The prehistoric megalithic structure in England has been targeted by activists spraying orange powder paint, social media footage showed.

Environmental protesters sprayed paint on Stonehenge on Wednesday, with footage showing an orange powder covering some of the stones.

Two protesters dressed in white were seen running towards two of the megaliths, spraying paint, as another person attempted to stop them, in footage released by Just Stop Oil, an environmental activist group focused on the issue of human-caused climate change.

  • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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    5 months ago

    yknow what fuck it, i support this. i was a little on the reactionary side back when they were throwing soup,

    but after seeing hundreds of comments saying “just do <insert violent felony> if you want something done” and then seeing those same people turn around and say “but safely blocking streets in protest is an affront to my rights, stop being annoying”

    …i get it now. it’s cornstarch and will wash off. calling for “optics” is just concern trolling. people are hearing about it. that’s the point. fuck oil. keep up the messaging. people are going to starve and drown and bleed from war caused by climate change. we are gonna survive a few people yeeting nonpermanent shit at public art.

    • Bertuccio@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Even if they did damage anything their message is that anyone getting mad about damaging works of art or heritage sites through direct action should be just as mad about people destroying the actual entire planet indirectly and calling for their immediate imprisonment too.

      As annoying as I find them and as much as I want to preserve these things, they’re exactly right that paintings and rocks mean fuckall if we ruin our only home.

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      If it’s cornstarch that will wash off, then the headline is a lie and your quarrel is with whoever wrote that, not the people who believe the headline and believe stonehenge is getting actually defaced.

      • qevlarr@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        True, but also there’s the more general point about “I support the cause but not the method” naysayers being absolutely counterproductive. Climate protesters are finding themselves cut off from every method of protest, violent or not. Because lots of people want to continue business as usual in peace without those pesky tree huggers complaining about, y’know, the fact we’re already well past the Paris 1.5 °C target with no end in sight

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          You would have to be the laziest dumbest motherfucker who has ever lived to not be able to get a job in recycling or renewable energy sector right now if you want one.

        • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          People have the right to do as they please, even if it means choosing a path toward their own demise.

          People aren’t unaware of climate change. Everyone knows about it. What you’re seeing is a manifestation of the average human’s ranking of climate change in their own list of things to be concerned about.

          You have no right to tell someone that climate change is more important than the things they choose to focus on instead.

          If you think they’re mistaken about what’s on the table, like they underestimate the danger or something like that, then the right move is to inform them. All this protest activity is implicitly based on the assumption people just sort of … forgot about climate change.

          They didn’t. They just don’t prioritize it over the other problems in their lives. Which is their right.

          • Blackbeard@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Amen. Plus some of us do prioritize it. We’ve minimized our carbon footprint, we’ve dedicated careers to environmental awareness and protection, and we spend countless hours in our own lives to communicate the reality of the situation to others, but we resent the fact that these protestors push people away from the rest of our messaging by making us look like a group of unhinged, attention-seeking morons.

          • n1ckn4m3@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            On top of that, one of the biggest problems with climate change is that us as individual citizens have absolutely no control over it no matter how many people try and guilt us into taking action.

            No amount of individuals recycling, driving less or with a more efficient vehicle or with an electric car, or drinking less water is going to change the fact that container ships, factories, manufacturing facilities, cruise ships, private jets, etc. belch more pollutants into the atmosphere by so many orders of magnitude that anything we can do as individuals is completely and utterly inconsequential in comparison.

            Me recycling my plastic doesn’t mean shit and it never will. Same with me driving an electric car vs. a gas powered car, hell even me driving a car with good fuel economy vs one that has bad fuel economy. Cargo shipping is responsible for more than 20% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the world while passenger automobiles are responsible for 5%-7% at most based on recent estimates. If every single person in the world stopped driving fossil-fuel powered cars and moved entirely to renewable fuel sources for their transportation, it would still be a drop in the bucket – and that’s never going to happen.

            But the media keeps pointing the shotgun at everyday citizens like it’s our fault that cruise ships belch shit into the atmosphere when we haven’t been on a cruise in 10 years, or it’s our fault that the shipping industry refuses to use more ecological and eco-friendly fuel sources.

            Tell me more about how me as a single person recycling is gonna save the world, lol.

            • qevlarr@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Just Stop Oil is specifically pointing to governments to stop new oil projects. They aren’t blaming you, why are you so defensive?

              • qarbone@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                Because most protests are about making the lives of normal people miserable until they’re pissed enough to hold someone to task.

                Are the Tories gonna care that Stonehenge was dusted, from in their mansions? Most of them would love to dig up the stones and use them as new countertops, simply as a bragging point at their parties. But normal people that care about landmarks like these will be pissed and, maybe, bitch to the government.

                • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  Because most protests are about making the lives of normal people miserable until they’re pissed enough to hold someone to task.

                  And how is that working for you? How is diet-terrorism panning out?

            • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              that container ships, factories, manufacturing facilities, cruise ships, private jets, etc. belch more pollutants into the atmosphere by so many orders of magnitude that anything we can do as individuals is completely and utterly inconsequential in comparison.

              In my area they were talking about building a natural gas plant. We have some of the strictest laws on earth about air pollution. People protested against it. The planet got moved to a different state, one with less regulations.

              I mentioned this to one of the people organizing the protest. I point out exactly what was going to happen and my prediction was correct. If the decision is already being made to do the wrong thing I want it done by the best person I can find, because they will do it in the least offensive way that they can.

              It’s shit like this. It’s not being able to look at the whole picture that is the most devastating.

      • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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        5 months ago

        my quarrel is with people who tell me what my real quarrel is thank you very much. edit: that includes status quo liberals telling activists how to fight for a livable future and you telling me who i am upset at.

        i have no opinion on the headline or who believes it. please do not tell me what i believe.

          • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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            5 months ago

            dude im not trying to be clever i just don’t like people telling me what i believe. do you?

    • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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      5 months ago

      Yeah I’m on board now.

      These stunts are a harmless way to keep climate activism in the media. It’s fine.

      Sadly, I don’t see human kind changing course and I think it’s inevitable that this kind of activism deteriorates into environmental terrorism.

    • Crikeste@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      The people up in arms about the protests have never given a shit about the things the protesters “destroy”. It’s all just an optics game to make any dissenting opinion from the norm look batshit. Fuck the pieces of shit getting up in arms about this without knowing what’s up. Theyre the problem. They make the world worse every day they exist. They stop change. They allow for the atrocities to be committed.

    • lepinkainen@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      It was coloured corn starch, and the stones have lichen growing on them that has helped them survive this long.

      Nobody knows what the colouring agent was.

      • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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        5 months ago

        If it causes lasting damages they will and should be prosecuted for exactly what happens. I’m hoping they did their due diligence but hey, if not that was dumb as hell of them and they should pay for it.

        Again though, the sentiment remains that people are going to die. That damage is also irreparable and far less redeemable. I support this kind of action.