4x4s disarmed in the city of Stockholm

24th August: a new­ly formed activist group, call­ing itself The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle, has struck repeat­ed­ly against SUVs in the cen­tre of Stock­holm over the last weeks. Some 300 of those killer machines have so far been tem­porar­i­ly dis­armed. The Indi­ans deflate the tyres of the SUVs and leave a let­ter to the own­er on the wind­screen, where­in the action is explained (trans­la­tion attached below). Con­sid­er­able fury has arisen among the SUV-own­ers of the city, as evi­dent in the lynch atmos­phere in count­less com­ments on the web­site of the group as well as in var­i­ous army, car and sports com­mu­ni­ties on the web. In one inci­dent, an own­er chased an Indi­an for 20 min­utes. Three Indi­ans have been nabbed by the police – appar­ent­ly giv­ing high pri­or­i­ty to stem­ming this crime – and face var­i­ous crim­i­nal charges. How­ev­er, the group is deter­mined to con­tin­ue tak­ing direct action against SUVs, as they con­sti­tute one of the most provoca­tive and insane sources of unnec­es­sary car­bon emis­sions (inso­far as con­spic­u­ous con­sump­tion of mon­ster vehi­cles is not deemed a gen­uine human need).

24th August: a new­ly formed activist group, call­ing itself The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle, has struck repeat­ed­ly against SUVs in the cen­tre of Stock­holm over the last weeks. Some 300 of those killer machines have so far been tem­porar­i­ly dis­armed. The Indi­ans deflate the tyres of the SUVs and leave a let­ter to the own­er on the wind­screen, where­in the action is explained (trans­la­tion attached below). Con­sid­er­able fury has arisen among the SUV-own­ers of the city, as evi­dent in the lynch atmos­phere in count­less com­ments on the web­site of the group as well as in var­i­ous army, car and sports com­mu­ni­ties on the web. In one inci­dent, an own­er chased an Indi­an for 20 min­utes. Three Indi­ans have been nabbed by the police – appar­ent­ly giv­ing high pri­or­i­ty to stem­ming this crime – and face var­i­ous crim­i­nal charges. How­ev­er, the group is deter­mined to con­tin­ue tak­ing direct action against SUVs, as they con­sti­tute one of the most provoca­tive and insane sources of unnec­es­sary car­bon emis­sions (inso­far as con­spic­u­ous con­sump­tion of mon­ster vehi­cles is not deemed a gen­uine human need).

Update: New indi­an tribes has appeared and has struck against SUVs in Malmö, Gothen­burg and Sundsvall.

The Indi­ans would like to rec­om­mend this form of direct action to all like-mind­ed groups. If selec­tive SUV-dis­ar­ma­ment is done repeat­ed­ly and on a mas­sive scale, it will devel­op from a slight annoy­ance in the eyes of the own­ers into a real obsta­cle for dri­ving the things, thus putting an end to per­haps the most obnox­ious aspect of bour­geois car­bon addic­tion. Imag­ine wak­ing up to a car with­out air in the tyres every morn­ing, or even once a week! It’s not a com­pli­cat­ed manoeu­vre: just unscrew the cap of the valve, insert a grain of grav­el or stone in it, and screw it back on. The grain will push down the peg in the mid­dle of the valve, mak­ing sure the air is gen­tly released. The whole manoeu­vre will take about 10 sec­onds. Leave the SUV, and lis­ten to the beau­ti­ful sound of the air peter­ing out.

Let­ter to SUV own­ers:
Your SUV kills!
We have deflat­ed one or sev­er­al tyres of your SUV. Don’t take it per­son­al. It’s your car we don’t like. You are cer­tain­ly aware of the large amount of fuel it con­sumes, so we don’t have to enlight­en you about that. But either you are igno­rant of, or you don’t care about the fact that all the gas you con­sume by dri­ving around in your SUV in the streets of the city has dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for oth­ers. Sci­en­tists are entire­ly sure that we are very close to push­ing cli­mate change over a thresh­old, into a phase where it will be total­ly out of con­trol.

When the glac­i­ers melt, people’s source of water dis­ap­pear. When the deserts spread, agri­cul­tur­al fields become uncul­tivable. When the sea lev­el ris­es, homes are inun­dat­ed. Result: bil­lions of refugees, count­less deaths. It’s already esti­mat­ed that 160 000 peo­ple die every year due to the effects of cli­mate change, accord­ing to the WHO.
As an afflu­ent Swede you will sur­vive longer then most. Those most vul­ner­a­ble, and already worst afflict­ed by the glob­al warm­ing caused by North­ern afflu­ence, are the peo­ple of poor coun­tries. In the end, how­ev­er, cli­mate chaos will affect us all, poor peo­ple as well as rich.

This does not have to hap­pen if we impose a rad­i­cal cut on car­bon emis­sions. Now.
Not tomor­row. That’s why we have dis­armed your SUV by deflat­ing the tires.
Since you live in a city with a func­tion­ing and acces­si­ble pub­lic trans­porta­tion sys­tem you will have no prob­lem going where you want with­out your SUV.