Hard News: Scuffling and screaming on The Left
245 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 … 10 Newer→ Last
-
Their solidarity is in reaction to a joint police action. The various groups don't link themselves together but rather the imagination of the police to tie the various groups as one.
-
There seem to be a few Labour people dropping in on the Indymedia thread.
I know it's mean to make fun of Indymedia (and the NZ one's pretty good really - at least you don't get the creepy anti-semitism that infects some of the others), but I thought the following exchange was a classic:
Post:
I walked into the Labour Party conference as a worker and a union delegate. I've been a union member for the last 16 years and while I don't always agree with Labour I think we need to use every avenue we have to make people's lives better. National would not have raised the minimum wage by more than 60%. National would not have extended annual leave to four weeks. National would not worked to halve unemployment to 3.4%. It's not perfect, but when you're a working person you realise spitting at union delegates and calling them scabs is not going to improve anything.
I walked into the conference having 'shame' and 'scab' yelled at me, and then went straight into a meeting where we discussed what mechanisms to implement to help improve the lot of low paid workers like myself and my workmates.
But I suppose that isn't important when you're a middle class university student waiting for the revolution. '
Response:
fuck off state apologist!
Chortle.
-
Margaret B: "professional protesting class" is not necessarily a pejorative. I have a lot of time for those people who can be bothered to get off their chuffs and protest regularly, and they have a role in our democracy. But protesting all the time also introduces a significant element of tribal ritual to the confrontations with the police. When I see unedifying carry-ons on telly between protesters and police I am always reminded of films of posturing hostile tribes from the New Guinea Highlands.
-
Well the UK went for over a thousand years (up to about 1840) with no organised police force.
What do you call the Knights of the Round Table then?
Seriously, yeah, society won't collapse just because there's no police. It won't collapse with no broadband either, but in both cases it might be better off with them.
The idea of amateur police is an interesting one. Most of the places where it has been tried tended to have a strong tradition of military training and experience on the part of the civilians, though. It wouldn't have been hard to find gung ho guys in the ancient or medieval world (or in some anarchist revolutionary society, for that matter) who would happily tussle with an accused murderer. Arrest procedures probably were a bit laxer too - there were probably quite a few violations of human rights committed by said amateurs, particularly beating the living shit out of prisoners who were even slightly lippy, or burning them out of whatever barn they may be hiding in.
It seems to me to be an idea that would work in a very small, isolated, primitive place, where evading arrest could involve more privation than just taking the punishment. Leaving the tribe/city, and throwing yourself on the mercy of nature/other tribes, could actually be the greater of two evils. In the modern world it is easy to move, easy to start up elsewhere. And it is hard to track people down, a highly specialized job, which can be very dangerous at times, requiring coordinated action of large numbers of people and expensive equipment. As with most things today, it is specialized work and having specialists do it has lots of advantages.
-
Their solidarity is in reaction to a joint police action. The various groups don't link themselves together but rather the imagination of the police to tie the various groups as one.
I think at least some of the activists have acknowledged attending the Urewera camps, so I don't think a relationship between the groups is purely the invention of the police.
It would be nice to hear someone from the activists' side criticise Tame Iti's supportive relationship with the thugs running Fiji -- where the police beat a New Zealander nearly to death over the weekend.
-
I have a wider question for the lefty- left - why do people who profess such anarchistic and revolutionary views make such a knee jerk alliance with a bunch of reactionary, patriarchal tribalists with a fixation on the 19th century?
I think Winston Churchill gave one answer to this after the German invasion of Russia:
If Hitler invaded hell, I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil -
Those wanting to have a go at the fascist coppers might consider a protest-holiday in Karachi. They would probably have the people behind them, at least.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10474008
-
Just a slight aside, but I was a bit surprised to see Chris Knox pop up doing Labour's new theme song. Obviously he's always been more sympathetic to the left than the right, but I thought it wouldn't be his cup-of-tea having such direct involvement with Labour.
As for who'll sing National's theme song, my money's on...Hayley Westenra.
-
"...If Hitler invaded hell, I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil..."
That sort of parallel with the government of New Zealand is frankly offensive.
-
I have heard Suva is really scarey, on edge and dangerous place (not just because of Aja Rock). Bashings are becoming normal.
-
Just a slight aside, but I was a bit surprised to see Chris Knox pop up doing Labour's new theme song. Obviously he's always been more sympathetic to the left than the right, but I thought it wouldn't be his cup-of-tea having such direct involvement with Labour.
I presume it's alright to say this: Chris's partner, Barbara Ward (a very organised and involved person) was Labour candidate Phil Twyford's campaign manager at the last election and I presume will be again. So that would have been the connection. I further presume it was a commissioned work.
The Labour-Flying Nun connection isn't new though. Last time the TV election advertising song was The Clean's 'Anything Could Happen'. Everybody just conveniently forgot that the song is actually about going to the doctor and trying to score drugs ...
-
That sort of parallel with the government of New Zealand is frankly offensive
Why is it that a big chunk of 20th century history has cones and tape round it and you can't go there without offending people? I wasn't saying that the NZ government is in any way comparable to the Nazis (Tama Iti isn't Stalin either, he hasn't even got a moustache). I was simply suggesting that in politics, people often grab allies where they can.
(Besides, if you want to attack the Left on choice of allies, what about the Labour party and Winston Peters?)
-
Why is it that a big chunk of 20th century history has cones and tape round it and you can't go there without offending people?
The millions of dead people make it kind of obviously a bad comparison to anyone who isn't a complete fucking idot.
-
The millions of dead people make it kind of obviously a bad comparison to anyone who isn't a complete fucking idot.
And what proportion of the Maori population died, from disease and war, after colonisation? I know that (most of) the British didn't have the same genocidal motivations, but it's a pretty devastating position for a people to be in.
-
A school run by an anarchist collective would provide better education than one run by the state.
Umm, no. Unless you want to teach kids to reject any kind of responsibility or structure or society.
I wouldn't argue that anarchist collectives would run a great school system. But your response clearly shows that you don't understand anarchists. There's lots of different sorts, but at it's simplest level, the ones you're talking about here are opposed to government control of their lives. They don't reject responsibility or structure or society at all. Some of them I know have intricate structures and rules about the community that they live in, but they're rules that they've created themselves rather than using ones created for them.
Tomorrow's schools adopts ideas from anarchism, by appointing parents to have a role in the running of schools as boards of trustees. It's not always violent revolution.
Um, a certain party member, namely Helen Clark, directs the SIS.
I'm no expert, but the little I know, is that this is a mile off. It's not Minister for Sending SIS Agents to Harass People You Don't Like. The SIS aren't going to let Helen Clark do that to them, and you can bet if she tried, then she'd just be giving Nicky Hager his next book on a plate.
It would be nice to hear someone from the activists' side criticise Tame Iti's supportive relationship with the thugs running Fiji -- where the police beat a New Zealander nearly to death over the weekend.
Yeah that was dumb. Being indigenous doesn't give you to the right to be an arsehole and just take over the country using the military.
And personally, firing that gun at the flag? I didn't like either. Gave me bad vibes.
Feel better?
The millions of dead people make it kind of obviously a bad comparison to anyone who isn't a complete fucking idot.
Settle down. If you can't quote Winston Churchill...
-
The Labour-Flying Nun connection isn't new though. Last time the TV election advertising song was The Clean's 'Anything Could Happen'. Everybody just conveniently forgot that the song is actually about going to the doctor and trying to score drugs ...
That factoid tickles me nicely. The hallmark of a successful ad campaign seems to be the misuse of a song chosen because the chorus sort of sounds a bit like the message the ad is trying to get across.
-
I think Rich is suggesting that just as Churchill was the kind of wanker who had some useful part to play in WW2, and he allied with an even bigger wanker who also helped us out (at whatever cost), so the anarchist-dreamers see the kind of wanker who dreams of reverting NZ into an island of warring states as a useful ally. Because when the state is smashed everyone will spontaneously see all the advantages of anarchy. No one would want to join a tribe then, when you've got the whole brotherhood of man as your tribe.
-
(and apologies to Deborah that this paragraph largely rehashes a comment I made on her excellent blog last week).
No worries! Your analysis deserves a much wider audience than it will get over at my place.
-
The hallmark of a successful ad campaign seems to be the misuse of a song chosen because the chorus sort of sounds a bit like the message the ad is trying to get across.
One of the Reagan campaigns used 'Born in the USA' as a theme song, presumably because they never listened to any of the verses.
-
We in advertising NEVER let the client listen to the verses.
-
More or less, except that I wouldn't ever call Churchill a wanker. Misguided (often, especially on India), a complex character (always) but mostly on the right side.
(typical Churchill incident - in 1913, when the original UVF were threatening insurrection in Northern Ireland, his chosen weapon to deal with this was the Dreadnought battleship. He was all set to send a battle fleet to shell shit out of them when saner counsels prevailed).
You have to judge people by the standards of their time, as well.
-
So what are they getting all exercised about?
From this side of the ditch it looks like a group of people have been arrested on firearms charges. Serious charges like possession of illegal firearms always take some time to get to defended hearings in a court of law. Have there been other charges laid that could be perceived to include some sort of erosion of civil liberties that the protestors are so agitated about? The voice of the extreme left on this is so muddled, its hard to get a handle on what's going on or what they're even complaining about.
My one concern from that TV3 video is wtf with the mullets! We didn't know any better but the kids of today don't have that excuse...
-
You have to judge people by the standards of their time, as well.
I think Churchill was a wanker even by the standards of his time. He was just our wanker.
-
Rich of Observationz: I am afraid I belong to the "Churchill was pretty much an big idiot" camp, a man whose incompetencies cost many New Zealand lives. The Grand Fleet was largely Fisher's and Louis Battenburg's creation. The Dardanelles was his baby and an utter fiasco. In his next incarnation in office his delusions of imperial grandeur finished off the remnants of British industry with his grandiose return to the gold standard. In WWII, he loathed Ghandi and was utterly opposed to home rule for India, rightly seeing it as the end of his beloved British Empire. His decision to send Imperial troops (including the New Zealanders) to Greece before finishing off the Italians was a strategic error as disasterous the fall of France. His dispatching, and the subsequent loss of, Force Z to the Japanese along with his blind committment to strategic bomber offensive showed his propensity to cling to failed strategies rather than admit Britain was no longer a great power. His three towering achievements were to early recognise the danger to democracy presented by fascism, his rallying of the British people in 1940 and his realisation the war would be lost unless he got the Americans involved.
It seems odd that an anarchist can be so enamoured of a man who was basically a 19th century aristocratic super-patriot.
Sorry for th diversion, as you all were.
-
So, if anarchists are happy to ally themselves with Tame Iti on the basis of "My enemy's enemy is my friend," does the same principle apply to allying themselves with neo-Nazis? After all, if Hitler invaded hell you'd have a kind word for Satan...
Post your response…
This topic is closed.