that such events are beginning to receive the attention from the populace that they deserve. In short, a good, solid ass-kicking. When such behaviours could just as quickly end in grenades being lobbed onto the trading floor as a foghorn, in the wake of the 9/11 flights, its clear there's only one rational response to such things: turn on the aggressors and rip them limb from limb, until they learn that behaving in such a way is not acceptable.

In the US, the government provides the right to peaceful assembly. Unfortunately, the protesters of today seem to think that the "peaceful" part of that only applies to the people they protest against, not to themselves, and as a result push past the barriers that exist to protect all involved in an ever more ridiculous effort. The government has difficulty pushing back against their insanity because anything they do is portrayed in the worst possible light, even if performed for the most righteous reasons, by a media hierarchy devoted to leading with the bleed.

That's fine. I vaguely recall something being "of the people, by the people, for the people" around here. So, people, let's do this thing up right.

• Crazy blocking your way to the family planning clinic, spitting and screaming in your face? I find a 10lb metal monkey wrench swung to impact the off-hand temple will back them up smartly, and cow the other spinally inhibited members of their entourage.
• Moonbats lying in the road, blocking your path to the city hall, where you have legitimate business as a citizen? Back up to get a good run at it, then drive right over their conveniently bound and outstretched legs, cackling in the pleasure of being Evolution's Scythe.
• Bunch of wastes of flesh putting big metal spikes in trees that you're trying to log and which your company'll spend millions replanting after in good stewardship? Set up some low-light cameras, catch the useless bastards in the process, and conveniently arrange for them to be chained to an old, retiring chipper "in protest" while you feed in the spiked trees they intended to kill you and your men, instead.

See, there's a lesson to be found here, and its in one of my central life axioms:

Life is simply not painful enough, anymore.

We'll just have to resort to Pavlovian training regimens to try and bring the weak-minded among us to their senses. Once acting like a useless ass is sufficiently painful, we'll only have to dispose of the worst examples of the Homo sapien stupidity fetishists, the rest having learned by observation that, as John Wayne said, "Life is hard. Its harder if you're stupid."

Let's work together to make life harder for the stupid.

Current Mood: predatory