Yesterday SunMedia's David Akin joined the alarming number of politicians and their media fluffers - who are apparently aghast and appalled that a woman would stand silently holding up a piece of cardboard for twenty seconds - with this long dull dreary post :
Memo to Brigette : There are no shortcuts in politics. It takes long, dull, dreary work.
According to Akin, working the inside political corridors completely precludes ever protesting against that same self-serving self-perpetuating hegemony and Brigette DePape broke that most solemn of all Fight Club rules. Oh, boo.
He also apparently did not hear Brigette's interviews on CBC and CTV in which she said she didn't think just holding up a sign would affect anything all by itself but hoped to inspire others to action because politics and democracy is not just about elections.
Seriously, Akin, how the fuck long do you think it will take to get the environment mentioned in a Harper majority Thone Speech the "long dull dreary" way?
Antonia Zerbisias on climate change : Time for a Climate of Change (italics mine)
"Well-known American environmentalist and activist Bill McKibben founded the grass-roots group 350.org, which attempts to get people all over the world agitating for laws, regulations and policy aimed at reducing GHG (greenhouse gas emissions) reductions.All the important social movements of the last century - rights for minorities, women, LGBT, children, POWs, FN, workers, differently abled, the environment - all of them were or continue to be actively suppressed by our governments, who only jump into the front of the parade after a whole lot of outside protest.
“We need to do (civil disobedience) on a mass scale," McKibben, author of many books including Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, tells me. “We need to do it in a way that makes one thing clear to all onlookers: in this fight, we are the conservatives. The radicals are the people who want to alter the composition of the atmosphere.”
“Non-violent civil disobedience is justified when there is a history of long-standing harm or violation of people's fundamental rights; when legal and policy means have failed to reduce the harms and violations; and when there is little time remaining to address the problems,” University of New England professor John Lemons and Penn State’s Donald Brown wrote in last month’s Journal of Science and Environmental Politics."
“Simply put, people do not have the right to harm others who have not given their consent to be harmed "
From CathiefromCanada : About Protest - the proof that protest works
Post title shamelessly ripped from a great post by Your Heart's on the Left : Harper stunt interrupts Canadian statement delivered by DePape
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5 comments:
somewhere ... I can never put my finger on it when I want it ... but somewhere I heard Noam Chomsky talking about public intellectuals who don't live up to their own rhetoric.
I put a big nickle on 350.org and another one on Elizabeth May. McKibben says he is calling for protest, but 350.org turned out to be smoke and mirrors and hype; and May's reponse to Brigette DePape's courageous stand is ... telling.
So. Where from here?
well, Brigette succeeded
She has inspired me and I'm making the same Brigitte STOP sign to whip out for all sorts of occasions
Remarks from our esteemed progressive politicians are very disappointing
and I have let them know so
David, be your own leader.
David : "350.org turned out to be smoke and mirrors and hype" ???
You go, O!
Anon : Excellent advice.
Harper embarrassed Canada in Copenhagen, over greenhouse gas emissions. Harper can't even open his mouth on any type of pollution. Harper is in favor of the dirtiest energy in the world. The dirty Alberta tar sands.
They have deformed fish, in Athabasca Lake. They have found oil, heavy metals, mercury and cancer causing agents in, the mighty Athabasca River. The huge Athabasca watershed is contaminated. The caribou are dying. A First Nations village has a high rate of cancer. Even the rare cancer of, exposure to petroleum. Another flock of ducks died, from landing in the filthy sludge. The Boreal Forests are now showing damage, from the dirty tar sands. All of this eco damage, done by the dirty tar sands. From space, the dirty tar sands, are an abomination, on the face of Canada. The damage is permanent, it can't be cleaned up.
P.M. Harper wants to build a pipeline from the dirty tar sands, to the Port of Kitimat, on our beautiful pristine northern coast of B.C. The dirty oil tankers from China and the U.S. were to pick up the dirty tar, at the Port of Kitimat. The Port of Kitimat, has the most treacherous seas in the world. The channel is very narrow, with high winds, that knock you off your feet and high waves. However, the U.S. has said, one way or the other, they will get the dirty oil home.
I had thought the U.S. was much more careful of greenhouse emissions, than Canada. The dirty tar, is the dirtiest energy in the world.
The pipeline burst out of Edmonton, has leached into the clean underground drinking water. The First Nations children, got so sick from the spill. they can no longer use their school. The spill in the Kalamazoo River in Michigan was another bad disaster.
The Gulf spill, has taught the two country's nothing. How many off shore wells have blown up? I have lost count. There is still oil gathering on the rocks, from the Valdez spill 22 years ago.
The saying, sometimes the government is an ass, should be...Governments are always asses.
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