Posts by Chris Waugh
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Hard News: The question of Afghanistan…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
maybe if it had been Stalin rather than Brezhnev, they might have done, and we'd have a pacified, relatively liberal state inhabited almost entirely by Russians
Umm... like the other 'stans or the Caucasus? Places where Stalin did get up to all sorts of shenanigans like deporting the entire population of Chechnya and creatively redrawing borders to suit his purposes, but certainly not regarded by many as liberal, even relatively, and all with trouble simmering away beneath very thin veneers of pacification.
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Hard News: Living with the psychopath, in reply to Gudrun Gisela,
No. There must always be the chance for redemption. We want a safe society, so it is up to us to make it safe for all members, including those who have transgressed. I do agree that the option to lock people up for the term of their natural lives must be there to protect society from the worst of the worst, but the opportunity to redeem themselves and work their way back into society must be there for all those we lock away. That's not just to protect the innocent from wrongful conviction, or at least allow them compensation for when they are wrongfully convicted. That's because we can't have a safe society unless society is safe for everybody.
Allow me to attempt a different approach: Leadership sets the tone society will follow. If our leaders - conventionally the government, but sometimes others - sets a tone of brutality - "Lock 'em up and throw away the key! Bring back the guillotine!" - then a tone is set that empowers the likes of Lhaws and his would be lynch mobs and witch hunters. In such a situation justice can not be done, even when the truly guilty are charged, convicted and punished. Justice does require the appropriate punishment of transgressors and compensation, so far as that is possible, for victims, but it must also include the opportunity for redemption and forgiveness.
...ummm... sorry, struggling to think of how to explain why I think this way. Just realised I should probably finally sit down and read my copy of Mozi that's been sitting on the shelf above me for so long... But there you go, that's where I'm at with the whole justice thing.
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Hard News: Living with the psychopath, in reply to Richard Aston,
a psychological maelstrom that deconstructs him, opens him up and changes him.
US Marine Corps bootcamp?
Hey while we are at there must be a few mind altering chemicals that could aid this process.
Yeah, let's give them clockwork oranges to play with.
I mean why are we being so nice with these guys?
Because we're better than them. I don't mean that there's some inherent quality in us that they lack, because we all share the capacity for pure evil. I mean that we are better because we choose to be better, we have opted for civilisation over "the law of the jungle", and our choice dictates how we must proceed.
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Capture: Spring is Like a Perhaps Hand, in reply to JacksonP,
Brilliant play of light, shadow and colour. The middle one looks more like abstract painting than beach. Great shots.
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Nora and Jackson, you may have captured birds in slightly awkward poses, but at least you capture them, or parts of them. This summer I became aware of a 黄鼠狼/huángshǔláng/yellow or siberian weasel living, or at least, visiting the garden just outside our building. Nearly got a photo of it today - it popped out of the bushes and looked around, saw me, we stared at each other, but before I could get my phone out to get a photo, it'd vanished. I chased, but it's just too fast. I'm just glad I got a clear look at it today, so I know what it is, but it'd be nice to have a photo so that my neighbours don't think I'm mad.
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Field Theory: In closing, in reply to Russell Brown,
Wow, brilliant! Doesn't seem to have been the best of situations for Adams, great to see it all works out.
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Speaker: Selling the Dream: The Art of…, in reply to Peter Alsop,
Clearly I am going to have to drop some very strong hints to my mother, my chief supplier of New Zealand books, about what an appropriate Christmas present would be.
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Speaker: Selling the Dream: The Art of…, in reply to Russell Brown,
it seems odd to me to completely lock away works produced as commercial art.
Oh absolutely. These works should be in books and galleries and they should be talked about. They are all beautiful as art works in their own right.
But they're more than that. They're products of a particular time and social and political context. They carry with them the marks of certain attitudes that need to be discussed openly and honestly, because they haven't gone away, yet one thing we really need to do as a country and people/s is take a good, hard, honest look at our history.
ETA: Almost forgot. No, they're not golliwogs, but on t-shirts and tea towels as tacky souvenirs they do tend to take on a certain golliwog-ish aspect.
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Capture: Spring is Like a Perhaps Hand, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
Moving along from spring a bit, but …..
So some actual spring flowers from a few months ago.
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Interesting piece by Tapu Misa, although the comments live down to their usual standard.
