Hush or be hushed
This sketch started out as a comment on disposable consumerism, just so that I could rant about how badly designed most things are these days that when one part breaks, the whole thing needs replacing. But it turned into a comment on the treatment of dissent.
The concept of protest has never been a favourite of government, but these days sticking your neck out and saying something anti-government is likely to get you labeled as a terrorist.
Take the recent protests at the proposed new Heathrow terminal, how many protesters were stopped and searched by the police using new anti-terror legislation?
Too many, that’s how many.
Seriously, these people had legitimate grievance and a non-threatening political point to make, yet they were deemed ‘terrorist’ enough to warrant using specific laws against them.
About 2000 protesters joined in the (mostly) peaceful demonstration, yet 1800 police officers were sent to make sure no trouble erupted. That’s almost one each folks, though late-comers might have to share.
It may only be a matter of time before speaking to your friends, or posting some whiny rant like this on the internet will justify the use of anti-terror legislation against you… or, even better, you’re dragged off to some camp somewhere in the middle of the night where your human rights get lost with your luggage at check-in.
Should you be afraid to be a squeaky wheel?
Technorati Tags: dissent, protest, webcomic, comic, politics, the+future
Sean on 
Maddie on
I can’t really relate to being worried about my government. I think it because I have spent some time in areas that are outside or untouched by law and the aurthorities (not in a cool mafia or secret society way).
I guess what most ppl are worried about is another government regime like the Nazis or Stalin, but I think that with current technology and media (internet and mobile communications), it would be very hard for that situation to arise again.
The big problem I have with political movements, left and right wing, is that the ppl who lead them are rarely the ideal candidate. They (teh leaders) are often motivated by reasons other than the noble causes which they claim, power and money are the obvious reasons, but there are others.
For example, I will refer to workers union organisations. You would think that the ppl who are the heads of these movements would be working for the interest of the demographic that they represent, but you would be horribly wrong. During converstions with key players on either side of this field, I leant of unions and companies co-operating to manipulate the workforce so that they could achieve a goal.
My point is that it can be profitable for both left and right, for the middle ppl to be in a state of dissarray, to protest against the left or right.
With large media corporations being so obviously political motivated and the independant media sources being unreliable, I hesitate to judge the current political climate.
Any way this is your space for a rant, so I’ll stop here.
I’m having trouble working out where you’re from, both of you. But I’m from Australia where (thankfully) we only really hear about these draconian insanities rather than experience them. I understand US unions aren’t always peaches and cream, but here in Australia a recent law was enacted that basically removed the restrictions on cutting rights from work contracts (rights like unfair dismissal, sick leave, holiday pay, etc). So all the unions got together and mounted a campaign that is actually seriously endangering the current government’s chances at the next election.
Maybe you could draw an Australian version of this comic where a whole load of little squeaky wheels join together to make Squeakywheelotron who runs over the government.
I’m from Aus.
All I can say about the new ?IR? laws is “welcome to my world”. I’m a contractor in the building industry and every new contract requires careful negotiation.
The specific union incedent I refer to, happened in the ’70s, but I’m fairly confident that it still happens.
Fully. I don’t envy you having to stress that stuff all the time. I work at a university where there’s a pretty good union culture, even if it gets a bit bloody cringe-worthy and “comrade” and all that. My mate’s a doctor and last time her union went in to negotiate they came back with … (drum roll, please) … LESS pay. In exchange for? Nothing much. Sometimes you wonder …
That is my point exactly. Fortuently for the union members, they get paid during strike, so conflict is normally not a total loss, tho I resent that many union members abuse this and organise a strike for the sake of a day off.
But as members of a society, we benefit little from political conflict, while the major political movements can gain alot. Which I guess is the point of my first post.
Also, Adam, I believe, is a Pom, which would explain his worry about being persecuted for whinging (says me with a british passport).
I’ll keep my eye to the wheel, then.
Which can be awkward when
my ear is on the ground.
i wish i too was from australia. then i could justify any long rants i might have about its government. but alas i am simply an american who sometimes wish she were a canadian.
oh and in my town, we don’t grease or replace, we just hit it with a hammer till it shuts up or goes away. When that fails, the officials turn around with their fingers in their ears going “LALALALALA” hoping the wheel will copy them. Very efficient
Alas, Ben, you’re almost right there. I’m half-pom. Which means I’m terrible at cricket and can’t hold my drink either.
It’s really interesting to hear how things are going in Australia, I must confess to not really knowing that much about politics over there. That’s probably a good thing and a sign that your country is more concerned with it’s own issues than everyone else’s.
Talking about unions, the prison officers have just gone on strike today over here… much chaos. It’s being called an illegal strike too.
…and hubcab, sounds like you live in one of those enlightened places that we all get to hear about on the news and in Michael Moore films.
Hmmm, about those new laws.
One of my good friends is being threatened with arrest under the new terrorism laws for a environmental protest that she is staging in NSW.
The nude protest happened last week and her gallery is doing a history of the protests that are related to this cause.
Incedentally, she made the list of ppl who are banned from certain areas of Syndey during APEC, due to her history (of paceful protest).
I’m disapointed I’m not on the list, guess I don’t live close enough to Sydney.
yay for australia!
or not.
ben, youll be voting for john i assume? if i may ask you that.
i have recently become pretty highly interested in our politics, so i try to keep up. im actually really excited about the election, looking forward to keeping up with all the tit for tat kind of stuff, y’know?
i mean, have you seen the kevin 07 shirts?!
i recently heard a story on the radio about schools expelling kids for skipping school to go to protests. me, i dont see how it should be any different from just plain ol’ skipping school, but people are crazy.
that makes me a little bit afraid of being a squeaky wheel (i love this analogy, by the way) but if i find something i care enough about, sure ill do something about it.
I do find it perculiar that a naked human is still an offensive thing.
Not that I don’t like clothes, and in our climate you’d suffer, but I do think it is seriously strange to arrest someone for showing what you can go and see in a mirror.
Hey Justine, I don’t vote, we can discuss that more on myspace if you want.
I think some naked ppls are offensive, atleast from an aesthetics PoV.
Tho, yeah it is weird that gratuitous violence is popular and promoted, by sex and nudity is harshly censored.
Hmmm, culture.
1) Considering how “anti war protesters” routinely behave— riots, vandalism, arson, physical assault against counter-protesters and innocent passersby— perhaps 1800 police was an under-response.
2) To the contrary, I note that we have entered an age where countless people are proclaiming that they are in danger of being silenced by the evil powers-that-be. And announcing this dreadful police state from their rooftops. In the dead of night. With a bullhorn.
This is not the death of freedom, it’s the death of irony.
3) Said people are making such announcement in the dead of night, from the rooftops, with a bullhorn— and are utterly oblivious to the reason that people are calling the cops on them. They’re not being silenced, they’re being ANNOYING.
4) This also represents one of the great fatal failings of the human race: the inability to correctly assess danger when it is not immediately visible. They don’t see islamic terrorists chopping off heads and hands except on T.V.; they do however meet annoying policemen– the ever- resented authority figure— every other day of the week. Childishly, it is therefore easier for them to imagine the Great Oppression coming from those police officers (who have never done them any greater disservice than questioning their behavior or handing them a ticket) than to imagine flaming death from the unseen Muslim suicide-bomber.
There were surely people in the World Trade Center who were seething over some ham-fisted fascist traffic cop — right up to the moment the airplanes smashed into the towers. And that very cop probably ran into the building to save them and died along with them when the towers fell.
Today, violent, abusive, disruptive, self-centered, egotistical, self-anointed martyr wannabees are STILL incapable of distinguishing between the soldiers, and police, and government agents trying to save their lives— and the terrorists trying to kill them.
Jesus called people “sheep” and “lambs.” It was not a compliment. Sheep are the dumbest frigging things on four legs. They will die of thirst right next to running water. They will trample their own young to death. And they are too stupid to tell the difference between the sheepdog protecting them, and the wolf that tore one of their number to pieces the night before.
5)Nearly all of the “oppression” that these poor tortured souls suffer is their own damn fault. When they set fire to the local Starbucks, or parade in the streets with banners comparing the commander in chief to Hitler (first sign that he is NOT “Hitler?” The fact that this was not answered with firing squads) or urging soldiers to kill their commanding officers, or they pass out an endless stream of leaflets, posters and web-postings packed with enemy propaganda in a time of war, it is hardly shocking that the rest of us “question their patriotism.”
On a deeper level, it is their demand that we fight this war in a politically correct fashion that causes most of their “legitimate grievances.” Don’t like airline security? Hardly surprising when the enemy is Islamic, led by islamics, motivated by Islamic devotion, has ranks composed entirely of islamics, and 100% of all airline hijackings for the past 30 years have been conducted by Islamics, yet we are not allowed to screen for Islamic passengers for fear of offending someone. so we herd everyone like cattle through a gestapo-like invasion of personal privacy, goosing 80 year old Lutheran grannies, wanding Medal of Honor recipients and letting smirking chimp rent-a-cops cop a feel off eighteen year old college girls and sift through their luggage for exploding panties.
NATIONAL security is treated the same way— with every single Man in Black forced to pretend with all his might that, in a war with homicidal Muslims, we might want to start looking in Mosques and in the hallways of the local CAIR office, first.