The Church of Climate is a hotbed for eco-terrorists. Remember the pumpkin-colored soup thrown at the Mona Lisa, which was protected/saved by advanced glass manufactured by Koch (Guardian Industries)?
The latest on Just Stop Oil is good news for civil society. Doug Sheridan, an intrepid energy editorialist on social media, reported:
The Times UK writes, two Just Stop Oil activists have been jailed for throwing tomato soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and damaging its antique frame. Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland, both 22, threw two tins of Kraft Heinz tomato soup at the painting at the National Gallery and then glued themselves to the wall in October 2022 in the group’s high-profile stunt.
Plummer was jailed for two years and Holland for 20 months. The maximum sentence for the offence is ten years’ imprisonment. The bail conditions stipulate that they must not carry glue, paint or any adhesive substance in a public place and must not visit any galleries or museums.
While the painting, which was completed in 1888 and is worth up to £72.5MM, was protected by a glass cover, prosecutors believe the soup, which is said to have acted as a “paint stripper”, may have caused £10,000 worth of damage to its 17th-century Italian frame.
The court was told that the pair had visited the museum a day before the incident to carry out reconnaissance and had bought the soup from supermarket.
In a statement read to the jury, Isabella Kocum, a frame conservator, said she was “shocked and dismayed by the extent of corrosion this tomato soup” caused to the “exquisite antique frame”.
She told the court, “The frame was specifically chosen for Van Gogh’s painting because of the matching colouration. I remain amazed at how corrosive the soup was to the frame. Even once the majority of the soup had been removed, I was alarmed to see that the remainder was acting like a paint stripper in front of my eyes.”
Prior to the sentencing, more than a hundred artists, curators and historians called for the activists to be spared jail because they had upheld a “centuries-old tradition of calling on our social conscience through art.”
Plummer, who studied at the University of Manchester and represented herself at the trial, told the court that she decided to use tomato soup “because it would stand out” and that it “symbolised the link between the climate crisis and the cost of living crisis”
Plummer and Holland said they were taking instructions from someone in Just Stop Oil but refused to identify the person. Plummer told the jury she loved the painting. In her closing speech, she claimed that she was ‘sounding an alarm bell” on climate change and invoked the example of the suffragettes and the civil rights movement in the US.
She said, “I don’t think that action like this fits the black and white letter of the law. Sometimes morality is different from the law, different from justice, different from legal directions. We caused some damage to the frame. The painting was returned to the gallery the same day.
Our Take: Note the self-comparison to the struggle for universal sufferage. That’s what they’ve been told—civilization’s means of lifting 3 billion people out of poverty in a matter of decades is an injustice to all of mankind. That they’ve no idea is telling.
The final word belongs to Vogi Schulz, who commented:
These crazy protesters blatantly ignore that “civilization’s means of lifting 3 billion people out of poverty in a matter of decades is an injustice to all of mankind.”
If you want to accelerate the energy transition, reduce your consumption of fossil fuels. You’ll quickly learn how hard that is. If you manage most of it, you’ll notice how your quality of life has deteriorated.
Van Gogh paintings vandalized at a London gallery after 2 activists were sentenced in similar attack
LONDON (AP) — A pair of paintings by Dutch master Vincent van Gogh at London’s National Gallery were vandalized Friday when a group of climate activists splattered what appeared to be tomato soup on them, shortly after two other activists were sentenced over a similar attack two years ago.
The paintings from Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” series, which the artist painted in Arles in the south of France, were not damaged thanks to protective glass coverings. The gallery identified the two as its own Sunflowers (1888) and Sunflowers (1889) on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The three activists from the Just Stop Oil environmental group involved in the attack were arrested while the paintings were removed, examined, and then returned to their location. The exhibition reopened later Friday, the gallery said.
The group posted a video of the attack on social media, showing three people pouring soup over the paintings. The action was apparently in protests against the sentencing earlier Friday of two other activists from the group, Phoebe Plummer, 23, and Anna Holland, 22…
(more) https://apnews.com/article/van-gogh-sunflowers-britain-activists-943f799fe05c4f55a747874f7024252e