Open mike 21/01/2010

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, January 21st, 2010 - 45 comments
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45 comments on “Open mike 21/01/2010 ”

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  1. Jenny 1
    21 January 2010 at 7:26 am

    Hi All,

    A good friend of mine sent me this article on the world political system.

    It seems to encompass and explain so much, why the car culture that is threatening the environment is so hard to part with. Orlov explains this as part of the myth that sustains the whole edifice

    And as the Nats and Act polish up their punitive anticrime policies, I was particularly struck by Orlov’s dissertation on the justice system.

    And, Orlov’s statement, that what these people want is shame, reminded me of Fran O’Sullivan.

    Fran O’Sullivan stooped very low when she used the humanitarian disaster in Haiti to push her barrow over nuclear ship visits.

    As Orlov put it, for these defenders of a failing system; better shame than appear pure evil.

    “I remember a certain conversation that took place around that time, in the late 80s. The topic of discussion was, “What could these bastards (meaning the Soviet government) possibly want now? ” A wizened old lady offered an answer that seemed nonsensical at first, but made a lot of sense upon reflection: they want shame.”

    And:

    “Should they fail to do so, history will remember them as evil. Should they succeed, history will mercifully consign their memory to oblivion, judging them to be merely incompetent.”

    Reinventing Collapse

    By Dmitry Orlov
    Created 09/15/2008 – 16:17
    teaser:
    The Cold War lasted so long because the opposing superpowers were evenly matched. Now that the US has no superpower competitor, could this spell the demise of America?

    [don’t put a full article in the comment thread. too long. provide a link]

    [lprent: Linking is pretty easy – just look at the FAQ on it. ]

    • Jenny 1.1
      21 January 2010 at 8:27 am

      Sorry about that. My friend didn’t provide me the link. Maybe someone else could find it. Unfortunately I have to go to work now.

      [This may be it: http://www.realitysandwich.com/reinventing_collapse –r0b]

      • Draco T Bastard 1.1.1
        21 January 2010 at 12:26 pm

        From the link:

        The US is by no means unique in jailing or executing innocents and in neglecting to punish the guilty. But while in other countries such injustices can be put down to corruption, oppression or other problems with the justice system, in the US they are designed into the justice system itself. This state of affairs makes it hopelessly naive for anyone to confuse legality with morality, ethics or justice. You should always behave in a legal manner, but this will not necessarily save you from going to jail. In what manner you choose to behave legally is between you and your conscience, God or lawyer, if you happen to have one, and may or may not have anything to do with obeying laws. Legality is a property of the justice system, while justice is an ancient virtue. This distinction is lost on very few people: most people possess a sense of justice and, separate from it, an understanding of what is legal and what they can get away with.

        Emphasis mine.

        Which boils down to what I’ve been saying: Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean that it’s right. Which is usually what the RWNJs don’t seem to realise.

  2. NickS 2
    21 January 2010 at 7:51 am

    Science!:
    Alligators Breathe Like Birds, Study Finds

    Oh yeah, that’s right, most people reading this wont know about the presence of air-sacs in therapods, sauropods and pterosaurs, and also how birds breath…

    And I have more links on this topic if anyone’s interested, mostly thanks to a bit of stupid put in the science-news services by one John Ruben making some really dumb comments concerning air-sacs.

    • Bill 2.1
      21 January 2010 at 10:07 am

      Hmm. Maybe we should subject some our glorious ‘World Leaders’ to a series of MRI’s and X-Rays?

      Might explain their recent lack of humanity.

  3. Bill 3
    21 January 2010 at 11:10 am

    You just couldn’t make this shit up!

    British troops in Afghanistan have rifle sights which the manufacturers engraved the markings JN8:12 on…a deliberate reference to John Ch 8 v 12 which reads: “Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/row-over-biblical-rifle-sights-for-uk-troops-1873876.html

  4. BLiP 4
    21 January 2010 at 12:10 pm

    More from the “you just couldn’t make this shit up” file:

    According to the NCIS documents, each prisoner had fashioned a noose from torn sheets and T-shirts and tied it to the top of his cell’s eight-foot-high steel-mesh wall. Each prisoner was able somehow to bind his own hands, and, in at least one case, his own feet, then stuff more rags deep down into his own throat. We are then asked to believe that each prisoner, even as he was choking on those rags, climbed up on his washbasin, slipped his head through the noose, tightened it, and leapt from the washbasin to hang until he asphyxiated. The NCIS report also proposes that the three prisoners, who were held in non-adjoining cells, carried out each of these actions almost simultaneously.

  5. Brett Dale 5
    21 January 2010 at 12:36 pm

    Was there any doubt?

    Israel has once again put it’s hand up and is
    helping out in Haiti.

    The silence from its critics is deafening.

    Israel has shown true leadership by sending a team
    of 220 people that includes medical staff, and they
    have built a makeshift hospital that will treat over
    5000 people a day. They have also sent over a search
    and rescue team like they did in India, Turkey and
    Kenya during their disasters.

    A brilliant effort from a country with only 5.7
    million people.

    Where are the critics, where are the likes of
    John Minto now and posters here at the
    The Standard who feel the need to yell
    out “You have got blood on your
    hands” to Israeli Tennis players.

    Yes, Israel has blood on their hands, its from
    treating the sick and dying in Haiti.

    Perhaps certain bloggers who can stand on
    a street corner in Auckland with a megaphone,
    would like to do some real good and fly over
    to Haiti, instead of complaining.

    I anit holding my breath.

    But I will take off my hat and say a big
    thank you to the good people of Israel.

    • Draco T Bastard 5.1
      21 January 2010 at 12:41 pm

      Israel still has blood on it’s hands – no amount of charity to a few here and there will wipe away the atrocities that Israel has perpetrated.

    • BLiP 5.2
      21 January 2010 at 12:43 pm

      And to think, just a year ago the Israeli army was shelling crowded Palestinian hospitals.

    • Bill 5.3
      21 January 2010 at 1:25 pm

      Another piece of brainless twaddle from the right. What is it with you guys? Seriously. I really would like to know.

      I’ll make it simple Brett. Do you think that the presence of British search and rescue teams in Haiti renders all criticism of the actions of the British state illegitimate?

      Yes or No.

      • felix 5.3.1
        21 January 2010 at 1:58 pm

        I’ve tried asking Brett straightforward questions like this before and I think you might need to make it a bit simpler.

        Tricky bits will be “renders”, “state” and “illegitimate”.

        You might also want to change “search and rescue teams” to “army men”.

    • lprent 5.4
      21 January 2010 at 2:37 pm

      How many people did they kill by attacking hospitals and people sheltering in schools in Gaza a little over a year ago?

      The only thing that the Israelis have appeared to learn from the brutality inflicted on Jews during history is how to inflict it on their own citizens (I consider that until Israel allows a viable Palestinian state to form, they are responsible for all those in Gaza and the West Bank).

      A PR stunt like helping in Haiti isn’t going to wipe the blood from the Israeli regimes hands. External PR stunts like this are a habit shared by many oppressive regimes because it distracts from the persecution, maiming and killing of their own citizens. Try South Africa under Botha. The Germans in the 30’s and 40’s. Etc.

      It is useful for fooling unthinking apologists for atrocities like yourself.

  6. Brett Dale 6
    21 January 2010 at 2:52 pm

    Bill:

    No of course not. A country can be criticize, even though they do good.

    Felix:

    Those on the left should congratulate Israel for all the good work they are doing in Haiti.

    Its been amazing so far, many lifes have been saved.

  7. Brett Dale 7
    21 January 2010 at 2:55 pm

    Iprent:

    A PR Stunt???????????

    Have you talked to the doctors their?

    Have you seen them working???

    Do you believe they want to help the people of Haiti?

    They are doing so much good work, perhaps those on the standard should fly over to
    Haiti and help out, instead of blogging?

    • lprent 7.1
      21 January 2010 at 4:11 pm

      It is a PR stunt.

      In Gaza last year the Israelis were responsible for the damage and injuries. And they tried to prevent as much aid getting in there as was possible for them to do, given that they were under immense international pressure to stop killing people and get the aid through.

      The number of people that the Israelis will manage to help in Haiti is dwarfed by the number of people that they killed or maimed last year in Gaza. Or who subsequently died because the Israelis were embargoing food and medicines.

      Frankly the Israeli state are hypocrites staging a PR stunt because they are too gutless to do what is required to establish peace inside their own state for their own citizens. This is a useful distraction to burnish their international image.

      You’re just being a hypocrite. You prefer that Israeli is helping people a third of the way around the world instead of stopping the slaughter of their own Arab citizens.

      Perhaps you should stop your hypocritical moralizing and go to Gaza to find out what is actually happening as Israel oppresses their own citizens while denying them a vote.

  8. felix 8
    21 January 2010 at 3:02 pm

    Brett you’re such a racist. Where is your support for the black and chinese aid workers in Haiti?

    Conspicuously silent as usual when it comes to praising black and chinese people Brett. I won’t hold my breath.

  9. Brett Dale 9
    21 January 2010 at 3:54 pm

    Felix:

    China has sent one million dollars, not enough out of a population of one billion.

    Just like the left to bring in race to everything.

    I mentioned Israel, because they are a country that always takes sh*t from everybody, and no one ever says well done to them, when they do good.

    Their work on the ground has been impeccable, so has the work of a lot of third world countries and ther usa.

    Britian on the otherhand doesnt seem to be doing their fair share.

    I couldnt give a shit about people’s skin colour, thats a left thing.

    • felix 9.1
      21 January 2010 at 4:07 pm

      Who said anything about China? I think you’re losing it.

      It’s also pretty obvious that you only praise white people.

  11. Brett Dale 11
    21 January 2010 at 5:54 pm

    I praised Obama’s victory in Politics. I praised Darius Rucker’s victory in Music.
    I praised Larry Fitzergarld touchdown in sport.
    I praise the relief effects on those around the world.
    I praise anything that is a heart warming story.
    I praise Besty Smithe.

    I praised it because of the acheivements and not the colour of the skin.

    • BLiP 11.1
      21 January 2010 at 11:10 pm

      You know those cutesy-pie stories about rescued animals and miracle operations that run at the end of the news . . . they’re just for you.

  12. Brett Dale 12
    21 January 2010 at 5:55 pm

    FLEIX:

    You mention China.

  13. Brett Dale 13
    21 January 2010 at 5:56 pm

    Iprent:

    Do you believe that the Isareli’s helping in Haiti are doing it for the right reason???

    I do.

    • Bill 13.1
      21 January 2010 at 9:03 pm

      Can we please be very clear on the difference between Israelis, Jews and Zionists?

      That’s not too hard, is it?

      Not all Israelis are Jews.

      Not all Jews are Zionists or Israelis.

      All Zionists are Jews.

      The State of Israel is Zionist.

      Israelis in Haiti are not necessarily Zionists or supportive of the Israeli state. They might not even be Jewish Israelis.

      Your point Burt, was to blunt criticisms of the Zionist State of Israel…a point so crippled it crumples on the ground before managing a single step.

  14. Brett Dale 14
    21 January 2010 at 5:58 pm

    “When the last thing we notice is the colour of skin and the first thing we look for is the beauty within, then we shall be free”

    I live by that, I love all people who have a good heart.

    • Bill 14.1
      21 January 2010 at 8:54 pm

      So you love me Brett!

      That is so…..heart warming …..and deeply meaningful….and….well, as I rinse my hanky be rest assured my faith in humanity has been completely restored by the degree of your magnanimosity.

  16. Brett Dale 16
    21 January 2010 at 10:33 pm

    Bill:

    I love almost everybody.

  17. Brett Dale 17
    22 January 2010 at 8:48 am

    Felix:

    Good fishermen, sold them some ice cubes once.

    I love their pies.