Posts by Stephen Judd
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Drug users should be regarded as "patients, not criminals".
Indeed, this is a false dichotomy.
What if we said drug users should be regarded as consumers, and thus protected by the same sort of regulation for purity, safety, standards of commercial behaviour as consumers of other products?
I'm not advocating this necessarily, but I think that while user-as-criminal view has an overtly moralising angle, the user-as-patient view is founded on an implicit moral disapproval of drug that is just as constricting.
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Why wouldn't a 10 year old be angry? Every parent knows how righteous children can be.
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That really depends on what kind of zombie Emma might be.
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Sorry Joe, that was meant more in the way of "and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were REAL small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri" and not so much as a statement of fact about the class origins of New Zealand premiers.
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EDIT BUTTON PLEASE.
possibilities for radical change in society
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i do think his notion of giving people "a chance to develop alternative social models to everyday New Zealand society" in the form of communes on Crown land quite remarkable.
From the vantage of now, when the neo-liberal consensus is impossible to escape, yes.
Maybe in the 70s, when Labour prime winisters were working class and socialism was still a concept people could straightforwardly support, it wasn't.
I don't know, I was four when Norman Kirk died and I still remember listening to the radio and wondering what it was that he was late for. But I do wonder if we aren't all a lot more jaded about the possibilities for radical in society than people were in 1972.
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Aren't these the people who are the first to bang on about cover ups and conspiracies and things being concealed from the public? Hilarious.
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For that unflinching pursuit of what tastes good, heedless of price, I salute you, Rob Hosking.
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Is it wrong of me to wonder whether McCroskrie (jeeze that name's hard to spell right) hasn't just turned our own local culture war into a lucrative business?
Perhaps those media figures who aided and abetted him in this sordid misrepresentation could redeem themselves by applying a little investigative rigour to the Family First organisation.
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I'm presuming public safety is the 'argument' behind the ban, rather than just because Whanganui folk don't like the look of it.
I was discussing this law, and Gio's excellent crack upthread, with some colleagues today. One of them supported the ban, simply because it would annoy gang members. And I think that is definitely a motivation for people who support this law. Gang members swagger around in their regalia, let's take them down a peg by stripping it off them.
This law isn't based on any sort of rational policy or consideration of actions and consequences. It's about the realm of the symbolic.