Posts by WH
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Actually, Weston, that would be an opinion.
Some quick research has uncovered that Sue Bradford may, in fact, not be "a dick". She is a real person with thoughts and feelings that are entitled to respect.
I regret any hurt or confusion my comments may have caused.
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I really don't like John Armstrong's political writing, but I am struggling to understand why (even if you oppose smacking) that you would want to pass Bradford's bill in the face of such overwhelming opposition.
Without rehashing the arguments for and against, this is a debate that the bill's supporters have decisively lost. This Act of electoral suicide needs to be stopped before any more damage is done to causes that actually matter.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10431744
National's polling is apparently registering a voter exodus from Labour of astonishing proportions - so astonishing National is querying whether its figures are right.
For God's sake, just pass the Burrows amendment. Can't anyone see they're all the same look? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
Sue Bradford is a dick. Fact.
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Smacking debate. Aargh.
You don't have to say anything thats actually false to be misleading, you can just be selective about your material. Lets have another look at those Herald comments:
Since when did an MP whom wasn't even elected to parliament get to tell me how to bring up my kids? I will be voting National come next election if this is passed.
We live in a plurist society and normal parents should be able to choose the form of discipline most appropriate to their family without the government intervention.
Everyone is against child abuse - Chester Burrows included. I'm not buying this 80% of us are wrong/aliens thing.
Love your work Russell - have a good weekend all.
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Chris Rattue's column on 'the sham of the World Cup' is a bizarre piece. In summary, all world sporting tournaments are flawed, the Cricket World Cup is especially buggered, and Chris has not watched a game since Bob Woolmer's untimely passing. Eh?
Its been six months since Rattue triggered that international incident before the Wales test. For a guy who writes about sport for a living, he doesn't seem to like it very much.
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James,
I agree that the left should not align itself with the excesses of Islamic fundamentalism, whatever those excesses might be. I would prefer to leave questions of comparative religion for another discussion, if thats okay.
As I interpret it, there is a broad desire on the left to ensure that the West deals with the world on just terms. Many of us would like to do better than we have done in this regard.
So, unlike the far left, I believe that the United States can help lead us to a better world and that radical Islam is bad. But everyone on the left is in agreement that that the approach actually taken by GWB has been counterproductive.
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I'm still trying to finish his first book: To Live in Infamy: How Beatkniks, Loose Women and Uppity Nigra were Responsible for Pearl Harbour
lol - the occassional bout of lefty introspection is a good thing, but it definitely has its limits.
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To be honest, I think my secular modernism is under more direct threat from the religious fundamentalists of America than it is from Islamists. The Islamists' derangement might be considerably greater, but I don't think they have the power to change the society with which I identify. The other lot just might.
I suspect that Aaronovitch and Cohen would say, among other things, that the radical Islamic desire to resolve the Jewish question is more troubling than the threat the posed by the US religious right.
I don't hold far left political views, and I think Cohen may have a point in respect of the debate that has taken place in the UK. I wouldn't take it personally if I were you though:
HAROLD PINTER last night delivered a stinging attack on Tony Blair and Bill Clinton over the threatened war against Saddam Hussein, claiming the US President had kil1ed thousands of children" by sanctions and accusing the Cabinet of being excited by the prospect of dropping "big bombs" on Iraq. The playwright led mounting opposition to war in the Gulf at a meeting of dissident Labour MPs at Westminster, as Cardinal Basil Hume, the leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, released a letter to Mr Blair expressing "strong doubts" over whether military targets could be hit without causing "disproportionate harm". Mr Pinter, a long-term critic of American aggression, told The Independent that the close Anglo-American relationship forged between Mr. Blair and Mr. Clinton was "shameful and pathetic". He said: "The USA is a monster. It's actually the USA that needs to be stopped. "Everyone knows that war is appalling but what we lose sight of is that it's been abstracted now and sanitised to such a degree... I said in my speech that Mr Clinton has killed children and he hasn't even noticed it, because they are actually abstractions - they are children dying by his sanctions." War had been sanitised by political propaganda from government with a certain kind of complicity in the media. That was certainly the case in the Gulf War." Mr Pinter added: "I am not a pacifist. I am rational." Addressing an anti-war meeting at Westminster, Mr Pinter said: "Despite continual references to thc solidarity of 'the international community', the United States has in fact held international law in contempt for so long it has succeeded in rendering the concept meaningless. "Madeleine Albright [the US Secretary of State] said the other day "our patience is running out'. I remember a man who used to say very much the same thing in the l93Os. The USA is now a bovine monster out of control. That this government can so glibly ally itself to such a pointless, utterly irresponsible and profoundly dangerous enterprise is lamentable."
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I think we should be cautious of judging people simply on whether or not they supported Iraqi "regime change".
The Guardian's David Aaronovitch was a supporter of the Iraq war, and George Bush Snr was against it. Hillary Clinton and John McCain still refuse to apologise for their votes to authorise the invasion. I personally retain a lot of respect for Tony Blair, but think that George Bush has, without doubt and by some distance, been the worst US president of modern times.
Related to this is the question of whether any occupation force could ever have restored order (say, by adopting Shinseki's troop estimate or by operating under the auspices of the UN) or whether this fiasco was a product of the Bush Administration's incompetence. I tend to think it probably could have been done by a competently led multi-national force.
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I think its good that the centre and centre left does not share the worldview of the hard left. Anyone who reads CiF will have occassionally come across the more puritanical aspects of British left wing opinion, pitted as it currently is against the UK Labour Party. I'd guess that the relative strength of the hard left in the UK is responsible for Labour's (historical) poor showing there.
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Sorry for the double up, but if anyone is interested in Gore's relationship with the media, the WaPo's Howard Kurtz included this quote today (it also covers some of the clips that Russell wrote about):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100587.html
"-- From the perspective of Democrats, no politician has been more right, more often, on more important questions. On global warming, words that had a radical edge in 1992 -- and still do, to many conservative ears -- Gore wrote 'Earth in the Balance,' anticipating mainstream liberal rhetoric by a decade. Many Washington Democrats cringed at what they regarded as his shrill people-vs.-powerful 2000 convention speech, when he warned that a Bush presidency would favor special interests and the wealthy. They cringed even more in 2002 at what they regarded as Gore's naive warnings that the coming Iraq war was a disaster in waiting and a distraction from other fronts in the campaign against terrorism. But within a year or so of both speeches, most Democrats inside Washington and beyond essentially embraced Gore's argument and tone."