Posts by DexterX
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Strange times indeed - everyone "is" and becomes "news".
It is good to turn the whole social media thing off and get on with the business ofl living - you get more done.
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For word of the year try "Report".
There have been so many disasters, failures, in most spheres or "governance" – all that happens is there is another report in response and no solution or change in policy.
Novapay, The Dunny Leak, The ongoing privacy failures, The Bain Report, The further report on the Bain report, The Len Saga, the Police were waiting for one etc, etc
Also I am sad that First Citizen, Mr Wow himself, John (in the key of awesome) Key wasn't time magazine's person of the year. I needed to share it somewhere.
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1981 it was a civil war - well almost.
An image seared in my mind was looking up the railway line from Morningside to Kingsland and see riot squad members placed about ever 20 metres apart all the way around the bend.
I can remember thinking, "I was so relieved we didn't have a gun culture". .
Although I have in my mind his story when thinking of Nelson Mandela the images of the 1981 tour protests are stronger than any image I have of him as a person/statesman.
I couldn't be dismissive of anyone involved in countering prejudice as "well-intentioned people who were very long sighted about institutional and casual racism on the other side of the world".
Nelson Mandela's passing has, for me, become about overcoming prejudice and being glad people, not just here, but all over the world got up to meet the challenge.
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Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Alec Morgan,
Really if a government figure has to go it should ideally be Hone Harawira leader of Auckland Patu squad in ’81 and nowTe Mana. He is the only actual government rep with any credibility beyond office holding for such a representative role. Hone don’t forget was the sole NZ politician to attend Aussies “Sorry” day, no one else had the rap or balls to attend.
Totally Agree.
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As a teenager in the late 1970s I discussed the Anti Tour Movement with my father - his view was that it was important to protest to show that you cared and give hope to the people in South Africa, and he expanded how apartheid, and any form of institutional discrimination, robbed people of fulfilling their potential and the gifts that their potential could bestow was lost to humanity.
When I began working in Otahuhu in the 1980s – it struck me being in the minority at the bus station, a first time experience. I can remember reading the Biko biography during my lunchtimes at the Otahuhu Library just how savage the state can be to an individual, to people, in wanting to defeat an ideal – for no other purpose than to defeat and deny the ideal.
The protests against the tour bought out some pretty savage and ignorant racist prejudice – an example that sticks in my mind from one geezer, was “The problem with Mandela was that he was educated, proof that you shouldn’t educate the blacks it created trouble.”
A focus of the anti tour movement was to educate and counter the racist viewpoint –opposition to apartheid took NZ on a journey it needed to travel.
In the early 2000s I worked with two South African expats, father and son, on a building project and recall them saying that it wasn’t until they came to live and worked in NZ and were amongst us, NZers of all races, working alongside each other as equals that they realised why people had protested so long and hard against the tour. They realised how flawed apartheid was – but at the time they just didn’t know, it could be any other way.
This is a quote from NJ in the NZ Herald –
“Nelson Mandela was proof that if you keep to your just principles, the people in the wrong will eventually bow down. RIP”
Nelson Mandela a gift to the human race - and to all those people that stick to just principles – Thanks.
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Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Matthew Hooton,
he was alongside Reagan, Thatcher in the sense of bringing tyranny to an end
I appreciate that you have expressed yourself well, however. I cannot see Reagan and Thatcher alongside Mandela ever. They both cast Mandela as a terrorist for seeking universal suffrage so that all people in South Africa had the right to vote regardless of race.
Mandela would not sit comfortably alongside such ill company; he would be civil but uncomfortable - civil unrest.
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A blast from the past:
http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/patu-1983 -
Hard News: The judge is not helping, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Matters revolve around the "the issues to be determined in that proceeding". s68.2 Evidence Act.
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2006/0069/latest/DLM393681.html
Form what I understand of this case from reports on the pleadings of both parties - Slater based his "published material", from a hard drive (stolen) that belonged to Blomfield's and was given to Slater by Blomfield's former employer (under a fanchise arrangement).
Blomfield only had one employer in such circumstance.The informant’s, Slater's source, identity is known to both parties - IMHO there is no service to the public interest in this case in not allowing Bloomfield the disclosure sought.
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Hard News: The judge is not helping, in reply to Matthew Poole,
It’s the outcome of the appeal which will create a precedent, one way or the other.
I consider the appeal judgment won’t have a long reach or wide application.
The appeal judgement, depending on what it is, will only create precedent that extends to defamation proceedings involving published material that is similar in nature to the material that is the subject of the proceedings between Blomfield and Slater.
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Hard News: The judge is not helping, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
You are right - I meant "News Media"..