Posts Tagged ‘debate’
Formative experiences
Reflecting on why I oppose the National government’s proposed rushed legislation to retrospectively sanctify unlawful police surveillance actions, I found myself remembering back to when I was a sixth-former in Wellington and got a holiday job at the Supreme Court — coincidentally just as an appeal was being heard against the double murder conviction of […]
Getting to be a habit
Enough with politics! Contention can become addictive. Here’s Diana Krall, looking every bit as good as the right-wing vixens I referred to earlier … but sounding way better.
Tribalism
One of the perennial themes of this blog is an exploration of the ‘reasons’ for prejudice and conflict between different groups. See my 2009 post Q: Where does conflict come from? which records Tajfel’s social psychology experiments … Henri Tajfel is perhaps best known for his minimal groups experiments. In these studies, test subjects were divided arbitrarily […]
SIS boss’s slow resignation letter + Slater says enuf!
Media wannabe Martyn ‘bomber’ Bradbury, twisting on the spit of his own sour double-mindedness appeared yesterday to pour scorn and contempt on his Right wing foil, blogger Cameron Slater: ” … to think that the SIS would hand papers like that over to Slater of all people is unbelievable.” and “It is an incredible thing […]
A trolling we will go … anonymously
Touching on one of our perennial themes here, criticism, anonymity and unpleasantness on the interwebs …in ‘How the internet created an age of rage’ The Observer‘s Tim Adams delivers a worthwhile treatise on how commenters are able to hide behind a cloak of anonymity, making the blog and chatroom have into forums for hatred and […]
In praise of Cameron Slater (yeah, I’m surprised too)
If you’d suggested to me a year ago that I would be writing an article in praise of ‘WhaleOil’ blogger Cameron Slater I would have laughed at you. Hard. Yet, here I am doing just that. Let me explain. We’ve discussed these issues before: responding to criticism or negative feedback about one’s actions or statements, […]
Capital Gains Tax: ‘Politics is the art of polarization’
The NZ Labour Party has (deliberately) let the cat out of the bag with its ‘soft launch’ confirmation that a Capital Gains Tax in some form will be part of its election policy for November 2011. Cue the scary music! And the completely predictable howls of outrage (some justified) with cries of ‘unfair’, ‘inconsistent’, ‘distortionary’, […]
Smoke gets in your eyes, Carrick?
Tonight TV3 broadcast an Inside New Zealand documentary: Dying for a Smoke, highlighting some of the health issues and the political debate around suggested moves to increase controls on the sale of tobacco products — and even suggestions to eliminate tobacco products from the country by 2020 … which strikes me as a pipe dream, […]
On a collision course
I briefly mentioned in passing the small c ‘controversy’ generated by blogger Martyn ‘Bomber’ Bradbury loudly expressing his opinion about whether or not blogger Cactus Kate (Cathy Odgers) was suitable ACT MP candidate material. ‘Hell no’ Bradbury says (or words to that effect) because he says she’s a ‘far right hate merchant’ who has previously […]
The road not taken — copyright is a complicated playground
Sometimes we’re caught by the law of unintended consequences … and sometimes we’re saved by it. Righthaven is a law firm widely portrayed as copyright trolls trying to shake down bloggers and commenters for reproducing news stories published by Stephens Media. According to David Kravets in WIRED 20 June, ‘copyright litigation factory’ Righthaven has sued […]
It’s only ‘propaganda’ if you’re talking about the other side, right, Carrick?
A few days ago in the context of the public discourse around plain packaging legislation for tobacco products, No wonder tobacco co.s are SQUEALING … I briefly mentioned a PR flack who appears to be an advocate (paid or unpaid? Not clear) for Tobacco manufacturers. This spin doctor* Carrick Graham follows me on Twitter and […]
How I wish I had the talent to make a point like this so well
Via Tim Carmody’s Snarkmarket blog, this awesome argument with illustrations demonstrates the sexist double-standard operating in (sigh) comics … merely a microcosm/reflection of wider society. It’s an argument (discussion, really) that’s been running for a while … and is worth following if you care. But my point is the way Megan Rosalarian Gedris has pretty […]
