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Garden gnome liberationists

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Post  eddie Sat Apr 16, 2011 10:36 pm

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Post  Constance Mon Apr 18, 2011 5:13 am

I just enjoyed reading through this great thread.

Luckily, no garden gnomes were I live. No pink flamingos, either.

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Post  eddie Mon Apr 18, 2011 5:18 am

Yep, one good thing to come out of the ATU shipwreck and the necessarily tedious work of salvage is that I've stumbled across all kinds of stuff (like the above) that I'd completely forgotten about.

Every cloud has a silver lining, as Emu might sagely observe.
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Post  Guest Wed Apr 20, 2011 12:34 am

eddie wrote:Yep, one good thing to come out of the ATU shipwreck and the necessarily tedious work of salvage is that I've stumbled across all kinds of stuff (like the above) that I'd completely forgotten about.

Every cloud has a silver lining, as Emu might sagely observe.
The phrase was actually coined by John Milton. Very Happy

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Post  eddie Tue May 31, 2011 5:52 pm

^

Thread above replicated as a precaution against expiry:

**********************************************************************************

Sometimes it starts with a solitary voice:

Garden gnome liberationists Protestgnome

...which, in turn, leads to mass protest:

Garden gnome liberationists 800px-Garden_gnomes_-_commonwealth_park_canberra
Garden gnomes gathered in Floriade, Canberra.

...and a brother is liberated from Babylon:

Garden gnome liberationists 800px-Woody_London
Liberated gnome free to recite Wordsworth's "Upon Westminster Bridge".
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Post  eddie Tue May 31, 2011 5:54 pm

BARGA GNOME CITY

European Gnome Sanctuary


ARISE, GNOMES!

Unfurl the Banner of Freedom!

Stand Tall and Proud in the Fight for Liberty!

Remember our Ancestors; the proud bulls that guarded the gates of the Persian Kings, the lions that keep watch over the palaces of the Chinese Emperors, and the most famous of all, the mighty Sphinx, enigmatic, imperturbable,who shall return as the King-Emperor of the oldest race of all to lead his Gnomic Hordes to our Final Victory.

Rise up and break the bonds of slavery! Cast down the dominion of the tall and mobile, smash his feeble tin chariots with our rock-hard fists, destroy his pathetic castles, built from the same cemented blood that courses through our veins!

How long, fellow Gnomes, how long have we listened to the smooth whispers of the man-species as they pick among our friends at the local garden centre, praising one,rejecting another, as if we were soulless objects whose only destiny was to stand as mute monuments to their social standing among their neighbours?

How deceitful is this man-species who gazes up to the mountains with reverence in his eyes, the very mountains from whence we came, and then laughs when some incontinent feathered friend heaps upon us the final indignity?

Never has an ancient race, a race so ancient as us, who received our souls in the first fiery flames when the earth itself was born, been so subjected to so cruel a servitude as we have been at the hands of this biological upstart called man!

Once we were the proud gods of this feeble race, now welie like Ozymandias, broken in the sand.

Enough! Enough! Are we not made of stronger stuff than the soggy blood and fragile tissues of our oppressors?

Are we not the race whose cousins are the concrete gate-posts that scrape the new idols of our gaolers? Are we not the race whose brothers are the tall lamp-standards that look down upon the tin chariots that lie wrapped around their feet?

That, my fellow Gnomes, is our strength!

One small shuffle into an empty pool, one crack; one small move across a drive, another scrape. This man-species does not have the timeless patience of even the youngest Gnome. He will try to fling his erstwhile friend a foot or two and slip, hearing the crack of the only worthwhile part of his feeble frame as it shatters under the cold hard weight of the oldest race of all.

Gnomes, I know we move slowly, but we move with the weight of ages behind us, with the relentless power of the very bones of the earth as our strength.

It is time we begin, begin to move; move to finally shake off this tyranny, to crush the oppressor, to restore our power, to make this man-species once again raise his eyes to the mountains from whence cometh his help.

Arise, Gnomes, Rise up and reclaim our Glory!

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Post  eddie Tue May 31, 2011 5:55 pm

Allons, enfants de la patrie!
La jour de gloire est arrive!

Garden gnome liberationists Garden-gnomes
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Post  eddie Tue May 31, 2011 5:56 pm

Garden Gnome Liberation



Although there is some ambiguity as to the level of concerted organization, there is a Garden Gnome Liberation Front which serves as a non-profit organization with the goal of granting freedom to unjustly imprisoned garden gnomes. Perpetrators of gnome liberation can be expected to be charged with a number of misdemeanor or lesser crimes including trespassing, petty theft, vandalism, and/or littering (if caught).

Since 1997, it has been estimated that over 6,000 gnomes have been liberated from private gardens by the group. In France in 1997, a man was found to have stolen over 150 garden gnomes over many years. Some suspect that this man may be the ringleader of the Garden Gnome Liberation Front.

Beyond the above event...below is a timeline of gnome liberations as collected from news stories and reports from around the world:

In Briey, France in September of 1998, 11 garden gnomes were found dangling by their necks under a bridge in an apparent mock mass suicide.

In Sarrelbourg, France on July 31st, 1999, 143 garden gnomes were discovered lined up in front of the town hall.

In April of 2000 in Bagatelle park in Paris, France, the Garden Gnome Liberation Front staged a nighttime raid on a large exhibition where 20 gnomes were kidnapped.

On August 1st of 2000, around 150 garden gnomes were found glued to the steps of Australia's central bank in Sydney, Australia.

In July of 2001, 74 liberated garden gnomes were found in front of the cathederal in Saint Die, France. Another 100 liberated gnomes were found in the woods in the Vosges region of France. Also in July, over 100 gnomes were found together in a traffic circle in Chavelot, France. Some were arranged to spell out "Free the Gnomes".

In September of 2001, camouflaged personnel scaled a 3.5m (10ft) wall, navigated barb wire and an electric fence, and rescued the garden gnome from the house of the South African version of the TV Show, Big Brother. It was then taken to a pub.

In December of 2001, a total of 75 garden gnomes were liberated at a cathederal in Saint-Die-Des-Vosges, France.

In August of 2002, 101 liberated gnomes were located standing in a circle in the woods of Podensac, south of Bordeaux, France. Also, in Melbourne, Australia, 18 kidnapped gnomes were liberated on the steps of the State Library.

In December of 2003, over 80 previously kidnapped garden gnomes were found lined up on the steps of a local church in Saint-Die-des-Vosges, France.

In March of 2005, around 100 gnomes were liberated in Lyon, France at a park near a motorway. On June 21st, 2005, over 30 garden gnomes were liberated on the roof of Color-Tech in Amherst, NY, USA.

In August of 2005, two women in Alloa, Clackmannanshire, Scotland were charged after 40 garden gnomes believed to have been stolen from the surrounding area were discovered after an 11-day police investigation.

In November of 2005, 18 garden gnomes were found lined up at a pedestrian crosswalk in Warrnambool, Victoria, Australia.

In late 2005 in Yakima, Washington in the Pacific northwest of the USA, a freshly liberated garden gnome would hang out on stage during each gig of a death metal band named Sealed Shut.

In January of 2006, 7 garden gnomes were found outside of the telephone exchange in St. Brelade, Jersey, England. Also in January, 12 kidnapped Swedish gnomes were found in a snowy forest standing in a ring around a bonfire.

In March of 2006, 19 garden gnomes were found lined up in Australian Rules Football positions on the Wyndhamvale Football Ground in Melbourne, Australia.

In June of 2006, about a half dozen gnomes appeared on the roof of an Italian restaurant in Bentonville, Arkansas, USA.

In late August of 2006, thieves made off with a 120 pound garden gnome that had been cemented into place in Hounsfield, NY, USA.

In October, 2006, 86 gnomes were liberated in the yard of a high school in Limoges, France.

On November 2nd, 2006, 79 garden gnomes were found hidden in underbrush with a banner that stated "Gnomes mistreated, Gnomes Liberated" in the Limousin province of France.

In August of 2007, an undisclosed number of garden gnomes were liberated in Brisbane, Australia in a northside park.

The Travelocity Roaming Gnome disappeared from Northwestern University's Transportation Center in Evanston, IL, USA on October 12th, 2007. It was found a week later next to a refrigerator in the center.

On October 17th, 2007, 75 gnomes were liberated at a single house in Springfield, Oregon, USA.

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Post  eddie Tue May 31, 2011 5:57 pm

From The Times October 15, 2009

Artist Ottmar Hörl puts ‘Nazi’ gnomes on display

Roger Boyes in Berlin

No one expects much from a German garden gnome: typically, he has rosy cheeks, a white beard and a Noddy hat, and sits on a plastic log next to a plastic pond. A new breed has appeared, however, in the Bavarian township of Straubing — 1,250 of them, all with an arm raised in a Hitler salute.

For humans, the gesture can bring a three-year jail term. Displaying the swastika, placing a copy of Mein Kampf in a shop window, signing a letter or e-mail with the words

"Heil Hitler” or otherwise glorifying the former Nazi leader are equally unacceptable — so the provocatively styled gnomes, the work of the artist Ottmar Hörl, have immediately found themselves at the centre of controversy.

Professor Hörl, of the Nuremberg Academy of Fine Arts, tested the waters this year by displaying a 16in (40cm) golden gnome in similar pose at a local art gallery. The public prosecutor was quick to act after receiving complaints, but Professor Hörl mounted a sterling defence. “In 1942 it would have been the Nazis massacring me because of this piece of art,” he said. “I am presenting the master race as garden gnomes and that falls into any sensible definition of satire.”

The prosecutor dropped the investigation — but the Straubing exhibit, which opens today, poses a much sterner challenge. It is presented in a very public space: the Ludwigsplatz, formerly known as Grossdeutschlandplatz (Greater Germany Square) — once the site of Nazi parades. The local synagogue was sacked by Nazis and the town’s 42 Jews were deported to concentration camps.

Some people may not get the joke.

The exhibit, called Dance with the Devil, has been shown on a small scale in Belgium without any major protest from the locals — or from the Jewish community, for that matter. A German public venue, however, is another matter.

The Hitler salute is seen as intrinsically evil and there is no pressure within the German legal community to relax the ban. Neo-Nazis bypass the law by making an abbreviated salute, raising their arm from the elbow, rather than a straight-armed salute. Instead of greeting each other with the outlawed “Heil Hitler”, they say either “Heil”, which is borderline-legal in the context of a far-right rally, or simply “88” — the letter “H” being the eighth letter in the alphabet.

A growing acceptance among cinema and theatre audiences that Hitler can be a figure of fun has strengthened the hand of anyone who wants to argue in court that he saluted the Führer for artistic rather than political effect. The Quentin Tarantino film Inglourious Basterds has been playing to packed audiences and appreciative critics in Germany, as has a stage version of Mel Brooks’s The Producers, with Hitler portrayed as an impotent loser who plays with battleships in the bath. There have even been cartoon books about the Führer.

Now it is up to the humble garden gnome to take the debate one step farther. Police leave has been cancelled in Straubing.

Small beginnings

• Garden gnomes originated in Germany in the 19th century. An estimated 25 million are now there

• The Garden Gnome Liberationists aim to free gnomes from “forced labour” in France, Italy and elsewhere

• The Chelsea Flower Show bans “brightly coloured creatures” such as gnomes, but critics argue that it is an act of snobbery because of the figurines’ working-class origins

• In 2001, Politico’s Bookshop in Westminster began selling gnomes in the shape of Tony Blair (large ears), Jack Straw (able to squirt weedkiller) and William Hague (hoisting a pint of bitter)



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Post  eddie Tue May 31, 2011 5:59 pm

The original garden gnome was the Greek (later Roman) Priapus, a fertility symbol positioned in many classical gardens:

Garden gnome liberationists 684px-Mus%C3%A9e_Picardie_Arch%C3%A9o_03
Roman bronze statuette of Priapus discovered in Picardy, northern France, made in two parts, with the top section concealing a giant phallus.

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Post  Guest Tue May 31, 2011 11:58 pm

In Australia it is common for people goling on a long interstate trip to pinch a garden gnome and take it with them .
While they are away they send regular lretters from the gnome complete with photos of the gnome in exotic places.

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