Latest Stop Oil protest targets a petrol station.

They're not trying to get individuals to buy, or give up, anything. They are not interested n what you and I do, and I really don't understand why people think that they are targeting individual's actions.

This is from their website:

"Just Stop Oil is a coalition of groups working together to ensure that the government commits to ending all new licenses and consents for the exploration, development and production of fossil fuels in the UK."

Not simplistic at all.

It's all far too simplistic. They remind me of the demonstrators in the 60s chanting 'Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh' and holding up Mao's Little Red Book as if that would solve the world's problems. Just more cult behaviour. They don't seem to realise ordinary people need fuel to get to work or hospital, can't afford fancy electric cars and can't afford heat pumps.

M0nica

DaisyMae The problem is, how do you tell the truth from the untruth, or lies? More to the point, how do you tell those manipulating the truth to their ends from those who aren't?

How can we understand that some time the 'truths' we believe in are not the truth?

Guess time will tell.

DaisyMae The problem is, how do you tell the truth from the untruth, or lies? More to the point, how do you tell those manipulating the truth to their ends from those who aren't?

How can we understand that some time the 'truths' we believe in are not the truth?

I can't help but be reminded of the quote 'All truth passed through there stages. First ridiculed, then violently opposed, finally accepted as self-evident '. Guess we're in the second stage. Look at woman's sufferage. A case in point.

eazybee

It echoes 'Clockwork Orange.'
I deliberately didn't copy his exact words because I found them so chilling, that anyone could say such things in a video aimed at young people.

You're right, it does echo Clockwork Orange.

He, Hallam, also caused controversy over his comments about the Holocaust (basically dismissing it as yet another genocide among many others in history). He said afterwards that his comment had been "misunderstood" and that he wasn't downplaying what happened and that in fact he intended the opposite.

However, he also said that Germany's 'memory of the event' was holding them back...

... holding them back from what? I wonder. I can only think he means holding them back from focusing on Extinction Rebellion's message. Many of the ER have distanced themselves from him and condemned him for these comments.

eazybee Well. MaizieD could have done what everyone else has done and looked at the video clip, which is what most of us have done and been profoundly shocked.

But she didn't want to see the video, and wanted what he said summarised so I did. I would have thought that there has been enough about the clip on this thread for her to realise that it was indeed unpleasant and that if she was too scared to watch the video clip, the contents were hardly something to be put in a GN thread, but there you are, there's nowt as queer as folks.

It echoes 'Clockwork Orange.'
I deliberately didn't copy his exact words because I found them so chilling, that anyone could say such things in a video aimed at young people.

MaizieD OK, you asked so here it is - and my apologies to all those who have not seen this clip and are shsocked by what I will be writing

The clip shows Roger Hallam, taking about the results of climate change and the breakdown of society that will follow

'Gangs of men breaking into your house, grabbing your girlfriend or your mother and putting them on the table and gang raping them. Then they rake pointed sticks and heat them up and thrust them into your eyes'.

Oh, how he seemed to enjoy saying it. Just the kind of man to be leading a protest movement, most of whose members seem to be young, clever, but impressionable women.

They are just rent a mob eco terrorists and should be treated as such, they have gone way outside the freedom to protest, just jail them.

eazybee

I read the article by Michael Deacon , Telegraph November 10th: 'Just stop Oil has become a lethal cult'. In it he quotes Roger Hallam's words from a video he posted online last year entitled 'Advice to Young People As they Face Annihilation'. He talks about a project (climate change) to have billions of people die, which needs to be punished, otherwise the future will consist of war, mass slaughter and the collapse of social systems. He then describes graphically how gangs of young men will come to your house and commit gang rape, then turn on you with a pointed stick and blind you.
Enough?

He talks about a project (climate change) to have billions of people die, which needs to be punished, otherwise the future will consist of war, mass slaughter and the collapse of social systems. He then describes graphically how gangs of young men will come to your house and commit gang rape, then turn on you with a pointed stick and blind you.

We are already seeing the collapse of social systems, war, and have already seen mass slaughter over the years. I believe too that if countries become uninhabitable because of floods, fire, etc, then there will be mass migration. We are seeing that, too.

But I do not have faith in anything Hallam says. He did not understand the Holocaust or its causes, for one thing. He may be a PhD researcher on civil disobedience at King's College London, but he is not (IMO) politically an intellectual or objective thinker.

As easybee has posted

I read the article by Michael Deacon , Telegraph November 10th: 'Just stop Oil has become a lethal cult'. In it he quotes Roger Hallam's words from a video he posted online last year entitled 'Advice to Young People As they Face Annihilation'. He talks about a project (climate change) to have billions of people die, which needs to be punished, otherwise the future will consist of war, mass slaughter and the collapse of social systems. He then describes graphically how gangs of young men will come to your house and commit gang rape, then turn on you with a pointed stick and blind you.
Enough?

Blossoming

Sorry Volver, I’m a recently retired software developer and if you’re logging in to Twitter and reading things then the algorithms are working on you, whether you know it or not.

Yes, I'm sure that's true Blossoming.

But I have a virtual list (i.e. in my head) of people I look at and I never click on the accounts it suggests for me. Am I safe?

Sorry Volver, I’m a recently retired software developer and if you’re logging in to Twitter and reading things then the algorithms are working on you, whether you know it or not.

M0nica

MaizieD I have given the link, 2 posts up.

I didn't particularly want to see the video. Wouldn't a couple of sentences in answer to my question have done?

GrannyGravy13

MaizieD

25Avalon

I was perturbed to read that stop oil went round universities recruiting youngsters. What’s wrong with that? Well they were told a load of lies perpetrated by the founder Roger Hallam about what would happen. Having your mother and girl friend raped on the table and then having your eyes poked out with a hot stick, apart from the world coming to an end in 2o years with billions dead is not true but builds on the fear of climate change which is all around us. Stop oil has now become like a religious cult with eco zealots following, chanting their mantras and beyond reasoning with.

WTF is that about rapes and pointed sticks?

MaizieD the video clip of Mr.Hallam saying those things has been all over the internet for several weeks.

He honestly looks disturbed and not in his right mind.

I don't spend my days trawling the internet, I stick to a few sites.

Who was going to rape and do things with pointed sticks is what I wanted to know. And what has it got to do with stopping oil use?

M0nica

There is a very thoughtful and considered article on what motivates these protesters in the Daily Mail today. It is by one of the DM's regular columnists, the NHS psychiatrist, Dr Max Pemberton.

He says many young people are gripped by a crippling generalised anxiety and that the climate crisi is something specific to hang this anxiety on.

He comments on the inability of the protesters, most highly educated to cogently argue their case when asked, to explain exactly what it is they want done and, in his words, they seem incapable of putting forward a reasoned argument or of summing up the issues in a way that doesnt fall back on hysterical hyperbole. Some come across as neither rational nor logical

He points out that Elon Musk has done more for the environment by developing mass-produced electric cars than have all these eco-protestors.

He also refers to the darker underbelly of the movement encapsulated in the clip of its leader, Roger Hallam,
twitter.com/calvinrobinson/status/1589685496287879169
who has been described as a cult leader.

I can understand why young people - and old people come to that - are gripped by a crippling generalised anxiety. I have felt it myself and pondered over it often.

The 'Stop Oil' movement though theoretically laudable, is IMO treating the symptoms and not the cause of a much wider and far more complex 'issue' (I hate using that word but can't think of another one at the moment as my brain is fogged out with medication). And I believe the issue is the world global elite who control the economic systems, technology, science and the military machines, etc. I'm not into conspiracy theories - it is true though that those who control the money supply are those with the power and that power is invested in maintaining the status quo. An over simplification, but necessary for the sake of brevity, I don't want to lecture, just give my POV.

The production of oil and search for new fields is just a part of this whole IMO. What made me think along these lines is Hallam's almost airy dismissal of the Holocaust as "just another fuckery in history" which makes me think he doesn't quite grasp the political and economic complexities of why oil production is still ongoing.

I'm not expressing myself very well - opiates and blood-pressure medication have slowed me almost to a standstill, but what I'm attempting to say is that where we are now is the result of something far more complicated and problematical, and nothing will be solved by protestors gluing themselves to motorways or hanging off gantries.

I am a twitter reader. I don't follow anyone or give Elon any idea what I'm interested in. Hence the algorithms don't work on me

Volver I seem to remember you are a Twitter user. Roger Hallam is certainly all over there.
twitter.com/talktv/status/1589645665772404738?s=61&t=yHa3CZFfRcYex7Vvlh817g

He is quoted as saying such in this article.

unherd.com/thepost/green-activism-is-turning-apocalyptic/

Maybe the protesters are getting the idea that their protests aren’t popular, they have gone the wrong way about getting a message across.

MaizieD I have given the link, 2 posts up.

GrannyGravy13

MaizieD

25Avalon

I was perturbed to read that stop oil went round universities recruiting youngsters. What’s wrong with that? Well they were told a load of lies perpetrated by the founder Roger Hallam about what would happen. Having your mother and girl friend raped on the table and then having your eyes poked out with a hot stick, apart from the world coming to an end in 2o years with billions dead is not true but builds on the fear of climate change which is all around us. Stop oil has now become like a religious cult with eco zealots following, chanting their mantras and beyond reasoning with.

WTF is that about rapes and pointed sticks?

MaizieD the video clip of Mr.Hallam saying those things has been all over the internet for several weeks.

He honestly looks disturbed and not in his right mind.

Well I googled and it's not all over my internet.

Just an article about his German lover who is half his age and that they have been seen with takeaways. 😕

He's clearly a bit unusual though...

There is a very thoughtful and considered article on what motivates these protesters in the Daily Mail today. It is by one of the DM's regular columnists, the NHS psychiatrist, Dr Max Pemberton.

He says many young people are gripped by a crippling generalised anxiety and that the climate crisi is something specific to hang this anxiety on.

He comments on the inability of the protesters, most highly educated to cogently argue their case when asked, to explain exactly what it is they want done and, in his words, they seem incapable of putting forward a reasoned argument or of summing up the issues in a way that doesnt fall back on hysterical hyperbole. Some come across as neither rational nor logical

He points out that Elon Musk has done more for the environment by developing mass-produced electric cars than have all these eco-protestors.

He also refers to the darker underbelly of the movement encapsulated in the clip of its leader, Roger Hallam,
twitter.com/calvinrobinson/status/1589685496287879169
who has been described as a cult leader.