While we're talking about APEC...
... and the Stop Bush Rally, consider this...
In the early hours of this morning someone in Alaska was Googling the search terms "totalitarian" and "big business"... and they would have got 1.3 million hits. Number two in that hit list was an item from the archives of this blog, dated May 31, 2004. Very apposite in this time of APEC and the planned demonstrations against Bush and HoWARd, I think, don't you?
In the early hours of this morning someone in Alaska was Googling the search terms "totalitarian" and "big business"... and they would have got 1.3 million hits. Number two in that hit list was an item from the archives of this blog, dated May 31, 2004. Very apposite in this time of APEC and the planned demonstrations against Bush and HoWARd, I think, don't you?
posted by The Editor at
11:45 AM
6 Comments:
Might have been the folks over at A Western Heart - but from their post today, I doubt it.
Hehehe... MK seems to be a real nice piece of work.> Nicely underscores my post. Like the Germans under Hitler, he wouldn't know tyranny till the Gestapo are knocking on _his_ door. But he does have a point about so-called "peace" protests getting violent.
Yeah. There was a discussion somewhere about the relative benefits of completely non-violent protest or maybe even not protesting at all.
Even though I understand (and believe me, I do) the arguments that support trade agreements and the associoated folderol, in the end the ordinary bloke cops it in the neck and it's been a one-way street for too long. I hope my employers aren't reading this, it's not on the songsheet, I tell you. But as soon as you leave the office, you're another bloke on the street trying to look after you and yours, and you start to get a fair idea of who's on your side, and who's trying to pull the ladder up after themselves, to mix a few metaphors.
What would be the benefits of not protesting at all, Phil?
I definitely think mass protest is called for, but I also think that if you don't want the majority of potential protesters to be scared off, you have to give them a sound undertaking (one that they would trust) that the protesters will not turn violent but stay completely non-violent.
I also believe that if the authorities use undue force against such a protest, and if the protesters steadfastly refuse to be sucked into becoming violent, that the the authorities would experience a devastating backlash of public opinion resulting in exponentially bigger numbers at the next similar protest action, ad infinitum, until the regime listens to the people or topples.
This is what the young hotheads and war mongering "revolutionaries" don't understand, and until they are isolated and made unwelcome at nonviolent protests, we're wasting our time and allowing the nonviolent protest movement to be discredited and kept from achieving its full potential.
Those f*cking violent, vandalous rent-a-crowd yobboes may as well be working for ASIO for all intents and purposes. And I suspect their tactics are in fact orchestrated by ASIO or AFP agents provocateur.
Either that, or they're idiots who want to go out in a pointless blaze of glory rather than be effective at achieving their declared political agenda. It might well be that they have an undeclared agenda of trying to foment violent uprising, in which case they do not belong at peaceful protests...
Here endeth my rant...
Gerry, your points - or rant if you wish - are the exact risks you run in trying to conduct a non-violent protest. I see that nice Mr Iemma has cleared 200 cells for expected incoming. THey'll be there, as you well know.
In the end I agree, you can't just stay home.
Ahhhh yes, Phil, but eventually Peaceful People Power Australia will have gathered enough fact-based data to provide the public with a reasonably accurate assessment on any particular group's individual "commitment to nonviolence" rating. A sort of a who's who of groups with regard to their commitment to nonviolence.
Who knows, it might make a difference, or it might not. Time will tell.
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