Posts by Steve Withers
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Don't forget about ECAN. Democracy got a bullet between the eyes there, too. What does the government have against Christchurch?
National hasn't impressed me with the ease they kill off democracy to enable their business projects.
A copy of "Shock Doctrine" should be delivered to every home in the city. This looks like a text-book example of using a crisis to override all on the path to a neo-liberal agenda for Canterbury.
The rest of the country should - must - take note.
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Hard News: "Because we can", in reply to Mark Graham,
“Bullshit politicking” can work because everyone knows someone (or knows someone who knows someone) who is sitting around on the benefit having babies. I, personally, witnessed this over the past few years. The gang connections. The boy-racer cars. The low-level drug dealing. No one has a job. Quiet periods while various family members were in jail for petty offences. The fights….and though they may be the only family out of 300 in the area who behave that way…..everyone knew them (or knew of them). So while they might be less than 1% of the population, they feature larger than life in the gossip / rumour “life” of the neighbourhood….and become the ‘basket’ containing numerous activities they DIDN’T do….but people want someone to blame. That’s all you need for bs politics to gain traction: a good, emotionally satisfying anecdote will invalidate all rational statistical perspectives.
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I'm very happy to hear it wasn't what he said. I'm not so happy about what enabling software patents means for the outcome of the TPPA. It also doesn't change the general presumption of willingness to use Kiwi soldiers' lives as bargaining chip in trade relations. Actions there by labour and National are clear enough.....though at least Labour stood by the UN and the law instead of joining the Coalition of the Lied To.
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Thanks for pointing this out. It represents a continuation of one of the National Party’s primary foreign policy themes: (Broadly) Do whatever the US says. From Kim Dotcom to suddenly allowing software patents (TPPA foreshadowing BIG time) this IS what they do. I still remember Simon Power and Wayne Mapp slagging Clark / Labour’s refusal to join the invasion of Iraq because it would cost us a free trade agreement with the US. They retracted “by lunchtime”, but the point had been clearly made: If you want the lives of Kiwi service men and women whored for better relations with the United States (and better trade deals) then they are the party you want to vote for. In your extract Key explicitly links the willingness to get into wars with a "high quality" free trade agreement. He's selling dead kiwis again.
As it happens, this aspect of their policy rules them out as worthy of support pretty much forever. I'm amazed anyone with a skerrick of care for their fellow kiwis votes for them at all. Do farmers really want blood money for their milk?
Does it make me angry? Definitely. Most definitely.
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The format of the Herald hardly matters. Their editorials in recent days have seen them trenchantly ridiculed in the comments, their credibility as a ‘journal of record’ very much in doubt for many. For example, they opposed plain packaging of cigarettes on the grounds of intellectual property? The same argument being run by the tobacco peddlars. The Herald slammed Julian Assange as one-eyed and self-interested. Similar clangers have appeared in recent leaders. The irony is often overwhelmingly delicious. Will they have any more insight or integrity in a new format? No breath being held here.
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I'm happy to put money into anything that combats the "Len's Train Set" / beneficiary-bashing / race-baiting propaganda we get from the sadly degraded MSM in NZ. I've indicated I'd pay $50 a month just for starters....which is about half of what sport-loving people pay for SKY TV every month. I'd rather have something closer to the truth for my money. If it's good enough, I'll pay more than that. Sky isn't on the menu anyway as long as Rupert Murdoch owns any of it.
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Hard News: And so it begins, in reply to Bart Janssen,
I understand there can be measures. One might even be tempted to use these measures in comparing things. But if the 'resolution' of the measures themselves is too low, then the value of the measure is undermined. Having been the beneficiary - simultaneously - of good tuition and bad tuition at the same schools, year on year, I personally would not find any resolution limited to the level of an entire school as anything but the most gross of metrics. It would tend to obscure the good and the bad in some kind of average....rendering it less meaningful than if done teacher by teacher. I also don't assume teachers perform consistently year on year. The get ill. They divorce. Their children are ill...or die. They cease enjoying their work...or they love it more than ever. So many variables....time being chief among them. The sort of measures the government is talking about can be of very little value even in the current year....never mind forward or backward in time.
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Hard News: The question of Afghanistan…, in reply to tussock,
Tussock: Thanks for posting. Occasionally more accurate vocabulary intrudes into the flow of the approved narrative....which tends to have captured the language even among people who do not agree with the approved narrative. I don't use the world "insurgents". It's the new version of "radicals" and "extremists"......which used to be used to dismiss and deride anyone who opposed the Western agenda in a particular state.
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I don't see how anyone can compare schools at all. It's about the relationships between a teacher and the children being taught in a given year. Last year isn't like this year won't be like next year. In that classroom. In that school. In any school. Anywhere.
Let's see the government publish league tables on marriage, friendship and acquaintances. I want to know who the best spouses, friends and acquaintances are so I can hook up with them.
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A good story well told. Thank you for sharing it.