All of the vehicles torched and vandalised at the dealership were covered by insurance, and very probably all of the privately owned ones were, too.

The assembly plants that build these SUVs have enough capacity to easily build sufficient trucks to replace the ones burned - therefore, this action did little to reduce environmental impact since the trucks will be easily and routinely replaced.

On the plus side, it kept the plant open another hour or so, so that's a bunch of people with a little more money in their pockets and a tiny bit more cash for GM.

On the minus side, insurance may be a bit more expensive for car dealers next year.

Overall, this changed nothing substantially.

^^^
Asides from buddy getting something off his chest.
Pretty excessive punishment in my mind for harming an inanimate object but then again property rights have always been more strictly enforced than human rights in my opinion.

Well, you know, apart from the fire fighters who have to put out the blaze.

Fire-bombs were used extensively throughout the 80s and 90s in the UK by the animal rights movement. See "Arkangel" magazine for more details. I've had this exact same debate before; "fire-bombs are an effective political tool" vs "fire-bombs are used by a tiny number of extremist nuts who don't realise the damge that they're doing to their movement."

Fire-bombing something is not a non-violent action that harms no-one. Fire-bombing risks the lives of fire-fighters who are a wholly innocent party. Fire-bombing risks the lives of support staff; cleaners and security guards. These people usually earn terrible wages and are not a primary target. Non-violent attacks on firms who provide support to the primary target are acceptable (indeed, they're so effective that the UK has passed laws to make it much harder) but anything that risks the lives of people to get a message accross is Just. Fucking. Stupid., because you lose the support of almost all the people who nearly care, and they're the people that you need to convince.

Except most people aren't talking about the ways that many Americans are trying to reduce the very great amount of harm that America does to the environment, most people are talking about this one nut and how ineffective his protest is. How many people have decided not to drive an SUV because of him? Now ask yourself: How many people have decided that they *will* drive an SUV just because of him?

Fuck that, I'm European. It's you goddamn yanks killing the planet

I bet Judge Gary Klausner drives an SUV.

The More people do acts like this, the more insurance for SUVs will cost, and the more deterance to drivuing them.

Would have been a lot more fun with an RPG, but ya gotta work with what you got.

I was going to comment on that but never got around to it. The rest of the world probably cracks up at us getting high and mighty towards Hummer drivers when, Hummers or not, we use like 10 times the gas as the rest of the (developed) world. And 10,000 times the gas as the undeveloped world.

We're all going to burn.

MORE Vandalism = More Expensive Insurance for SUVs.

It would have been better to slap stickers onto the paint job, or pour break fluid on the hood, but wht can you do... An RPG for Every SUV...

We're also at least 10 times the size of most other countries.

I meant per capita.

And we certainly aren't 10 times the size of Russia, China, or India.

Yeah, somebody else pointed out to me earlier in the thread that they were firebombing the damn things as well as vandalizing them, so I'm feeling kinda stupid for saying that now. Guess I should have read the article a little more attentively.

You may have meant per capita, but I said most.

I fucking love you for knowing who Hayduke is.

about the only sad thing about this whole saga is that the kid got caught, imho.

of course, it would have been better to stick to dealerships and stay away from people's homes.

[Edited on Apr 22, 2005 by MisterDionysos]