your perspective is completely revisionist as criminal damage has long been a part of the movement to defend the environment. it is people like you we need to remove from our movement. all you are trying to do is stir up division.

It is a very difficult decision to decide when to use criminal damage to protect the planet, after all, it takes resources to build machinery and will take more to rebuild them. just because it is a hard decision it does not mean it is one above us to make. it is not above our station.

one thing that is above station is you suggesting who should and should not be a part of the 'climate camp' movement. your views and the way you present them clearly indicate you have not been 'active' for very long, or if so never very much, so expect to be met with derision until you have thought the issues through a bit further.

at the very least get some respect.

1. Property destruction is not violence. I was expecting the links to be stories about people or animals being hurt. I can have no sympathy for inanimate objects as they feel pain.
2. The inanimate objects in question were facilitating the destruction of our planet.
3. Destroying our habitat through climate change will result in massive loss of life and quality of life. Those affected by climate change, past present and future, unlike inanimate objects, are innocent victims I can have sympathy for.
4. Facilitating climate change, eg. polluting excessively, is an act of aggression in that it directly contributes to this loss of life.
5. Such an act of aggression, knowingly contributing to the harm of millions of people, could be considered violent, if not worse.

The people who carried out these actions were acting to prevent violence. Silence on this issue (ie. not carrying out these actions) could have implied support for destroying the lives of millions through climate change.

I imagine most of the people at the gathering have the sense to see through your nonsense argument anyway, so don't get your hopes up.

Like all this symbolic action has really helped a lot hasn't it?

Activists turn up for their usual and predictable "actions" of heavy-handed symbolism, do this for a bit and then go home and congratulate themselves on being eco-"warriors". The corporations merely wait around until the "activists" have left and carry on, business as usual, exerting institutional and infrastructural corporate violence against the planet. Why should they worry about a bunch of wanna-be actors?

These more direct property-trashing actions actually do give them pause for thought however, because it gets them where they live: not in some namby-pamby place of peace and good will to planet and populations, but in their pockets. That is where the changes are more likely to be successfully seeded: when corporate planetary-fuck-overs become too damn expensive to continue to do.

And how exactly would you suggest defending ourselves and our planet? By nicely asking the oil companies to stop destroying it? It's this sort of sectarian "pacifism" that has turned the anti-war movement into such a shambles.

Direct actions like this are exactly what we need, and from my experiences I can assure you the vast majority of the 'movement' feels exactly the same way.

Up the Saboteurs!