Political activism is carried out for all sorts of reasons, by all sorts of people, in a variety of guises.
The 1981 Springbok Rugby Tour divided families, households, workplaces … and the nation. Our current Prime Minister John Key “can’t even remember” whether he was for or against the tour, or the anti-Apartheid civil disobedience protests which sought to frustrate it.
People from nuns and clergymen, students and teachers, sportsmen and women, superannuitants, and others massed for the most violently repressed public protests this country has ever seen. But Mr Key was “sort of somewhat ambivalent about it” although he says he “was always interested in politics”. Hmmm.
What would get YOU marching in the streets? If not state asset sales, benefit cuts, land confiscation, how about expanded powers for state spying and surveillance of computer and telephone communications? How about corruption in our electoral system?
Danyl McLauchlan’s post at the Dim Post, comparing media reactions to left wing policy versus right wing policy is worth reading. So are the comments. It made me think.
‘Economic saboteurs’ graphic: Joe Wylie via DimPost.wordpress.com. Photo (ex scoop.co.nz): National Party political activist and manipulator David Farrar inflaming a mob (of reporters, mainly) about the Electoral Finance Act limiting corporate donations to political parties. Quelle horreur! See below.
The Electoral Finance Act placed restrictions on the amounts people could donate to political parties and to the amounts ‘third parties’ – groups that are not political parties but that try to influence an election – could spend during an election campaign. The act also tightened up the rules around anonymous donations and the authorisation of election advertisements. It was repealed in 2009.
– P
Terribly sorry to be a pessimist … nothing will get Kiwis marching in the streets .. simply because who we are that ever defined us as a nation has been systematically stripped away.
However … having said that …. if the economy really starts to flail around mindlessly (and its currently on a very short lead) then you may see many start to act.
But i suspect next election … more of the same … “that etc etc … he/they seem to know what they are doing … they are so successful so they must know what they are doing …”
So do Sharks know what they are doing …
Ivans right no one Marches in the streets. People in NZ are too lazy for one.
And what has happened in NZ that would constitute Pitch Forks and Bill boards. Really what?
I know the compromised bunch here think everything that the current administration do justifies putting down their babies leaving their jobs and pick up a megaphone and Marching in the streets. but in cold light of day you are just the opposition. mostly using these sorts of rhetorical questions to basically bumping up the propaganda on the Left.
I agree the new legislation being pushed through with loosening of GSCB rules is disgusting and should not go through. And the argument of “if you’re doing nothing wrong don’t worry” is a beside the point.
However the Key angle of the Hiring of the Head honcho at GSCB. For gods sake NZ stir the storm in a teacup. I find it amusing to learn Helen Clark even more so did the same style of recruitment. Oh but shes on the Shills side so thats ok. Got it.
Yeah I’ve noticed among the right wing spin doctors’ talking points (along with how the “far-left” Lab-Greens are “destroying value” with their “economic sabotage”) they include “Gee, if you think we (Key, Collins) are shonky with our dodgy government post appointments/jobs for our boys & girls, you should see what Helen Klark did!!”
Nice regurgitation. Just what I’ve come to expect.
– P
Listen mate … firstly i am not a great fan of Helen Clark … and i voted National (to my eternal regret) in her final term of office. What i am beginning to realise is that she was a better option than what we’ve ended up with.
Secondly … i didnt know (and really dont other than connecting the dots that its meant to imply some sort of partisan belief … i was so disinterested i didnt even google it ..) what a fucking SHILL actually is???
I am not really partisan toward anything except what seems right and proper to me. I am not a member of any political movement at all.
I never said people were too lazy to march in the streets … what i really mean .. is that we have it too good here (AT the moment…) and most of us dont have anything to light the touchpaper. Apathy … not laziness.
By the time the shit hits the fan … it will be too late …
And i must note that a lot of that apathy comes from everything that exemplified open kiwi style democracy being slowly stripped away. That includes a right to employment opportunity .. and the use of regulation and managed intervention to ensure quality of life … NOT profit for the corporates and nouveau riche etc etc This Government only intervenes to make what wasnt legal .. legal … or to make Warner Brothers fatter and richer – and on it goes.
Frogs in pots on hotplates.
Thats what we are … turn the heat up slowly and we just think we’re having a nice warm bath …
We’ll it may be regurgitation(vomit), but its the same vomit thrown up by the right in more volume that the right are now complaining about.
Politics sure. double standards, not eating your own food, not looking in the mirror, Shit stirring, Hypocrisy. Most definitely.
Couldn’t help but defend your ex Leader. Shill.
Are you trying to make me sorry I replied Craig?
My observation of the government issuing ‘We’re not as bad as the last lot’ talking points (faithfully reported – albeit with an optimistic headline – in the NZ Herald as Key bats away talk of cronyism) seems inescapable. That’s their spin: “Yeah, we’re dirty, but don’t look at us, look at them!”
Other, more partisan foaming has issued from the National Party’s cheerleaders like (surprise, surprise) Russell Beaumont writing in the Judith Collins fanzine:
That’s (apparently) avowed John Key supporter and activist Russell Beaumont, as a public service (chuck) “explain[ing] why you should be very concerned about the possibility of Labour ever holding power in this country again” and reproducing a list of ‘Labour’s Crony appointments’ that virtually has ‘National Party Research Unit’ as a paper mark and probably was fed to her lapdog by Judith Collins’ office.
– P
Again with the ‘shill’ Craig? Check your definitions. Are you, ignorantly, misusing the word, perhaps? (As well as vacuously and repetitively.)