Free Speech for Me--Restrictions for You

The Stench of Self-Righteous Hypocrisy

We have a great deal of sympathy for the following issue, raised by several unions over recent days. 

We have seen numerous incidents in New Zealand where workers have been going about their lawful business, heading into their places of work, only to be confronted by loud, screaming, intolerant, and reprehensibly rude Greenpeace bigots.  Apparently their employer had been involved in some actual or potential degradation of the environment and Greenpeace is now busy victimising the innocent workers involved.  

The unions are proposing that a 150 metre exclusion zone be placed around all workers in transit to their place of employment.  Others have been calling for a one kilometer exclusion zone.  The emotional damage caused by Greenpeace zealots is incalculable and entirely without defence.  However, longtime Greenpeace activist and prominent actress, Lucy Lawless has reacted angrily to the union proposals.
 She points out that every time Greenpeace protests it is to call public attention to immoral acts on the part of greedy, unconscionable corporates.  Always the businesses targeted have been singled out as complicit in acts of environmental degradation.  Employees were guilty of facilitating and carrying out their employers acts of environmental damage.  For unions to join them, protecting them in their destruction of the environment, was shameful, she said.

When she was asked whether she had any sympathy for the argument that the feelings, as well as the right to privacy, lawfully enjoyed by employees, were being traduced by Greenpeace actions, she angrily retorted that her inquisitor had not a scintilla of conscience nor care for the environment.

The head of Greenpeace NZ, former Green Party Co-Leader, Russel Norman agreed.  Threatened species and rivers, he argued, have no voice.  Greenpeace is their voice.  We have a higher calling, a sacred duty, to stand up and be their voice, so as to make their voice heard.  If we don't, who will? was his animated retort.  When asked about the feelings of workers trying to get into the places of employment, he snorted, suggesting that the little darlings should harden up.  Greenpeace had a commitment and duty to the "greater good".

In the light of the brouhaha above, we find ourselves profoundly discombobulated by Green Party politicians advocating banning protesters around the vicinity of abortion clinics.

Green MP Jan Logie says it is worth debating whether New Zealand should introduce a no-protest zone around abortion clinics, similar to those enforced in some Australian states. . . . In the Australian states of Tasmania and Victoria, filming, intimidation and protests are banned within 150m of abortion centres. In New South Wales, a bill to provide a 150m "safe access zone" has just been introduced by a Green MP on the grounds of ensuring the right to medical privacy.

Logie said the Green Party had no plans for a member's bill on the issue but another speaker had raised the Australian example. There were different views expressed on it and she believed a broader discussion was needed.  "I do think there's is a genuine issue around the impact of those protests directly targeting women and making their lives worse."  [NZ Herald]

So, let's get this straight.  When Greenpeace is publicly protesting, disrupting the lives of others, in the attempt to promote their ideological views it's all for the greater good.  But when folks attempt to speak up for the most defenceless in our society, the not-yet-born, most vulnerable humans beings they need to be silenced.

One's nostrils are assailed by the pungent stench of egregious hypocrisy.