One more day, one more lie, one more smile, one more wave.
Some old joke wants my vote. Aspirational fail.
Did you see on TV? The third world disease on her face.
Unlike me, all you see, are scabs not your first world disgrace.
You’re the faeces of the species, you’re the disease, you’re the plague on the face of that girl.
You’re the hunger, you’re the plunder, all asunder, heaven wonder if there’s oil on the moon (in our bones).
You’re the statistic, optimistic, pessimist e-con-o-mystic, you’re the waste in the space.
Merchant banker, supertanker, deep drill wanker, pull your anchor, just get out of the way.
And we’ll rise. And when we rise up.
We will sing, and we will be glorious.
One more try, one more bribe, one more tea for your friend.
Some old bloke on a rope while they bury his dead.
Did you see on tv? The mould on kids in their bed.
Unlike me, all you see, is dirt and the profits from rent.
You’re the faeces of the species, you’re a disease, you’re a plague on the backs of us all.
You’re the sadistic, little twisted, first world gifted, Mi-pad whiz kid, the foul wind in the sales.
You’re the hunter, you’re the blunder, toxic numbers, six foot under, and you’re the slag of good grace.
Mother cluster, bunker buster, colonel mustard, general custard, just get out of our way.
And we’ll rise. And when we rise up.
We will sing, and we will be glorious.
19 on the daily chart, 304 on the wildcard chart, from two votes.
We’re all lefties here, right? we’re all anti poverty and pro children in need, right?
Two clicks, and you don’t even have to listen to the song to vote.
Pass the link around, and we’ll all have played a part in forcing the issue of child hunger and inept government in NZ in the faces of a head under the cover, not really listening public.
Surely you can see what the songs about, so please click to fight to win.
Underneath the title and band name, there’s an orange ‘vote’ button
Or click or mouse over the Al1en head picture and there’s an orange java vote button.
I’d do a screenshot if I knew how post it.
You can vote everyday until we win.
Viva revolution.
I have to to log in using my facebook details to access my profile, but if I log out, return to the site and dismiss the login screen, I always go straight to song page.
I don’t know why you can’t access the page, but I appreciate your efforts in trying.
Thanks.
Sometimes I like a crooked day dream to keep me company at work.
My fave is the song does well using the government’s (ours) money, and the pm handing over an award at the tuis (or whatever they’re called), to a stunt double dressed in an alien suit, with the whole nation knowing it’s about his premiership and him doing sod all to help our children out of poverty, live on TV.
It makes international news reels, and as we know, there’s no such thing as bad, free publicity.
Then my boss comes and wakes me and tells me he’s made my coffee. đ
I voted. But it still asks for some silly flash player, I have never had any trouble playing anything from the net before It would be nice to know what I voted for đ
My respect to all those who have voted.
231 after 7 votes.
You see how easy this could be to win if the just the site stalwarts here gifted a daily vote over the next couple of weeks.
Tell your friends, use the pc at work and home and we could all be having a right old laugh at Teflon john expense.
I don’t want to spam more than I have, and certainly don’t want to wear out my welcome here, so for bearing with me, ta very much.
Just in case anybody is still awake and or interested, I’ve made a Dr Evil pic to accompany the vote link if anyone wants it.
Right click, save as, and email away. http://www.al1en.org
Puff piece in the Herald today on Maggie Barry, written by Audrey Young, headlined ‘Maggie’s Way’.
A Q&A style article. She talks about the insults and bullying nature of parliament and it’s from her point of view all Labour’s fault. Gets politely and super lightly called on insulting and bullying Jacinda Adern, and it turns out it’s all because of Trevor Mallard twitter twatting or something.
Maggie doesn’t do insults or bullying, neither does National, its all Labour and the Greens fault. Of course Young leaves that and moves on to bigger more pressing issues.
Which MP outside your party impresses you?
That’s a hard one. Can I get back to you on that? That’s a really hard one.
Classy, there are good people on both sides of the house doing good work and you can’t even mention one, you f&^*ing work there on committees with these people . Says more about Barry than any of her other answers.
Maggie this may be the zenith of your political career, may your years of seat warming ahead be good for your garden.
This article was so light and fluffy from our hard hitting gallery journo I think the paper floated in from the letterbox this morning on its own.
All the Maori party mps, for services to the National party.
John Banks, that he’s still clinging on to his salary, despite everything that says he shouldn’t.
Simon Bridges, for carrying on and making the best of it, despite taking a severe beating with the wanker stick.
And last and very much least, Paula Bennett, for her continued support for NZ tent makers in these troubled times, and popularising the moo moo all over again, even if she does need help to zip it.
Audrey young doing her bit for the party her daddy served and her herald masters.
Maggie Barry is a vacuous nasty piece of work, can’t even shut the f up and learn the ropes. Finally got selected for one of the safest seats as they couldn’t risk her in anything less.
“I personally think that men and men and women and women should be allowed to marry if that’s what they want. Frankly, I don’t quite understand why they want to do it. I’ve never got married in my life.”
She even manages to screw up her pro-marriage equality stance. It’s like a pre-women’s vote man telling a woman ‘I don’t know why you want the right to vote, I’ve never done it’.
Yes Maggie, we shouldn’t marry because you think it’s silly.
On the subject of student loan defaulters, I have no idea why the IRD cannot just make an agreement with the tax collection agencies of the UK, USA, Ireland, and Aus to have the student debt recovered through their respective tax systems?
Probably because those countries want nothing to change. At the moment, they get all our educated people improving their economy / society.
Not only would it cost their tax systems to chase kiwis, but it would stem the tide of highly educated people working within their country.
I don’t know how anyone could really confuse the two though, the writing styles are worlds apart. “Cactus Kate” is just a horrible bogan wrapped in a logical fallacy.
I actually quite like Cactus’s writing. Sure she is a right wing bogan but at least she is an up front bogan and she writes and thinks rationally. Her principles may be different to ours but at least she has some principles. And unlike Key she is exactly who she is. There is not pretension. She is not trying to make out she is something she is not.
That’s very true micky, and I don’t doubt her sincerity one bit. She’s a straight up honest bastard.
However she does rely on some pretty flimsy logic. For example on RNZ she tried to argue that Matt McCarten shouldn’t criticise the operators of the Pike River mine because he wouldn’t want to run a mine himself.
Also there are times I think a responsible host should hide the keys to her computer…
That is a horrible accusation. I have never been on red radio.
And you’ve misrepresented the comments I did actually make on another station which were in relation to a defamatory comment made by another guest. One who consistently accuses directors of companies of all manner of bad behaviour, so I was merely making a point that it is not as easy and glamorously well remunerated that he may think it is and if it was he should be a mining company director.
What is the world coming to, with Hooton cheer leading for team Shearer, and Cactus Kate arguing (albeit in a nuanced sense) in favour of team Cunliffe. As I read her, she wants to see actual political engagement and a proper battle of ideas, rather than both left and right racing to see who can do the best job of cosseting the middle class. And I have to say, it is a lovely piece of writing.
Odgers can’t write to save herself. I find her at times close to illiterate. On top of this, no matter how much she tries to dress things up for her audience, her words are invariably littered with a belief that greed is good and spiked with a hatred for anyone she thinks may impede that pursuit. I would’ve loved to have seen her in parliament, getting roasted on a daily basis, away from the safety of her computer screen. Small fish in an even smaller pond.
Of all the things to talk about you are all hung up on whinging about grammar and calling me a bogan.
Little wonder Cunliffe cannot gain momentum in a working class party.
His supporters are a bunch of snobby toffs.
This kind of grammar policing, of anyone, really makes me cringe. The style of my writing is often poor and ungrammatical. Yet somehow, I feel entitled to have my say. If I felt insecure about all this, as so many people do, reading these kinds of comments would make me even more reticent about participating in conversations at the Standard.
Looks like you’re hung up on issues with your bad writing, too. There was this, you know:
“On top of this, no matter how much she tries to dress things up for her audience, her words are invariably littered with a belief that greed is good and spiked with a hatred for anyone she thinks may impede that pursuit.”
I hope you aren’t implying that those who are put off speaking out by comments deriding others for their writing deficits, are just being “oversensitive”.
I’m never too bothered about clumsy or wrong grammar, but “CK’s” summary of my post as:
The silly policy to build homes for middle class kiddies screaming poverty is an excellent example of this Cunliffe v Shearer tension. “Karol” has an excellent post on this and has thought of the conspiracy that capitalism in fact is to blame in forcing this idea that owning your own home is aspirational to all.
…. is just inaccurate, whether as result of clumsy use of words, or just a poor interpretation. I was critical of the political position and policy of the current Labour caucus leadership (Team Shearer really), but I’m pretty sure I never referred to Cunliffe directly or indirectly in my ‘state housing vs home ownership’ post. And “conspiracy” is not what I think of when I am writing about the way the loose networks of the wealthy and powerful operate to further their own interests.
So she doesn’t have much of an idea of what I was thinking, but then maybe the entity that is “karol” is just a quotation, a figment of someone’s (or some group’s) imagination?
You’re being far too charitable, Karol. Anyone who refers to the poor as the “pathetic heaving underclass”, believes beneficiaries should be paid not to “breed” and thinks Slater’s blog has anything to offer other than a window into how nasty the right can get can’t be taken seriously. Just as QoT saw the hook in Fran O’Sullivan’s piece, no matter how hard she tries Odgers cannot help but let her true colours show, even when she posts on The Standard as happened again throughout today. I do not see how some on the Left can place genuine value in anything she says.
There were some points of agreement between my views on home ownership & CK’s, but she went off on her own little tangent about the (allegedly continuing) Cunliffe-Shearer tension.
I’m more curious as to why TS suddenly got so much attention over the last 24 hours or so, from CK, MH, and a Labour MP and an LP policy person. Some things seem to be bubbling away out of my sight. Yes, FO’S was still being pretty right wing, but, also seemed to shift her position somewhat.
I’m wondering if it’s part of a growing sense of uncertainty about changes happening that some political people feel they are losing control of. While some may be just trying to manoeuvre so they’ll be in a relatively favourable position when the dust settles.
Hi weka, the game is far bigger than February, important as that is. Leaders come and go, MPs come and go, neither Shearer nor Cunliffe will be relevant 10-15 years from now. The real sea change has to happen at the Labour membership and constitutional level. And we’ve only just started.
As I read her, she sees the Shearer/Cunliffe tension as arising from the courting of the middle class by the Shearer people, and the desire for a genuinely left orientation by a lot of left wing people. And she sees the housing policy and your response to it as exemplifying this tension. But I agree that beyond those points, she does go off on her own tangent.
Queue some b/s about ck’s post being proof positive that ‘misguided’ types of the left are unwittingly in cahoots with portions of the right and in effect undermining the ‘nice’ Labour Party just as the ‘right’ wants, and how every one counted within the ‘misguided left’ ought now, and once and for all, STFU.
In fact. Haven’t I already read that line somewhere here at ts?
Does ‘indeed’ indicate you think that’s a reasonable line to spin, McFlock? The reason I ask is your follow-on, which I guess is attempting to posit the opposite of what I’d call a b/s line. And it’s another b/s line. No-one is calling on DS to resign the leadership. But lots of people are wanting to see democracy really exist within the Labour Party. And, I guess, pressure might be applied to mp’s who’d rather deny democracy in Feb.
Now, you might not agree with that sentiment or goal. Fine. But don’t mis-call it as a call for DS to resign.
Well, I have seen arguments that posit Hooten’s support for shearer is evidence that shearer is not fit to be leader.
If I were to make a similar quibble about your phrasing, I don’t recall seeing anyone here specifically demand that critics of the Labour party should “STFU”.
Yep things are getting really strange. Chris Trotter thinks the nats have a mandate to sell our assets and the right are calling for tax increases for the wealthy.
Has it ever occurred to any of you lot that most people don’t have a blindly ideological approach to every issue unlike yourselves – that there are good points and bad points to both sides of most given arguments? That most peoples views may shift back and forth somewhat over time?
I guess it is because you lot are in constant battle mode fighting the good war against the forces of evil, you have developed an us vs them mentality – “you are either with us or against us!”.
You are left exasperated an confused when you can’t squeeze someone into one of a few pigeon holes.
Has it ever occurred to you that us lot don’t give one big fat f**k what you ‘think’ and we only tolerate you as an object of mirth to bestow the odd piece of spittle upon when we have run out of jokes about the Prime Minister Slippery’s bad habit of public displays of ‘spastic dancing’…
Neo marxism is dead in the water – who’s suppose to be the Agent of change since the proletariat failed to turn up to the party? Why should anyone believe that knowledge is only ever Historical never Universal?
Has it ever occurred to any of you lot that most people donât have a blindly ideological approach to every issue unlike yourselves â that there are good points and bad points to both sides of most given arguments? That most peoples views may shift back and forth somewhat over time?
Sounds like poststructuralist mumbo-jumbo to me…isn’t that usually your target?
No its not poststructurlist, its Humanist. I believe there is an objective reality and objective universal values about ethics/justice.
Post structuralists/Deconstructionist/various Feminists splinter groups/Neo Marxists/Cultural Relativists/Multiculturalists – they all suffer from hyper relativism and symptoms of solipsism of varying severity.
Makes it hard to pin that lot down as they twist and squirm, grabbing a bit of this and a bit of that to create what can only be described as very bad philosophy.
well, that is where we part ways friend; existence precedes essence; consider the “existence” of people born with profound impairments (at Templeton there were “patients” that resembled sun-fish, to put it politely); consider the “essence” of so-called “schizophrenics”; I have followed your comments over the year, and like mine, there is nothing “objective” about them. (we need new lock-nuts)
Ah, k-p, why so keen to put people in boxes? I do have difficulty following a party line or any one theory – the best still have their weaknesses. It depends on the context and the issue as to which is most useful. I am a little bit neo-Marxist and quite a bit post-structuralist. There are some things in postmodernism I agree with. There is no theory of everything. But I am for democratic socialism, social and economic justice/fairness, and am against violence, prejudice, persecution and oppression.
And I am for evidence-based research, knowledge, understanding and argument.
I do think there is an objectively (scientifically) verifiable material reality. I see objectivity as a process, not an end point. And it doesn’t necessarily cancel out subjectivity, especially when it comes to human activities and communications. Objectivity is haunted by subjectivity, as you demonstrated with that sentence of yours I quoted above. But, that’s the thing about language and human communications.
You seem to miss your own contradictions. “believing” in something is a subjective statement.
Yep. I’d say it’s an odd sort of humanism that fails to recognise that humans interpret reality both subjectively, and through socially constructed lenses.
not that flakey Post Modernist stuff which I think QofT suffers from.
No, please, do go on.
I’ll just be over here having a chuckle that you managed to get from “you stupid lefties just want to pigeonhole everyone” into “I bet you’re a neo-Marxist” in a mere six comments.
”i have never read the book,(Marx),tho i was told to take a look,i lifted my pool hall cue for another game”,
(Thanks to the Clash for the lines which i have gleefully altered with the addition of the Social/economists moniker),
LOLZ, my pidgeon hole is somewhere in the vicinity of Pol Pot, a Communizing Fascist,
Thanks to the good old New Zealand education tho i have the ability to realize that getting KP’s relatives to bang a four inch nail into the back of His head at gun-point just isn’t acceptable human behaviour so good old Post-Modernist,(whatever the fuck that means), me has had to accept simply being a Socialist…
Trotter must have holidayed in one of those Batchs that have 50 year old lumpy couches!
He didn’t get a good rest and over stretched some of the points he was making.
Shearer should front foot the mercenary thing so that it is yesterday’s news by the time the Nats get their research ready for leaking through their usual channels
This is twilight zone stuff…are Right Wing commentators giving Key and English room to launch one or two definitively Left Wing policies? Can their strategy for 2014 be really this cunning? Mix in one or two headline Left Wing policies (top tax rate hike and youth employment/youth training programmes), and use it as cover for austerity and asset sell downs elsewhere?
I wonder if they have found in their polling that a lot of ordinary NZers – including the middle class – are worried that their kids can’t seem to get ahead and that there is a shortage of decent jobs and training opportunities.
Nah, it just won’t happen via a lift in the top tax rate, the Fed crowd would string English up by a very sensitive part of His anatomy in a rotary shed at the very thought of it,
The only invite Slippery would get from now until the little Shyster is given the kick would be from those wishing to have Him behave naturally,(dance like a clown),in their presence while they took pics to show off to the Grand-kids in their dotage,
The Bizness lobby would immediately stop calling, i think that if they are going to spend money on any sort of employment initiative,(or pretend to), the usual suspect will be trotted out, asset sales proceeds will have yet another attachment of ‘youth employment’ attached to it along with the continuously growing list of roading,health,schools,debt, blah blah blah,
Other than that if the Slippery little Shyster has half a brain He will be offering employers a years worth of dole payments as a ‘training allowance’ to actually employ a large number of the 24% of unemployed youth, possibly with a slight hint at a top tax rate rise…
Have people forgotten about the youth changes for 16-17 year olds?
Does one think it’s possible that that was setting the scene for harsher benefit conditions for all youth and more privatisation?
The right taketh more than they giveth so creating an enviornment where it seems that they are taking positive steps to address the issue may simply be a way of saying to people well now there’s no excuse to be on a benefit.
Bootcamps won’t work this time to get that 5% of swinging vote but the strategy surely won’t change – we’re offering this but if you don’t avail yourself of our wonderful opportunity then benefit damnation is yours.
Can their strategy really be this cunning? It sounds eerily like their 2008 me-to strategy. The must be getting a bit of polling feedback telling them to DO something.
This is what I reckon. Also, any PR headline increase in the top personal tax rate can be more than compensated for by drops in corporate and trust tax rates, see how it works đ
may I just pop in here?
I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had time to make it shorter đ
(The last thing on knows when constructing a work is what to put first; continual eloquence is tedious) ;)-Blaise
WHAT WE CAN NEVER KNOW,or the collapsing hermeneutic (there’s your spiral)
-David Germez
“one could in the light of the fact that the divine life is itself a continued variation,,, apply to divinity in the most exalted sense the name of time. The old mythology of Chronos as primordial being and first divine principle seems thereby to be somehow in contact with the truth”
-Franz Bretano :Philosophical Investigations on Space Time and the Continuum.
“All created things are God’s speech. The being of a stone speaks and manifests the same as does my mouth about God: and people understand more by what is done than by what is said”
-Meister Eckhart : The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises and Defence.
Let just get this out there. A person in receipt of a benefit, if they earn more than $3,400 are pushed up into the second lowest band of taxation. Key did this because obviously he never read the convention on human rights, that if someone is so in need that they receive a benefit then they cannot be treated differently, that everyone should receive the same amount of welfare. Yet Key believes that progressive taxation should kick on those on welfare!
Looking at it another way. People who earn $100,000 pay 10.5% on the first $14,000 they earn.
People who earn $3,400 pay only at the 10.5% rate. Those in receipt of a welfare
check, and have no income, get the full entitlement, pay no tax on income. But Key in
his infinite stupidity believes that those individuals who do have some paltry $3,400+
of income should not get the full welfare entitlement (as effectively they pay more tax,
pay the 17.5% rate on their measly income after the first $3,400).
Just for a moment imagine the cost of filing tax returns as all those people on welfare
whose taxation just became a complicated mess. Whatever happened to keeping
government taxation simple. But worse, how can government argue that families
on welfare should not get family tax credit when there is clearly income tax
bands for those on welfare. I mean whatever happened to equal treatment in taxation.
You pay a higher rate of tax makes you eligible for the programs its funds to those who
also pay higher rates of tax.
“whatever happened to equal treatment in taxation”, only when the main beneficiaries of such treatment are those at the top of the food chain or those who vote to put them there,
The Working for Families fiasco where the Clark Government deemed the middle class,(and quite high up in that decile), to be more ‘in need’ of relief from taxation than beneficiaries with children was the final straw for me that broke my connection with Labour,
Incidently the ‘loud noise’ us lot at the Standard have been making over housing affordability has obviously attracted the attention of Labour so much so that Annette King has paid a visit and at least aquainted herself with the concerns many of us here have regarding State owned rentals being provided to the decile of lower waged workers so there is a small glimmer of hope of seeing some specific and substantial gains in that area when Labour release it’s completed election policy,(hopefully sooner rather than later),
My view is that the next ‘issue’ that we as the Standard need to address is just that of ‘working for Families’ and just how grossly unfair is it to tax the benefits of welfare dependent children and then refuse to offer them the ‘tax relief’ offered to the children of the upper echelons of the middle class…
The money spent on some of WFF would be better off being spent on a) a universal family benefit, and b) an increase in the state housing stock. The same outcome would be achieved.
Though I agree with the sentiments leveled at Labour, my point was this, that Key introduced a second progressive tax in the middle of the welfare. Imagine for a moment that we pay benefit to help people out of poverty only to tax them more if they do the right thing on welfare!
Save or get some part time work????
But worse, by taxing them on welfare we also don’t pay them WFF, which is blatantly unfair.
But its even worse, the 10.5% tax rate is a farce since its really just a tax relief for the rich, those who don’t get welfare don’t the relief since unlike everyone else the MSD take the first
10.5% tax band when they provide welfare. So the low tax band had no effect except for the
free who live off assets with little income (and can’t claim benefit), those geared to reduce their
taxes using trusts – the super rich.
Merging Madness and Reason (it’s the DSM V season)
“you have never been diagnosed as mad-this is the shifting sand upon which you erect your sanity. Yet, your illness has gone unrecognized…you have been deprived of treatment because the steady, sure advance of science has taken too long to reach you.”
“Beneath the (can’t read my handwriting, some adjective) labels of consensus there is just the homogenous zone-our common origins and physiology bind us together; we are a crowd of open-eyed children staring with wonder at the world. This vast assembly of “thrown” people is the homogenous zone-a coat of many (red) colours”.
“Reason too, recognized itself as being duplicated and dispossessed of itself; it thought itself wise and it was and it was mad; it thought it knew and it knew nothing; it thought itself righteous and it was insane; knowledge led one to the forbidden world when one thought one was being led by it to eternal light.” (thats “progress” for ya’s; Get Ya YaYa’s Out) (those art-school rockers aye)
-Foucault :Mental Illness and Psychology
According to Scheff, relative to the rate of treated “mental illness” the rate of unrecorded residual rule breaking of societal norms is extremely high.
-consider this continual self-absorbed flouting of cell -phone /driving legislation, and it’s on the increase; BodyCount’s in the house.Listen to how close people are to stress thresholds in their daily discourse with children, family, associates, witness the behavioural temperature on the roads, the anasthetization and subsequent harms carried out; that’s why I drank alone in the end; Dos Gusanos was fun though, all those years ago đ (an I’m not surprised productivity is tanking when I observe people ostensibly working yet using their work p.c for shopping and such-like)
“Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of ‘world history’, but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed and the clever beasts had to die-One might invent such a fable and yet still it would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature.
-Friedrich Nietzsche :On Truth and Lies in a Non-Moral Sense
“Madness and sanity are variants of the same phenomena; everything that we see and fear in the madman can also be seen and feared in ourselves. We are all mad children, we are all autistic, we are all deluded, we are all abstract and solipsistic and we all madly cobble together systems of absurd beliefs on this lost planet of fools; perhaps a fundamental truth about our humanity can be found in the instability, ‘throwness’ and madness of the homogenous zone.”
(Baudrillard places his hopes in terrorism, viruses and catastrophe)
i read today of an analysts perspective on FIVE potential Asian Shocks
-Taiwanese Independence asserted by the democratic vote
-Islamic unrest reaching China
-US Defence (Naval) cuts
-Thailand destabilized
-Territorial disputes in E and S China seas (we do live in interesting times)
-Why, thou sayest well; I do now remember a saying, “The fool doth think he is wise, yet the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
-As You Like It (if you are ruled by mind, you are a king, if by body, a slave-Cato)
WHAT WE CAN NEVER KNOW- David Gamez. I whole-heartedly recommend this little book; I read it this afternoon at the library (air-con and I cannot afford to pay my fees, yet;)
HBT-10 more hot dry days forecast, little rain since August, Irrigation Ban on the way, Farmers may ‘dry out’
-if you’re walking a dog, they cannot eat anything they find in or around rivers or ponds, (cyano-bacteria) meanwhile we are going to supply more dairy to another Infant Formula Manufacturer establishing in NI
Dom-The Children’s Commissioner, a HB paediatrician,Russell Wills,, is “incredulous” about child poverty and inequality in our country…
from your friendly neighbourhood “madman” (hyper-rationally and reflexively yours)
now what am I gonna do for a crust. hmmm
11.29 By faith the people passed through the RED Sea, as on dry land, but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned. đ
đ It’s a Mad Mad World, btw D, I’m gettin “bored” again, don’t wanna write a book, there’s enough been written already, might start an Anarchist Commune ala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin đ
I assumed your “watch from the High Plains” remark meant that you weren’t going to be actively commenting for the moment, forgive me if I misinterpreted.
Loved your stuff, trooper, a message from Nu-Earth?
“And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts
And I looked and behold, a pale horse
And his name that sat on him was Death
And Hell followed with him.”
“What is happening at the moment? Because the Falklands are back in the news. Belfast is back in the news. It’s like some sort of hideous 80s revival, isn’t it? All we need is a heartless Conservative prime minister attacking the unemployed and demonising the poor, bankers making obscene profits, David Bowie releasing a single…”–Sandi Toksvig, The News Quiz
mickysavage -> So tell me KP is unfettered capitalism in a healthy state and just what this world needs?
Obviously not. I was never a supporter of neo liberalism, except back in the 80s when I was in my middle teens. But everyone was entranced by it then, Muldoon was gone, the Cold War over, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous was on TV.
This is an interesting piece by a contemporary philosopher I like, applying some Humanist qualities – imagination, intuition, memory, ethics – to the current morass:
“I can only ask: is there a single example in Western civilisation over the past 2500 years when a broad policy of austerity has pulled a civilisation out of crisis and set it on the road to wellbeing, prosperity or growth? No. There is no example. There is no evidence. Only ideological conviction – romanticism – coming out of a political-economic theory packed into an apparently inevitable force called globalisation…
…Crises usually strike when ideologies have been around too long and the elites that serve them have lost their ability for critical thought…
…Instead of retreating inside a received wisdom, which has already revealed that it doesn’t work, we could turn to some basic, helpful human qualities…
…Ethics, for example, are a simple, practical reminder that the primary obligation of a civilisation is to its citizens’ wellbeing, not to the protection of commercial contracts or the servicing of debts. The fact that most of these debts were incurred by the commercial sector and its financiers reinforces this point…
…Memory is an essential tool of education. You can’t deal with a crisis if you are in the hands of economists, managers and business elites who don’t know the history of debt. They don’t know the history of competition. Very few read anything of consequence. They are the briefing paper generation. Many are, in reality, functionally illiterate, except on very narrow topics. They don’t know what has worked and not worked in their own society. In fact, they don’t seem to understand the concept of either society or civilisation…
…As for Imagination, it is not the privileged domain of the arts. Good financial policy is an expression of imagination. Throughout history great financiers and great ministers of finance have usually also been great consumers of culture, intellectuals, men of imagination. I think of Solon in Athens 2600 years ago, of Sully at the side of Henry IV in 1600, of Siegmund Warburg after World War II, of Jean Monet rebuilding Europe. As they would explain: you must imagine your way out of an economic cul de sac, just as a good general imagines his way out of a military stalemate. Bad generals stick to trench warfare…
…History is clear. When faced by unsustainable debts, the fools, the weak, the degenerate civilisations become obsessed by what they owe. They convince themselves that money is real, not an agreed-upon convention. They become its slave. And they destroy themselves. Successful civilisations make these impossible debts disappear – clearly, intentionally, massively. In this way they protect what needs to be protected, such as the savings of real people and their pensions. They clear the decks and the result is raw, new human energy to deal with society’s needs. History is filled with examples of this being done on purpose. It is also filled with the carcasses of those who refused to face reality and so caused their societies to commit suicide.”
For some reason no reply buttons are showing for Pascal or karol, so here goes:
Pascal -> “Yep. Iâd say itâs an odd sort of humanism that fails to recognise that humans interpret reality both subjectively, and through socially constructed lenses.”
Where did I deny any subjectivity? It’s the post structuralists/post modernists who go the hyper relativistic route.
You end up with crazy feminists calling Newton’s Laws of Physics a ‘rape manual’, and prattling on about “Rape Culture”. Science is dismissed or supposedly ‘improved’ via “Critical Theory” to “Feminist Science” or “Post Modernest Science”.
It’s all very poor philosophy and embodies atrociously low Academic standards.
You don’t necessarily “end up with crazy feminists calling Newtonâs Laws of Physics a ârape manualâ” if you accept a lot of what PM theorists say. And to equate that sort of thing with rape culture’ is just asinine.
Do you think that cultural norms are socially constructed, partially through the way we talk about things? And that cultural norms affect individuals thoughts about behavior and blameworthiness?
If so, then it’s no stretch to say that the way a society talks about rape, will affect the incidence of rape. ie, that some ways of talking about rape could increase the incidence of rape by creating cultural norms that support rapists interpretations of reality.
You end up with crazy feminists calling Newtonâs Laws of Physics a ârape manualâ, and prattling on about âRape Cultureâ. Science is dismissed or supposedly âimprovedâ via âCritical Theoryâ to âFeminist Scienceâ or âPost Modernest Scienceâ.
Oops, k_p’s brain overloaded and it’s back to copy-pasting MRA propaganda which he’s already been informed multiple times is inaccurate. Balance has been restored to the Force.
karol -> “Ah, k-p, why so keen to put people in boxes? ”
Just want to know where you stand is all, nothing wrong with that.
“I do have difficulty following a party line or any one theory â the best still have their weaknesses.”
I don’t follow a part line and I get MOBBED on here for it – especially by your girl pals.
“It depends on the context and the issue as to which is most useful.”
It’s not good enough to go with what is “useful”. Marxism for example is a theory of everything, the guy was a genius obviously, nevertheless his philosophical system crashed and burned. Why should anyone believe you have the intellectual ability to uplift a fragment of it, remove it from context and claim it is “useful” for contemporary application.
“I am a little bit neo-Marxist and quite a bit post-structuralist. There are some things in postmodernism I agree with.”
The main tenet in postmodernism is that language is meaningless. Apparently Focault back tracked from that to the position that the meaning the reader gets from a text may differ from the author’s intention. In which case he hasn’t made any insight that authors and readers haven’t been aware of already.
As for Derrida, he’s been called an intellectual fraudster by some luminary academic types. Anyone who says they have read Derrida is lying, its incomprehensible – worse than Hegel.
The fact that Post-structuralist professors still hand out As Bs and Cs to their students submitted essays suggest the whole exercise is an insider’s joke.
“There is no theory of everything. But I am for democratic socialism, social and economic justice/fairness, and am against violence, prejudice, persecution and oppression.”
“And I am for evidence-based research, knowledge, understanding and argument.”
You are keeping the word “science” out of it. Are you referring to science, if not why not, and to what are you referring, Karol?
“I do think there is an objectively (scientifically) verifiable material reality.”
Ok you do bring up science now. Don’t know how you can claim to believe in science but claim to be “quite a bit post-structuralist”
“I see objectivity as a process, not an end point. And it doesnât necessarily cancel out subjectivity, especially when it comes to human activities and communications. Objectivity is haunted by subjectivity, as you demonstrated with that sentence of yours I quoted above. But, thatâs the thing about language and human communications.”
I never denied that there is subjectivity, it is postmodernist who deny the objective.
“You seem to miss your own contradictions. âbelievingâ in something is a subjective statement.”
Is it? Does it matter? Like I said I don’t deny there is subjectivity eg “Chocolate tastes better than vanilla!” [ proviso – scientist discover genetic basis for varying tastes ]
[lprent: There is no “partY line” – it is every person’s argument for themselves. However there is a moderation line.
Personally I tend to view you as having a problem with dealing with women (what is it with that?) and indeed with anyone who thinks. You have that kind of “I’m just a poor victim” mentality (as you have amply demonstrated in this comment) that makes it difficult for you to deal with anyone disagreeing with you. And to top it off you seem to be a poor excuse for a psuedo-intellectual. Generally a waste of bandwidth and a bit of a luser in social media terms.
But these are just my opinions – they don’t enter into moderation.
Most of the time you pick up bans for either personally attacking authors or peristently going off topic in posts – usually the female authors. Right now you’re on most moderators “watch for stupidity” lists, and includes r0b’s list (about your only NOTABLE acheivement to date). ]
âI am a little bit neo-Marxist and quite a bit post-structuralist. There are some things in postmodernism I agree with.”
To be very blunt and clear, to me you are the typical KIWI IDIOT, I frown on, you have neither any understanding of complex history, socialism, social science, alternative social agendas and even scientifically evidenced social data.
I am totally flabber-ghasted about what brought you here.
Sorry, my impression is, you know too little of what goes down.
My comment was not really directed at the quote “kiwi_prometheus” used re what Karol may have commented on before, it was just totally incoherent, confusing, contradictory and much senseless, what “kiwi_prometheus” commented on in a wider context, also using that particular quote.
I tried to read his truly bizarre comments a few times, and I still cannot make that much sense at all out of what “k_p” tried to say or argue. Sorry for the frustration that lead to anger and some over the top comment I made in return.
You are not even just that “Kiwi idiot” I sometimes dismissably refer to, you are a totally ignorant, one sided coffin slicer of sorts, getting another angle on why some people may have died.
That is the lowest and cheapest crap I ever read and heard, man. Rot in fucking hell for that.
I donât follow a part line and I get MOBBED on here for it â especially by your girl pals.
Have you ever considered that’s because you say really stupid things about girls?
Itâs not good enough to go with what is âusefulâ. Marxism for example is a theory of everything, the guy was a genius obviously, nevertheless his philosophical system crashed and burned.
There’s only one thing to say here and it was said by Marx himself: I don’t know what I am but I know that I’m not a Marxist.
Marx considered that Marxists had twisted his teachings. This can most clearly be seen by his writings on the Paris Commune of 1871 which was anarchist. It was destroyed by military attack from the government.
Is it? Does it matter?
Yes it does. Opinion and belief cannot change objective fact. This is something that the RWNJs and economists can’t seem to grasp.
“The main tenet in postmodernism is that language is meaningless. Apparently Focault back tracked from that to the position that the meaning the reader gets from a text may differ from the authorâs intention. In which case he hasnât made any insight that authors and readers havenât been aware of already.”
Hi xtasy. This paragraph pretty much sums things up. Every point made here is complete and utter bullshit and incorrect no matter how you look at it. So much so it’s impossible to engage with. I’d tell kp sayonara.
A great experience I had today, or rather yesterday (12.01.) to visit and view the NEW Rainbow Warrior vessel down at Princes Wharf. I am IMPRESSED, Greenpeace got their shit together, had I not been a member of sorts, I would have signed up right way.
I am worried for the ones who do not get it, how much NZ, Australian and Antarctic environmen is in danger! It is damned serious.
I left the vessel in doubt and worry, who is going to keep them alive to fight, I asked, being myself in dire straits.
I can only hope they get donations, manage and do more good, as that is what Greenpeace are here for. I would dread the day they die. I would want to die also.
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Having written, taught and worked for the US government on issues involving unconventional warfare and terrorism for 30-odd years, two things irritate me the most when the subject is discussed in public. The first is the Johnny-come-lately academics-turned-media commentators who … Continue reading → ...
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Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachersâ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul.  âThe Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. âScience, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During todayâs meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. âThe Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in TaupĆ as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the TaupĆ International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. âAnticipation for the ITM TaupĆ Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. âThe coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. âThis project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sectorâs productivity,â Mr Jones says. âThe project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Governmentâs plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. âBenefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Governmentâs commitment to doubling New Zealandâs renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealandâs latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. âOur Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. âNew Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Governmentâs intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. âThe introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Todayâs announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Governmentâs plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. âInflation is now at 4 per ...
Refreshed health guidance released today will help parents and schools make informed decisions about whether their child needs to be in school, addressing one of the key issues affecting school attendance, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. In recent years, consistently across all school terms, short-term illness or medical reasons ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is streamlining high-level oceans management while maintaining a focus on supporting the sectorâs role in the export-led recovery of the economy. âI am working to realise the untapped potential of our fishing and aquaculture sector. To achieve that we need to be smarter with ...
Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson is speaking at the International Wool Textile Organisation Congress in Adelaide, promoting New Zealand wool, and outlining the coalition Governmentâs support for the revitalisation the sector.  "New Zealandâs wool exports reached $400 million in the year to 30 June 2023, and the coalition Government ...
The Government is making legislative changes to make it easier for new early learning services to be established, and for existing services to operate, Associate Education Minister David Seymour says. The changes involve repealing the network approval provisions that apply when someone wants to establish a new early learning service, ...
Changes to the Resource Management Act will align consenting for coal mining to other forms of mining to reduce barriers that are holding back economic development, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. âThe inconsistent treatment of coal mining compared with other extractive activities is burdensome red tape that fails to acknowledge ...
Trade, Agriculture and Forestry Minister Todd McClay has concluded productive discussions with ministerial counterparts in Beijing today, in support of the New Zealand-China trade and economic relationship. âMy meeting with Commerce Minister Wang Wentao reaffirmed the complementary nature of the bilateral trade relationship, with our Free Trade Agreement at its ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon today paid tribute to Singaporeâs outgoing Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.  Meeting in Singapore today immediately before Prime Minister Lee announced he was stepping down, Prime Minister Luxon warmly acknowledged his counterpartâs almost twenty years as leader, and the enduring legacy he has left for Singapore and South East ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. While in Singapore as part of his visit to South East Asia this week, Prime Minister Luxon also met with Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and will meet with Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong. During todayâs meeting, Prime Minister Luxon ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has made further appointments to the Board of Antarctica New Zealand as part of a continued effort to ensure the Scott Base Redevelopment project is delivered in a cost-effective and efficient manner. The Minister has appointed Neville Harris as a new member of the Board. Mr ...
Finance Minister Nicola Willis will travel to the United States on Tuesday to attend a meeting of the Five Finance Ministers group, with counterparts from Australia, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. âI am looking forward to meeting with our Five Finance partners on how we can work ...
The coalition Government has today announced purrfect and pawsitive changes to the Residential Tenancies Act to give tenants with pets greater choice when looking for a rental property, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. âPets are important members of many Kiwi families. Itâs estimated that around 64 per cent of New ...
State Highway 1 (SH1) through Wellington City is heavily congested at peak times and while planning continues on the duplicate Mt Victoria Tunnel and Basin Reserve project, the Government has also asked NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) to consider and provide advice on a Long Tunnel option, Transport Minister Simeon Brown ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters have condemned Iranâs shocking and illegal strikes against Israel.  âThese attacks are a major challenge to peace and stability in a region already under enormous pressure," Mr Luxon says.  "We are deeply concerned that miscalculation on any side could ...
Hundreds of people in little over a week have turned out in Northland to hear Regional Development Minister Shane Jones speak about plans for boosting the regional economy through infrastructure. About 200 people from the infrastructure and associated sectors attended an event headlined by Mr Jones in Whangarei today. Last ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti has today thanked outgoing Health New Zealand â Te Whatu Ora Chair Dame Karen Poutasi for her service on the Board.  âDame Karen tendered her resignation as Chair and as a member of the Board today,â says Dr Reti. âI have asked her to ...
The NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has signalled their proposed delivery approach for the Governmentâs 15 Roads of National Significance (RoNS), with the release of the State Highway Investment Proposal (SHIP) today, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. âBoosting economic growth and productivity is a key part of the Governmentâs plan to ...
New Zealand is renewing its connections with a world facing urgent challenges by pursuing an active, energetic foreign policy, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says.  âOur country faces the most unstable global environment in decades,â Mr Peters says at the conclusion of two weeks of engagements in Egypt, Europe and the United States.  âWe cannot afford to sit back in splendid ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has announced the Australian Governor-General, His Excellency General The Honourable David Hurley and his wife Her Excellency Mrs Linda Hurley, will make a State visit to New Zealand from Tuesday 16 April to Thursday 18 April. The visit reciprocates the State visit of former Governor-General Dame Patsy Reddy ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced that Medsafe has approved 11 cold and flu medicines containing pseudoephedrine. Pharmaceutical suppliers have indicated they may be able to supply the first products in June. âThis is much earlier than the original expectation of medicines being available by 2025. The Government recognised ...
New Zealand and the United States have recommitted to their strategic partnership in Washington DC today, pledging to work ever more closely together in support of shared values and interests, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says.  âThe strategic environment that New Zealand and the United States face is considerably more ...
April 11, 2024 Joint Declaration by United States Secretary of State the Honorable Antony J. Blinken and New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs the Right Honourable Winston Peters We met today in Washington, D.C. to recommit to the historic partnership between our two countries and the principles that underpin itârule ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced further New Zealand cooperation with the United States in the Pacific Islands region through $16.4 million in funding for initiatives in digital connectivity and oceans and fisheries research. Â âNew Zealand can achieve more in the Pacific if we work together more urgently and ...
Kia Ora Gaza A passionate haka reverberated through Auckland International Airport as a medical team of three New Zealand doctors received an emotional farewell from a big crowd of supporters before flying to Turkey to join the international Freedom Flotilla to Gaza. The doctors, who left Auckland yesterday, hope to ...
With submissions closing today, Macassey-Pickard says groups around the country have been supporting a huge range of people to make their submissions. ...
Our response to the new legislation is informed by targeted conversations with practitioners working in the system and through an implementation lens. ...
The new âFast-track Approvals Billâ would give just three Ministers the power to approve or deny development projects. They would avoid the usual checks and balances that are in place to protect rivers, land, the ocean, and communities. ...
COMMENTARY:By Eugene Doyle Helen Clark, how I miss you. The former New Zealand Prime Minister â the safest pair of hands this country has had in living memory â gave a masterclass on the importance of maintaining an independent foreign policy when she spoke at an AUKUS symposium held ...
The government's released the list of organisations provided with information on how to apply - just hours before public submissions on the bill close. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milton Speer, Visiting Fellow, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Technology Sydney Before climate change really got going, eastern Australiaâs flash floods tended to concentrate on our coastal regions, east of the Great Dividing Range. But thatâs changing. Now ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Finkel, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, La Trobe University Sia Duff / South Australian Museum In February, the South Australian Museum âre-imaginedâ itself. In the face of rising costs and inadequate government funds, CEO David Gaimster, who took the reins last June, declared ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Pearce, Professor, School of Allied Heath, Human Services & Sport, La Trobe University, La Trobe University This week, Collingwood AFL player Nathan Murphy announced his retirement, brought on by his concussion history and ongoing issues. The 24-year-oldâs seemingly sudden retirement, ...
The Mental Health Foundation provides support and resources for those facing the loss of their job, so itâs wrong in the very week the Government adds another 1000 jobs to its tally of cuts, that this is happening. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney Daniel Boud/Sydney Theatre Company Decay, terror, revulsion. These are three of the central themes of Thomas Bernhardâs rarely performed play The President. The Austrian is one of the greatest ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says threats by ministers Shane Jones and David Seymour to reform or close down the Waitangi Tribunal were “ill-considered”, as legal experts say the ministers may have breached Cabinet Manual conventions. “I think those comments are ill-considered and we expect all ministers to actually exercise good ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ye In (Jane) Hwang, Postdoctoral Research Associate at School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney Shutterstock Youâd be hard pressed to find any aspect of daily life that doesnât require some form of digital literacy. We need only to look back ten ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Newton, Professor of Exercise Medicine, Edith Cowan University Pexels/RDNE stock project Youâre not in your 20s or 30s anymore and you know regular health checks are important. So you go to your GP. During the appointment they measure your waist. ...
A new poem by Evangeline Riddiford Graham. Mitochondrial Problem I. It was long drive to Kansas for the man and his dog but you have to understand he said She doesnât fly. Which calls to mind not carsick shitting barking or whining but a dog who chooses not to as ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Booksâ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Hemingwayâs Goblet by Dermot Ross (Mary Egan Publishing, $38)Hot off the press, this debut ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Wajnryb McDonald, PhD candidate in Criminology, University of Sydney Less than 24 hours after Ashlee Good was murdered in Bondi Junction, her family released a statement requesting the media take down photographs they had reproduced of Ashlee and her family without ...
Chief executive Shaun Robinson said it has not had any government funding cut, but government-funded contracts have not kept pace with rising costs. ...
The Ministry of Health has delayed the release of its evidence brief on the safety, reversibility and mental health and wellbeing outcomes for puberty blockers. While we wait, Julia de Bres speaks to those with firsthand experience. Best practice gender-affirming healthcare is based on trans peopleâs self-determination and agency. The ...
Barcelonaâs city streets have gone from traffic-clogged to pedestrian-friendly. How? Superblocks. Ellen Rykers explains. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Last week I read a great interview with renowned urbanist Janette Sadik-Khan by The Spinoffâs Wellington editor Joel MacManus: âYou can reimagine streets, ...
Student groups âClimate Action VUWâ, Schools Strike 4 Climate and VUWSA will be on the street in Wellington today, the last day for submissions on the Fast-track Approvals Bill, with a message that the fight against the Governmentâs âWar on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sofia Ammassari, Research Fellow, Griffith University Since 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modiâs popularity has grown exponentially â and so has the formidable organisational machine of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). These two factors will be key to delivering the BJP a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendon Hyndman, Associate Professor of Education (Adjunct) & Senior Manager (BCE), Charles Sturt University During COVID almost all Australian students and their families experienced online learning. But while schools have long since gone back to in-person teaching, online learning has not gone ...
Yes, theyâre better for the environment. No, thatâs not a good enough reason for me to use them. Once every 26 days or so, my period arrives, and if struck by an act of God, I am caught red-crotched without products. How, after 17 years of this, do I still ...
âIt will cause significant harm to our environment and communities. It is completely at odds with New Zealandersâ relationship with nature and our need for a low-carbon, sustainable economic future." ...
The Chair of the National Maori Authority, Matthew Tukaki, has warned a Parliamentary Select Committee that fast-tracking legislation is a perilous practice that undermines the core tenets of democracy, transparency, and accountability. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Tenbensel, Associate Professor, Health Policy, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau Getty Images Since coming into power, the coalition government has adopted a simple but shrewd see-how-fast-we-can-move political strategy. However, in the health sector this need for speed entails ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Hronis, Clinical Psychologist, University of Technology Sydney Darya Sannikova/Pexels Whether youâre watching TV, attending a footy game, or eating a meal at your local pub, gambling is hard to escape. Although the rise of gambling is not unique to Australia, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Wong, Forrest Fellow, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Western Australia Have you ever wondered if there are more insects out at night than during the day? We set out to answer this question by combing through the scientific ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carol T Kulik, Research Professor, University of South Australia IR Stone/Shutterstock In Australia, itâs not the done thing to know â let alone ask â what our colleagues are paid. Yet, itâs easy to see how pay transparency can make pay ...
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) is sounding a warning to migrants, that running foul of the law may see them leaving the country prematurely. ...
The governmentâs plan to get 50,000 people off jobseeker support by 2030 has had a rocky start, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoffâs morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. Beneficiary numbers are up â and so are ...
Raglan Roast is a staple of Wellington coffee culture. But with five branches across the capital, which one is the best? I am a die-hard Raglan Roast fan. Itâs consistently the most affordable cafe in Wellington, and one of the only places you can get a coffee after 3pm. So, ...
Residents of University of Auckland halls are being urged to withhold their accommodation fees from May 1, in a bid to force the university to take student concerns over rent hikes seriously.The University of Auckland is facing a strike from students over the cost of on-campus accommodation. The Students ...
New Zealand and the Philippines have signed a new maritime security agreement and stated their concerns over activity in the South China Sea, as Chinese vessels continue to flout international law. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Philippines President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos committed to signing a Mutual Logistics Supporting Arrangement by ...
The thousands of government “back-office” job cuts are causing widespread pain in the capital city. In today’s episode of The Detail, we speak to three journalists and a think tank researcher, looking at the larger picture around the cuts and what effect it will have on Wellington, a city that’s ...
Opinion: The famed American architect and urban designer Daniel Burnham once said, “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood!” Burnham wouldn’t have been referring to the transport plans in Aotearoa New Zealand over the past five years; projects so big they hadn’t the credibility to ...
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http://www.theaudience.co.nz/the-al1en/the-faeces-of-the-species-1/
Click the link, and vote to get NZonAir funding.
One more day, one more lie, one more smile, one more wave.
Some old joke wants my vote. Aspirational fail.
Did you see on TV? The third world disease on her face.
Unlike me, all you see, are scabs not your first world disgrace.
You’re the faeces of the species, you’re the disease, you’re the plague on the face of that girl.
You’re the hunger, you’re the plunder, all asunder, heaven wonder if there’s oil on the moon (in our bones).
You’re the statistic, optimistic, pessimist e-con-o-mystic, you’re the waste in the space.
Merchant banker, supertanker, deep drill wanker, pull your anchor, just get out of the way.
And we’ll rise. And when we rise up.
We will sing, and we will be glorious.
One more try, one more bribe, one more tea for your friend.
Some old bloke on a rope while they bury his dead.
Did you see on tv? The mould on kids in their bed.
Unlike me, all you see, is dirt and the profits from rent.
You’re the faeces of the species, you’re a disease, you’re a plague on the backs of us all.
You’re the sadistic, little twisted, first world gifted, Mi-pad whiz kid, the foul wind in the sales.
You’re the hunter, you’re the blunder, toxic numbers, six foot under, and you’re the slag of good grace.
Mother cluster, bunker buster, colonel mustard, general custard, just get out of our way.
And we’ll rise. And when we rise up.
We will sing, and we will be glorious.
19 on the daily chart, 304 on the wildcard chart, from two votes.
We’re all lefties here, right? we’re all anti poverty and pro children in need, right?
Two clicks, and you don’t even have to listen to the song to vote.
Pass the link around, and we’ll all have played a part in forcing the issue of child hunger and inept government in NZ in the faces of a head under the cover, not really listening public.
Surely you can see what the songs about, so please click to fight to win.
Click what Alien? I’ve followed the link twice and still can’t figure out how to vote.
Thanks for that, mate.
Underneath the title and band name, there’s an orange ‘vote’ button
Or click or mouse over the Al1en head picture and there’s an orange java vote button.
I’d do a screenshot if I knew how post it.
You can vote everyday until we win.
Viva revolution.
278 on the wildcard chart from 5 votes. đ
I’ve voted now. Thanks for telling us how. I couldn’t work it out either. đ
Funny isn’t it? You put a bright orange button with the word “vote” on it in the middle of a sparsely decorated page…
that’s not where that link takes me.
What do you see? js.
Your facebook page. I have to click on the picture to go further.
I have to to log in using my facebook details to access my profile, but if I log out, return to the site and dismiss the login screen, I always go straight to song page.
I don’t know why you can’t access the page, but I appreciate your efforts in trying.
Thanks.
That’s kind of you, thanks very much.
Sometimes I like a crooked day dream to keep me company at work.
My fave is the song does well using the government’s (ours) money, and the pm handing over an award at the tuis (or whatever they’re called), to a stunt double dressed in an alien suit, with the whole nation knowing it’s about his premiership and him doing sod all to help our children out of poverty, live on TV.
It makes international news reels, and as we know, there’s no such thing as bad, free publicity.
Then my boss comes and wakes me and tells me he’s made my coffee. đ
Daily chart is updated at midnight, wildcard chart by the hour.
So far, 242 with 6 votes.
A famous victory for the left slipping away. đ
Come on.
I voted. But it still asks for some silly flash player, I have never had any trouble playing anything from the net before It would be nice to know what I voted for đ
why wont it play??
I don’t know why it won’t play for you, but cheers for the solidarity.
If you want to hear the track it’s also up at https://soundcloud.com/theal1en/the-faeces-of-the-species
But don’t blame me if you can’t sleep tonight. đ
My respect to all those who have voted.
231 after 7 votes.
You see how easy this could be to win if the just the site stalwarts here gifted a daily vote over the next couple of weeks.
Tell your friends, use the pc at work and home and we could all be having a right old laugh at Teflon john expense.
I don’t want to spam more than I have, and certainly don’t want to wear out my welcome here, so for bearing with me, ta very much.
Actually I think you are ranked 220…
You must have just hit the hourly change over.
Cheers for looking out for me đ
Just in case anybody is still awake and or interested, I’ve made a Dr Evil pic to accompany the vote link if anyone wants it.
Right click, save as, and email away. http://www.al1en.org
And I’m serious, or one million dollars.
Always looking out for you mate. This Viper has your six.
Now lost amongst dead open mikes.
Got up to 7 in the daily chart and 168 on the chart that counts – The wildcard chart.
14 plays and 9 votes.
Not bad for a days revolutioneering. Thanks comrades.
Now please, do it again, and tell a friend. đ
Puff piece in the Herald today on Maggie Barry, written by Audrey Young, headlined ‘Maggie’s Way’.
A Q&A style article. She talks about the insults and bullying nature of parliament and it’s from her point of view all Labour’s fault. Gets politely and super lightly called on insulting and bullying Jacinda Adern, and it turns out it’s all because of Trevor Mallard twitter twatting or something.
Maggie doesn’t do insults or bullying, neither does National, its all Labour and the Greens fault. Of course Young leaves that and moves on to bigger more pressing issues.
Which MP outside your party impresses you?
That’s a hard one. Can I get back to you on that? That’s a really hard one.
Classy, there are good people on both sides of the house doing good work and you can’t even mention one, you f&^*ing work there on committees with these people . Says more about Barry than any of her other answers.
Maggie this may be the zenith of your political career, may your years of seat warming ahead be good for your garden.
This article was so light and fluffy from our hard hitting gallery journo I think the paper floated in from the letterbox this morning on its own.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10858622
“Which MP outside your party impresses you?”
All the Maori party mps, for services to the National party.
John Banks, that he’s still clinging on to his salary, despite everything that says he shouldn’t.
Simon Bridges, for carrying on and making the best of it, despite taking a severe beating with the wanker stick.
And last and very much least, Paula Bennett, for her continued support for NZ tent makers in these troubled times, and popularising the moo moo all over again, even if she does need help to zip it.
Audrey young doing her bit for the party her daddy served and her herald masters.
Maggie Barry is a vacuous nasty piece of work, can’t even shut the f up and learn the ropes. Finally got selected for one of the safest seats as they couldn’t risk her in anything less.
“I personally think that men and men and women and women should be allowed to marry if that’s what they want. Frankly, I don’t quite understand why they want to do it. I’ve never got married in my life.”
She even manages to screw up her pro-marriage equality stance. It’s like a pre-women’s vote man telling a woman ‘I don’t know why you want the right to vote, I’ve never done it’.
Yes Maggie, we shouldn’t marry because you think it’s silly.
Im sure blokes all over the country will be breathing a sigh of relief, dont know why anyone would want to marry her…
Saw the headline, and figured I wanted to keep my breakfast.
No wonder our young are heading to Aussie, if this story is anything to go by.
Headline on the Herald : Student loan debtor: I’m better off in OZ.
In NZ a borrower has to pay back $10.000 a year,across the Tasman it’s only $3.000
Sorry i can’t link the story..
Here’s the link vivaciousviper:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10858618
Thanks for linking Olwyn (:
On the subject of student loan defaulters, I have no idea why the IRD cannot just make an agreement with the tax collection agencies of the UK, USA, Ireland, and Aus to have the student debt recovered through their respective tax systems?
Probably because those countries want nothing to change. At the moment, they get all our educated people improving their economy / society.
Not only would it cost their tax systems to chase kiwis, but it would stem the tide of highly educated people working within their country.
http://asianinvasion2006.blogspot.co.nz/2013/01/labour-struggles-with-its-direction.html
I wasn’t sure where to post the above. It is a blog by Cactus Kate, primarily abut Karol’s post, ‘State Housing versus Home Ownership’.
I haven’t left a teaser, it’s all pretty interesting.
Am half way through, yes it is interesting, but for the rest of the weekend can we please refer to Cactus Kate as “Cactus Kate”? đ
Sorry? You’ll have to explain.
“Cactus” decided to call Karol “Karol”.
Ahhh. Missed it. Ta.
And as for the delusion that anyone in their right mind would mistake “Cactus Kate” for QoT. And to say the least QoT makes way more sense.
I’m a bit stunned, I agree with almost everything “Cactus Kate” is saying.
It’s possibly an impostor writing. Maybe QoT.
She has paid homage to QoT I notice…..
(as is only fitting).
I don’t know how anyone could really confuse the two though, the writing styles are worlds apart. “Cactus Kate” is just a horrible bogan wrapped in a logical fallacy.
I actually quite like Cactus’s writing. Sure she is a right wing bogan but at least she is an up front bogan and she writes and thinks rationally. Her principles may be different to ours but at least she has some principles. And unlike Key she is exactly who she is. There is not pretension. She is not trying to make out she is something she is not.
I wish more right wingers were like that.
That’s very true micky, and I don’t doubt her sincerity one bit. She’s a straight up honest bastard.
However she does rely on some pretty flimsy logic. For example on RNZ she tried to argue that Matt McCarten shouldn’t criticise the operators of the Pike River mine because he wouldn’t want to run a mine himself.
Also there are times I think a responsible host should hide the keys to her computer…
That is a horrible accusation. I have never been on red radio.
And you’ve misrepresented the comments I did actually make on another station which were in relation to a defamatory comment made by another guest. One who consistently accuses directors of companies of all manner of bad behaviour, so I was merely making a point that it is not as easy and glamorously well remunerated that he may think it is and if it was he should be a mining company director.
Sorry, radio live perhaps?
But yes, that’s precisely the logical fallacy to which I refer. Thanks for restating it.
Should have stood on the ACT list IMO.
What is the world coming to, with Hooton cheer leading for team Shearer, and Cactus Kate arguing (albeit in a nuanced sense) in favour of team Cunliffe. As I read her, she wants to see actual political engagement and a proper battle of ideas, rather than both left and right racing to see who can do the best job of cosseting the middle class. And I have to say, it is a lovely piece of writing.
That’s the difference between Hooten and “Cactus” đ
“it is a lovely piece of writing.”
Maybe I’m just not used to her writing style, but I found myself repeatedly tripping over her use of grammar.
Yes, on re-reading I noticed a couple of grammatical mistakes as well, but her arguments were clearly thought out and hung together well.
Odgers can’t write to save herself. I find her at times close to illiterate. On top of this, no matter how much she tries to dress things up for her audience, her words are invariably littered with a belief that greed is good and spiked with a hatred for anyone she thinks may impede that pursuit. I would’ve loved to have seen her in parliament, getting roasted on a daily basis, away from the safety of her computer screen. Small fish in an even smaller pond.
Maybe concentrate on the subject matter, and add some value into a discussion that way.
Small picture types are one reason this country has become a joke!
Grammar – It’s not going to halt the county’s decline!
+1
Communication is a two way street. If you want to get your point across, grammar can help.
Of all the things to talk about you are all hung up on whinging about grammar and calling me a bogan.
Little wonder Cunliffe cannot gain momentum in a working class party.
His supporters are a bunch of snobby toffs.
Fair cop.
http://paintingthegreyarea.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/literacy-privilege/
This kind of grammar policing, of anyone, really makes me cringe. The style of my writing is often poor and ungrammatical. Yet somehow, I feel entitled to have my say. If I felt insecure about all this, as so many people do, reading these kinds of comments would make me even more reticent about participating in conversations at the Standard.
Looks like you’re hung up on issues with your bad writing, too. There was this, you know:
“On top of this, no matter how much she tries to dress things up for her audience, her words are invariably littered with a belief that greed is good and spiked with a hatred for anyone she thinks may impede that pursuit.”
Who are you replying to, Mary?
I hope you aren’t implying that those who are put off speaking out by comments deriding others for their writing deficits, are just being “oversensitive”.
No, just saying, it’s a response to Cactus Kate Viper who seems to think the focus of comments here is her bad grammar. It’s not.
Have another look at of what I said and see if you can see where the emphasis is.
I’m never too bothered about clumsy or wrong grammar, but “CK’s” summary of my post as:
The silly policy to build homes for middle class kiddies screaming poverty is an excellent example of this Cunliffe v Shearer tension. “Karol” has an excellent post on this and has thought of the conspiracy that capitalism in fact is to blame in forcing this idea that owning your own home is aspirational to all.
…. is just inaccurate, whether as result of clumsy use of words, or just a poor interpretation. I was critical of the political position and policy of the current Labour caucus leadership (Team Shearer really), but I’m pretty sure I never referred to Cunliffe directly or indirectly in my ‘state housing vs home ownership’ post. And “conspiracy” is not what I think of when I am writing about the way the loose networks of the wealthy and powerful operate to further their own interests.
So she doesn’t have much of an idea of what I was thinking, but then maybe the entity that is “karol” is just a quotation, a figment of someone’s (or some group’s) imagination?
You’re being far too charitable, Karol. Anyone who refers to the poor as the “pathetic heaving underclass”, believes beneficiaries should be paid not to “breed” and thinks Slater’s blog has anything to offer other than a window into how nasty the right can get can’t be taken seriously. Just as QoT saw the hook in Fran O’Sullivan’s piece, no matter how hard she tries Odgers cannot help but let her true colours show, even when she posts on The Standard as happened again throughout today. I do not see how some on the Left can place genuine value in anything she says.
There were some points of agreement between my views on home ownership & CK’s, but she went off on her own little tangent about the (allegedly continuing) Cunliffe-Shearer tension.
I’m more curious as to why TS suddenly got so much attention over the last 24 hours or so, from CK, MH, and a Labour MP and an LP policy person. Some things seem to be bubbling away out of my sight. Yes, FO’S was still being pretty right wing, but, also seemed to shift her position somewhat.
I’m wondering if it’s part of a growing sense of uncertainty about changes happening that some political people feel they are losing control of. While some may be just trying to manoeuvre so they’ll be in a relatively favourable position when the dust settles.
And February is approaching fast.
Hi weka, the game is far bigger than February, important as that is. Leaders come and go, MPs come and go, neither Shearer nor Cunliffe will be relevant 10-15 years from now. The real sea change has to happen at the Labour membership and constitutional level. And we’ve only just started.
As I read her, she sees the Shearer/Cunliffe tension as arising from the courting of the middle class by the Shearer people, and the desire for a genuinely left orientation by a lot of left wing people. And she sees the housing policy and your response to it as exemplifying this tension. But I agree that beyond those points, she does go off on her own tangent.
Paying homage to a greater being, self preservation being the aim. That’s the base level she operates on.
I think I’m meant to be hurt that “Cactus Kate” has noticed I get angry sometimes. How very unladylike of me.
(And interestingly *I* don’t get scarequotes on my name, which is nice and revealing about why “Kate” applies them to karol.)
It’s a white flag QoT. CK doesn’t want to get into any debate she is guaranteed to lose and that’s any debate with you.
Take it as a compliment.
Oh, I do. It would be quite a debate though, the epic battle of Chaotic Good vs Chaotic Neutral.
Maye because she knows that Karol wont tell her to Fark off!! đ
The same here. Now I too want to know who wrote that article because it dont look at all like the usual “Cactus Kate” stuff.
Queue some b/s about ck’s post being proof positive that ‘misguided’ types of the left are unwittingly in cahoots with portions of the right and in effect undermining the ‘nice’ Labour Party just as the ‘right’ wants, and how every one counted within the ‘misguided left’ ought now, and once and for all, STFU.
In fact. Haven’t I already read that line somewhere here at ts?
Indeed.
And if you replace “STFU” with “resign the leadership”, you’ll have it in both directions.
Does ‘indeed’ indicate you think that’s a reasonable line to spin, McFlock? The reason I ask is your follow-on, which I guess is attempting to posit the opposite of what I’d call a b/s line. And it’s another b/s line. No-one is calling on DS to resign the leadership. But lots of people are wanting to see democracy really exist within the Labour Party. And, I guess, pressure might be applied to mp’s who’d rather deny democracy in Feb.
Now, you might not agree with that sentiment or goal. Fine. But don’t mis-call it as a call for DS to resign.
Well, I have seen arguments that posit Hooten’s support for shearer is evidence that shearer is not fit to be leader.
If I were to make a similar quibble about your phrasing, I don’t recall seeing anyone here specifically demand that critics of the Labour party should “STFU”.
Fran is off the reservation, calling for the “the top personal tax break” to be cancelled amoungst other heresies: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10858589
Another impostor!
Must have banged Her head on something, Fran is just about demanding a Socialist solution to ‘youth unemployment’ from a Tory Government no less,
Wonder if Slippery lost control of His bowels when He read that lot this morning…
Ah, but if you read carefully, bad, you’ll see that Fran’s concerns are actually about “gaps in the NZ workforce”.
So solving youth unemployment is really just a side effect of her real goal, helping NZ businesses recruit.
Wonder if Slippery lost control of His bowels when He read that lot this morningâŠ
That could lead to an awful mess, considering the lack of toilets on Planet Key.
đ
Yep things are getting really strange. Chris Trotter thinks the nats have a mandate to sell our assets and the right are calling for tax increases for the wealthy.
What is going on?
Has it ever occurred to any of you lot that most people don’t have a blindly ideological approach to every issue unlike yourselves – that there are good points and bad points to both sides of most given arguments? That most peoples views may shift back and forth somewhat over time?
I guess it is because you lot are in constant battle mode fighting the good war against the forces of evil, you have developed an us vs them mentality – “you are either with us or against us!”.
You are left exasperated an confused when you can’t squeeze someone into one of a few pigeon holes.
Has it ever occurred to you that us lot don’t give one big fat f**k what you ‘think’ and we only tolerate you as an object of mirth to bestow the odd piece of spittle upon when we have run out of jokes about the Prime Minister Slippery’s bad habit of public displays of ‘spastic dancing’…
Yet another good illustration of why the Left is so broken it can’t even grab the ball of a team of drop kicks ie the Nats.
Goran Therborn
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6ran_Therborn
Neo marxism is dead in the water – who’s suppose to be the Agent of change since the proletariat failed to turn up to the party? Why should anyone believe that knowledge is only ever Historical never Universal?
So tell me KP is unfettered capitalism in a healthy state and just what this world needs?
Has it ever occurred to any of you lot that most people donât have a blindly ideological approach to every issue unlike yourselves â that there are good points and bad points to both sides of most given arguments? That most peoples views may shift back and forth somewhat over time?
Sounds like poststructuralist mumbo-jumbo to me…isn’t that usually your target?
No its not poststructurlist, its Humanist. I believe there is an objective reality and objective universal values about ethics/justice.
Post structuralists/Deconstructionist/various Feminists splinter groups/Neo Marxists/Cultural Relativists/Multiculturalists – they all suffer from hyper relativism and symptoms of solipsism of varying severity.
Makes it hard to pin that lot down as they twist and squirm, grabbing a bit of this and a bit of that to create what can only be described as very bad philosophy.
well, that is where we part ways friend; existence precedes essence; consider the “existence” of people born with profound impairments (at Templeton there were “patients” that resembled sun-fish, to put it politely); consider the “essence” of so-called “schizophrenics”; I have followed your comments over the year, and like mine, there is nothing “objective” about them. (we need new lock-nuts)
You are putting forward an Existential argument, not a Post Modernist one.
Good example again of how the Left is in disarray.
Existentialism enjoyed brief popularity post WWII thanks to a French philosopher or 2. It descended into Nihilism fast and sank out of sight.
ciao
I believe there is an objective reality and objective universal values about ethics/justice.
Interesting statement.
It would be interesting to know where you stand – I’m picking neo-marxist, not that flakey Post Modernist stuff which I think QofT suffers from.
But like I said before you lot dart here and there depending on the direction of fire. Good tactic I guess as its harder to hit a moving target.
Ah, k-p, why so keen to put people in boxes? I do have difficulty following a party line or any one theory – the best still have their weaknesses. It depends on the context and the issue as to which is most useful. I am a little bit neo-Marxist and quite a bit post-structuralist. There are some things in postmodernism I agree with. There is no theory of everything. But I am for democratic socialism, social and economic justice/fairness, and am against violence, prejudice, persecution and oppression.
And I am for evidence-based research, knowledge, understanding and argument.
I do think there is an objectively (scientifically) verifiable material reality. I see objectivity as a process, not an end point. And it doesn’t necessarily cancel out subjectivity, especially when it comes to human activities and communications. Objectivity is haunted by subjectivity, as you demonstrated with that sentence of yours I quoted above. But, that’s the thing about language and human communications.
You seem to miss your own contradictions. “believing” in something is a subjective statement.
Yep. I’d say it’s an odd sort of humanism that fails to recognise that humans interpret reality both subjectively, and through socially constructed lenses.
not that flakey Post Modernist stuff which I think QofT suffers from.
No, please, do go on.
I’ll just be over here having a chuckle that you managed to get from “you stupid lefties just want to pigeonhole everyone” into “I bet you’re a neo-Marxist” in a mere six comments.
”i have never read the book,(Marx),tho i was told to take a look,i lifted my pool hall cue for another game”,
(Thanks to the Clash for the lines which i have gleefully altered with the addition of the Social/economists moniker),
LOLZ, my pidgeon hole is somewhere in the vicinity of Pol Pot, a Communizing Fascist,
Thanks to the good old New Zealand education tho i have the ability to realize that getting KP’s relatives to bang a four inch nail into the back of His head at gun-point just isn’t acceptable human behaviour so good old Post-Modernist,(whatever the fuck that means), me has had to accept simply being a Socialist…
PS, i think it all got lost in the translation for poor old Pol Pot, He thought it meant retribution when He was reading redistribution…
Trotter must have holidayed in one of those Batchs that have 50 year old lumpy couches!
He didn’t get a good rest and over stretched some of the points he was making.
Shearer should front foot the mercenary thing so that it is yesterday’s news by the time the Nats get their research ready for leaking through their usual channels
This is twilight zone stuff…are Right Wing commentators giving Key and English room to launch one or two definitively Left Wing policies? Can their strategy for 2014 be really this cunning? Mix in one or two headline Left Wing policies (top tax rate hike and youth employment/youth training programmes), and use it as cover for austerity and asset sell downs elsewhere?
I wonder if they have found in their polling that a lot of ordinary NZers – including the middle class – are worried that their kids can’t seem to get ahead and that there is a shortage of decent jobs and training opportunities.
Nah, it just won’t happen via a lift in the top tax rate, the Fed crowd would string English up by a very sensitive part of His anatomy in a rotary shed at the very thought of it,
The only invite Slippery would get from now until the little Shyster is given the kick would be from those wishing to have Him behave naturally,(dance like a clown),in their presence while they took pics to show off to the Grand-kids in their dotage,
The Bizness lobby would immediately stop calling, i think that if they are going to spend money on any sort of employment initiative,(or pretend to), the usual suspect will be trotted out, asset sales proceeds will have yet another attachment of ‘youth employment’ attached to it along with the continuously growing list of roading,health,schools,debt, blah blah blah,
Other than that if the Slippery little Shyster has half a brain He will be offering employers a years worth of dole payments as a ‘training allowance’ to actually employ a large number of the 24% of unemployed youth, possibly with a slight hint at a top tax rate rise…
Have people forgotten about the youth changes for 16-17 year olds?
Does one think it’s possible that that was setting the scene for harsher benefit conditions for all youth and more privatisation?
The right taketh more than they giveth so creating an enviornment where it seems that they are taking positive steps to address the issue may simply be a way of saying to people well now there’s no excuse to be on a benefit.
Bootcamps won’t work this time to get that 5% of swinging vote but the strategy surely won’t change – we’re offering this but if you don’t avail yourself of our wonderful opportunity then benefit damnation is yours.
Can their strategy really be this cunning? It sounds eerily like their 2008 me-to strategy. The must be getting a bit of polling feedback telling them to DO something.
This is what I reckon. Also, any PR headline increase in the top personal tax rate can be more than compensated for by drops in corporate and trust tax rates, see how it works đ
http://asianinvasion2006.blogspot.co.nz/2013/01/labour-struggles-with-its-direction.html?m=1
No, o revered one. I would not read Cactus Kate that way.
While she can be snappy, she never comes across as being anyone’s poodle.
Or they have all finally figured out that the Emperor really has no clothes
may I just pop in here?
I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had time to make it shorter đ
(The last thing on knows when constructing a work is what to put first; continual eloquence is tedious) ;)-Blaise
WHAT WE CAN NEVER KNOW,or the collapsing hermeneutic (there’s your spiral)
-David Germez
“one could in the light of the fact that the divine life is itself a continued variation,,, apply to divinity in the most exalted sense the name of time. The old mythology of Chronos as primordial being and first divine principle seems thereby to be somehow in contact with the truth”
-Franz Bretano :Philosophical Investigations on Space Time and the Continuum.
“All created things are God’s speech. The being of a stone speaks and manifests the same as does my mouth about God: and people understand more by what is done than by what is said”
-Meister Eckhart : The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises and Defence.
Invasion of the body snatchers. A pod has got her – there’s a reason why they call Mars the “Red Planet”
scaloppine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernesto_Screpanti
Let just get this out there. A person in receipt of a benefit, if they earn more than $3,400 are pushed up into the second lowest band of taxation. Key did this because obviously he never read the convention on human rights, that if someone is so in need that they receive a benefit then they cannot be treated differently, that everyone should receive the same amount of welfare. Yet Key believes that progressive taxation should kick on those on welfare!
Looking at it another way. People who earn $100,000 pay 10.5% on the first $14,000 they earn.
People who earn $3,400 pay only at the 10.5% rate. Those in receipt of a welfare
check, and have no income, get the full entitlement, pay no tax on income. But Key in
his infinite stupidity believes that those individuals who do have some paltry $3,400+
of income should not get the full welfare entitlement (as effectively they pay more tax,
pay the 17.5% rate on their measly income after the first $3,400).
Just for a moment imagine the cost of filing tax returns as all those people on welfare
whose taxation just became a complicated mess. Whatever happened to keeping
government taxation simple. But worse, how can government argue that families
on welfare should not get family tax credit when there is clearly income tax
bands for those on welfare. I mean whatever happened to equal treatment in taxation.
You pay a higher rate of tax makes you eligible for the programs its funds to those who
also pay higher rates of tax.
“whatever happened to equal treatment in taxation”, only when the main beneficiaries of such treatment are those at the top of the food chain or those who vote to put them there,
The Working for Families fiasco where the Clark Government deemed the middle class,(and quite high up in that decile), to be more ‘in need’ of relief from taxation than beneficiaries with children was the final straw for me that broke my connection with Labour,
Incidently the ‘loud noise’ us lot at the Standard have been making over housing affordability has obviously attracted the attention of Labour so much so that Annette King has paid a visit and at least aquainted herself with the concerns many of us here have regarding State owned rentals being provided to the decile of lower waged workers so there is a small glimmer of hope of seeing some specific and substantial gains in that area when Labour release it’s completed election policy,(hopefully sooner rather than later),
My view is that the next ‘issue’ that we as the Standard need to address is just that of ‘working for Families’ and just how grossly unfair is it to tax the benefits of welfare dependent children and then refuse to offer them the ‘tax relief’ offered to the children of the upper echelons of the middle class…
The money spent on some of WFF would be better off being spent on a) a universal family benefit, and b) an increase in the state housing stock. The same outcome would be achieved.
Though I agree with the sentiments leveled at Labour, my point was this, that Key introduced a second progressive tax in the middle of the welfare. Imagine for a moment that we pay benefit to help people out of poverty only to tax them more if they do the right thing on welfare!
Save or get some part time work????
But worse, by taxing them on welfare we also don’t pay them WFF, which is blatantly unfair.
But its even worse, the 10.5% tax rate is a farce since its really just a tax relief for the rich, those who don’t get welfare don’t the relief since unlike everyone else the MSD take the first
10.5% tax band when they provide welfare. So the low tax band had no effect except for the
free who live off assets with little income (and can’t claim benefit), those geared to reduce their
taxes using trusts – the super rich.
Merging Madness and Reason (it’s the DSM V season)
“you have never been diagnosed as mad-this is the shifting sand upon which you erect your sanity. Yet, your illness has gone unrecognized…you have been deprived of treatment because the steady, sure advance of science has taken too long to reach you.”
“Beneath the (can’t read my handwriting, some adjective) labels of consensus there is just the homogenous zone-our common origins and physiology bind us together; we are a crowd of open-eyed children staring with wonder at the world. This vast assembly of “thrown” people is the homogenous zone-a coat of many (red) colours”.
“Reason too, recognized itself as being duplicated and dispossessed of itself; it thought itself wise and it was and it was mad; it thought it knew and it knew nothing; it thought itself righteous and it was insane; knowledge led one to the forbidden world when one thought one was being led by it to eternal light.” (thats “progress” for ya’s; Get Ya YaYa’s Out) (those art-school rockers aye)
-Foucault :Mental Illness and Psychology
According to Scheff, relative to the rate of treated “mental illness” the rate of unrecorded residual rule breaking of societal norms is extremely high.
-consider this continual self-absorbed flouting of cell -phone /driving legislation, and it’s on the increase; BodyCount’s in the house.Listen to how close people are to stress thresholds in their daily discourse with children, family, associates, witness the behavioural temperature on the roads, the anasthetization and subsequent harms carried out; that’s why I drank alone in the end; Dos Gusanos was fun though, all those years ago đ (an I’m not surprised productivity is tanking when I observe people ostensibly working yet using their work p.c for shopping and such-like)
“Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of ‘world history’, but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed and the clever beasts had to die-One might invent such a fable and yet still it would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature.
-Friedrich Nietzsche :On Truth and Lies in a Non-Moral Sense
“Madness and sanity are variants of the same phenomena; everything that we see and fear in the madman can also be seen and feared in ourselves. We are all mad children, we are all autistic, we are all deluded, we are all abstract and solipsistic and we all madly cobble together systems of absurd beliefs on this lost planet of fools; perhaps a fundamental truth about our humanity can be found in the instability, ‘throwness’ and madness of the homogenous zone.”
(Baudrillard places his hopes in terrorism, viruses and catastrophe)
i read today of an analysts perspective on FIVE potential Asian Shocks
-Taiwanese Independence asserted by the democratic vote
-Islamic unrest reaching China
-US Defence (Naval) cuts
-Thailand destabilized
-Territorial disputes in E and S China seas (we do live in interesting times)
Exit Strategy
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0847840247
-Why, thou sayest well; I do now remember a saying, “The fool doth think he is wise, yet the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
-As You Like It (if you are ruled by mind, you are a king, if by body, a slave-Cato)
WHAT WE CAN NEVER KNOW- David Gamez. I whole-heartedly recommend this little book; I read it this afternoon at the library (air-con and I cannot afford to pay my fees, yet;)
HBT-10 more hot dry days forecast, little rain since August, Irrigation Ban on the way, Farmers may ‘dry out’
-if you’re walking a dog, they cannot eat anything they find in or around rivers or ponds, (cyano-bacteria) meanwhile we are going to supply more dairy to another Infant Formula Manufacturer establishing in NI
Dom-The Children’s Commissioner, a HB paediatrician,Russell Wills,, is “incredulous” about child poverty and inequality in our country…
from your friendly neighbourhood “madman” (hyper-rationally and reflexively yours)
now what am I gonna do for a crust. hmmm
11.29 By faith the people passed through the RED Sea, as on dry land, but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned. đ
This Isn’t the Petition Response You’re Looking For
đ It’s a Mad Mad World, btw D, I’m gettin “bored” again, don’t wanna write a book, there’s enough been written already, might start an Anarchist Commune ala
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin đ
It was Kropotkin’s Conquest of Bread that introduced me to anarchism.
Well, The Standard sure has evolved. That’s all from me, and that’s all from him. (a little birdy messaged me that a “challenge” is a moot point).
Adios Amigos, I’ll watch on from the High Plains from now on. đ đ đ
Don’t go too far away, mon ami đ
?
Oh, Clint, you’re back. It read like you were heading off along the ridge and leaving this little village behind.
High Plains Drifter
Great movie.
And The Two Ronnies
This is too much – I really going to miss you.
I assumed your “watch from the High Plains” remark meant that you weren’t going to be actively commenting for the moment, forgive me if I misinterpreted.
No I am going CV, it has been fun, and I have learned a lot (Thank You All and One and All A Good Night)
John James Elijah (Ha, comment 101 ers) đ
Farewell mate, take good care.
Nooooo, don’t go away!
Oh alright, if you must. I can’t force you to stay… but know that I’ve loved your contributions.
Take good care, as CV says. Fare thee well.
Loved your stuff, trooper, a message from Nu-Earth?
“And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts
And I looked and behold, a pale horse
And his name that sat on him was Death
And Hell followed with him.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9IfHDi-2EA
Great Clint Eastwood movie!!!
“What is happening at the moment? Because the Falklands are back in the news. Belfast is back in the news. It’s like some sort of hideous 80s revival, isn’t it? All we need is a heartless Conservative prime minister attacking the unemployed and demonising the poor, bankers making obscene profits, David Bowie releasing a single…”–Sandi Toksvig, The News Quiz
mickysavage -> So tell me KP is unfettered capitalism in a healthy state and just what this world needs?
Obviously not. I was never a supporter of neo liberalism, except back in the 80s when I was in my middle teens. But everyone was entranced by it then, Muldoon was gone, the Cold War over, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous was on TV.
This is an interesting piece by a contemporary philosopher I like, applying some Humanist qualities – imagination, intuition, memory, ethics – to the current morass:
“I can only ask: is there a single example in Western civilisation over the past 2500 years when a broad policy of austerity has pulled a civilisation out of crisis and set it on the road to wellbeing, prosperity or growth? No. There is no example. There is no evidence. Only ideological conviction – romanticism – coming out of a political-economic theory packed into an apparently inevitable force called globalisation…
…Crises usually strike when ideologies have been around too long and the elites that serve them have lost their ability for critical thought…
…Instead of retreating inside a received wisdom, which has already revealed that it doesn’t work, we could turn to some basic, helpful human qualities…
…Ethics, for example, are a simple, practical reminder that the primary obligation of a civilisation is to its citizens’ wellbeing, not to the protection of commercial contracts or the servicing of debts. The fact that most of these debts were incurred by the commercial sector and its financiers reinforces this point…
…Memory is an essential tool of education. You can’t deal with a crisis if you are in the hands of economists, managers and business elites who don’t know the history of debt. They don’t know the history of competition. Very few read anything of consequence. They are the briefing paper generation. Many are, in reality, functionally illiterate, except on very narrow topics. They don’t know what has worked and not worked in their own society. In fact, they don’t seem to understand the concept of either society or civilisation…
…As for Imagination, it is not the privileged domain of the arts. Good financial policy is an expression of imagination. Throughout history great financiers and great ministers of finance have usually also been great consumers of culture, intellectuals, men of imagination. I think of Solon in Athens 2600 years ago, of Sully at the side of Henry IV in 1600, of Siegmund Warburg after World War II, of Jean Monet rebuilding Europe. As they would explain: you must imagine your way out of an economic cul de sac, just as a good general imagines his way out of a military stalemate. Bad generals stick to trench warfare…
…History is clear. When faced by unsustainable debts, the fools, the weak, the degenerate civilisations become obsessed by what they owe. They convince themselves that money is real, not an agreed-upon convention. They become its slave. And they destroy themselves. Successful civilisations make these impossible debts disappear – clearly, intentionally, massively. In this way they protect what needs to be protected, such as the savings of real people and their pensions. They clear the decks and the result is raw, new human energy to deal with society’s needs. History is filled with examples of this being done on purpose. It is also filled with the carcasses of those who refused to face reality and so caused their societies to commit suicide.”
http://www.johnralstonsaul.com/eng/articles_detail.php?id=98&lang=eng
Wow, just as I’m signing off, kiwi_prometheus posts a relevant comment đ
postscript
http://philosophynow.org/issues/74/What_We_Can_Never_Know_by_David_Gamez
subscription only
Sound familiar?
http://truth-out.org/news/item/13852-latvias-economic-disaster-as-a-neoliberal-success-story-a-model-for-europe-and-the-us
For some reason no reply buttons are showing for Pascal or karol, so here goes:
Pascal -> “Yep. Iâd say itâs an odd sort of humanism that fails to recognise that humans interpret reality both subjectively, and through socially constructed lenses.”
Where did I deny any subjectivity? It’s the post structuralists/post modernists who go the hyper relativistic route.
You end up with crazy feminists calling Newton’s Laws of Physics a ‘rape manual’, and prattling on about “Rape Culture”. Science is dismissed or supposedly ‘improved’ via “Critical Theory” to “Feminist Science” or “Post Modernest Science”.
It’s all very poor philosophy and embodies atrociously low Academic standards.
There are silly things said in all schools.
You don’t necessarily “end up with crazy feminists calling Newtonâs Laws of Physics a ârape manualâ” if you accept a lot of what PM theorists say. And to equate that sort of thing with rape culture’ is just asinine.
Do you think that cultural norms are socially constructed, partially through the way we talk about things? And that cultural norms affect individuals thoughts about behavior and blameworthiness?
If so, then it’s no stretch to say that the way a society talks about rape, will affect the incidence of rape. ie, that some ways of talking about rape could increase the incidence of rape by creating cultural norms that support rapists interpretations of reality.
You end up with crazy feminists calling Newtonâs Laws of Physics a ârape manualâ, and prattling on about âRape Cultureâ. Science is dismissed or supposedly âimprovedâ via âCritical Theoryâ to âFeminist Scienceâ or âPost Modernest Scienceâ.
Oops, k_p’s brain overloaded and it’s back to copy-pasting MRA propaganda which he’s already been informed multiple times is inaccurate. Balance has been restored to the Force.
karol -> “Ah, k-p, why so keen to put people in boxes? ”
Just want to know where you stand is all, nothing wrong with that.
“I do have difficulty following a party line or any one theory â the best still have their weaknesses.”
I don’t follow a part line and I get MOBBED on here for it – especially by your girl pals.
“It depends on the context and the issue as to which is most useful.”
It’s not good enough to go with what is “useful”. Marxism for example is a theory of everything, the guy was a genius obviously, nevertheless his philosophical system crashed and burned. Why should anyone believe you have the intellectual ability to uplift a fragment of it, remove it from context and claim it is “useful” for contemporary application.
“I am a little bit neo-Marxist and quite a bit post-structuralist. There are some things in postmodernism I agree with.”
The main tenet in postmodernism is that language is meaningless. Apparently Focault back tracked from that to the position that the meaning the reader gets from a text may differ from the author’s intention. In which case he hasn’t made any insight that authors and readers haven’t been aware of already.
As for Derrida, he’s been called an intellectual fraudster by some luminary academic types. Anyone who says they have read Derrida is lying, its incomprehensible – worse than Hegel.
The fact that Post-structuralist professors still hand out As Bs and Cs to their students submitted essays suggest the whole exercise is an insider’s joke.
“There is no theory of everything. But I am for democratic socialism, social and economic justice/fairness, and am against violence, prejudice, persecution and oppression.”
“And I am for evidence-based research, knowledge, understanding and argument.”
You are keeping the word “science” out of it. Are you referring to science, if not why not, and to what are you referring, Karol?
“I do think there is an objectively (scientifically) verifiable material reality.”
Ok you do bring up science now. Don’t know how you can claim to believe in science but claim to be “quite a bit post-structuralist”
“I see objectivity as a process, not an end point. And it doesnât necessarily cancel out subjectivity, especially when it comes to human activities and communications. Objectivity is haunted by subjectivity, as you demonstrated with that sentence of yours I quoted above. But, thatâs the thing about language and human communications.”
I never denied that there is subjectivity, it is postmodernist who deny the objective.
“You seem to miss your own contradictions. âbelievingâ in something is a subjective statement.”
Is it? Does it matter? Like I said I don’t deny there is subjectivity eg “Chocolate tastes better than vanilla!” [ proviso – scientist discover genetic basis for varying tastes ]
[lprent: There is no “partY line” – it is every person’s argument for themselves. However there is a moderation line.
Personally I tend to view you as having a problem with dealing with women (what is it with that?) and indeed with anyone who thinks. You have that kind of “I’m just a poor victim” mentality (as you have amply demonstrated in this comment) that makes it difficult for you to deal with anyone disagreeing with you. And to top it off you seem to be a poor excuse for a psuedo-intellectual. Generally a waste of bandwidth and a bit of a luser in social media terms.
But these are just my opinions – they don’t enter into moderation.
Most of the time you pick up bans for either personally attacking authors or peristently going off topic in posts – usually the female authors. Right now you’re on most moderators “watch for stupidity” lists, and includes r0b’s list (about your only NOTABLE acheivement to date). ]
âI am a little bit neo-Marxist and quite a bit post-structuralist. There are some things in postmodernism I agree with.”
To be very blunt and clear, to me you are the typical KIWI IDIOT, I frown on, you have neither any understanding of complex history, socialism, social science, alternative social agendas and even scientifically evidenced social data.
I am totally flabber-ghasted about what brought you here.
Sorry, my impression is, you know too little of what goes down.
My comment was not really directed at the quote “kiwi_prometheus” used re what Karol may have commented on before, it was just totally incoherent, confusing, contradictory and much senseless, what “kiwi_prometheus” commented on in a wider context, also using that particular quote.
I tried to read his truly bizarre comments a few times, and I still cannot make that much sense at all out of what “k_p” tried to say or argue. Sorry for the frustration that lead to anger and some over the top comment I made in return.
You are not even just that “Kiwi idiot” I sometimes dismissably refer to, you are a totally ignorant, one sided coffin slicer of sorts, getting another angle on why some people may have died.
That is the lowest and cheapest crap I ever read and heard, man. Rot in fucking hell for that.
HC
I AM HAPPY TO BE BANNED AFTER SUCH IGNORANT POST AND ME GOING OVER THE TOP. SORRY, I COULD NOT HELP MYSELF. ALL THE BEST.
Have you ever considered that’s because you say really stupid things about girls?
There’s only one thing to say here and it was said by Marx himself:
I don’t know what I am but I know that I’m not a Marxist.
Marx considered that Marxists had twisted his teachings. This can most clearly be seen by his writings on the Paris Commune of 1871 which was anarchist. It was destroyed by military attack from the government.
Yes it does. Opinion and belief cannot change objective fact. This is something that the RWNJs and economists can’t seem to grasp.
“The main tenet in postmodernism is that language is meaningless. Apparently Focault back tracked from that to the position that the meaning the reader gets from a text may differ from the authorâs intention. In which case he hasnât made any insight that authors and readers havenât been aware of already.”
Hi xtasy. This paragraph pretty much sums things up. Every point made here is complete and utter bullshit and incorrect no matter how you look at it. So much so it’s impossible to engage with. I’d tell kp sayonara.
A great experience I had today, or rather yesterday (12.01.) to visit and view the NEW Rainbow Warrior vessel down at Princes Wharf. I am IMPRESSED, Greenpeace got their shit together, had I not been a member of sorts, I would have signed up right way.
I am worried for the ones who do not get it, how much NZ, Australian and Antarctic environmen is in danger! It is damned serious.
I left the vessel in doubt and worry, who is going to keep them alive to fight, I asked, being myself in dire straits.
I can only hope they get donations, manage and do more good, as that is what Greenpeace are here for. I would dread the day they die. I would want to die also.