Posts by Bart Janssen
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After finishing our post-grad degrees we are very very strongly encouraged to leave NZ for "personal growth". Kicked out might have overstated it but it was close. We ended up in Texas for 13 months. Texas is beautiful but the people were strange.
It was a period when we were most definitely NOT home. In many ways it crystallised how important home was to us. And when we finally escaped Texas (after driving with a U-Haul behind us and a broken fuel pump in Amarillo) and we drove over the hills into California's central valley, we saw green, and it felt like coming home.
That moment of seeing green made me realise how much of home for me is the green of Auckland and New Zealand as a whole. Not 100% pure, not all wild or natural, but alive.
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Hard News: Ten Thousand Maniacs, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Did you mean WW1
yeah doh!
Also note that is not an exhaustive list of the fuck ups in that region, more an attempt to highlight the futility of saying
"it's all because of this, if we just fix this then it will be all right"The solutions to the problems of that region are not going to be easy ones.
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Hard News: Ten Thousand Maniacs, in reply to Jason Kemp,
so far it looks like the obvious military response would be exactly the wrong one
I can understand why people would want some kind of immediate military response but I tend to agree the current slow but steady strategy of assisting local groups to deal with ISIS seems to be working and disrupting that strategy seems unwise.
The problem I have is the continued hypocrisy of selling arms that everyone knows will end up in the hands of those committing these atrocities. Compound that with the hypocrisy of buying oil from ISIS leaves me aghast. Let's make a quick buck while Syrians and Iraqis die and then wring our hands when Europeans die.
The causes of the disaster are multiple, disbanding the Iraqi army, Russian support of Asaad and US support of anti-Asaad rebels, stupid borders drawn on post-WWII maps etc. All leading to an environment where nutjobs can step in.
Every time I see pictures from Syria it jars with my memories of that open friendly country we visited a decade ago. Somehow I just hope that Syria can find some new balance in peace. Sadly to get that peace there will need to be some dramatic changes both in Syria and in the countries surrounding.
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To address you in good faith.
Here's the thing. Without a quota we've ended up with a male dominated cabinet and parliament where an alarming number of important jobs are being handed to white males of dubious talent.
By contrast Canada has while implementing a quota actually got talent in jobs that matter.
Since the current system has failed how about we give a quota a go and at the same time represent 51% of the population.
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Up Front: How I Learned to Stop Worrying…, in reply to Russell Brown,
As my very bright and mathematically talented wife was once told by her male teacher
"We can make her an honourary bloke" -
Well said Emma
At least we got 3 posts before we got trolled.
I'd just point out another factor in the recent Canadian cabinet, almost every position is filled by an actual expert in that field. Strange that even with the huge limitation (not) of choosing half women, the roles are filled by people with a clue. Compare that with our sorry excuse for a cabinet (cough Simon cough Bridges, minister for extinction).
While we're dreaming of quotas, how about quotas for every state owned enterprise, what I wouldn't give to see even one woman on our senior executive team.
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Thank you Claudia.
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The further we get into this the sicker I feel.
Really. It makes me sick with anger and sadness.
How can we as New Zealanders treat our own citizens like this?
How can our PM and the speaker behave this way in parliament?
How can our country stand beside Australia as it abuses it's own people and ours?
How can the women in our parliament be treated with such callous disregard?
Part of me wants so desperately to hit something, it's that core animal part that when faced with horror wants to go into some kind of fanatical rage in the vain hope it might save me.
The rest of me is just crying.
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So how does the house remove an incompetent and biased speaker?
Serious question, given his/her ability to shape the debate in the chamber, it is important the speaker is unbiased and has a competent understanding of the rules of the house (as well as an ability to hear shouted abuse and read and comprehend the Hansard).
If the speaker is biased in his/her rulings and also incompetent then surely there must be a mechanism to remove him or her.
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Polity: Cold, calculated and cynical, in reply to izogi,
To top it off we’re also talking about just how many New Zealanders on Christmas Island were previously punished for those offences, implying there’s a possibility that the Christmas Island treatment could be somehow acceptable because of it.
Exactly! these people are being punished TWICE for the crimes that some of them committed.
We don't do that in a civilized justice system and having a PM suggest it's just fine and dandy to keep punishing them is abhorrent.