Posts by Rob Stowell
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Sorry Simon for the appearance of an echo!
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If by democracy, Neil, you mean majority rule, that was the fatal flaw in the neo-con vision for Iraq from the start. The oppressed majority of Shi'ites in Iraq really don't have anywhere else to look for friends- in a middle-east overheated with militant monotheisms. The Iranians are hardly opposed to the SIRC.
It's worth remembering that Iran is also a democracy- one of very few more-or-less genuinely democratic countries in the region- and with a very large population of young people, growing up with (relatively new) democratic expectations. -
Friends and I have kicked around the idea of a series of semi-nostalgic books called "The Ghost Building of...(Insert city)." - the best pictures we could find of the iconic buildings we've lost, plus appropriate reminisences. Ok it'll never happen- but in an equally "it'll never happen"- wouldn't it be great if (courtesy of Wingnut or Google earth) you could take a "virtual walk" down Queen St in say 1890, 1920, or 1960. You can't visit Dunedin without noticing it had the first big building projects in NZ and that it STILL has them.
Yer right- here's plenty that's great about Auckland- and Chch for that matter- but with a few exceptions the quality of architecture and public spaces are shabby- and seems Auckland is going down faster...
ps thanks for the music! -
I like the tino flag, it'd be an advance- but the jeffy james is better. Still- we've flown the hundertwasser for years (in a thoroughly non-jingoistic and straight-lines-are-the-devils-work sort of way....) And we'd prefer to get right away from all the red, white, blue, black styles (Canterbury colours for NZ?)- which the hundertwasser flag signally does. Another dose of affinity for L, S and S? Maybe. And all the better for it, I say. We ain't looking for something that'll stand out on a 19th (or 21st) century battlefield.
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Thanks for the very insightful analysis. I'd never considered the "official bi-cultural project" in this light (and I'm not sure I do now) but it's a fascinating notion.
I was lucky enough to be taught by the late (and I reckon great) David Novitz for a few years- and he had a lot to say about the concept of "culture". I may be way wrong, but his take was that the word is as used is so sematically (?) messy it's almost meaningless. Cultures are almost never monolithis or static (unless they're "dead" cultures) and attempts to talk of them as if they were were either mis-guided or (more commonly, perhaps) jingoistic and political....
Anyway- thanks. It's a great debate, and I hope for all our sakes it's one Bill English can continue to participate in. -
I'm also inclined to give Key some benefit of the doubt- but what most are observing is that "Mr Key’s proposal’s" are so far very thin. Tipping one's "support for community organisations backed by big business bucks" implies that community organisations aren't backed (Labour HAS lost cred and allies here, but I don't think it's a crisis) and that somehow truckloads of big-business-bucks are awaiting Key's call to be off-loaded on the "underclass" (who will not spend a cent of it on P but sagely decide to send their children to university.) Hmm.
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The New Zealand Wars is a great series- if only for Belich's shear arm-waving David-Bellamy-style enthusiasm for the subject- and you've been able to pick it up in bargain-bins at the Warehouse for a couple of years. Certainly worth buying- but not if it means people stop reading the book!
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It was uncanny- the liberal political blogosphere was running hot on Sen Biden and there he was joking about with Jon last night.... Watching them it was hard not to think Jon Stewart would make the better president. And wouldn't the press conferences be fun.
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Poor old Herald? It's priceless:
"These bloggers, operating under their own misguided belief of self-freedom rarely research any offerings..."
While at the Herald, we offer- not spit- the well-researched and venomless opinion that:
"most bloggers - and we're talking 95 per cent - are fly by night, gutless wonders who prefer to spit venom under inarticulate pseudonyms …"
If it was available on-line, that'd be pretty close to "cyber-bullying" ...
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Ahhh- that should be 1: 2.38 - rather better.