Posts by anjum rahman
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agree with you tom. but then, you have to give them 63 years to achieve that... hopefully with out the world war & resulting ruin as an impetus.
incidentally, india is also a country that has used force to maintain central control. the punjabis tried hard for sovreignity, and i guess have been beaten into submission (an excellent bollywood film called "maachis" is worth seeing, if you can get a version with decent subtitles). also the kashmiris have been trying unsuccessfully ever since partition. the same reasoning seems to be in the minds of the central indian government - if they let one state have independence, many others would want the same.
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china will never let go of tibet, given the current geopolitical situation. it needs to ensure secure boundaries, particularly with US trying to isolate china by sucking up to its near neighbours, particularly india. no doubt US will be doing its best to ensure that china doesn't become a rival superpower, or probably the dominant superpower. splitting china up into various countries a la the former USSR (as suggested by someone upthread) would certainly achieve US objectives, but i wonder how it would really go down with the chinese population.
would love to hear some comments from chinese new zealanders about the situation.
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it could be that mr ralston is getting clannish, and having a rant on behalf of fellow op-ed writers and journalists at the herald, who have also been criticised by various PAS bloggers eg in regards to their criticims of the herald's coverage of the EFA.
but i'd agree with what someone has said previously - if you're writing your opinion publicly or you're going to take an editorial slant, then you have to accept that people will critique it. making personal attacks in response is just a little sad. it only shows he isn't able to debate the substantive issues.
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a bit late, but i would also like to give my condolences to finn's whanau and partner. i really enjoyed his posts here, and find it strange that i can miss someone i never met. it's a sad loss.
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What's with the quote marks around blog? It feels like Dr Evil is reading it out, and he's done the wee quote marks with the fingers... ooh, Russell has got a "blog".
probably to give the impression that it's just a blog, not "real jornalism"?
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the patriotism was amazing
patriotism is not always a good thing. too much patriotism is definitely not a good thing. a nice balance where being proud of who we are and what we've achieved without being arrogant towards others is probably best. in any case, i much prefer our realistic grappling with our troubled past than blind fervour. maori tv looks like it's doing some excellent stuff tomorrow.
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re afgahnistan: this really pisses me off, when so much of the war against the taliban was around the guise of "freeing the women from oppression". i remember soon after the iraq war hearing statements about how iraqi women were now free to wear miniskirts, when the reality is that they are less free to do so than they were before.
i'm so sick of feminism and equality for women being used as a partial justification for bombing the shit out of countries. well - not justification, more a way to try and make us feel good about the liberation we're supposedly bringing about.
i think the only way to improve the lot of women is through education of women, particularly in areas like jurisprudence & theology.
the only way to do that is to provide funding for it. but most of these countries won't take funds from western countries for that purpose, cos it's seen as an attempt to indoctrinate the local population in a way that will continue existing hegemony.
that's the problem with trying to force societal change with international pressure (like the petition). until you stop illegal occupation & the like, no-one is going to listen. all they will think is "great, you bombed the shit out of our infrastructure, you've failed to rebuild what you've destroyed, you've occupied our country & are siphoning off our resources, and now you're going to stop trading (or whatever other sanctions) with us. with that kind of behaviour, why would we listen to anything you have to say about anything?".
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on the day my parents migrated here, they had a conversation in which they thought they heard the other person say "oh, so you've come here to die."
totally offended, they responded "no, we've come here to live".
then there's the whole cross-cultural thing, like when they were invited to come over for tea, and had dinner before they went.
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maybe the lack of sport stuff is because of the lack of volunteer coaches. changes in lifestyles + teachers having too much other stuff to do means that schools seem to find it hard to get decent coaches to develop the competitive sports teams. shouldn't sports bodies be funding some of that (ie sports waikato & the like)? or are they doing it already?
boot camp? a much better option is the trial youth justice facility that has been set up in hamilton, called te hurihanga. this is a residential facility where young offender are given support, education/training and counselling. they spend 6 months at the residential facility, then get another 6 months of intensive support at home and a final 6 months of lower level support. their families have to sign up and commit to supporting the young person as well. to top it off, stephen tindall has stepped up and guaranteed these young people a job at the warehouse to ensure that they don't end up unemployed. it's a brilliant programme, with wonderful staff.but wouldn't you know it, the local national MP has been a vocal opponent, and has done his best to support the NIMBY group in the community. i have yet to hear him say one positive thing about the programme or the facility.
maybe they think a youth rehabilitation programme is not worth doing unless the young people are made to suffer...
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wow, now i feel loved! thanx for all the nice comments.
would love to write, one problem is time; the other is of course fear. i've done a couple of speaker thingies on PA but that was before the comments thing was happening.
i've been thinking about the whole issue of posting a bit more. what i find most strange is that i'm quite a confident public speaker (not saying a good one!), and very rarely get nervous. i'm happy to take all kinds of questions. as i'm often asked to speak about islam/muslims, i usually tell my audience to ask any nasties they like - female circumcision; "all muslims are terrorists"; bigamy; etc etc. they sometimes do - usually they're too polite - and it doesn't bother me at all. i also happily shoot off letters to the editor and have had various opinion pieces published, some of which draw nasty published replies. doesn't bother me one bit.
but i have somehow found posting comments here often leaves me with knots in my tummy. it's so wierd and i haven't been able to understand my own reaction. it would be nice if someone could make sense of my very strange mind for me... any psychologists out there?