Posts by Russell Brown
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The just in: Underworld are playing at a new festival on April 8. It's called Oro and it's to be held in Woodhill Forest.
Herald story here.
Tickets (not yet) available here.
The promoter is the experienced Dave Roper, so it's not going to be one of those festivals that promises big then folds. Great news.
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Yeah, this thread isn't really useful any more and I'm bored with everyone else being lectured about the workers by a guy who owns a lifestyle block. That'll do. Thread closed.
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A statement from the Autistic Collective.
NO EXCUSING THE MURDER OF AUTISTICS!
Ruby Knox, a young autistic woman, was murdered last year by Donella Knox, her own mother, and recently her supporters have been asking for Donella’s early release on ‘compassionate’ grounds.
The Autistic Collective however, feel that the central issue being lost sight of here is that a young woman was murdered, and her murder is being justified because she was autistic.
When a disabled person is murdered, much sympathy is all too often expressed for the murderer, while the victim is seen as ‘better off dead’. In no other case of murder is this so.
This sends the message that our lives are somehow worth less than others, and that our deaths are to be regarded as ‘mercy killings’. That we might have difficulties, even severe ones, and yet still find life worth living, never seems to occur to others.
And these killings are, unfortunately, not as uncommon as the judge in this case seems to think – certainly not ‘once in a lifetime’.
We autistics struggle with life, as do those with other disabilities, but we do not ‘make’ our caregivers kill us – they make that choice of their own accord. Crisis is not an excuse for murder.
We in the autistic and disabled communities are however in agreement with Donella Knox’s supporters on one thing – there needs to be more services, and far more and better training for those delivering services to those with disabilities. This is especially true with autistics, as our needs often differ even from other disabled, due to our neurology.
The position of the Autistic Collective is that there should be far more support available, so that we are not forced to stay with family members or other caregivers when the relationship turns toxic, or when they have threatened violence towards us.
Penni Winter for the Autistic Collective
The Autistic Collective is a group of autistic advocates who have joined together in order to become more effective in our advocacy.
We can be contacted at info@autisticcollectivenz.org
Our website can be found at www.autisticcollectivenz.org -
Hard News: Burning down the house to…, in reply to Nick Russell,
I don’t see Willie Jackson’s recruitment as a deliberate provocation to the likes of Poto Williams so much as an attempt to kill off the Maori Party. They wanted Jackson but Labour got him.
More apocalyptic language!
They wooed a candidate the Maori Party was also trying to woo. That's not the same as "attempting to kill off the Maori Party". C'mon.
The interesting thing, I think, is that the iwi establishment has clearly been drifting away from Labour and towards the Maori Party. Labour has now tapped someone who has his own battles with that same establishment. It's not necessarily a straight swap, but it's quite an interesting dimension to the whole thing.
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Hard News: Burning down the house to…, in reply to Katharine Moody,
On the ‘widen the appeal’ idea, I think I might be part of the target market. I know Willie Jackson outside his commercial radio career – met his mother too and got to understand what they were trying to do with both Maori broadcasting and the urban Maori authority. My respect for him and his family will never diminish;
I had an extremely difficult personal relationship with Willie for some time, because of my criticism of that ghastly radio interview (from which I don’t resile a bit) but he’s a complex character and it does feel a bit like some of his most vocal critics this week only know the one thing about him. But other people perceive a different person.
Moana said to me once that she thought the backlash he and Tamihere copped when other hosts on Radio Live at the time (Andrew Fagan, Sean Plunket) had said shitty things on the same topic was a matter of racism. I don’t agree – the interview was much worse – but it’s an indication of how people can see things differently.
I have been somewhat bemused by the whirling fury of reactions on both “sides” though. Tom’s talk of “calculated undermining” and “sabotage” seems like utter tosh to me. There are times when an MP may feel point to take a stand. It’s hardly unprecedented and rarely amounts to undermining the party.
I’m not quite sure how he’ll fit as an MP though – he has a way of making things happen, but sometimes it’s making things happen for Willie, which might be difficult to accommodate within a party structure.
My other potentially unpopular opinion is that Greg O’Connor might make a very effective Labour MP. He’s an expert media communicator and has views on justice and drug law reform that I find quite encouraging. And again, I don’t resile from my criticism of some of the bullshit he spouted as a police union leader.
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Amusingly, in 2015 Schlicter wrote a column titled 'You are a fool if you're supporting Donald Trump and you're being exploited':
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This is the blurb for Schlicter’s novel. Wowee.
America’s growing political and cultural divisions have finally split the United States apart. Now, as the former blue states begin to collapse under the dead weight of their politically correct tyranny, a lethal operative haunted by his violent past undertakes one last mission to infiltrate and take out his target in the nightmarish city of Los Angeles, deep in the heart of the People’s Republic of North America.
National Review’s Jim Geraghty calls Kurt Schlichter’s “People’s Republic” “a surreal, fast-paced journey through a dramatically different America but less than a generation away. … Violent, imaginative, full of mordant humor and dark, gritty details, you won’t want to live in this People’s Republic…but you’ll feel a chill as you wonder how different our real future will be.”
EDIT: Oh my god: he also wrote a short story about US forces defeating Isis by destroying the entire city of Raqqa and everyone in it. It’s genocide porn.
This man is not well. And yet, he writes for “respected” conservative websites and blogs (including The Federalist). In New Zealand, he would be regarded as a dangerous loon.
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Hard News: Burning down the house to…, in reply to Farmer Green,
That’s putting it mildly. The invective is stepping up, more than a notch:-
To be fair, Schlicter seems to truck in little but this sort of polemic. Recent titles over his work:
Can Creepy Leftist Weirdos Create A Progressive Tea Party?
America To The Liberal Elite: “New Phone – Who Dis?”
And Now The Left’s War On Normal Americans Truly Begins
Sorry, But Our Fight Against Liberal Fascism Has Only Just Begun
Some Christmas Presents For Our Liberal Friends
What A Stupid Time To Be Alive For Liberals
Laughing At Liberals As They Lose Their Minds
Trollmaster Trump Is Driving Liberals to New Heights of Fussy Fury
And yet, he writes, liberals are the real haters:
They hate you.
Leftists don’t merely disagree with you. They don’t merely feel you are misguided. They don’t think you are merely wrong. They hate you. They want you enslaved and obedient, if not dead. Once you get that, everything that is happening now will make sense. And you will understand what you need to be ready to do.
You are normal, and therefore a heretic. You refuse to bow to their idols, to subscribe to their twisted catechisms, to praise their false gods. This is unforgivable. You must burn.
And then:
They are fanatics, and by not surrendering, by not kneeling, and by not obeying, you have committed an unpardonable sin. You have defied the Left, and you must be broken. They will take your job, slander your name, even beat or kill you – whatever it takes to break you and terrify others by making you an example. Your defiance cannot stand; they cannot allow this whole Trump/GOP majority thing to get out of control. They must crush this rebellion of the normal, and absolutely nothing is off the table.
And the first comment under the column:
Liberalism has many affinities with Islam. One is that both are engaged in a jihad against us.
I really don’t think there’s any engaging with that. You just have to let them get on with whatever it is they’re doing and hope no one gets hurt.
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This from Josh Marshall is right on the money, I think:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/on-trump-keep-it-simple-in-5-points
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Hard News: Burning down the house to…, in reply to Ewan Morris,
but it’s the suddenness of the change of tone on the supposedly respectable right that I find somewhat depressing.
Yes. I feel exactly the same way.
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