Hard News: Occupy: Don't call it a protest
311 Responses
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HORansome, in reply to
As I said, I didn't take notes so I'm operating from memory. I know that she did talk about "some South Africans" in the talk I attended and I might be mistaking that with the "Close Up" interview (which was, reportedly, edited; apparently it was a much longer discussion than the one that aired).
And furthermore, directly comparing the political system here to the practice of apartheid in South Africa is a gross insult to the suffering of black South Africans under a system that deprived them of their very humanity. Perhaps she could throw in a Holocaust comparison or a rape metaphor next time.
So, you're offended that Prof. Mutu has made a claim you disagree with, so you find it acceptable to then claim that maybe she might make also want to make similar analogies with the Holocaust or with rape?
Really? Do you really want to go there?
I think you are fixating here on one construal of the analogy: there is research which indicates that some South Africans came to New Zealand because it is a white culture with an indigenous population which is marginalised (and thus suffers from the entrenched effects of institutionalised racism). Whilst I know Prof. Mutu holds what some think are fairly radical views about how bad Pākehā and Māori relations are here and now I don't think she would (certainly not from the talk she gave yesterday) say that we had the explicit policy of Apartheid that South Africa had (although there have been policies similar to that in Aotearoa me Te Wai Pounamu's post-colonial history). That doesn't speak against what she is saying, though, which is that, attitudinally, some South Africans came here because they could continue to live their lives of smug superiority (almost all of this is bound up in Mutu's discussion of Prof. Spoonley's work, which hasn't really been touched on by the media with respect to this discussion.
But still, Russell, even suggesting that Prof. Mutu might like to make Holocaust or rape analogies to go with her discussion is a pretty low blow.
I think I'll bow out from PAS now.
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Don't know about white South Africans (although I might have well founded suspicions -
However I'm bloody sure that a lot of my fellow English (and other UK) migrants moved here under the misapprehension that NZ was the white monoculture they weren't getting in the UK, and would prefer that it became so. If you want evidence, pick up (don't even think of buying) a copy of the weekly editions of the UK tabloids that sully our dairies.
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DCBCauchi, in reply to
If you are going to argue that her expertise applies to commentaries on what is, in essence, the current global financial system
I’m arguing nothing of the sort. That it is ‘in essence, [commentary on] the current global financial system’ is entirely your characterisation. It does not match my reading of the piece (whenever it came out was) at all.
Yours is an unwarrantedly reductive characterisation. Your ‘essence’, I suggest, like that of many narrow specialists commentating, is entirely misplaced.
The essence of it all, I reckon, is in the social system, of which the financial system is only a part (a weird artificial abstract part no less). And on that, historians (easily the best humanities degree, if you’re going to bother with one) are eminently suitably qualified to comment.
Qualification isn’t a matter of what degree you’ve bought.
Take, for example, another historian who’s written about early Pakeha explorers in New Zealand, in this case Tasman’s voyage. The early explorers were extremely important for many reasons, you see, not least visual art. Cook’s Endeavour turned into an art school off the East Coast, led by the young Quaker Sydney Parkinson.
Cook was a Yorkeshire farmer’s son, eminently practical, who’d come up through the hawse hole and made his name by his surveying ability (and some dashing action against the French on the rivers of Canada). He knew Parkinson’s drawing skills were important things he needed.
On Tasman’s voyage though, they used different drawing conventions, ones developed by the merchant princes of the Low Countries. Now this historian who wrote a book about it isn’t an academic. He’s a sailor. He put himself as near as he could to Tasman’s anchorages,off the coast around Nelson, took careful photos, then compared the photos with the coastal views from Tasman, which most (probably all) academics considered to be merely fanciful. Because they were narrow specialists and couldn’t read the pictures in front of them.
(Oh, and now I see I've wasted my time, as you've pre-emptively bowed out. Great.)
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
And meanwhile, eye-popping charts on where income growth in the US has gone in the past couple of decades.
As Bernard Hickey says, it’s a wonder they haven’t rioted by now.
Basically aristocracy by another name. And that goes for the nouveau riche ladder-kickers too.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
As I said, I didn’t take notes so I’m operating from memory. I know that she did talk about “some South Africans” in the talk I attended and I might be mistaking that with the “Close Up” interview (which was, reportedly, edited; apparently it was a much longer discussion than the one that aired).
Yes. Field interviews are almost always edited. In itself, that’s no proof of ill–doing.
The fact is, she said what she said.
So, you’re offended that Prof. Mutu has made a claim you disagree with, so you find it acceptable to then claim that maybe she might make also want to make similar analogies with the Holocaust or with rape?
Really? Do you really want to go there?
For goodness sake, Matthew. She didn’t make “an analogy”. She made a feckless and offensive claim that the New Zealand political system is “similar” to apartheid – and thus South Africans who make their homes here would be “comfortable” with it.
I pointed this out with some vigour. And yes, I’d put feckless comparisons with apartheid on the same shelf as Holocaust and rape analogies. Her airy declaration that South Africans like it here because it’s like apartheid just made it worse.
You haven’t really addressed this at all, beyond taking vicarious and exaggerated offence.
I think you are fixating here on one construal of the analogy: there is research which indicates that some South Africans came to New Zealand because it is a white culture with an indigenous population which is marginalised (and thus suffers from the entrenched effects of institutionalised racism).
Matthew, I’m “fixating” on what she said, verbatim, in a televised interview.
But still, Russell, even suggesting that Prof. Mutu might like to make Holocaust or rape analogies to go with her discussion is a pretty low blow.
I think I’ll bow out from PAS now.
If you must. I honestly think you’ve argued very poorly here. You dismissed her original quote by saying it wasn’t stupid and offensive because she appropriately qualified her statement. I demonstrated that she did nothing of the kind – and yet somehow it’s still my fault.
I understand academic loyalty, but … really.
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Salmond's noble ideas of how society should work were nice and all, but I'm not entirely sure we should treat her opinion piece as being an important part of the conversation, especially given that it's long on rhetoric yet vague on solutions. For an academic to play the role of critic and conscience of society they need to more than just an academic but rather a suitably qualified academic in a field relevant to the discussion society is having.
I think this is a really bad misreading of any concept of conscience and critic.
Academics have a duty to be conscience and critic beyond their field, and this is pretty obviously accepted. Einstein, Oppenheimer, etc etc. It's one of the ways to distinguish academics from other professional, who all also have roles as critics and conscience.
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DexterX, in reply to
The Occupy movement will have more influence on the political process in the USA and Europe. The failure of governance to represent the wider public interest is the issue.
Watching this Melbourne Removal reminded me of Bastion Point January 1977 to May 1978 and the Long March in 1975 - the Maori Land March.
Bastion Point is a gift to the nation fgained by protest and occupation and one for which I am grateful. Occupation and protest to get things started and bring them to a head is something I support.
A bit of a background to Bastion Point - which is basically as my father related the situation and treatment of Ngati Whatua to me when I asked what was goin gon at age 16.
Click the "from you tube" link to view.
It is interesting the comment made on title to land - many of the old rice paper titles issued in the estatern susburbs of Auckland had a restiction on them that the title for the Land could not be owned by Non Europeans. -
Hilary Stace, in reply to
Not so much about actions as reflecting the rapidly changing times.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Academics have a duty to be conscience and critic beyond their field, and this is pretty obviously accepted. Einstein, Oppenheimer, etc etc. It’s one of the ways to distinguish academics from other professional, who all also have roles as critics and conscience.
It’s probably useful to know that she was spurred to write the column after hearing a talk by LSE professor (and expat NZer) Robert Wade, who gave a global forecast out to 2030 that apparently put the shits up everyone who heard it.
Wade’s home page URL idiotically includes his email address, which completely messes up any attempt to format a link. See if this works:
r.wade@lse.ac.uk" target="_blank">http://www2.lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/Experts/r.wade@lse.ac.uk
Sigh ... no. Stupidest URL schema ever. You'll have to Google him ...
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Sacha, in reply to
Not so much about actions as reflecting the rapidly changing times
In a time of change, reflection is seldom useful without action.
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JacksonP, in reply to
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Sacha, in reply to
yep
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Oh look, here's a nice article about one of my heroes:
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BenWilson, in reply to
Academics have a duty to be conscience and critic beyond their field, and this is pretty obviously accepted. Einstein, Oppenheimer, etc etc. It's one of the ways to distinguish academics from other professional, who all also have roles as critics and conscience.
Everyone has that responsibility. Ones ability to comment technically on a specific field is limited by technical ability, but issues of morality and conscience should always cross all boundaries. There are no morality specialists. Anyone claiming to be one is selling you a religion.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
'@' and '.' are legal characters in the path part of URLs. In fact, I think everything except ampersand, equals and space are.
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Everyone has that responsibility. Ones ability to comment technically on a specific field is limited by technical ability, but issues of morality and conscience should always cross all boundaries. There are no morality specialists. Anyone claiming to be one is selling you a religion.
I dunno, I reckon that there's a further duty on academics as people who are paid to think, and have been put in a very specific part of society, to go beyond the general responsibilities of citizens in this one area.
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DCBCauchi, in reply to
I dunno, I reckon that there’s a further duty on academics as people who are paid to think, and have been put in a very specific part of society, to go beyond the general responsibilities of citizens in this one area.
This was, once upon a time, the alleged point of universities. They served no masters, neither church nor king, and pursued knowledge for its own sake, because knowledge pursued for its own sake benefits everyone. Or so wise people thought.
Long ago though, the people (who claimed to be) paying the bills started insisting that the knowledge pursued serve particular interests: nowadays rendered using weasel words such as ‘knowledge economy’ and ‘skilled productive workforce’. Proper academics objected to this, but the administrators took a different view.
And now, as a result, the only real value of universities lies in their libraries, pretty much. And anyone can get into those.
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Sacha, in reply to
the people (who claimed to be) paying the bills started insisting that the knowledge pursued serve particular interests: nowadays rendered using weasel words such as ‘knowledge economy’...
I believe you're confusing the latter with nutty neoliberal theories about private benefit from tertiary education that were used to justify introducing student fees.
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BenWilson, in reply to
I dunno, I reckon that there's a further duty on academics as people who are paid to think, and have been put in a very specific part of society, to go beyond the general responsibilities of citizens in this one area.
Perhaps they should have that duty, but I haven't really noticed them exercising it with any more gusto than other segments of the population. I'm not surprised, they have jobs that are very much reputation based, and often extremely cushy. That's never been the ideal conditions to speak out.
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They served no masters, neither church nor king
That might have been the case for a hundred or so years between the abolition of mandatory state religions and the introduction of substantial government funding,..
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DCBCauchi, in reply to
I believe you’re confusing the latter with nutty neoliberal theories about private benefit from tertiary education that were used to justify introducing student fees.
I do not believe I am.
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Sacha, in reply to
Then pray explain what you think a "knowledge economy" is.
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DCBCauchi, in reply to
I’m not surprised, they have jobs that are very much reputation based, and often extremely cushy.
The story of how Mayan writing was deciphered is a salutary case in point.
The guy in charge of the field (a small one, in which one person could easily dominate, especially as it was riven by the divide between the 'dirt archaeologists' who grubbed about in poor people's houses and the 'students of kings' who spent their time on stela etc) made his reputation standing on a couple of important planks: that Mayan writing was hieroglyphic, not syllabic, and that it had no relation to the language the Mayan people living around them spoke.
Needless to say, both of these were dead wrong. When he came to realise it, he couldn't admit it, because to do so would knock out the planks he was standing on. So the whole bloody field, rendered pointless by petty political bickering anyway, had to wait for the bastard to die before sensible people could get on with their work, put the findings of everyone together, talk to the people around them, and actually look at the bloody things they were meant to be studying.
It's a fucking crime.
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DCBCauchi, in reply to
That might have been the case for a hundred or so years between the abolition of mandatory state religions and the introduction of substantial government funding,..
Look again.
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DCBCauchi, in reply to
Then pray explain what you think a “knowledge economy” is.
To be really honest, I can't be bothered going into it in detail.
Short version: one of those things that mean whatever people want it to mean. That is, a word with no clear referent. Easily manipulable. A politician's word. A weasel word.
That do?
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