Those bloody protesters again; most recently a bunch of the idiots scaled the walls of New Zealand’s Parliament House in protest of…
No. That’s what they want me to do. Well I refuse to lower myself to their game of public spectacle, citizen outcry and such. In my opinion they climbed the Beehive, thereby causing a massive security breach for no other reason than because they are a bunch of impetuous dickheads with nothing better to do than bring down the hopes and dreams of greater New Zealand.
Few months ago – and I very nearly wrote a piece on this at the time – some dude in Auckland wanted to clear some land on his property and decided the gargantuan Kauri (which is actually pronounced ‘Cody’) standing in the corner was taking up too much space. Understandably then he took measures to cut down this tree.
Well, next thing all hell’s broken loose. Despite following all the appropriate legal channels, gaining consent to have the tree felled safely and so forth, next thing there’s one of these bloody tree-huggers, literally hugging his tree.
I know, it’s a difficult thing for all us law-abiding citizens to comprehend but apparently if you’re a protester it doesn’t matter; if you’re a protester, seemingly, you’re above the law.
That’s right, according to the protester handbook, if you have good cause you can bust onto anybody’s property and do whatever the hell you wish. In the case of the Kauri protester he climbed it then kept vigil until he got his way; in this recent case the idiot protesters defied national security by infiltrating Parliament grounds and essentially, made a mockery of our Government by using the walls of Parliament House as a climbing frame – all to ‘peacefully’ protest something that I still refuse to mention.
No. That cute little alliterative description ‘Peaceful Protest’ has to be the biggest oxymoron of the 21st century.
Remember silly Pete Bethune? Remember the way a few years back he threw himself onboard and tried to manhandle the crew of the vessel that he and his affiliated boat were protesting, in order to prevent them from doing whatever they were doing? Fair call, it was regarding whaling and yes, I too am against whaling in the South Pacific but for Pete’s sake, you can’t just go doing illegal shit simply because you feel strongly on a particular matter.
For the record, Mr Bethune was incarcerated for five months and personally, he deserved longer.
While I am not necessarily against the values protesters uphold, I am invariably against the ways in which they go about expressing those beliefs.
Article by Tim Walker
Edited by Trey Hye Geer
Photography by John Law