Posts by giovanni tiso
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to DCBCauchi,
What I don’t understand is why the cost of someone possibly being offended by something should outweigh the benefit of anyone else using that thing to create something new?
Nazism and Fascism aren't "something new". Italy and Germany have laws against the use of the language and symbols of those historical movements. They are imperfect laws, and they are powerless of course to prevent the rise of various neo-fascist and neo-nazis groups. But I'm still glad we have them. I'm glad it's actually against the law to wave a fascist or nazi flag, if only for the pain that they bring to victims' descendants and the remaining survivors.
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Sacha,
No kidding.
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Kumara Republic,
It’s the hardliners who are more prone to sharp political turncoating later in life.
Do you plan to keep saying that until it becomes magically true?
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Russell Brown,
Lindsay Perigo was brought up in a Marxist household; Keith Windschuttle and Elizabeth Rata are both apostates. Martin Durkin, producer of The Great Global Warming Swindle, was a member of a group around Marxism Today. It’s quite a thing.
No, it really is not. Firstly, because if you broaden it to "being brought up in a Marxist household", it reaches Family Ties-like levels of silly. And secondly, because I could bring up a lot more people who swung from the social democratic left to the rabid right. Like, I don't know, Douglas, Caygill, Prebble, Bassett.
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Kumara Republic,
When Francis Fukuyama broke big-time with the neo-cons, he likened them to Leninists:
Wow, is Francis Fukuyama actually your source? That’s pretty funny. Because you know, Roger Douglas will go to his grave insisting that he’s the one true socialist. We should totally define socialism on the basis of what he says.
But it’s not even what Fukuyama is saying. Could you kindly point me to a prominent member of the neoconservative movement who used to be a Marxist? How about Wolfowitz? Perle? Kristol? Cheney? Feith? Fukuyama himself? A number of them were in fact former members of the Democratic party or social democrats, like Abrams. Somehow though you never hear people say look, that guy at university was a moderate leftie and now he’s a rabid right winger – there must be something really wrong with the moderate left.
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Kumara Republic,
And it’s no coincidence that many neo-cons and Teabaggers are ex-Marxists. It’s the dogmatic zeal that remains the same.
Aaaaand the world's most spurious piece of anecdata rears its ugly head again.
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Hard News: Science: it's complicated, in reply to Bart Janssen,
If you choose to believe one or other scientist then be very careful about the motivations of that scientist.
Yes. I mean it's not as if scientists who work at AgResearch could possibly be biased on this subject.
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Muse: WHORISH SELF-PROMOTION VS.…, in reply to Jackie Clark,
My husband gets excited about very little, and he is new to the whole online game, but he did get his knickers in a twist about this. “Just imagine” he said ” I don’t have to buy books anymore”.
Whereas I get excited at the prospect of fairs being flooded with second-hand books. Everyone’s a winner!
I too was thrilled since it means we can now contemplate getting rid of all his books which are in piles everywhere.
See?
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Che Tibby,
who was it who said recently that the biggest threat to Europe isn’t islam, but resurgent fascism?
Me?
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Che Tibby,
italian ex-minister defends ideas of norwegian terrorist, "[his] ideas are in defence of western civilisation."
I was timing him (Borghezio, not Tibby).