Tag Archives: Protest

Jon Stewart’s Speech at Rally to Restore Sanity

Posted on by Brad Heap

Overnight Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert hosted their Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear at the National Mall in Washington D.C. 150,000 people attended to witness one of the most bizzare protests/rallys you will ever see. But despite this it was also one of the biggest rallys in a generation. The speech made by Jon Stewart at the end of the rally summed up the feelings of the day quite aptly, at the same time in very much Jon Stewart style:

I can’t control what people think this was. I can only tell you my intentions. This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith or people of activism or to look down our noses at the heartland or passionate argument or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear. They are and we do. But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus and not be enemies.

But unfortunately one of our main tools in delineating the two broke. The country’s 24 hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems but it’s existence makes solving them that much harder. The press can hold it’s magnifying up to our problems bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected dangerous flaming ant epidemic.

If we amplify everything we hear nothing. There are terrorists and racists and Stalinist and theocrats but those are titles that must be earned. You must have the resume. Not being able to distinguish between real racists and Tea Partiers or real bigots and Juan Williams and Rick Sanchez is an insult, not only to those people but to the racists themselves who have put in the exhausting effort it takes to hate. Just as the inability to distinguish terrorists from Muslims makes us less safe not more. The press is our immune system. If we overreact to everything we actually get sicker and perhaps eczema.

And yet with that being said I feel good—strangely, calmly good. Because the image of Americans that is reflected back to us by our political and media process is false. It is us through a fun house mirror and not the good kind that makes you look slim in the waist and maybe taller, but the kind where you have a giant forehead and an ass shaped like a month old pumpkin and one eyeball.

So, why would we work together? Why would you reach across the aisle to a pumpkin- assed forehead eyeball monster? If the picture of us were true of course our inability to solve problems would actually be quite sane and reasonable. Why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution or racists and homophobes who see no one’s humanity but their own? We hear every damn day about how fragile our country is—on the brink of catastrophe—torn by polarizing hate and how it’s a shame that we can’t work together to get things done, but the truth is we do. We work together to get things done every damn day!

The only place we don’t is here or on cable TV. But Americans don’t live here or on cable TV. Where we live our values and principles form the foundation that sustains us while we get things done not the barriers that prevent us from getting things done. Most Americans don’t live their lives solely as Democrats, Republicans, Liberals or Conservatives. Americans live their lives more as people that are just a little bit late for something they have to do—often something that they do not want to do — but they do it. Impossible things every day that are only made possible by the little reasonable compromises that we all make.

Look on the screen this is where we are this is who we are. (points to the Jumbotron screen which show traffic merging into a tunnel). These cars—that’s a schoolteacher who probably thinks his taxes are too high. He’s going to work. There’s another car-a woman with two small kids who can’t really think about anything else right now. There’s another car swinging I don’t even know if you can see it—the lady’s in the NRA. She loves Oprah. There’s another car—an investment banker, gay, also likes Oprah. Another car’s a Latino carpenter. Another car a fundamentalist vacuum salesman. Atheist obstetrician. Mormon Jay-Z fan. But this is us. Every one of the cars that you see is filled with individuals of strong belief and principles they hold dear—often principles and beliefs in direct opposition to their fellow travelers.

And yet these millions of cars must somehow find a way to squeeze one by one into a mile long 30 foot wide tunnel carved underneath a mighty river. Carved, by the way, by people who I’m sure had their differences. And they do it. Concession by concession. You go. Then I’ll go. You go then I’ll go. You go then I’ll go, ‘Oh my God, is that an NRA sticker on your car? Is that an Obama sticker on your car?’ Well, that’s okay—you go and then I’ll go.

And sure, at some point there will be a selfish jerk who zips up the shoulder and cuts in at the last minute, but that individual is rare and he is scorned and not hired as an analyst.

Because we know instinctively as a people that if we are to get through the darkness and back into the light we have to work together and the truth is, there will always be darkness. And sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the promised land.

Sometimes it’s just New Jersey. But we do it anyway, together.

If you want to know why I’m here and want I want from you I can only assure you this: you have already given it to me. You’re presence was what I wanted.

Sanity will always be and has always been in the eye of the beholder. To see you here today and the kind of people that you are has restored mine. Thank you.

March for Mob Rule.

Posted on by Brad Heap

Brain Rudman has a good column in the Herald today about the so called March for Democracy this Saturday.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10609888

How humiliating to live in a country where $500,000 is being spent encouraging people to march up the main street of our biggest city demanding the right to beat their kids.

It could only happen in a country with one of the worst child murder rates in the developed world.

Instead of parading up Queen St this Saturday, waving their wooden spoons and looking for bottoms to belt, Colin Craig, the organiser and bankroller of this crassly named March for Democracy, and his supporters should be holding a candle for each abused child.

It is quite amazing that what is being dubed as the biggest protest march ever is about the right to smack a child. It just goes to show how sad a society we have become when the biggest issue facing us is the right to abuse and hit defenseless kids.

Despite this horrendous culture of abuse, Mr Craig will process up Queen St with his merry marchers to demand that their ancient right to smack their children be restored. Will the penny never drop that he’d be doing more for democracy – and the kids of New Zealand – if his $500,000 went into something as simple as parenting lessons – or support services – for at-risk young parents.

Exactly. If you want to really fight child abuse then put the money into programs that will sort the root cause of the issue. Not provocative and factually wrong tv ads.

The organiser of the ambiguously worded anti-smacking referendum of earlier this year, Larry Baldock, set the benchmark for hyperbole in September when he announced plans for yet another referendum, this one on whether or not such votes should be binding.

“If we do not seriously address these constitutional issues now, our children and grandchildren may be governed in a way our forebears never imagined possible when they resisted oppression on foreign battlefields to protect our liberty.”

This despite the fact that binding referendums have never been a part of the Westminster system of democracy our forebears fought to defend.

Also lurking in the wings is Steve Baron, who since 2003 – first under Voters’ Voice and now Better Democracy – has been campaigning for binding citizens-initiated referendums as a form of direct democracy.

He says he is marching on Saturday and “I hope others will join me and become the 6-8 per cent of society who become politically active, the political gladiators, the select few who get off their backsides to make a difference.”

Bob McCoskrie, national director of Family First, warns that the march is “not a one-off – it is part of a long term strategy to bring representative democracy back to New Zealand”. Like Mr Baldock, he’s got his political science confused. Binding citizens-initiated referendums, which is what this motley right-wing band are demanding, are anathema to the principles of representative democracy.

This form of government dates back to the 18th-century principle, advocated by Edmund Burke, that an MP is not in Parliament to act as his constituents’ delegate, but is elected to represent them, using his skills and best judgment to do what he thinks is best, for both country and the electors.

The development of disciplined political parties has somewhat watered this principle of MP independence down, but the system we have inherited and developed is still a far cry from the principle of mob rule that governance by binding citizens-initiated referendums promises.

The Royal Commission on the Electoral System 1986 decided that “in general, initiatives and referendums are blunt and crude devices … [that] would blur the lines of accountability and responsibility of Governments”.

They threaten the rights of minorities. In Switzerland, the land of cheese and binding referendums, binding referendums enabled a majority of men to deny women the basic right to vote until 1971.

Paradoxically, they also allow minorities to push their own hobby horses. Baron, of Better Democracy, in his rallying call for this Saturday’s march, appealed for “political gladiators … the select few who get off their backsides to make a difference”.

He puts this minority at 6-8 per cent.

6 – 8 percent is nothing more than mob rule. The rich elite with their ability to ensalve the working class. It sounds like the past. The past that the vast majority of New Zealanders do not want to go back to.

NZ Herald Speaks out against Vandalising Priest

Posted on by Brad Heap

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10550878

Editorial: Desecration does nothing to help Gaza
The actions of an extremist Catholic priest in desecrating the Wellington memorial to Nobel Prize winner Yitzhak Rabin undo any good that a thousand others protesting against Israel might have hoped
to achieve.

Father Gerard Burns daubed a drop of his own blood mixed with red paint across the Rabin memorial, inspired perhaps by an equally misguided Auckland cleric who poured his own blood on the carpet of the US consulate at the beginning of the Iraq war. At least in that repulsive act the first priest was, in the twisted logic of his protest, at the right place.

For Father Burns to desecrate the Rabin memorial is not only in breach of any civilised standard of protest but utterly wrongheaded in terms of his target. Rabin, a former Israeli general-turned-two-time-Prime-Minister, was perhaps the greatest hope for peace between Jews and Palestinians in a generation. He was assassinated by an ultra-conservative Jew because he was too accommodating to the Palestinians in seeking a lasting peace. He died after a rally for peace, with the words of Shir LaShalom, or Song for Peace, found bloodied in his pocket. He had been honoured, with Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres, by the Nobel judges. The memorial in central Wellington marks that commitment to peace.

The sins (as Father Burns might see them) of his successors in the Israeli Government cannot be visited upon Rabin. The Friends of Israel group rightly calls for the Catholic Church to discipline the priest and apologise to Jews in New Zealand, for whom desecration of their monument causes deep offence. The vandalism has received worldwide attention, the kind of attention that shames Catholics of goodwill and undermines their own public stands for justice and peace. The organisers of the Wellington march opposing Israel’s heavy-handed military action in the Gaza strip should also demand an apology from Father Burns. They must know that their message against the killings of civilians, including children, is diverted and made hollow by a calculated insult to Jews everywhere.

Father Burns no doubt views the hurt and harm caused by his desecration as out of proportion with the tragedy in Gaza. In lives lost, that is correct. No one died, as the saying goes, because of his stunt with paint. Yet something dies when whole communities are insulted, deliberately, by an act so heavy with the symbolism and fear of their past. Should Catholic monuments, for example a memorial to the revered Bishop Pompallier who brought the Church to New Zealand, be attacked because of some stance taken by the Vatican, similar outrage would ensue.

…

Extreme responses seldom get things in proportion. And, sadly, Father Burns’ drop of blood mocks the deaths of those for whom he claims to speak.

Since when do people in NZ throw shoes at others because of their nationality?

Posted on by Brad Heap

Okay,I have been very reluctant to blog about the ongoings in Israel partly because I have been busy, and partly because Kiwiblog have been doing a good job of keeping the issue balanced, at least in the NZ Blogosphere.

But the reason why I am blogging now is because John Minto and his rent a protest crowd have really got my back up in the last two days.

Now I will come back to Minto and his bunch of loonies in a few minutes but first lets get things in perspective.

Israel is not a large country. I have combined an image of Israel and part of the north island together to show it in comparison to NZ.

The Gaza Strip is highlighted in Red. It is about the same size as the distance from Manukau to Huntly. 100km max. And Gaza city itself is about the same size as Auckland City, as in the city city, not Manukau, Waitakere or the shore.

isnz

So as you can see they are fighting over a very small piece of land, but at the same time a very heavily populated land. So as you can expect when you are dropping bombs or firing tank shells civilians are naturally going to be caught in the crossfire.

However that is no excuse for not defending yourself. And that is what Israel are doing.

Israel has spent the past week inside its own land trying to prevent terrorists from firing rockets and random into civilian towns. Rockets that have rained down for the last 8 years, or 400 weeks for those of you who want things in perspective.

Israel is the only jewish state in the world. There are many many christian states, many muslim states, and many states of other religions, but only one jewish state. And more importantly for those who don’t believe in religion, Israel is the only democracy in the Mid East.

And so I find all the protests against Israel quite ironic. But at the same time it doesn’t surprise me when they are vastly outnumbered in terms of supporters (primarily due to religious beliefs).

Okay so lets come back to New Zealand.

Firstly Wellington. There was a lovely “peaceful” protest down there earlier this week. And I say “peaceful” in quotes because I am disgusted by the actions of a priest of the catholic church who thought it was wise to mix blood with paint and smear it on a jewish memorial.

Now two things strike me about this action. The first is that how would NZ’s respond if an environmentalist decided that Sir Ed’s grave was a good place to smear blood on after all he sent polluting tractors to the south pole and therefore help start melting the ice caps by putting out too much heat and carbon. People would think that they are crazy and demand that they be prosecuted to the nth degree of the law. However NZ just turns a blind eye to the actions of a high ranking public individual who vandalises a memorial. Would I be arrested if I were to throw red paint over his church for all the killing the catholic church has done through the ages?

The second thing is this. The accidental symbolism. In jewish custom smearing blooding over a door frame protects you from G-d’s destruction. That is the Exodus story. The passover. This priest appears to have accidentially asked G-d to passover Israel’s sins, so in a way I thank him for doing that.

And now lets come to today in Auckland. John Minto is the hero of the 1980s and the anti Springbok tour protests. At the time they were good things. Because they actually had an impact because they were a nationally sanctioned team.

But today, threatning to throw shoes at an Israeli individual who has no ties to the Government is disgusting. Whatever happened to welcome to New Zealand, what ever happened to respecting everyone? Since when did NZders’s throw shoes at people just because of their nationality?

And for those who have no idea what I am blogging about check this out: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10550934