Posts by BenWilson
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You are quite full of bold back and white statements. You must have a broad life experience. (I am not trying to start a flame war here just trying to shine a mirror back at you as to how you come across)
Should I ignore this then? I don't claim 'broad life experience' nor do I see it as a prerequisite to saying what I think, in black and white. I'm just relating my actual experiences with the opinion of the Maori I know on the issue at hand. I'm willing to bet you what I'm relating is not at all uncommon.
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Sound harsh?
Very. I'm reporting the opinion of my Maori friends, not my own opinion. And I can only go on what they say, I'm not a mind-reader. I'm sure much of their Maori-bashing is like my Kiwi-bashing, ie they still feel a great deal of connection to the wider pool of Maori. But they're not gonna buy it wholesale, or give away rights to criticize what they don't like.
But don't get in a Treaty discussion with me. It would be long and boring.
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Yikes. Does it really?
Ooops soz, overstating again. Radical maori culture spurns them. Actually most Maori I've met in the wider circle are also similarly disinterested in the culture that is an accident of some part of their ancestry, pretty much as Scottishness is an accident of mine. The number I've met who actually speak decent Maori is less than the number of Pakeha I know who can.
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3410
Punching the man is the last course of action. The order of action should be:
1. Tell him to stop
if that doesn't work
2. Restrain him as gently as possible (which could be quite roughly and still be well short of a punch in the face)
if that doesn't work and he turns on you
3. Attempt to disengage and draw him with you, calling for help
if that doesn't work and he's locked in then yes, finally
4. Fight. Until he is subdued or repulsed.By the time you've reached 2, the child is pretty safe. They've probably run away, in fact.
Fighting is a very serious business, especially when it comes to blows. You may find yourself in prison from trying to help out with your fists. You may get seriously injured. You may injure the other person or even kill them. That's why it's the last option.
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kowhai
__ I don't know any Maori personally who feel any bond to the Treaty whatsoever, and I know quite a few.__
Are you serious?
Actually that's overstating. By 'knowing personally', I meant 'have had any lengthy dealings with'. I've definitely met plenty of Maori to whom the Treaty is a big deal. But the Maori that I associate with are for the most part just like Pakeha. It's not an inconsequential number, either. 4 out of my 5 best friends are part-Maori. Occupations are lawyer, graphic designer, computer programmer, unemployed. None of them could give a shit about the Treaty. They think I'm the lefty liberal wanker for even considering it the slightest bit important.
Yeah I don't have a wide acquaintance amongst rural Maori, as I live in the city. But I haven't noticed that the Maori around me are especially hard done by from the land confiscations of the 19th Century, or the failure to acknowledge the authority of whoever their tribal leadership is, or the more recent removal of rights to overfish local waters. They still seem to pay the same as me for fish, work about as hard, some have more land, some less.
You could say they have turned their backs on Maori culture. I think the reverse, that Maori culture turned it's back on them. Instead of embracing people who sought to live in comfort and success in an increasingly Pakeha world, it spurns them as race traitors.
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Just because they're fringe and wacko doesn't mean they're wrong. Sometimes, just sometimes, they have quite interesting things to say.
I tend to give a wacko a fair go. If they're not accustomed to talking politely to polite people who actually listen to what they say and then pick the bones out of it, they might just be someone in need of a bit of polish in their language and a bit of a beating from all sides to knock the rough edges off. Personally, that's how I'm using the blogosphere myself, the more insane rough edges have come off, and my thoughts have actually been altered occasionally by others.
If, on the other hand they go down the path of the dad4justices of the world then they're best ignored or moderated away.
That's the kid who turns up in a martial arts club and instead of learning discipline and how to fight fair, and all the other noble intentions of most martial arts, instead bites their opponent, or kicks them in the balls, beats up on the girls, etc. Those guys usually just get a short sharp beating and expulsion. Some clubs will tolerate them, but you won't find any girls in those clubs, and you seldom find anyone who knows much about discipline or fair fighting either.
Then there's the wacko cult clubs, and I'd put these wargaming kill-the-PM types in there, where all the seriously crap shit goes down, like people being seriously injured or killed in training, abuses of all kinds, etc. These guys couldn't handle a fair fight at all because they never get any practice. They're cheap-shot wankers whose idea of fighting is always the kinghit and run-away. Eventually they're dealt to either by the law or by an outraged victim and their mates. Prison is the best place for them, where all the other ignoble lazy cheap-shotters end up. Some will see the error of their ways and change. Others will love it, and be in and out of the place for their whole life.
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What is the greater evil - (1)failing to prevent Vietnam non-violently, or (2)preventing Vietnam violently?
My numbering.
Excuse my computer programmer mind for noticing the two unmentioned cases: (3) Failing to prevent Vietnam violently and (4) Preventing Vietnam non-violently.
The greatest evil would be 3, and the ideal outcome would be 4. The other two are possibilities, but not the only ones. It's a false dichotomy.
If you've been trying the non-violent option and it's not working, then you could be tempted to up the ante to using violence, if you weighed that 2 was the lesser evil than 1. But rationally you should also weigh up the ongoing possibility of 3 and 4 in your decision. I personally think that 3 is so very much worse than 1 that to tip the balance towards using violence you need to either
a. Believe the violence you might prevent so far outweighs the violence you will cause.
b. Believe that the violence really alters the odds towards the prevention of the other violence.a. is plausible in the case of Vietnam. In NZ, I think it isn't.
b. is totally tenuous. Violence could work backwards, causing far more violence. That seems to me extremely likely. In the case of Vietnam, violent cells opposing the war could easily be used by the state as further evidence that their famous domino effect was actually happening, and then not only smash Vietnam harder, but also a heck of a lot of locals.In NZ it will clearly have that effect - to uncover even a plausible plot of violence against the state, and particularly assassination (which has never happened in this country), would swing huge numbers of people behind the idea of crushing even the right to talk about having such a group, much less having their boy's own adventures out in the woods. In my mind that's a totally fucked outcome, and even a 20% chance of it is too much to risk for whatever lame message of dissent that they were pushing on behalf of sweet-fuck-all people. Only people who really don't care about the real outcome, for whom the actual goal is the violence itself, or the notoreity, would seriously contemplate it. And I don't have much compunction about those people being disarmed.
I don't see that it requires anti-terror laws, though. The existing laws against conspiring to commit crimes would actually do the job quite nicely. They carry punishments fitting to the crime.
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My point being that speculation based on limited information with an emotive topic necessarily stirs up a distracting number of ideologically inflected reflections.
Yup, and for a short period of time, anyone's guess is good. But there is an actual reality out there that really happened/is happening, and as more information comes to light the 'idealogically inflected reflections' (which no-one is immune to) will divide into those which were accurate and those which were not, and those we still don't know about.
Personally I've only got time for the first two. Something that could be actually right or wrong is actual knowledge/information. Something that can be reinterpreted as the facts arise is fatuous postmodernism at it's best.
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Deborah, too true. That's what's really wrong with 21st Century Radicalism. Too many fatuous postmodernists. They see hair-splitting like "aha, but sea-level on what planet??" as somehow a profound point about the subjectivity of truth, when really they're just pointing out an ambiguity that, sure, says something about our Earth-centrism, but could easily be cleared up just by being more specific when the occasion demands.
If the Treaty was not signed by Tuhoe, that doesn't make it not the Treaty, or a Pakeha interpretation of it, or any other subjectivist bs. It just tells us something about the Treaty - that it doesn't speak for all Maori.Tell us something we didn't know! I don't know any Maori personally who feel any bond to the Treaty whatsoever, and I know quite a few.
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I also thought some of what James George said was at least interesting, perhaps correct, time will tell. But the tone was definitely that of someone who felt themselves to be in hostile territory, surrounded by angry enemies. A lot of people reading might agree with a lot of what he said, if that tone didn't get in the way. And I think in that respect, he sounded much like his ideological opposites.
For instance, referring straight off the bat to the shallow facile insights of the gallivanting Brown. Or the endless references to whitefellas. Or the constantly plugged comic-names like Helen of Beehive or amerikan.
Ignoring such non-argument, he's written quite an essay on why the cops did what they did, when the cops have hardly told us anything about it themselves. Hence my question about whether he had some juicy inside gossip. But, as with Bomber, I suspect that hinting is all that's going to come out. It's a good way of boosting your hit-count, to promise tidbits which are never actually forthcoming, or just boil down to Truth magazine-like sources like 'vice girls say'. Investigate magazine has perfected this art, promising every month some shocking revelations which turn out in the end to be hearsay from angry partisans.
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