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Peace protesters...
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in General Chat
...should be cluster bombed.
They don't even see the irony. They're lucky to have freedom of speech and the opportunity to protest, yet they're against the action that will give the Iraqi people this right in their own country.
Any kids skipping school to protest should be done for truancy, and teachers taking pupils out of the classroom to protest should be sacked.
They're an embarrassment to our country.
Peace loving hippies, get to f***.
They don't even see the irony. They're lucky to have freedom of speech and the opportunity to protest, yet they're against the action that will give the Iraqi people this right in their own country.
Any kids skipping school to protest should be done for truancy, and teachers taking pupils out of the classroom to protest should be sacked.
They're an embarrassment to our country.
Peace loving hippies, get to f***.
0
Comments
Peace protesters? I detest them all
:rolleyes:
The protests seemed to start off relatively peacefully, but as of late they've been causing havoc.
Surely a sit-down protest in the middle of Princes St in Edinburgh is a public nuisance, peaceful or not?
The police should crack down on these muppets and start arresting for breace of the peace.
I do not agree with them but I am proud that they realise they have freedom of speech. They have every right to so what they do in the same way that you have every right to condemn them.
I am not embarrassed by them and I am happy that people have the courage of their convictions.
What gives them the right to hold up traffic and trains, causing problems for thousands of others?
There needs to be a balance between the freedom to demonstrate and the need to keep peace.
The police can only arrest someone if there is reasonable suspicion that a crime is about to be carried out, if it is being executed or if it has just been carried out. If they arrested the protestors without any reasonable suspicion, then they could - and rightly so - be sued for unlawful arrest.
Understandably, the police do not wish to be heavy handed or to arrest the protestors for very inconsequential things, for they could sue the police for a breach of their human rights. This illustrates the sheer difficultly in achieving a balance enbling the people to demonstrate and the need to keep peace.
Before you say 'the protestors are breaking the law,' it is important to remember that the police do not have sufficient resources to enforce every law. Thus the most insignificant laws are rarely - if at all - enforced, and difficult decisions as to the allocation of resources must be made. If every effort is used to enforce the law against small, controllable breaches of the peace, the limited resources might be wasted when they could, for instance, be used to investigate a much more grave crime. The police do not and will never have infinite resources, so decisions will always need to be made to effectively use them.
By the way, you mentioned public nuisances. Legally and briefly speaking, these affect the enjoyment of land, and they cannot normally be one-off occurences, but rather regularly occurring incidents.
As I said, there needs to be a balance between the freedom to demonstrate and the need to keep peace.
Personally I don't think they should have joined the army if they are going to feel so terrible if people don't back them unconditionally when they go into action- and its not like the protestors want them dead, they don't want them there at all.
And if they want to blame anyone, blame the government for sending them in while the majority of the population is opposed to the war!
Mr_Wobble
Ah no - 'tis YOU who cannot see the Irony!!
Your argument by the way seems to be more against being held up by peace protestors than about the issues behind their protesting. If they cannot achieve anything with these protests then what should it matter to you? Instead you are actually winging like a true twit about the minor inconvenience a protest has caused you personally.
It's not just a minor inconvenience to this one person though is it? Its been a major inconvenience to thousands of peoples across the country when protestors have held up motorways and the like. As you said, they're protests can't achieve a damn thing - so surely it's understandable to be pissed off with them as effectively they're causing an inconvenience to a huge number of people for no purpose whatsoever?
I think the vast majority of them ar enot naive enough to think they can stop the war once it has begun but I am glad that for once people believe in something strongly enough to be bothered to protest about it. It makes a change.
If this were something you felt strongly about would you not do all you could to make sure your message was put accross? I would.
If they all just stopped the protesting then surely it would be like saying they suddenly believe in war etc? These people have every right to protest. And holding up traffic is not a criminal offence, or at least I didn't think it was? Surely any pedestrain in the road has right of way?
Clearly, therefore, there is a fine line between what is moral and acceptable and what is immoral and unacceptable.
But on a non - legal basis, I still think that morally these people have every right to do what they are doing. Lots of people cause a nuisance to others everyday - bad drivers, old people who shop on a Saturday, the extra traffic and congestion caused around a football ground, people on horses, tractors on the road etc etc.
Sure most of them may not be stupid enough to think they might be able to make a difference by protesting, but most of them are stupid enough (or more likely not bothered enough - they're not as commited to their cause as you think) to really know anything about the war, and rarely have a proper argument against it.
Seriously, the majority of protestors no nothing about Iraq, and a fair number of them are just kids looking for a day off school. They should grow up.
True, but they don't cause as much disruption as many of the protests, and it's not like slowing people down on purpose either, like the protestors are doing.
Whatever anybody thinks of them, at least we are allowed to say what we think time and time again without fear.
I'm not talking about that one specific protest today, but war protests in general have involved a lot of kids skiving school.
Also, by holding up the motorway, you're effectively imprisoning the driver in their car - they can hardly get up and walk instead can they? Now how would you like it if you were talking down a street or something and you were stopped and made to stay in the same position for a few hours, unable to go where you wanted to go, simply because some people wanted to let everyone know they were against the war (even though we already know how many people are against the war and when the protests won't make any different) - cause effectively it's the same thing as holding up the traffic.
This did happen to me actually, in Durham last week. Protesters blocked one of the bridges off the peninsula (many of them were lying on the ground covered in tomato sauce :rolleyes:
How do you defend other people who cause a nuisance day in day out, like those I mentioned? At least these war protests won't go on for ever more, soon the numbers will fall.
I don't try to defend them, but at least the annoyances they case are accident - what the hell gives protesters the right to do it on purpose? I would understand say if the anti-war argument was somehow being silenced by the government, by not allowing anti-war things on TV, newspapers, or the media in general - but thats not happening now, is it? What is the purpose of the protests? People already know the countries view on the war, there's been enough surveys, is there really any need for these people to go out to "make their view heard" - even though their view already is heard? And the protestors know this - and they know that by protesting they will NOT be making a difference, they will NOT be informing the populus, they will NOT be telling people anything they haven't already heard before, and they will NOT change anybodys opinion - and the only thing they WILL be doing is inconveniencing and generally pissing people off. How can you say there's nothing morally wrong in that?
The right is to freedom of SPEECH - not freedom of movement, or of public disruption. They could quite easily speak their minds without being such a public nuisence. Take the candlelit vigiles every weekend in London - they were properly organised and weren't a disruption to anyone, and most of them seemed to at least know what they were talking about. All protests should be like that and shouldn't cause hassle to anybody. It's wrong.
Who gets to define what is a disruption though? You? Someone who is protesting? The vast majority? The Police? The dictionary?
And freedom of movement also exists.
Been to Paris lately? Pah! You do not know the meaning of the word disruption, but I do not let it get to me, oh no. That is because I am a member of Amnesty International, and I would like to reinterate my point: I have written to many people and met many others who have been imprisoned for speaking their mind. A truely harrowing experience. I think you should take stock of all your civil liberties and not let someone expressing their feelings annoy you so much young man.
And one could argue that you don't have anything better to do than moan about these people!!
Well yes, but I wouldn't do it in such a stupid pointless annoying way, especialy not over a subject that I knew wouldn't be effected by my protests.
Ah, touche.
One could argue that, yes, but it wouldn't be very constructive.
Personally I have not been bothered by anti-war protestors. I think that they have the right to protest and that is good, but protests really should be done in a way which does not do continuous harm to other people's lives. So far I would say it's not been unreasonable amounts of protest.