Posts by Rich Lock
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Hard News: About Occupy Wall Street, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
rather than a purely military expedition
I think your definition of ‘war’ is a little too narrow and formal. I can’t, off the top of my head, think of very many ‘purely military’ expeditions over the scope of history which didn’t go hand in hand with conquest or trade protection/expansion.
There just wasn’t any point to it. (Not much point now, come to that.)
A thought that’s been forming in my head for a while, and which is currently around the half-baked stage is that over the last 5000 years or so of recorded history, the amount of time where there hasn’t been a war on somewhere is pretty much zero.
It might be pointless, but as a species, we do an awful lot of it, nearly all the time. To delude ourselves that violence is the exception in our make-up rather than the norm might not be helping us deal with it.
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If you can be bothered waiting for their stupid Flash site to load
Can't get on that site, but have a read of this.
Sometimes, machismo outweighs a pleasant dining experience.
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Hard News: About Occupy Wall Street, in reply to DCBCauchi,
I grew up thinking I was English, until I actually met some English people.
I grew up thinking I wasn't very English, until I lived somewhere else...
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I favour Fatima's in Takapuna or Ponsonby for kebabs. Correctly wrapped, too.
I've always liked Zap for quick and easy foodcourt-level Thai. And speaking of spicy and building up a tolerance, a friend once commented 'I am become death, destroyer of worlds'* on a nam tok that I thought was just the right side of nicely warm.
*wrong culture, dude!
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Hard News: Dropping the Bomber, in reply to Just thinking,
Sue has always had the deepest red hue.
Greens were always just a means by which to be gleen the political scene.Not a true Scotsman, then?
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Hard News: About Occupy Wall Street, in reply to Simon Grigg,
they are essentially the same place racially, linguistically and culturally
Well, the history of the planet seems to be tightly woven with struggles between factions that to the outside eye are indistingushable, for causes that are incomprehensible. Civil wars are generally the most vicious.
they are essentially the same place....linguistically and culturally
Must be why so many Kiwis like hatin' on the Ozzies, eh?
<gets coat and hides>
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Or what India/Pakistan/Afghanistan would have been like if not arbitarily called into nationhood by some Brit drawing lines on a map (see also: Africa).
Or if the UN hadn’t intervened in Korea. Or if the French hadn’t had a revolution (too early to tell?). Or, or, or….
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Hard News: Where are the foreigners?!, in reply to BenWilson,
I’m not much of a fan of being called European, though. “White” is closer to what people usually actually mean. Pakeha will do in NZ. Skippy, in Australia. Anglo, maybe, except that I’m ethnically Irish on the whole, so actually Celtic.
Interesting with the Rugby on to be reminded how immediately identifiable the French were/are. There’s certainly a very distinct Gallic look (yes, outside their impeccable sense of fashion yadda yadda etc). Certainly different to a distinctively Celtic or Scandinavian look. Calling us/them all ‘European’ makes about as much sense as referring to everyone from the Phillipines up to Mongolia ‘Chinese’.
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Hard News: About Occupy Wall Street, in reply to Lilith __,
Got no idea what you’re referring to.
PAS in-joke. A certain republican cheerleader turns up occasionally to sermonise and try to convert all us lefty heathens to the One True Path.
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Hard News: About Occupy Wall Street, in reply to Russell Brown,
I was a doubter of the anti-capitalist protests. They were often incoherent. The same march would have people demanding trade barriers for developing countries be dismantled marching alongside US steelworkers and farmers demanding protection via increased tariffs and subsidies. Their demands were incompatible.
Yes, but there were certain common threads at the core, despite the flakiness at the edges (which may have received more media attention than it warranted), and it’s arguable that they may have got more coherent and focussed as they matured.
And as you say in your original post:
Weird and confusing is right….I’m wondering if Occupy Wall Street, rather than being a polar counterpart to the Tea Party, is begining to blend at the edges
We can draw some parallels, no?