Posts by Tom Semmens
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Reports indicate a shortage of tropical fruit is imminent, green beans are in short supply and a crisis looms in Kenyan flower supplies.
Truly, armageddon is upon us.
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What bothers me about these EI schemes is they essentially seem to be like most insurance schemes - sunny day umbrellas for the anxious middle class.
What ever happened to social security?
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What happens when your dole runs out?
Then you get starve, as befits the undeserving poor.
next up from Frau Paula: Investigating moving our undeserving poor to Scott Base, where winter will impartially deal with them as God intended.
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Tom placed all the blame on the soldiers firing the weapons, not the officers who authorised them to fire, not the chain of command above them, the rules of engagement that were written, and the politicians who put them there. It was a pretty crap analysis of an example that we have in front of us of USA military actions in Iraq, and Keith called him on it.
This is not what I said.
I said the primary moral responsibility for this massacre lies with the pilot, because he pulled the trigger. No one made him to do, ultimately it was a voluntary act by a volunteer soldier. My proposition is indeed a simple, uncompromising one, and that is we are all responsible for our actions. No man can surrender his morality with the defense that he was simply following orders, or the rules of engagement. Down that path lies Auschwitz. A moral man would have said "There are civilians down there, unable to engage". This key difference in the expectation of an innate morality between, say, our citizen soldiers and the Waffen SS is probably THE key moral justification for calling WWII a righteous war, because from this assumption of the innately moral individual springs every assumption our civilisation is built on.
So yes, for me the pilot is the primary guilty party for it was he who pulled the trigger when he had the choice as a moral being to refuse to do so. This, ultimately, is how change happens - when a moral man has the courage to say "no" to an immoral order or refuses to obey an immoral system.
That doesn't mean the officers who authorised them to fire, the chain of command above them, the lawyers who wrote the rules of engagement that were written, and the politicians who put them there are not also guilty. To paraphrase Bronowski: those men are guilty of arrogance, of dogma and of ignorance. What the video shows is the results of people who believe they have absolute knowledge with no test in reality. They are complicit in this crime as well.
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Jeremy, I think you'll find the shallow end is that way. You'll find it more to your liking.
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Keith, it is all of them. But surely the most enduring warning from the holocaust is that following orders, rules of engagment, protocols, whatever is no defense for the individual if those rules pervert morality. The individual stands guilty of his crimes.
When I watched that video, the words of Jacob Bronowski came powerfully to me:
"WE HAVE TO CLOSE THE DISTANCE BETWEEN THE PUSH BUTTON ORDER AND THE HUMAN ACT"
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Morgan, you points are utter bullshit.
"How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause. Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?"
- Sophie Scholl.
Or, if you seek something perhaps more germaine, a US Army helicopter pilot who knew right from wrong, try Googling Hugh Thompson, Jr.
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Oh I just want to be clear where the guilt lies here. It doesn't lie with the US military system - as much as they have lost their moral compass. It doesn't lie with the so-called "rules of engagement". It sits squarely on the man who pulled the trigger. He is solely responsible for these killings.
Let us remember the shooter in this atrocity isn't some ignorant white trailer trash G.I. Hyped up on propaganda to kill the sand niggers who hate freedom.
Oh no.
The shooter in this atrocity is an officer, a pilot in the top percentile of aptitude tests and almost inevitably holding a batchelors degree. An intelligent man, then. Maybe even a family man. A successful, career man.
A moral man.
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None of it makes it right, but they are real distinctions, and it should make a difference to how we feel about the situation and the people involved.
I really couldn't be arsed commenting in this thread, for the simple reason it seems to me only an idiot could equivocate about whether or not this is an atrocity. However, the waffling going on has driven me to conclude - yet again - that PA is full of fools in love with the sound of their own sophisticated mendacity.
It is wrong to kill civilians. That's the law in New Zealand. That is international law, it is U.S. law and I daresay it is the law of numerous international legal protocols both NZ and the USA have signed up to. So, lets all repeat that again for the people who can't quite grasp it. IT IS WRONG TO KILL CIVILIANS.
Now, the excuse makers, the deflectors, the apologists will say but-but-but! But what? But that Iraq isn't a "proper" war? Oh really? Define what is? But for the purpose of argument, let's agree it isn't war, more a heavily armed urban policing operation where the bad guys don't wear uniforms.
Would it be, then, OK for the Armed Offenders Squad to take out some bank robbers in downtown Palmerston North with a fucking great big, indiscriminate, helicopter mounted 30mm cannon if that also wiped out several hostages and two small children in a passing car? Yes or no? Because that is exactly what happened here.
It occurs to me that an AOS officer might shoot a robber, if the robber looks like he is about to execute numerous hostages. The AOS officer might kill a hostage by mistake in doing this, but that would be an accidental and unintentional act, performed saving mutliple lives and in line with his lawful duties. That is morally quite distinct from indiscriminately opening fire with a 30mm cannon on a bunch of civilians because you SUSPECT a couple of them are terrorists. That is murder, a morally pure, simple, open and shut case of murder. And it beggars belief that any civilised person would try to excuse opening fire on a heroic passerby who stops his van (containing small children, not that the murderers bothered to pause to consider that) to offer succour to the wounded. That act is the sort of ice cold killing that would bring a smile to the face of the Waffen SS - an organisation whose cult of violence the US Military appears to admire, and seems hell bent on emulating.
YOU CANNOT TARGET CIVILIANS PRIMARILY AND/OR INTENTIONALLY. THAT IS ILLEGAL. THAT IS MURDER.
YOU CANNOT KILL CIVIILIANS. THAT IS ILLEGAL. THAT IS MURDER.
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Hmmmmm... the WRFU loses $500,000 and the HBRFU makes a (modest) profit of $18,0000. Who are geniuses here again? Where should the NZRFU be looking for coaches and ideas for how to save professional rugby in the lower North Island again?
Jesus, Wellington and the Hissycanes can't even compete with a D grade soccer team playing in a boring no-name Australian competition.
Can't play, can't make money, can't compete, can't do sweet fuck all really... The rank arrogance of the Wellingtonians posting here makes me hope the whole crappy lot of them go down the gurgler of bankruptcy. It'll be good riddance to bad rubbish, it isn't like Hawkes Bay along with Taranaki and Manawatu (and maybe a few players from Wellington, but only if they feel like it mind) wouldn't be able to organise and run a team that was more profitable and successful than the Hurricanes, that is a prettly low barrier after all.