Let’s GET ‘EM!

10:12 am, 2/17/05

Let's GET 'EM!

Professor: "Get off my land!"
Protestors: "You can't own land, man!"
Professor: "I can, because I'm not a penniless hippy!"

-Futurama

Note to protestors: No trespassing.

Twenty-seven environmental protesters were in custody today after they were arrested following clashes with oil traders at the International Petroleum Exchange.

The Greenpeace activists broke into the building near Tower Hill, central London, to try and paralyse the oil markets on the same day the Kyoto Protocol came into force.

Armed with fog horns, rape alarms and whistles they tried to stall business by creating a deafening noise which made it impossible for the traders to work.

The protesters were arrested for various public order offences and taken to local police stations, a Scotland Yard spokesman said.

Greenpeace said they were demonstrating because although Kyoto was a good first step, it did not go far enough to combat climate change.

Campaigner Mark Strutt told how security guards were distracted by two protesters dressed in suits to look like traders, who dropped some money on the floor.

Rape alarms were tied to helium balloons so they would float to the ceiling and create noise out of reach.

By making so much noise, the protesters hoped to sabotage all trading between 2pm and 7.30pm yesterday, but a spokeswoman for IPE said all trading had resumed by 3.15pm.

"The floor was invaded by a small group of protesters," she said. "Open-cry trading was suspended but electronic trading carried on as normal throughout."

In a fun twist, IPE traders reacted firmly:

The pressure group complained that the traders were unnecessarily violent towards them.

One demonstrator described how "all hell broke loose" on the trading floor: "We were actually getting battered. We weren't fighting back which makes it even worse."

Greenpeace's executive director Steven Tindale said: "They kind of pinned us into the corner, there were a couple of dozen around us."

"We were non-violent and peaceful and we made it clear that's what we were there for but there were quite a few blows raining down on our heads."

"Non-violent and peaceful?" Criminally disruptive twits got what they deserved, and it's good people aren't laying down and taking their crap anymore. One protestor was taken to the hospital. Good for the traders. A London Times account of the incident quotes protestors as saying they had bitten off more than they could chew, that they were unprepared for a bunch for a bunch of "Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs".

Another said: "I took on a Texan Swat team at Esso last year and they were angels compared with this lot."

No he didn't. You can always tell when these idiots are making up stories to get laid with other filthy hippies.

Behind him, on the balcony of the pub opposite the IPE, a bleary-eyed trader, pint in hand, yelled: "Sod off, Swampy."

Protesters conceded that mounting the operation after lunch may not have been the best plan. "The violence was instant," Jon Beresford, 39, an electrical engineer from Nottingham, said.

"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."

"No honey, I can't make it home for dinner, I'm buried in paperwork!"

Of course, Greenpeace came back later anyway, to harass a more "sophisticated" set, less prone to opening up the proverbial can:

Greenpeace later started a second protest, at the annual dinner of the Institute of Petroleum.

Two campaigners had got into the Great Hall of the Grosvenor House Hotel, on London's Park Lane, and had ruined table settings by pouring red wine on them, spokeswoman Emily Armistead said.

Around 30 protestors were outside the hotel, she added, some blocking the front entrance by sitting down and locking themselves together, while others sound klaxons and alarms.

Climbers were scaling scaffolding to unfurl a banner reading "Climate change kills, oil industry parties".

Ms Armistead said as Mr Raymond started his speech the two protesters rose and shouted he was "a climate criminal".

They were removed from the building by security guards but not arrested.

Why not? There are a whole host of perfectly legal channels these two-bit hoods could use to express their opinions in public without violating the rights of others and trespassing or vandalizing private property. A person shouldn't be surprised if they get their ass kicked and thrown into the clink when they choose not to use them.

(Nor, I suppose, should they be all that surprised if, the next time they decide to try to chain themselves across a city street, they are helpfully nudged back to safety by the bumper of some concerned motorist, Blues Brothers style. "Illinois Nazis. I hate Illinois Nazis." *VROOM*)

Also unhappy with Greenpeace is the Czech Republic.

As a choir sings the national anthem, praising the beautiful Czech countryside, a bulldozer appears on screen shoving huge piles of garbage. As the singers refer to spring flowers sparkling in an orchard, an industrial smokestack belches out fumes.

Environmental group Greenpeace admits a new ad it wants to screen on television, depicting the Czech Republic as a toxic wasteland, is intended to shock and provoke. Judging by the reaction of the government, it has succeeded.

Despite the garbage heaps shown in the Greenpeace film, Environment Ministry statistics indicate this country produced less municipal waste per person in 2003, 455 kilograms, than the European Union average, 499 kilograms.

Greenpeace is apparently just mad about their CO2 production.