Just want to clarify what I meant by group in the first sentence - it was meant in a broad sense such as nation states or religions. I was thinking about the German citizen complicity issue when I wrote that.
@Psycho Milt; I agree. The majority of people in any group are not psychopaths but are vulnerable to group-think and can be manipulated to go along with explanations or narratives that excuse their actions (or more aptly in many cases, lack of action). The...
That's a ridiculous way to side-step the pro-lifer analogy. Oh, and political aims don't just mean pure tactics or terror, but all the broader reasons and rationale that people have cited on this thread. You're not suggesting that the punch wasn't ...
Ah - that's the point. They ''can'' make that argument (including claims that abortion doctors are Nazis), and even though their argument is wrong, we can't condemn their tactics of violence and coercion if we are prepared to do the same in furthering our ...
The analogy with pro-lifers isn't as a target of violence, but as perpetrator. They justify violence in similar terms through labelling those they attack as evil and posing a threat to society.
'' I think the option to punch someone is mainly relegated to able bodied, youngish men.'' Yep, and that's why the argument that we get to punch someone if we can apply a specific label to them is wrong and dangerous. Because it's what the alt-right wants ...
Bob Jones punched Rod Vaughan. And that's the thing with fascism, it strips out personality and individual humanity. But yeah, lots of people get some kind of charge from violence - what's your point?
By using a structural violence or indirect self-defence argument, people can justify anything. The twisted logic of violence is how anti-abortion zealots justify murdering doctors. After all they believe it's in service of a justified or noble cause. The ...
From what I have seen of Deborah Russell (just her TV appearances) your pompous little theory doesn't ring true. She appears to be a mix of intellect and sensitivity, and she comes across as smart, but also warm and likeable.
How they need to work is members grasping that they are ''the union''; the union is not their organiser or a Wellington official.
That's one very weird argument you've got there. Yes, I do consider her work journalism, but that's not a pejorative term for me. The Herald running an extract of her work does not discredit or devalue it.
Well that's wrong. Journalism has a strong history of unionism and membership remains at high levels, especially by today's standards. Where do you get the claim from that few journalists have been union members? Of course there is a dearth of industrial ...
''Asked whether his party would follow in the footsteps of Kim Dotcom's Internet Party in handing the election to National, Morgan retorted: "Kim Dotcom, I can think of something better - how about Trump?" However, he did not want to draw too many ...
Morgan likened himself to Trump. Fashionable as it is to write Morgan off I wonder if the big political story of 2017 will be that the pundits were wrong and his party was good for 7 or 8%. As annoying as he is I'm probably going to vote for him, and I ...
Rogernomics has not been worked through in NZ on a number of levels: politically, in academia, or the arts. Thus any apology from Labour would be into (and from) this cultural vacuum and would have little effect.
If you read the Economist Wayne you should know Theresa ''Maybe'' is in major bother over the muddled pre-Article 50 talks, and clinging to New Zealand and Australia is a distraction from that looming debacle. Would have been the perfect time for English ...
LOL. So ACC specialist lawyers like Miller and Dunedin's Peter Sara took no appeal cases during the Labour years. As if. My comment said National's manufactured crisis led to ACC playing hardball with a larger group of claimants. Thus it's unclear why you ...
No that's wrong, it got worse under National with its manufactured crisis and affected a much larger group of claimants, but long-term claimants had been persecuted under Labour's watch. It's amazing how people deny (or just don't know) stuff that's been ...
You might want to check out ACC's well-documented record with long-term claimants, including those who have illness caused by workplace accidents, before blithely giving that Crown entity a whole lot more claimants and financial clout.
Social investment is a successful narrative for the right to avoid responsibility for the system's failure to provide adequate housing, wages, and benefits. It's rubbish, of course, but highly effective. The problem with the ''technical'' monitor is while ...
As any child poverty campaigner will tell you, the universality of Super means deprivation among older people is much less than those aged 0-17. Its low admin costs from not having to put people through hoops to qualify as ''vulnerable'' helps offset the ...
The irony of using the trope of Labour being a bit useless to try to persuade people that the media is bad is that you push that message pretty hard yourself when it suits your agenda. I know you have done a pretty good job at picking up the 'better and ...
I've had that experience on a small site and it is annoying. The case taken by the former Service and Food Workers Union on behalf of Kristine Bartlett will help every caregiver and support worker including non-members and those not in a collective. I'm ...
A lot of money for increased wages will come from the Govt itself as funder, as many but certainly not all of the affected sectors are publicly funded. That's why the Govt is directly involved in settling the aged care and support workers case. It's going ...
More a legal problem than a perception problem. But yes the case had reasonable media and is a talking point. And next year when the aged care and support workers are likely to settle there will be lots of positive media that National has done more for ...
Health and safety law was watered down in 92, and several years later the mines inspectorate was dumped. Those are material changes that affect safety in mines. The system was no doubt imperfect but it saved people's lives by getting them out of unsafe ...
It's ironic that you criticise the Times' journalism standards when the website that carried its ''obituary'' is running a defence of the KKK and an article entitled ''The Feminization of Politics''.
That's incorrect; New Zealand's mining health and safety had been strong before the 1992 law change as a consequence of earlier tragedies. ''In October 1997, 13 years before Pike blew itself up, retired chief inspector of coal mines, Harry Bell, wrote to ...
No, save nz is not ''focusing on sponsored content'', they're focused on slagging off the Spin Off by conflating fake news with sponsored content. They said this: ''Spinoff is one of the worst offenders of ‘fake news’ and ‘sponsored content’..'' The Spin ...
Oh dear. I knew this thread would become swamped by people conflating everything they don't like about the media with fake news. The Spin Off is not a purveyor of fake news.
Yeah, the technology we use is not dehumanised and is embedded in the every day - who would claim otherwise these days when everyone with a computer has become a publisher of sorts? The new Adam Curtis film HyperNormalisation is worth a watch.
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