Posts by Kumara Republic
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Eerily reminiscent of Vyvan on the Young Ones.
Roflnui.
Interestingly enough, the car right outside is a Mitsubishi Sigma. If these wackos practised what they preached, shouldn't it be a Ford/Holden/BLMC?
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What bothers me about Finlay Macdonald's article is that it parallels many other defences of people being unpleasant in equating freedom of expression to some kind of freedom from consequences. We live in an age where pretty much anyone can comment to the widest of public audiences about anything (and it is a matter of personal preference if they do so in "Your Views" or P.A.S., and a matter of newsworthiness if it travels via traditional media channels). Just as people have the freedom to speak, the widest of public audiences has the freedom to speak back.
In the war memorial story there may be issues for the state of the media around the prominence the story was given, but once the story was out there everyone was free to comment on it.
I see a lot of conflation of many individuals voices saying what they think into the idea that some group is picking on a particular person.The hoary old chestnut of where to draw the line between free speech and hate speech.
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Saving Private Ryan is used to teach the rules of engagement in our NZDF.
And isn't Platoon also shown in official defence circles too?
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David Harris, the creator of Pegasus Mail, wrote the following in 2002. It's more relevant than ever.
New Zealand is in real danger of becoming a McDonalds nation - nothing more than a bland plastic replica of suburban USA - simply because we can't seem to believe that we are as good as we are, or that our own culture and expertise have the value they do. As long as we remain focused on the trap of being "Little America", we're ignoring our greatest strengths: our individuality, our number-8-wire approach to finding novel
solutions to problems, and an inherent humanity that believes that there might be more or better reasons for doing something than just the bucks in the bank. -
Do these fellas fall under the Gang Patch Bill? Or does it only apply if there's a test involving a brown paper bag?
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I think most people kind of hoped last year we went from people who read the Guardian online and watch the BBC to people who read the Telegraph online and watch CNN.
Unfortunately, this government clearly aims no higher than the Daily Mail and Fox News.
Prolefeed, anybody? How about whitebread and media circuses?
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It is rather the Tall Poppy Syndrome writ large - let's try not to create any excellent students
It overlaps with what Germaine Greer controversially described about her native Australia.
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Re: Minister Tolley's education policy - what next, gakushū juku? Seriously though, we seem to be shifting towards the kind of system Japan is moving away from.
I'm reminded of parts of season 4 of The Wire (cheers to all those people on here who kept plugging that show, very good), where the Maths teacher was instructed to stop teaching maths and just teach writing skills, as that is where the school was falling down in terms of achievement and therefore funding. Absolutely terrifying way to run a schooling system.
And people thought Aunty Helen was a control freak.
As for Tolley I am not sure if she knows what she is doing or not, but she does seem at the moment to be the face of anti-science, anti-intellectual and above all anti-evidence New Zealand.
"So what, if you can design a space shuttle? All we want to know is, are you driving the latest Range Rover?"
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Plus I wouldn't underestimate the fact that another fascist, Franco, got to die in his bed. These forces don't just implode and defeat themselves.
Franco and Suharto, like many other tin-pot dictators, were Cold War allies of the West, so their atrocities were wilfully overlooked in the fight against Soviet Communism. The film Balibo, which was @ the Film Fest earlier this year, partly illustrated the two-facedness of such policy.
"But Stalin killed more people than Hitler!" has become something of a cliché in neo-con circles.
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A smart dell (as a graduation present to myself) is just about the only expensive, non-entry lavel piece of technology I've ever purchased.
I'll never forget the combusting laptop incidents in a hurry.