Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Get Up Stand Up - Edinburgh Blog

Get Up Stand Up is put on by the WMD Awareness program. It has stand-up comedians, most of whom have their own shows, musicians and a film, the depressing “Anthropology 101 - The 'end of the world' lecture”

Geoff Norcott was a deaf comedian and very funny. One less good comedian ended on a very funny tagline: “I am going back now to finish off a video ‘anal lesbians’ – to be honest though it is not very good. They spent the first half hour making labels for all the things in the fridge.”

The underlying message of “Get Up Stand Up!” is serious:
The US is estimated to have spent around $4 trillion on nuclear weapons from 1940-1995 – and that does not include the cost of other WMD.
One in three children under 5 years old suffers from malnutrition.
Where do you think that money would be best used?

Ivor Dembina was a Jewish Comedian and can therefore get away with a joke about Auschwitz. “There is a plaque commemorating all the thousands of Jews killed there. Another mentions gypsies, disabled people, communists and gay victims of the Nazis. Zionists do not like that. They do not wish to be lumped with gippos, cripples, lefties and queers. It’s not your schwitz it’s our schwitz.”

He also went to synagogue to be given his “original name” which turned out to sound like “yidscock”. He was also given a Jaffa orange and told he had a place in Israel. When he asked to see where Israel was he was shown a place in Palestine. He said he wanted to go to Palestine as that was its original name. They suggested his father enroll him in a progressive synagogue down the road.

And they took back his orange.

In addition, one night “Get Up Stand Up” also had Bruce Kent (former CND leader) to give a less depressing perspective on the film. The film suggests we will lose the battle against global warming and nuclear war. He suggested many examples where people could make a difference.

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