Posts by chris
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Showing us how it’s done. I’m incredibly impressed by this, it’s a tiny group yet the methods, the very specific location, the clarity in the way the message is expressed and the restraint by all concerned affords it equal MSM visibility compared with any of the large scale Saturday marches we’ve seen. Well done people!
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Sorry I'm late to this discussion, I've been up to my ears registering Twitter accounts to fake follow Scout.
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Legal Beagle: Breaking News: Man Shot by…, in reply to Joe Wylie,
He said it was a reminder that people driving alone late at night in areas with bars and hotels should keep their doors locked.
That sounds strangely famliar.
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Legal Beagle: Breaking News: Man Shot by…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
No doubt you’ve caught up with this too. Who are all these people? Why are the heads of their industries coming out to bat for them and in turn tarring any number of prominent people in their industry as possible suspects? Is this suspect the same person as either of the suspects listed above? How about this one? Will this one be playing in the world cup? Could it be Sir Richie or Kevin Meleamu? Who knows. Weird place.
But I was drunk m’lud.
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Speaker: Refugee fear-mongering must stop, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Thank you very much for that Bart, it’s very much appreciated. From a distance and with so little exposure via the media beyond the negative I find it all to easy on a personal level to lazily categorically file the whole gamut of middle eastern countries under the category “war zone”. We hear and see very little of these places as they exist – shall we say ‘normally’.
Beyond the calls for refugee resettlement, aid, military intervention, miscarriages of justice, inhumane punishments etc, I’d gamble that most people in this country know very little about most middle eastern countries as functional entities. IMHO The void that this under-reporting carves out is ample dehumanisation to sufficiently facilitate Governments’ claims for military intervention in each new instance of a conflict occurring .
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Speaker: Refugee fear-mongering must stop, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Worth remembering the gung ho Russian intervention as well
It’s no secret that Syria has been the Russia and the USSR’s closest middle eastern ally for some time, so these close ties would no doubt have been considered by the west when deciding which of the anti-Government factions to arm and even when deciding to use the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as a cover to help co-opt the protest movement. Obviously it would have been naive to expect Russia to simply turn their back on an alliance lasting over half a century.
You mentioned on that thread that you visited Syria about a decade ago Bart, so I was wondering if you’d be willing to paint more of a picture as to how things were there, especially in terms of attitudes towards the Government, unrest, emigration etc as you’d have a much better idea than most of how Syria functioned before civil war broke out, even if only anecdotal.
While in China I talked to a number of people who’d been involved in the Tiananmen square protests, though not as many as I’d have liked, but the overriding sense I got was that in that case there were a lot of kids buoyed by prospects of a romantic getaway, taking advantage of the free rail travel for university students, who just wanted to be a part of something exciting, pawns essentially. We know that when these types of Governments are threatened, ethics are thrown out the window, and it’s generally accepted that successful revolution will usually take yonks.
I'm haunted by the gnawing sense that were we to triple the refugee intake, even if we were to take all the refugees from all the war torn states, we're still only doing half the job as long as we do this without addressing in the strongest possible terms the ongoing domestic interference by the super powers, especially while sitting on the UNSC.
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Polity: Refugees and aid - we’re laggards, in reply to David Hood,
You have a calendar from 1965?
No I don’t, it was a lame attempt to make light of a royal fuck up.
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It is a shame that people who make this argument did not apply it to the deployment of our troops to the Middle East.
I don’t know what makes me more uncomfortable. Obviously those who make that argument are wrong and they’ve been overruled to a degree in this instance. But those who make both these arguments in a professional capacity as opinion leaders i.e. send troops and take in refugees, are the ones that really scare me. people like Duncan Garner:
The PM is about to commit our combat SAS troops to fight Islamic State. I have no problem with it – it is our job – what’s your view?
Increase the quota, Prime Minister. It’s not about whether we can afford to take more refugees.
The truth is, we can no longer afford to sit still and ignore the crisis from afar.
Or Chester Borrows:
I have no doubt that, in the same situation, any New Zealand government of any political hue would do exactly the same.
We are not picking puppies or choosing kittens here.
With 52 million displaced persons on the planet, somebody has to do something regardless of race or ethnicity.
As if documented causality between the macho gung-ho western intervention and the rise of ISIS isn’t readily available, as if the world is just something to throw money at, and see what comes out in the rinse. Being part of the problem and part of the solution, hedging bets, selling product.
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Polity: Refugees and aid - we’re laggards, in reply to chris,
I just wish I hadn't used a 1965 calender.
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Polity: Refugees and aid - we’re laggards, in reply to ,
I’m deadly serious.