October 04, 2004

PEACENIKS PROVOKED

How to tell if someone is a genuine peace activist or a wild parody of a peace activist? It isn’t easy; take a look at this, for example.

Turns out she’s genuine. But a small group of dedicated activist-mockers showed up during yesterday’s End the Lies rally in Sydney, and for a time seemed to blend in with the general idiot rabble.

Zem was present, and witnessed the crowd’s gradual realisation that, hey, these people are making fun of us! Some of the less doctrinaire peace activists evidently ripped and clawed at their signs with mighty indignation-fuelled fingers.

Haven’t checked any of the papers yet to see if the peacenik mockers fooled any picture editors.

Posted by Tim Blair at October 4, 2004 01:54 PM
Comments

Oh, it's the Protest Warriors! God, bless them.

Posted by: julie at October 4, 2004 at 01:59 PM

That is so cool.

Posted by: Jim at October 4, 2004 at 02:01 PM

http://www.protestwarrior.com

The American version of those guys. While I don't necessarily agree with everything the Protest Warriors stand for, their infiltration of those "peaceful" groups is so damn cool! A bit scary somethimes, though. Not the violence, though, what scares me is hearing people defend North Korea, Saddam, and other assorted dictators and enemies of the civilised world.

Watch some of the videos they have on their site (taken during those "peace marches"). See how much the loony left REALLY loves dissent!

Richard :-)

Posted by: Richard at October 4, 2004 at 02:06 PM

Merlin "free th refugees" Luck.

Need I say and more?

Posted by: Richard at October 4, 2004 at 02:08 PM

What do you think these people's reactions would have been if I had dressed up as Saddam Hussein and gone down there and dacned among them, thanking them for their help, etc...?

Posted by: Richard at October 4, 2004 at 02:12 PM

Richard, a good idea! But check out http://www.communistsforkerry.com for a slightly different approach.....

Posted by: The Real JeffS at October 4, 2004 at 02:19 PM

I asked whether they were with a group (thinking they might be with Protest Warrior, Bureaucrash or similar), and they said no. Didn't get to chat for long, as they were busy being yelled at by peace activists ("the CIA put Saddam in power!", etc).

Posted by: zem at October 4, 2004 at 02:28 PM

Unreal! They even managed a bit of Monty Python as well. Gee, the mock protesters even looked the part. I'm not sure what the undie clad 'lady' was protesting about, her knickers were presumably a comment that meant 'no more bush'

Posted by: nic at October 4, 2004 at 02:41 PM

More photos over here

Posted by: Richard at October 4, 2004 at 02:54 PM

Aw crap. How do you post a damned link (yes I've read the red instructions)?

Never mind. Here's the link:

http://members.iinet.net.au/~hk-star/protest

Posted by: Richard at October 4, 2004 at 02:55 PM

Preview is your friend...

CLICK

Posted by: mojo at October 4, 2004 at 03:04 PM

Here's the guy's blog.

Posted by: yobbo at October 4, 2004 at 03:56 PM

Description of the events from the Protest Warriors' perspective here and here.

Posted by: zem at October 4, 2004 at 04:13 PM

Hey!

Thanks Zem for the link to my blog. The wheels128 blog is run by the guy in the 36 jersey with the 'Vote Green' sign (that'd be me), and Advance-West by the guy with the '100 million killed by Communism' sign.

And thanks to everyone for the support of Protest Warrior.

Posted by: Leigh at October 4, 2004 at 04:17 PM

Protest Warrior has many of those signs. From their first of 9 1/2 pages of signs:


  • Except for ending slavery, fascism, nazism and communism, war has never solved anything
  • Hey France... You shut the hell up We'll protect civilization
  • Protect Islamic property rightsagainst Western imperialism (accompianied by Islamic woman with chain around neck)
  • Communism has only killed 100 million people. Let's give it another chance.

There are a couple anti-civil rights posters that are a little more difficult to defend. Still, it's a great site.

Posted by: Tomorrowist at October 4, 2004 at 04:20 PM

Brilliant ploy by the organisers to put it on against the NRL grand final when Canturbury was playing, ensuring every Habib and Homie was out at Homebush rather than causing a mass ruckus in the city. Bet there were some Skylines donutting around Bankstown last night.

Posted by: Habib at October 4, 2004 at 04:37 PM

Leigh,
good on you. Could just imagine the loonies spinning out when they saw your sign.

Posted by: Lofty at October 4, 2004 at 04:41 PM

I'm from Brisbane, but just curious. Are "middle eastern youths" down in Sydney as much trouble as they are made out to be? Are most of them really in gangs, dealing drugs, etc? Happy to collect the dole while at the same time hating "whitey" for giving them the kind of freedom they wouldn't find back "home" in Lebanon, etc...

Posted by: Richard at October 4, 2004 at 04:44 PM

Richard,

I think it's a very minor problem in the grand scheme of things, and it's only really noticable in 5 or 6 suburbs. Most of them aren't in actual gangs, and even a lot of the ones that are in gangs aren't exactly anything to be scared of.

And Lofty, some of them didn't get the sarcasm, but either way a lot of them didn't take too kindly to the signs. One of the organisers was a good spirit and even moved out of our way as we came through, although another organiser didn't get our slogans. He was reading them out to his friends, and followed every slogan with a different version of "I don't get it?" or "What's that meant to mean?"

Posted by: Leigh at October 4, 2004 at 06:13 PM

The SMH has pictures of them, but didn't pick it.

Posted by: Mr T at October 4, 2004 at 06:46 PM

Damn link paste didn't work - thought I followed the instructions.

Richard,

One of, if not the biggest taskforces ever set up by the NSW Police is called GAIN, which deals with the problem of organised crime (shootings, etc), caused by middle-eastern youths. So no, they're no problem at all...

Posted by: Mr T at October 4, 2004 at 06:52 PM

Leigh,
If you don't count random murders of innocent people on the streets, shooting up local Hindu and Jewish temples, kidnappings and rapes, harrassing women in Sydney's inner west who don't abide by Islamic dress code, beating up 'skips' as fun, revenge attacks against any small business who don't give them freebies, being known in whatever street they live in as the local thieves and bullies (try asking them for your son's bike back when their son 'borrows' it)...

and most recently launching a coordinated attack on stalls at the Easter Show...

btw did anyone see the video of the poor bouncer in Melbourne who denied them access and got a bottle smashed on his head? Watch how 5-10 kids jump and run exactly like those in Gaza throwing stones at Israelis...

No, in the bigger picture, as our streets get taken over by all sorts of thugs, I guess its small potatoes, but 20 years time... look at the suburbs of Paris!

Posted by: Om at October 4, 2004 at 09:23 PM

I forgot-

Bringing pictures of Saddam Hussein to their Primary School classes,

coming to school dressed as militia in camouflage outfits,

celebrating the 9/11 attack at school,

(ask anyone from Belmore!)

viewing the world as races in conflict, so that when Aborigines attack Lebs in jail, a gang of Lebs immediately launches an attack on Redfern's Block.

Not in gangs? What the hell are you talking about? They are the Mafia!

And yes all the other 'stereotypes are true too.

Posted by: om at October 4, 2004 at 09:33 PM

Thanks for your responses, everyone. I'll take that into consideration.

I guess what I'd want to ask now is - are the police responding effectively to their kind of s#@t? Or are such attacks and appalling behaviour only increasing?

Richard.

Posted by: Richard at October 4, 2004 at 11:32 PM

Ew. Ew. EEEW.

Tim, please remember that some of your American readers are on this site very early in the morning (for us), and things like that hideous panty-clad activist should NOT be sprung on us without a "Not Safe For Breakfast" warning.

I mean, I expect the worst when you tell me a "peace" activist is genuine (whatever that means), but that was truly atrocious. I wonder if womyn like that realize just how much their appearance makes the rest of us gladly reach for the hair color, red lipstick, razors, and all those other implements of the "patriarchy"?

Posted by: Kimberly at October 5, 2004 at 12:30 AM

Mua ha ha ha. Excellent.

Posted by: The Patriarchy at October 5, 2004 at 04:22 PM

I'd need those implements of the Patriarchy to make myself look that *bad*. Sheesh. I look better than that when I wake up, and I'm pretty close to nightmarish then...

Posted by: Kathy K at October 6, 2004 at 11:09 AM

Awesome to see Protest Warrior working abroad as well as it does here in the U.S.

This is one of the best things I've ever done in my life! The day a soldier got out of his car and stood at attention, THANKING me...I was never more proud to be standing there, holding a flag and opposing the peaceniks.

Posted by: Da Goddess at October 6, 2004 at 05:18 PM

I have to 2nd Kimberly! I felt like I needed to go wash my eyeballs! Tim, you got a whole load of new folks from America reading your blog today, thanks to Da Goddess and Citizen Smash. Speaking for myself, I'm glad to see that your self-proclaimed peaceniks are as unpeaceful as ours! And I applaud your efforts! In America, we bloggers are now known as Pajamahadeen, since Tom Brokaw called us jihadists! Even the well-known libs are resorting to attacking their dissenters!

Posted by: DagneyT at October 7, 2004 at 04:56 AM