Posts by Angus Robertson
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Our senior ministers were in a purely domestic tizzy about being kept in the dark over a flight to Kuwait that everyone else seemed to know about. It was Downer who raised the stakes, surely.
How can it possibly be a purely domestic issue when it is a flight to Kuwait from Australia? These are not part of New Zealand. Our government is shouting that it is objectionable and wrong to transport Australian troops to Kuwait. Inferring that the Australian troops are objectionable material that must be kept off of our planes. Helen Clark is damned lucky Kev Rudd likes to visit NY tittie bars or this could well be making Downer look good defending Aussie troops against her implied barbs.
PS: Paul Campbell if you are concerned about terrorism do not get on any plane into LAX that is an actual target of terrorists, as opposed to Air NZ that is possible target for terrorists. -
But entirely absent from that dispiriting December evening in 1931 is the great surge of hope and relief that will fl ow through the working class communities of New Zealand in four years' time. To be sure, the ravages of the Depression have boosted the size of Labour's 'democratic public' from a quarter to a third of the dominion's population, but in rural and provincial centres the new 'National' government of Forbes and Coates continues to hold sway.
Labour was damned 'lucky' Mr Davy was around to secure 1931s victory for National, considering the whole world went to hell in the 1931 - 1935 period. This was 2 years prior to the New Deal began and anything we did alone would have been very vulnerable.
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Charles,
Those stories you have heard are from a sample of thousands of people and you are comparing it to your own singular experience. Statistically your experience is irrelevent.
Plus there is the whole other factor in harrassment as to what the harrassee is expected to do. For instance judging from personal experience alone a Hell's Angel will be unaware that the Animal liberation Front are against the wearing of leather, no card carrying member has come up and spat on his jacket; whereas if he were a lady in fashionable fur coat.... If you represent more of a physical threat than a skinny asian kid, you are less likely to be attacked by a bullying racist.
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Although 'more Chinese than thou' types can be annoying (I'm probably one of them at times) as can 'more Indian than thou' types, are they the primary source of racism experienced by those groups in the West?
No that'd be us white folks. Cause everybody is racist* and there are more white folks here in the West than Chinese or Indians. If you feel the need to be subjected to racism from a primarily Chinese or Indian source go to Beijing or Dehli.
* This is true for everybody except [fill in own name here]. -
It is reflexive racism plain and simple. To be a racist you have to believe that races are different with a distinct way of thinking that is superior to others. The racist world view is in terms of skin tone that define a persons thoughts and actions.
Mind you, I like bagpipes.
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Russell Brown,
What happened here, and what was going on in Rotorua in the 1980s, was evil. And I know one thing: Clint Rickards not only should not be one of our most senior policemen, he should not be in the force at all. He is lucky to be at large.
What you think you know and what you can prove are two entirely different things. And as long as that remains the case Clint Rickards (presuming he does not rape anyoneelse) has nothing to worry about. He has been found innocent on the evidence discovered and can keep his job (or accept a multi-million severence).
He is in my opinion positively blessed with luck, because no matter how guilty he may be it is not politically expedient to investigate corrupt practices in the police in the lead up to an election. The problem being that if serious digging is conducted into Rotorua, circa. 1980 there is real potential that this will spread to the rest of the country and a stench of corruption will be unleashed in an election year. You yourself explained this dilemma when confronted with Wishart's allegations involving the Dunedin police and you were right - inquiring into corruption in the police is bad news.
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Paul Brislem said in the first comment:
Journalism has (in newspapers) always been about selling eyeballs to advertisers, not stories to readers... the readers are the product, not the customer.
Age old question of retail - make more money by selling more highly profitable product to a select band of customers or by selling more of a less profitable product?
Only if news-providers solely go for the highly profitable product route with stories linked to adds will Kieth's assertion be justifiable.
However if they want more readers they need to appeal to more readers by making headline news and Kieth's assertion is not justifiable.
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Yet if the jihad cannot be explained solely through geopolitics, it's only decent to consider this story, noting the death of 80 civilians in a single American attack in Afghanistan, alongside the weekend's incidents in Britain, in which, thankfully, no one was even injured. While we are frightened by the callousness and evil intent of the homegrown British plots, it's as well to bear in mind the other innocents who died these past few days.
That was not an American "attack", that was an American "defence". A Taliban force launched an attack and were then pursued by the Americans to the village.
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The $20 million payment to end the Securities Commission's case against them was less than a third of what they made selling off TranzRail shares in 2002
They could have been fined $100 millions if they had been convicted of insider trading and done possible jail time. They were able to avoid prosecution for insider trading with a technicallity. NZ's insider trading law requires prosecution of trade within 2 years of trade even if the insider trading is not discovered until it is too late to prosecute.
This failling of the law was corrected last year after the SC lost the case on this prosecution. -
And if youbelieve that, you'll believe anything.
Apparently so. For one thing firing rubber bullets and teargas into peaceful demonstrations is wrong. Also that smashing the free press is wrong. That censuring debate is wrong. That these wrongs are so simple and as easy to understand that a child could understand them if told in a bedtime story.
But others believe it to be complex and that it is wrong to be calling him a tinpot dictator who rules through intimidation & fear. That his actions are somehow mitigated because someone somehwere is doing something else and it is complex.
Or perhaps there is some vague understanding that this man or that woman are on my side in a bigger conflict and thus their actions are justified. They are not. Each action has its own merit or otherwise.