Posts by Russell Brown
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Karl du Fresne has spoken, via his blog.
He acknowledges that Clydesdale's paper is "dodgy", but complains at great length about Tim Pankhurst being grilled about it, and decries the ad hominen attacks on Clydesdale.
The latter point is a little ironic given the amount of such abuse du Fresne has heaped on everyone else in his post, but I expect that's different.
He also says:
Well, perhaps in an ideal world an eager-beaver researcher would be assigned to assess the credibility of every academic paper submitted for publication, but that’s not how things work in the real world – including, I suspect, TVNZ.
The news media frequently publish what many might consider arrant nonsense by highly qualified academics; it’s a routine part of the news mix, and no one objects – that is, unless the subject matter happens to offend prevailing political sensitivities. I doubt that anyone would have tut-tutted at the failure to check Clydesdale’s history were it not for the crucial fact that he expressed a politically unfashionable view.
Actually, I think if a newspaper had prominently featured a poor-quality "study" that had not been through any conventional academic process -- but could have been accused of "political correctness" or something -- du Fresne would have been all over it.
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I seem to recall a documentary on Lange (prob 5+ years old now?) where they interviewed ex politicians and media etc who all seemed to basically agree that Pope *did* have a significant influence on Lange. So Bassett is not alone in this claim here.
I'm sure he took guidance from her, but I'm not sure that's the same thing as what Bassett alleges in the excerpt -- the woman who controlled a man too sick to form his own judgements, and in so doing brought down the glorious project.
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In the last of his reports from Pakistan, Damian Christie visits the Pakistan Dairy Development Company -- and finds it's full of Kiwis.
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__He's basically a Chicago-school neoliberal and as truly 'left-wing' as Michael Bassett is these days.__
It really is amazing that more people aren't noting this. It makes me cringe, the number of Kiwis who are calling Obama a 'Left-wing candidate'.
All the wingnut commentators noisily insisting that he's a Marxist probably cloud the issue a bit.
But it's just not true to say he's a "Chicago-school neoliberal" either. His rhetoric on trade has been explicitly protectionist; more so than I'm comfortable with.
And his record as a community organiser seems genuine to me. If he balances budgets and doesn't wage unnecessary wars that's good too. I was probably actually most moved by the Lawrence Lessig endorsement. A President who gets the digital commons seems like a fine thing.
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Have you read the book first Russell. I take it, given Bassett's well known political views, you have just assumed he's talking shite. Pathetic.
As Geoff said, I read the long extract in the SST, and the paper's follow-up story, and commented only on the content of those. Which seemed immensely self-serving to me.
I also had in mind Bassett's similarly self-serving cameo in The Hollow Men.
I never met Lange, and I haven't met Margaret Pope, but I had some contact with Margaret Pope when I commissioned her to write something for the Great New Zealand Argument book I edited. She and David also gave me a great letter that helped in the long process of getting the Oxford Union speech audio, when officialdom was not my friend.
And I'd never be rude enough to compare Bassett to Wishart. No one deserves that.
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Russell surely you meant to say:
"You can have my semicolons; when you prise them from my cold, dead hands'
But that would simply have been gratuitous.
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I was living overseas for the Lange years, but I have to say that apart from not being Muldoon, (hooray !) I find it hard to see why so many people idolise him.
I don't think you have to idolise Lange -- he certainly had his flaws -- to find Bassett's account of events, with its Lady Macbeth angle, somewhat objectionable.
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Just getting this on to System, seeing as how it's a bit late.
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I call for a limit on the apostrophe and a pox upon the semicolon.
You can have my semicolons when you prise them from my cold, dead hands.
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Just so you guys know, there is a mass of people who think what I think ...
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2008/05/pacific_island_immigration.html#comment-453647
Au revoirHa. Choice! You accidentally linked to your own post there, whining about being picked on here:
freethought (3) +0 Says:
June 8th, 2008 at 11:35 am
You guys are great. I have been debating with people at http://www.publicaddress.net/system/topic,1152,hard_news_debating_clydesdale.sm?p=53197 and they’re scarily ignorant.You speak of how you get labelled as soon as you try to open a debate: that’s what happened to Clydesdale and then what happened to me when I joined this other forum.
For more on this societal problem, read The New Thought Police, by Tammy Bruce. It opened my eyes.
Reading books by batshit crazy people will usually open your eyes in one way or another.
But really, it's a bit lame to strut around shouting the odds here then scurry over to Kiiwblog to complain about how much you're being oppressed by teh liberalz. We get it already: you're a victim.
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