Lone father paralyzes Sydney in rush hour protest
(AFP) – 2 hours ago
SYDNEY — A lone protester paralyzed rush-hour traffic in Australia’s largest city for hours Friday by scaling the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge and forcing the closure of the country’s busiest roadway.
The man, who said he was “ex-military”, evaded extensive security precautions to climb the bridge at dawn and hang two banners in a protest apparently linked to a custody dispute over his children.
The stunt forced the closure of the bridge that links north Sydney with the downtown area for around two hours, causing massive back-ups and leaving thousands of motorists and train and bus commuters stranded. ….
“If I have to stuff four million people around for one morning and that gets my kids and other kids help one day sooner, I have achieved my goal,” he said before rappelling down onto the roadway to be arrested by waiting police.
“Stuffing” four million people around. Goal achieved!
Getting more contact with your kids. Goal not so much achieved as hindered, I’m guessing.
More on the protestor here. He’s apparently a “bikie” – the Australian version of a biker – and “was almost killed during an alleged bikie shootout last year.”
UPDATE: As a result of this, the protester, Michael Fox has, not surprisingly, been ordered to not contact his ex-wife or family members.
And here’s an interesting detail from the coverage:
He left a note in his car, warning police to close the bridge and not to try to bring him down by force. “If anyone attempts to climb the upper arch of the bridge during my protest, the consequences will be fatal. Do what I ask and this will start and end peacefully,” it said. “You’ve taken my kids, I’ve taken your bridge.”
Generally speaking, nonviolent protestors don’t threaten “fatal consequences” for those who try to arrest them.
UPDATE 2: Another odd detail:
He last saw [his kids] almost 70 days ago, soon after a home owned by him was engulfed by fire. His estranged wife and one young daughter were sleeping inside. Both escaped the blaze.
I’m going to eat a bit but as for you once again Holly…When I said… “This “power” that a State has to deny a father access to his child shouldn’t even exist. Don’t you agree?”
You replied
“No. I don’t agree. If the man has been abusive or negligent, then he should get no access.”
Note the default position of the man being bad. Not even a whisper that a woman might be abusive.
Thus as with every conversation the default position is Man = Bad, Woman = Good.
When the default position for any social interaction between men and women is the man is at fault and the woman is blameless theres a problem with feminism.
Oh, and no one said a race can’t be a victim of a crime, just like any group can be the victim of a crime, because the people commiting it are targeting them. How does ‘my race is a victim of this specific crime, see here’ translate to ‘races commit atrocities’?
Note the default position of the man being bad. Not even a whisper that a woman might be abusive.
Alright, I’m officially flouncing, both because I need to get on with my life and because there’s no point talking to a person who either deliberately or maliciously didn’t listen. I SAID THAT ABUSIVE MOTHERS SHOULDN’T GET CUSTODY I ACTUALLY SAID THAT.
Christ. I’m going outdoors. Maybe getting a burrito.
You ask a question about a man, and then default to your man=bad crap when the answer is about a man. This is tiresome. The state should always have the power to remove a negligent/abusing parent. You asked about a man, you get an answer about a man. Here, lets try this: hey, anybody, if a women is abusive, should the state have the power to take away her child? Because I think the answer will be yes, and somehow not misandrist! I wonder if you can parse that.
Arg, misogynist, not misandrist. I think i need that sunshine, Holly.
Talk to me again about Equal custody when this little problem is solved.
http://childrens-justice.org/myths.htm
Until he is able to cite sources other than his own ass, I will take whatever is said there with a grain of salt.
Amused: If you can show me that, given the same circumstances, he would have said different things, then I’ll agree. I don’t think, however that the entirety of his statement there. It wasn’t, “Jews should just kill themselves”, but rather that, in keeping with a specific sort of belief, if they are in a situation where they were going to be killed, they should kill themselves, as an act of agency/protest.
That’s a very different thing that presenting it as, “Ghandi thought Jews were such a problem in Europe that they should do the world a favor and wipe themselves out. Which is the gist of what was said above.
I re-read that piece and I still don’t see it as being about, “Jews” but about the circumstance. Palestinians, Muslims, Hindus, S. African Blacks, weren’t in that circumstance, so he didn’t address it. I still think (from reading not just that piece, but his lenghty correspondence about it; and the reactions of the Jews he was corresponding with) that your interpretation isn’t fair to him, nor accurate to what he said (which are two different things).
Samsara: “Cager” is a derogatory term for someone who operates a car/truck. The problem is that it’s a group identification, which carries with it connotations of being unaware/hostile to motorcyclists.
As with other ingroup/outgroup labels many people say they mean nothing ill by the use of it, but the associations to careless, or dangerous, behaviors on the part of non-motorcycle operators are there, and as with any other othering speech seep into the culture they inhabit.
I ride. I’ve been treated badly by drivers. I’ve had drivers do things that could have killed me. I had one driver do something which caused me to have a low speed fall, and come back to tell me it was my fault; if I’d just trusted her to stop being stupid I’d have been fine.
At one level she was right. Had I been less cautious I’d have been fine, because she was abandoning the left turn she shouldn’t have been making. On the other hand, had she not stopped, and I proceeded she might have ploughed a four-door Mercedes into me/my bike. Given those two options, I touched the brakes. Bike was in a bad attitude (leaned a bit) and down I went.
In telling that story (and seeing others like it) the reaction, “Typical cager” is too common for my taste. I don’t see people saying, “Man, I saw a really tuned in cager today”. What I see instead is, “I saw someone in car that did….”.
Which is why I am opposed to it.
A guy had a bad idea to stop traffic to bring attention to a perceived injustice and the next thing you know you guys are talking Jews, Nazi’s, Russians and all kinds of sheit. Hmmmm, it does make you wonder if the guy wasnt so nuts afterall?
… and NWO is on moderation again.
Not just for going on about the Jewish “race” and citing a holocaust denial website, but also for never fucking listening to others and repeatedly misrepresenting what other people say.
WTF, dude.
Not sure when I’ll be lifting this. Not soon.
Holly: I agree, if a parent is abusive, that parent needs to be monitored/denied access.
Is it possible for one parent to game the system? Yes. I know a woman who decided her husband shouldn’t have access to her kids. It was unfortunate that 1: The husband was clueless about how to structure debates. 2: The wife’s mother was a social worker, and able to give her the sorts of “complaint” which would have greater effect in court and 3: the mediator was a dolt.
Four was that one of the children was step (the other wasn’t).
He lost. No visitation at all.
Does that suck? Yup. Does it mean the system is fundamentally broken? No. In the first place this was almost 25 years ago. In the second individual cases do not define the system. The aggregate defines the system.
Why, one wonders, it it the case that huge amounts of child support is owed to women? If all these paragons of male virtue cared about the kid so much they would suck it up, and pay the money; even if they don’t get to see them.
Why? Because it’s not the kids fault; even if they got screwed.
That’s where the rubber meets the road. Is the MRA, “movement” actually interested in the welfare of kids? From the way they talk, no. They are all about, “Sticking it to the woman”, because they didn’t get what they want.
The problem is, in cases like this, the woman isn’t the only one being harmed. The kids are. Right there, I don’t see any reason the state should be working to change those cases. The men have, prima facie, shown a lack of desire to be active in the care and nurturing of their children.
Ipso facto that makes them unfit to be custodial parents, and calls into question the idea of unsupervised visitation.
If that makes me a “misandrist” or “mangina” or whatever the jargon de jour is for that, fine. But it also makes me pro-kid, and there for pro-society, and I can live with that.
Annnd… it’s quiet :-p. But you know this is just a form of censorship! We are obviously just silencing the perfectly valid voice of non-reason.
Oh, and thanks, Bee, for that link to the story in The Australian.
One interesting detail from that story:
He left a note in his car, warning police to close the bridge and not to try to bring him down by force. “If anyone attempts to climb the upper arch of the bridge during my protest, the consequences will be fatal. Do what I ask and this will start and end peacefully,” it said. “You’ve taken my kids, I’ve taken your bridge.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/sas-veteran-takes-protest-to-the-top/story-e6frg6nf-1226055641359?from=public_rss
And naturally, as soon as I think to post that I get ninja’d >.<. And by 'we' are silencing I meant feminists as a whole, since you know, we're this monolithic block, etc etc.
Well, NWO can still post; he’ll just have to avoid being a complete douchenozzle if he wants any of the comments to go through.
… Douchenozzle? -_0
NWO, I’ve said this yesterday as well. A citation is only as good as its source. If you link to a holocaust-denial website, any point on it is going to be discounted unless there are further citations to more reliable sources. Link to better websites, and we won’t keep discounting your links. (Also, the discussion that goes “NWO: RACE RACE RACE, Others: Race? NWo: WHY U TALK ABOUT RACE?” doesn’t reflect well on you at all)
This case just confuses me. So the guy takes over a bridge because… his children aren’t being looked after while the divorce proceedings are happening? That would be pretty bad if true.
Or is he misrepresenting the case, and his children aren’t being looked after by the parents? That would make sense, since you don’t want the kids subject to bickering parents while the divorce is going through, and you can’t preemptively give the children to one parent or the other.
Like I said… confuzzled…
Another strange detail I’ve added to the OP:
He last saw [his kids] almost 70 days ago, soon after a home owned by him was engulfed by fire. His estranged wife and one young daughter were sleeping inside. Both escaped the blaze.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/bridge-stunt-chokes-city-20110513-1emg5.html#ixzz1MGeqKTSa
Re: Dave’s update, yeah, he’s not exactly engaging in active non-violent resistance, is he? Non-violence should carry no threat of violence from those engaging in it.
It’s kind of how the MRM to a large degree isn’t really a non-violent movement, isn’t it?
He last saw [his kids] almost 70 days ago, soon after a home owned by him was engulfed by fire. His estranged wife and one young daughter were sleeping inside. Both escaped the blaze.
Now that seems highly suspicious. It’s looking more and more like the courts were correct in their decision.
@Captain Bathrobe I wasn’t comparing him to Slutwalk or anybody else. 🙂 Sorry for the misunderstanding 🙁 I meant that whether or not it’s helpful or not was up to him to decide and still is, at the end of it all, maybe he did think he helped his cause (or maybe it will help at the end afterall)! 😮 just that saying “this won’t help!” from the outside when it’s not about us is easy (hence the slutwalk comparison) 🙂 I was using it as an example of ppl who are involved saying “YOU PEOPLE ARE HURTING YOUR CAUSE” not to say THIS GUY IS LIKE THEM, cuz obviously he’s not, what he did is way different 🙂 but even if I disagree with his ideology or dislike him as a person (and I know nothing about either rly) I still think that whether this was “worth it” or not would rly be whether he thinks it is :3
Patriarchy, it means…..
“the social system perpetuated by both men and women that defines gender roles in a way that oppresses both genders but gives men the upper hand.”(Holly)
Im wondering if the system ended up giving the upper hand to women but continued to oppress both genders, would we call that system the “Matriarchy”?
titfortat – Uh… yes? That seems linguistically consistent.
“I was using it as an example of ppl who are involved saying” should be “aren’t” 🙁 sorry! xD
But what if he is falsely accusing his ex of abusing the children to get custody? Oh I forgot, only women do that.
@titfortat, that is an interesting question, because, historically, anthropologists have been fond of calling any matrilineal society that was not a patriarchy a “matriarchy”, even though there is no clear comparison in terms of power and social position for most. This is sort of like how the terms “mothering” and “fathering” tend to have vastly different meanings even though linguisitically it looks as if they should mean almost the exact same thing.