Posts by mark taslov
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Hard News: Lorde, the council and the…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I know the actual experience of jabbing the needle in bit is going to be unpleasantly painful.
One might suggest snorting or smoking it instead if that’s going to be an issue – which depends on propensity for risk/ nuances of the buzz you’re looking for.
Would it be white heroin, brown heroin, black tar? Might it be correct to assume your insistence on "purity" is a preference for uncut stock? How much are you prepared to pay? What other socioeconomic/ cultural factors might we need to take into consideration? Would the intention be recreational use or drug abuse?
Obviously there are some very irrational drug users out there.
think that’s irrational wait til you hear about food.
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Hard News: Lorde, the council and the…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
If one were to inject 60g of ethanol (the amount of alcohol in 120g ounces of 100 proof moonshine) right into the bloodstream, the big difference is the time needed for the alcohol to be absorbed. Instead of taking an hour as would be the case were the alcohol consumed orally, it is all there instantly.
That’s 60 grams of alcohol straight into the bloodstream containing approximately 5 liters (5k grams) of blood. There will be a moment or two where the blood alcohol concentration is 60 / 5,000 – a toxic, possibly fatal level – before that alcohol diffuses into the water and fat of the entire body and falls by a factor of 10 to 60 / 50,000.
So to answer your question Rich, there’s really no chemical difference between drinking and taking alcohol intravenously. In both cases you have the drug flowing in the bloodstream. But because of the time difference you would need to be extremely careful about the amount injected. A mistake could be fatal.
As Bart said:
NZ has a totally broken attitude to alcohol
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something springy and also kinda vintage
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Hard News: Campaign 2017: Buy a…, in reply to Neil,
It’s really pretty sick when you think back on what Yang Jian and his family would have been through, KMT family members (Yang’s grandfather was a KMT General) were pariah still in the 80s to the extent that they’d be pointed at and whispered about in the neighbourhood.
The expectation that Chinese people as a culture might in any way be predisposed to dredging up humanitarian disasters they’ve lived through or criticising the CCP or is so culturally and historically tone-deaf that I’d wager we’ve gone full hillbilly.
oh and Reddell’s:
but never mentions the dreadful evil of the Great Famine,
From the maiden speech:
By the year of my birth in 1962, China had wiped out private ownership in an effort to build a socialist economy. A horrific famine had just passed with the death of millions of people.
What a fucking hatchet job by Pākehā of privilege, as he goes on to say:
In those years, everyone was equal but everyone was poor. The most spectacular present that I received for my 10th birthday was two eggs for breakfast.
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Hard News: Campaign 2017: Buy a…, in reply to Neil,
Indeed, it’s peppered with cold war rhetoric, false equivalence and a big old dose of the splain. How could Yang have neglected to mention The Great Famine…? The cheek.
The irony being that as per regulations in that era – 2 generations post revolution as it were – it’s his grandfather’s membership of the KMT that would have automatically precluded him from been allowed to advance in any meaningful way within the military or the state. The military or state at that time of course being the only employers.
Fortunately our democracy is better than that. ;)
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One thing that interested me, from the sprawling section where Reddell explains all the things that Yang should have said (if he were a loyal New Zealander):
But what of Jian Yang? I had a look yesterday at his maiden speech in Parliament, delivered in February 2012. Maiden speeches are often an occasion for a new member to outline their personal philosophy, and the things that made them who they are, and led them to seek to enter politics. A few are classics – I recall being taught from Sir John Marshall’s in my first year politics course decades ago.
Read without knowing he’d been a member of the Communist Party (well under 10 percent of China’s citizens are), or had been a serving participant in the intelligence establishment, it might seem inoffensive enough, although still a little surprising. To serious champions of liberty, the Tianamen Square protests and subsequent government massacres stand as a continuing charge against the Chinese state and Party. How does Yang deal with them? (they disrupted his plans for graduate study abroad) They are nothing more than “student demonstrations”.
He can safely be mildly critical of the Cultural Revolution – his parents were apparently sent to the countryside for “re-education” – but never mentions the dreadful evil of the Great Famine, one of the worst man-made (Chinese government made) disasters ever. There are boilerplate references to his support for opportunity and choice, but no attacks on the evil of the one-child policy, still in place at the time Yang gave his speech. Nothing about the lack of freedom of expression, the lack of freedom of religion, the lack of any free alternative to the Communist Party in China. Instead, we get paeans to the “success” of the Chinese government in “lifting millions of people out of poverty”, as if the same government hadn’t driven them unnecessarily further into poverty in the first place – and he has the gall to suggest that “reflecting on the way in which China has achieved its positive change and development gives me a firm belief that the policies of the National Party are in the best interests of New Zealand.”
And for someone with an academic background in international relations and an expressed interest in contributing on foreign affairs matters in Parliament, nothing at all about Chinese expansionism in the South China Sea, or its advocacy internationally of alternative visions of governance antithetical to liberal democracy.
It is one thing to be proud of your ethnic background – and China has an ancient culture that once led the world – but Yang showed absolutely no sign of having turned his back on, or a desire to call out, the evils of a repressive authoritarian party and government that has never recanted its mistakes, that has failed economically (compare Taiwan and China for example) and which represents a threat to us, and to countries (and believers in freedom) throughout east Asia.
And it wasn’t just the maiden speech. As the Financial Times notes, since entering Parliament “he has consistently pushed for closer ties with Beijing and for international policies and positions echoing those of China’s Communist party."
I can’t think of any offhand but perhaps someone has examples of a Labour or National MP speaking out about the atrocities committed (and that continue to be committed) in China in anything but the vaguest pedestrian obligatory terms this century? Might Shearer have spoken up on issues of this nature while in Government?
Would it be out-on-a-limb to suggest that Yang here is being criticised for basically following what has been the standard New Zealand Foreign Policy line over successive administrations due to his origins?
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Hard News: Campaign 2017: Buy a…, in reply to simon g,
You’d think it might have been an opportunity to openly criticise the authoritarian regime (being able to use the insider’s perspective he’d gained in his misguided youth) that he had turned his back on in choosing to come to New Zealand. But apparently not.
Yes isn’t it peculiar how banal things likely family loyalty may come to play as an influence in not publicly speaking out against an authoritarian regime in case the authoritarian regime ends up doing exactly what authoritarian regimes tend to do, to your family members.
The fact that Reddell selectively omitted this piece of family history from his analysis of Yang’s maiden speech is disappointing:
Mr Speaker, as an immigrant who witnessed and experienced the many political upheavals in China, I do not take any of the benefits I’m enjoying now for granted. My grandfather was a general of the Nationalist Party, or KMT, which is today the ruling party in Taiwan. When the Communist Party came to power in China in 1949, my grandfather lost all his property, was imprisoned and lived in poverty for the rest of his life.
As for the national Party; there are enough white faces with a finger in the pie not to singularly target the low hanging fruit.
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Hard News: Campaign 2017: Buy a…, in reply to Katharine Moody,
Personally I'm not convinced that it's all that helpful to attempt to erase the difference between being a cryptographer in the US military and being an English and American Studies lecturer at a Chinese military college.
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Hard News: Campaign 2017: Buy a…, in reply to simon g,
He’s fluent in Mandarin, because he’s racist ..
in context of this election campaign, accounting for Labour’s previous targeting of Chinese people earlier on, and in light of the the timing and likely outcomes this far out, Jamil has certainly not done himself any favours in that regard.