Hard News: Occupy: Don't call it a protest
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This is a sentence I very rarely find the need to use, but:
"I find myself agreeing, in part, with Paul Moon."
Dame Salmond's article was, to my mind, high on well-written waffle but low on actual content.
I think it sort of showed that she was writing outside her field of expertise on this matter, which is why Moon (whose right-winginess rarely makes me smile joyfully) was able to easily fisk her, although some of his rebuttals bordered on the absurd: he, too, was writing outside of his field of expertise.
Related to all that: I went to a fascinating talk given by Prof. Margaret Mutu and Dr. Sue Abel on the SST's reporting of that immigration interview with Mutu. The talk was videoed, so I'll put up a link for those who are interested when it becomes available.
Mutu made a big point on the dual roles academics play in re critic/conscience of society and academic freedom (which is not just a fancy idea but enshrined in the Education Act) and how they apply only when you are talking about things in which you are a qualified expert.
Salmond's noble ideas of how society should work were nice and all, but I'm not entirely sure we should treat her opinion piece as being an important part of the conversation, especially given that it's long on rhetoric yet vague on solutions. For an academic to play the role of critic and conscience of society they need to more than just an academic but rather a suitably qualified academic in a field relevant to the discussion society is having.
Also, I think someone needs to capitalise "Salmond" in the penultimate paragraph of the post.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Related to all that: I went to a fascinating talk given by Prof. Margaret Mutu and Dr. Sue Abel on the SST’s reporting of that immigration interview with Mutu. The talk was videoed, so I’ll put up a link for those who are interested when it becomes available.
What was the gist of it?
I'm genuinely interested to see how she walks back what she subsequently said to Close Up, that South African immigrants come to New Zealand and see "a regime that is not hugely different from the old one that they used to have, and that makes them feel comfortable."
That's an offensive and stupid statement on so many levels.
Also, I think someone needs to capitalise “Salmond” in the penultimate paragraph of the post.
That would be me.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
It’s a disappointingly cheap shot on your part to blame the violence entirely on protesters.
Did not do that. I didn't even mention violence.
All the protesters needed to do was express a little sympathy for working people and their families. Instead, there were a number of public quotes (and I'm going on memory here) that were unbelievably arrogant.
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DexterX, in reply to
Why shouldn't we turn our backs on a slide into inequitable poverty and reckless resource depletion, and privatisation of many things we spent my whole life paying for?
What is the “slide into inequitable poverty and reckless resource depletion of which you speak?
Thought the Lange Labour Govt kicked off the process where the best bits got sold for peanuts.
The thing about any debt is what you use it for, what it gives you back and can you pay it back - they are the relevant questions?
If I took a simplistic view of what you are expressing it is that you want to liberate the nation through more taxation.
The Vogel government doubled govt debt to provide for rail, roads, telegraph and other stuff and to do this they doubled public debt. By 1891 37.5% of Public Debt was concerned with rail development.
Without competent management whether an enterprise is publicly or privately owned or funded by public or private debt extreme wastage of resources and time can be the result regardless of the profit the or loss the enterprise delivers.
If you took the massive dartboard of opportunity or possible outcomes that managing the economy presents and threw the darts Labour or National at it they would land pretty much in the same place.
In my view it is a blind marriage to the Party Political viewpoint and ideology that perpetuates the incompetence that stuffs things up. It is tiresome living in the land of the perpetual infrastructure failure – and I note that now hte gas supply North of New Plymouth is failing/has failed.
It is a shame with the vote we have coming up that neither of the main choices have delivered much in the way of competence (in government or opposition).
To answer my earlier question, “What actually drives the economy?” the answer is people and the choices they make.
I could say that people leaning Labour want to make the choices for you and people leaning National want to take the choice away from you – but I won’t because it is to general. They are visionless lot of self serving clods.
As regards the sun as a driver of the economy – it was a great day yesterday I spent the evening at the beach.
Face it the only really solution you have is to put me in charge – I think that deep down inside you know this to be true and you are wrestling with the internal turmoil this realisation creates for you. Such is life.
Be you own Sun King – that is what I say - you don't have to worship me as you oft are inclinded.
It is most excellent that our votes if cast will cancel each other out and account for nothing.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
Did not do that. I didn’t even mention violence.
Fair enough, but it's more than a little cute to deny the implication.
All the protesters needed to do was express a little sympathy for working people and their families. Instead, there were a number of public quotes (and I’m going on memory here) that were unbelievably arrogant.
You seem to be applying a rather vague and selective form of memory, along with a massed bogeyman image of protesters that wouldn't have been out of place in the Herald's 1981 tour coverage. It's as though you're willing the current occupy movement to put a foot wrong, like a cat watching mice. But of course you wouldn't do that.
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BenWilson, in reply to
All the protesters needed to do was express a little sympathy for working people and their families. Instead, there were a number of public quotes (and I'm going on memory here) that were unbelievably arrogant.
Yes, political activism is quite a different beast in Oz. They let you know when they're angry over there. I don't think it's such a bad thing. But it definitely has casualties.
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HORansome, in reply to
She walks back from the "Close Up" interview by arguing that they substantially cut that interview and thus a lot of the context around that statement (the qualifying statements, if you will) were left out.
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HORansome, in reply to
Answering things in reverse day: the gist of it was that the SST article not only lacks context for some statements, only partially reported other statements and also featured statements which were not made by Mutu but were attributed to her (as I said, when the video becomes available I'll send out a link: it was an hour long talk and I didn't take notes).
There was also a section devoted to looking at the correspondence Mutu received afterwards, some of which included anatomically impossible instructions for her to carry out.
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HORansome, in reply to
Also, she said "some" South Africans. With that qualifier it's not actually stupid or offensive, because some do (this is supported by research: there is a lot of work going on at Auckland about the views of immigrants to New Zealand).
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DCBCauchi, in reply to
a suitably qualified academic in a field relevant to the discussion society is having
You mean a Dame Professor in History writing in an opinion piece of a few hundred words at most about how history can inform the discussions we’re having now? Someone who's specialised in early relations between Maori and Pakeha?
Remind me quite what your problem with this is?
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HORansome, in reply to
Because it's not an opinion piece on history but rather a combination of sociology and political philosophy (with some economics thrown in) about the here and now. Distinguished Professor Anne Salmond is a great historian and anthropologist, but what she's writing on in that article is, at best, very tangentially related to her own field of expertise.
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Sacha, in reply to
the growing groundswell of anger at the occupiers "preventing ordinary folk using the octagon/grass" worries me. There's a lack of awareness that a little bit of inconvenience is worth it for the preservation of opportunities for public protest.
It's actually an opportunity to highlight how private/public benefit is balanced - surely a core issue for Occupy. To avoid others framing that as "get off my lawn" requires proactive communication. Which in turn requires ways to agree common positions and mandates.
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Sacha, in reply to
his field of expertise
I'm still unclear what that actually is.
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HORansome, in reply to
Early Pākehā history, I believe.
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DCBCauchi, in reply to
a combination of sociology and political philosophy (with some economics thrown in) about the here and now
Have you actually read any of her books? That is her field. What do you think the early relations of Maori and Pakeha consisted of?
Two quite different social organisations interacting politically, militarily, and economically, in a way that is directly related (through causality) with the situation we find ourselves in here and now.
And I thought you were a stickler for titles other people give people. You still haven't got hers right.
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'Stick to your own field' indeed!
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Also, she said “some” South Africans. With that qualifier it’s not actually stupid or offensive, because some do (this is supported by research: there is a lot of work going on at Auckland about the views of immigrants to New Zealand).
Is that what she told the meeting she said? Because that would be a barefaced lie.
The video is here. The quote is about 5.46. The word “some” is not uttered.
And even if she had added a qualifier? Might someone else say “some Maoris are lazy”? Because that would, on some technical level, be true.
And furthermore, directly comparing the political system here to the practice of apartheid in South Africa is a gross insult to the suffering of black South Africans under a system that deprived them of their very humanity. Perhaps she could throw in a Holocaust comparison or a rape metaphor next time.
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I think the Dame Anne Salmond piece was wonderful, and reflected what many people (particularly women?) are thinking and feeling but who do not have her talent for expressing it, and access to the media for op-ed commentary. And so do many others from the number of times it has been shared and commented on in Facebook and other networks.
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Not really in a position to add much today. Busy, so I’ll just linkwhore the glorious NMA.
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merc,
Dame Anne Salmond is an amazingly talented writer and academic.
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HORansome, in reply to
Have you actually read the opinion piece? It doesn't say much more than what a lot of the unqualified 99% have been writing on their blogs and placards. It only seems notable because she is Distinguished Professor Dame Anne Salmond.
If you are going to argue that her expertise applies to commentaries on what is, in essence, the current global financial system, then I argue that she is writing outside her expertise because, at best, her expertise is only weakly applicable to this material.
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Sacha, in reply to
What were the best suggestions for *action* you encountered in those discussions?
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And meanwhile, eye-popping charts on where income growth in the US has gone in the past couple of decades.
As Bernard Hickey says, it's a wonder they haven't rioted by now.
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merc,
Incommensurate police response awaits your spontaneous haka.
Except here, http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10761783
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