
From TribLive:
LONDON — Climate protesters threw soup over Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” in London’s National Gallery on Friday to protest fossil fuel extraction, but caused no damage to the glass-covered painting.
The group Just Stop Oil, which wants the British government to halt new oil and gas projects, said activists dumped two cans of tomato soup over the oil painting, one of the Dutch artist’s most iconic works. The two protesters also glued themselves to the gallery wall.
The soup splashed across the glass covering the painting and its gilded frame. The gallery said “there is some minor damage to the frame but the painting is unharmed.” It was cleaned and returned to its place in the gallery on Friday afternoon.
These so-called “protestors” are barely out of their teens, if that old, and more to the point, emotionally in their pre-teens. In a more just society, rather than waste time and expense dragging them through the judicial system, they would simply be ordered, with zero due process, to spend 30 days or more of hard labor scrubbing off graffiti in the most visible public places.
In other words, letting the punishment fit the crime and far more fitting than their pretending martyrdom while sitting in a jail cell. It also would serve as a much more effective deterrent to their emotionally stunted peers.
