TV times
Arabic news service Al Jazeera is launching its English-language world news service today, news which will no doubt be welcome to anyone who’s seen the excellent documentary about Al Jazeera, Control Room. British PM Tony Blair is the first interview subject they have lined up.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like it will be easy to access in TV format here in Aotearoa. Al Jazeera lists ORCUS as its platform in New Zealand, which seems to be an Auckland company which recently bought an unused satellite in order to screen international programming. If anyone knows if they are active yet and how to tune in, please share your knowledge in the comments!
Fortunately it will also be available as a live stream on the Al Jazeera homepage soon.
Morning Report carried an item on the launch this morning.
Interestingly, the BBC are due to launch an Arabic-language service next year.
November 15th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
Al Jazeera English language world service is live and free to air from today. You just need a 60cm dish and tune in to it. But it will be encrypted from February, when you’ll have to start paying for it. Orcus’ phone number is 09-373 3420, for anyone who wants more details.
November 15th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
Yes Control Room was a most EXCELLENT movie indeed.
Bummer that we will not have more easy access to this new news service, as I for one would very much enjoy having an equal opportunity to hear an alternative perspective to the Middle Eastern news we currently have available to us.
Live internet streaming is an enormous toll on the monthly bandwidth when all our NZ ISP providers have capped data limits on their plans
November 15th, 2006 at 5:29 pm
If you have broadband (or are a patient dialup user) Memri TV provides an excellent range of middle eastern television, complete with English subtitles. You can quickly find many of their clips with a simple YouTube search.
November 15th, 2006 at 11:24 pm
Thanks Duncan.
Since you knew that one, may I ask if you have any insight into getting Russian TV channels? I know I could hit a satellite if I lived in the house on top of the hill, but it’s below my horizon here. Really shallow angle.
respectfully
BJ
November 16th, 2006 at 9:07 am
BJ,
Not a clue I’m afraid - but you might want to try rtv.co.nz - as far as I can tell, they produce Russian television for the NZ market, so they might be able to help.
We may disagree on many things, but it looks like we have the same opinion of the mainstream media
November 16th, 2006 at 11:09 am
Toad: Thanks for that info.
I’m a regular reader of English Al Jazeera on the web.
TV coverage would be excellent.
November 17th, 2006 at 10:18 am
Interesting developments on the Olaf Wig (sp) story, it seems that his kidnappers were not swayed by New Zealand’s gutless pacifist approach in the middle east after all.
Its all about the money!
November 17th, 2006 at 12:23 pm
big bruv’s label: “New Zealand’s gutless pacifist approach in the middle east”
Now that the full extent of the humanitarian, political and environmental disater in that region has begun to unfold … as was predicted, I find it totally INCOMPREHENSIBLE that anyone could still believe that Aotearoa/NZ should have been a part of it!
(For those who worry about “appearances” rather than morality: War crimes committed there are yet to face the International spotlight … and, at the very least, that is NOT “a good look” on anyone’s CV!)
November 17th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
Eredwen
So you would have done nothing about Sadamm?…or is it that many greens are just anti American?
And yes, NZ should have been involved.
November 17th, 2006 at 1:31 pm
No dispute from me that Saddam was a brutal despot. But tell me Big Bruv, in what ways has the US-led invasion that removed him made things better for the Iraqi people? And remember when Saddam was an ally of the US - because Iran was the enemy - and that was when Saddam actually did have weapons of mass destruction, and used them on the Kurds, the US turned a blind eye.
A pretty good reason to treat recent Administrations in the US with a high degree of contempt and cynicism I think. Along with the US continuing to prop up other dictatorial regimes around the world because it is in their economic and/or strategic interests to do so. When George Dubya calls for the restoration of democracy in Pakistan, he might have a bit more credibility.
So here’s one Green who is very, very anti American foreign and economic policy - but that doesn’t mean anti the American people, many of whom themselves get a pretty rough deal from the plutocracy that is passed off as democracy in the US.
November 17th, 2006 at 1:45 pm
Toad
I appreciate and respect your honesty, there is little point in us debating this topic much more as we are never going to agree.
But if I may as this, is your dislike of American foreign policy (not sure why you dislike the economic policy) dependent on who is the President?, I can not remember a lot of noise from the left about Yankee foreign policy when Slick Willy (History will expose him as an even bigger Liar) was the President.
November 17th, 2006 at 5:47 pm
“I can not remember a lot of noise from the left about Yankee foreign policy when Slick Willy (History will expose him as an even bigger Liar) was the President. ”
I think you’re confusing “the left” with “popular discontent”. here was plenty of grumpiness from the left about Clinton - over the 1998 and subsequent bombing of Itaq and the maintainance of sanctions and ‘no-fly zones’ among other things - ithe lack of obvious noise wasn’t due to the left keeping mum, it was just that the media and wider community didn’t get up in arms about these issues as they did about the wars of Bush senior and junior.
Oh, and as for NZ being ‘pacifist’, there’s close to a couple of hundred troops in Afghanistan, we had military engineers in Iraq, a frigate patrolling the Gulf, an Orion doing likewise, and a Hercules and a medical team in the first Iraq War. Not very pacifist really.
November 17th, 2006 at 6:33 pm
Sam: Not very pacifist … but not very combatant either!
(The NZ Government walking a careful line to stay onside just enough … but if our Government had been National led??)
I’d prefer Aotearoa/NZ to have the courage to take on the mantle of “neutral peacemakers” as a permanent stance … the Switzerland of the South Pacific … (AND it would augment our “clean green” image.) We’d probably have support and respect from unexpected(?) places if we did that.
WW2, ANZAC and the Battle of the Coral Sea, on which our (sometimes knee-jerk) loyalties have been based are now the past memories of the generation that is well on its way out. (I was alive but not aware when the Americans “saved us” and I am officially “a Senior Citizen”.) These should no longer shape our thinking.
The Aussies are moving in a different direction than we are in many ways.
November 17th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
Big Bruv - If the US had done nothing about Saddam, the middle east would be a much better place for it.
“Slick Willy” got a BJ in private the oval office. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld f0rn!c@ted with the dog in Iraq in front of the entire world… and the US is going to, if it is fortunate, get out of it at a mere trillion dollars and under 30 thousand casualties, not to mention the fact that we utterly failed the real mission…. cause Osama wasn’t anywhere near Iraq, the claimed mission… cause there weren’t any WMD in Iraq, the new claimed mission… cause there’s no democracy in Iraq and it isn’t looking good for the actual missions… cause the use of Iraq as a base for US troops in the middle east to expropriate other peoples oil doesn’t look real feasible and the Chinese look to be getting first dibs on the oil if it ever gets pumping again.
The failures are so egregious that they constitute treasonous incompetence. The actual war was initiated on the basis of a lie which Bush told to Congress so it is also an impeachable “high crime”.
The smartest thing any nation on the planet could do with Iraq was stay away, and many (most) did.
Clinton is the bigger liar? I don’t recollect that he cost the nation a Trillion dollars, or that he got thousands of troops killed…. you consider who lied about what and what the public consequences really were…
BJ
November 17th, 2006 at 9:42 pm
Eredwen
I am glad that most of NZ does not think like you, many men died doing what they thought was right.
If history has taught us anything then it is that pacifism never works, I would have thought you would appreciate that by now.
I am highly insulted that you consider my loyalties to be knee jerk, that is part of MY heritage and not something that I am prepared to let you throw away on some PC whim.
Or does it not matter about my heritage simply because I am a white New Zealander?
November 17th, 2006 at 9:48 pm
BJ
So you don’t care that people were being murdered, you don’t care that there was not any type of democracy going on.?
Again I see a naked hatred of America coming through.
As for Slick Willy, he had the chance to take out Osama twice, he did not take that chance as he was more worried about avoiding being impeached (STATEMENT OF FACT)
It sickens me to see the left wing media fall over Slick Willy (no doubt they will try and do a JFK with him in later years), given time History will prove Clinton to be nothing much but a showman and liar.
November 17th, 2006 at 9:55 pm
er big bruv, I expect BJ cares a lot about people being murdered, I think he is just concerned that people are dying violently at a far greater rate because of the war and occupation, than were dying before it. So do you care about that?
November 17th, 2006 at 10:02 pm
I care that there is now a chance (slim i grant you) of democracy in Iraq one day, that was never going to happen under Sadamm..or perhaps you would have preferred Uday to take over?…..now there was a nice young man!
November 17th, 2006 at 10:53 pm
Big Bruv - If you think that getting rid of Saddam was uppermost in the pimple on the shrubs butt that serves him for a brain you are seriously misinformed. That chickenhawk and his chickenhawk mates have no understanding of what they’ve done. They’re congenitally incapable of understanding war…. heck, they don’t even understand english. You can’t declare war on a noun… organizations, countries… yeah.
You’ve probably missed that I am a former US Naval Officer. You couldn’t know that the Intel organizations of the US warned of this and were overridden by the Rumsfeld clique of analysts.
Democracy in Iraq will come when and if the Iraqi people are prepared to take it for themselves…. and the USA is gone from the country.
I was wrong above though because I forgot myself in my furiously eager litany of failures… Bushco has succeeded in one thing. They have enmeshed the USA in a never-ending war. This is a pre-requisite to creating a police state… the echoes of Orwellian newspeak show up throughout the USA now. Did you know that Habeas is defunct? Did you notice that people can be taken of the streets of the US and locked up on the order of the junta without any recourse to lawyers, courts, or justice? Did you notice that it is now illegal for Americans to travel abroad without approval from Homeland Security?
Osama Bin Laden is still free. His goals included bankrupting the USA, involving the USA in a war with Islam, getting the USA out of Saudi Arabia, and destroying freedom in the US. With Bush on his side he has accomplished ALL of these goals. I don’t have a problem with war when it is necessary, most Greens understand that it is sometimes NECESSARY to fight.
But if it is not necessary to go to war, then it is necessary not to go to war.
Iraq was not necessary.
BJ
November 17th, 2006 at 11:02 pm
big bruv:
I am sorry that you have taken offence at general statements as if they were dircted at you personally. I assure you that, in my writings, this is not the case!
Maybe you make this assumption because you are in the habit of directly attacking/insulting others yourself. A change of tone would help your arguments to be taken seriously, and replied to on frogblog.
“Neutral” language is the key to good communication …
and a bit of friendliness, human compassion and shared humour goes a long way towards a true exchange of ideas! (I have perservered and read your contributions despite the fact that they sometimes make me feel very uncomfortable … )
To comment on your current assumptions:
The fact that many New Zealanders have died in previous wars has not escaped my notice!
I was born in 1941 and grew up among the stories of the survivors who returned from WW2. (I heard a lot from neighbours … who felt safe talking to a child … talk about the futility of war, and their determination that their children would NOT have to experience what they had.)
I was with my father as he was dying as a very old man, and he wept for the young pilots and navigators that he had taught (at Wigram Air Force Base) … he felt so guilty about “sending them to their deaths”. I tried to reassure him that he had done his best to give them the skills to stay alive.
The servicemen who “died doing what they thought was right” were fighting in the War which followed “The War to End All Wars”.
My parents experienced both of those wars … and then the Korean War and then Vietnam. My brother had two tours of duty in Vietnam as a doctor working in a Kiwi/Aussie Field Service Hospital for Vietnamese civilians. He commented at the time that “We are on the wrong side in this war.”
For the sake of all these people, and above all for the sake of our children, we need to remember the message our returned servicemen gave to me … as a small child.
November 17th, 2006 at 11:06 pm
There are reportedly 80000 people on the Homeland Security list. These people are not permitted to board planes or ships. They may still escape into Canada and Mexico.
The list is secret.
You can’t find out the rules for who goes on the list.
That’s a secret.
You can’t challenge your being on the list.
…. and I haven’t even gotten to the financial debacle brewing there…
Big Bruv … this is not a good topic for me. Hate is not a word I use when I describe this administration because it is such a wimp of a word. What you see coming from me right now is the palest glimmer of a leak from the seething hell inside the containment chamber. The betrayal of my country by these slime merchants is so complete that it is quite possible that it will never recover.
I think however, that the pyrotechnic show is over for the evening
Thanks for giving me an excuse for letting that out
respectfully
BJ
November 18th, 2006 at 2:26 am
Big Bro : you ask two questions :
is it that many greens are just anti American?
and
is your dislike of American foreign policy dependent on who is the President?
… see the contradiction?
If Greens didn’t (always strongly) oppose Clinton’s foreign policy, but strongly oppose Bush’s, that’s proof that it’s not knee-jerk anti-Americanism.
By the same token, you’re not a knee-jerk yourself either, or you’d have supported Clinton as well as bush.
The trick is : we oppose the policies, not the people.
At the time, I thought that Clinton’s foreign policy was not always well-intentioned, and often erratic or blundering. But boy, it looks like visionary statesmanship now, the contrast is so great!
You say pacifism never works (dunno - we can’t ask Gandhi, he’s dead - maybe we could ask Mandela?)
But even if it were true, it wouldn’t prove that “war always works”! War has to be a last resort, when other avenues have been exhausted, and there is a plausible chance of a good outcome. The Iraq adventure fails every test. It’s not a just war — it’s just a war.
November 18th, 2006 at 2:41 am
Hey BJ
s’okay, you’re here now!
“I think however, that the pyrotechnic show is over for the evening ”
Anytime you need to let that out, there’s some good places for peace action here in Wellington, and you may just meet other ex-american residents who feel as vehemently as you do. I might chuck something up on the member forums about that, don’t think the frogpond will aquiesce if I post it here
Try putting PAW into the search engine on the Indymedia website (it’a a link off the side of frogblog home) for some instant gratification
November 18th, 2006 at 7:22 am
eredwen
I have never insulted or attacked anybody here, perhaps you are confusing my distrust or dislike of SOME green policy as an attack, I can assure you that this is not the case.
I have many good friends who share wildly different political views from my own, they are of course wrong but that does not mean that I dislike them as people.
I do however draw the line at Comrade Klarke, her i would happily run over in my big shinny 4WD.
November 18th, 2006 at 8:46 am
Big Bruv
The Green policy you’re talking about - would it be defense? I suspect that you think it is, but Green’s haven’t published a defense policy yet, and as a result there’s a lot of misperception associated with it. This is being addressed.
I think I summed this up earlier in my catchphrase … where I said “if it is not necessary to go to war, it is necessary not to go to war”
Of course the trick is to know at the earliest possible moment when there IS a necessity.
Greens however, are not all “pacifists” the way Quakers are, though I daresay we have real pacifists as members.
respectfully
BJ
Oh yes… those “two opportunities?” … not exactly the same as depicted on faux news. Remember, this was before OBL had bombed the WTC. The objective is to subject OBL to criminal charges or failing that, get him locked up until we can, not to make him a martyr to the cause at American hands. Sudan offered but Saudi Arabia wouldn’t take him, and he couldn’t be convicted on the evidence at hand in any US court.
So instead of taking him anyway and pushing him out of an airplane the Clinton administration followed the rules.
Hindsight is always 20/20, and Clinton was as aggressive as possible in pursuing Bin-Laden under the circumstances. His turnover briefing and the intelligence and State Department briefs warned Bush that it was Osama, not Iraq, that was the threat to watch. Bush determined that there was nothing he wanted to hear there. Remember that at this point Afghanistan is still a sovereign state. Pitching the Cruise Missiles in there was technically an act of war, and there was no declaration to back it…. nor could one have been had with the Republican Congress foaming at the mouth.
You have to keep track of the whole stage, and the conditions at the time. Clinton might have done a little better… but Bush could not have done worse.
respectfully
BJ
November 18th, 2006 at 11:57 am
bj:
You write: “The betrayal of my country by these slime merchants is so complete that it is quite possible that it will never recover.”
“Never” is a word indicative of a (very human) short term perspective!
People thought “never again” after Hitler (now his clones are causing trouble … and if we look further back in history they always did!)
People thought that Japan would “never” recover after WW2 and nor would Germany/Europe.
Maori was a “dead” language (and the Maori people “doomed to extinction”)
We are a species which does learn from history, and doesn’t learn from history, at the same time! (We have these wonderful things called adolescents who “don’t listen to their parents” but do listen to their parents at the same time. If well nurtured they grow into an idealistic next generation.)
I am one who hopes that the USA will “never be the same again” but in a positive sense. Look what has happened to Europe … is happening in South America … etc
November 18th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
bj..i don’t think you have taken on board the significance of the changes wrought by this recent election..
the neo-cons have been sent packing….both them and their flawed ideolgies…
and progressives have made major advances…
america has not just gone back to the centre…it has moved further to the left than many (me included) could have hoped for..
that repressive legislation/those attacks on the constitution..will be repealed/over-turned.
for many years democrats in america were known for their apathy..and their party was hijacked…
the democrats have woken up from that apathy..(shocked awake by what bush has done)…and they have their eye on the ball again…
and..as eredwen pointed out..the seemingly hopless can be turned around…
if only those feckin’ american greens wd just make better use of their time/energies..and green the democrat party..
i know that if we were still operating under first past the post..i’d be in labour..beavering away to change/green them..
not working to decimate/hurt the major party i ideologically supported the most..
by trying to cannablise their vote…
phil(whoar.co.nz)
November 18th, 2006 at 4:56 pm
phil: Very well said!
November 19th, 2006 at 2:41 am
Phil , Eredwen -
The problem is not resolved in a single election. The turnaround appeared large, but real change?
That would have required that many many more incumbents be tossed out on their sorry bums. This was not enough of a revolution to stop “business as usual” and it is not clear that Dems will have the stones to actually impeach the two traitors who were not up for election. The actual shift in voting was only a few percentage points. Real change would have seen both major parties out on the street, a real revolution of the sort that Nader fantasizes about.
That isn’t going to happen.
The money has already been stolen. There is no way to recover the economy short of a massive recession and the fall of the dollar as the world reserve currency. The reputation of the country as an honest broker, as an honest champion of democracy… is gone.
Whether the Dems push back some of the draconian “anti-terror” legislation or not, there remains a disturbingly high percentage of Americans who are stupid enough to want that legislation to stand.
It does not appear realistic to expect the imposition of taxes large enough to correct things economically.
The pendulum has started swinging back, but the USA is currently enmeshed in a “war on terror” which is just another name for a “crusade” as far as the Islamic world is concerned, and there are plenty of fundamentalists on both sides whose main concern now is their supply of ammunition. Peace is a dirty word.
Germany, Japan…. they do not have the power that they had prior to their spectacularly bad leadership got them involved in global warfare… and they got assisted in their recovery by one of the most benificient economical expansions in the planet’s history… at the expense of the planet itself (we now know).
What will happen in this century however, with global warming, peak oil, the coming bankruptcy of the USA and the unfortunate war on a noun, is going to be the US coming down and the partial rise of China. China will get cut off at the knees because the planet itself cannot take any more.
Once again I return to the image of the culture in the closed petri dish… a culture doomed by the interaction of its own success and the lid. The USA was very successful and the lid is all too stifling now. We have to slow our “growth” and we have to remove the lid… and our best chance to do so was squandered in the ashes of Iraq and the boardrooms of Boeing.
So I am in no way an optimist about what is coming… though I am pleased that my worst fears were not realized in this election.
respectfully
BJ
November 19th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
bj said: “The reputation of the country as an honest broker, as an honest champion of democracy… is gone.”
I’m sorry to have to “bite the hand that fed” many, but I don’t believe that that the informed among outsiders have ever thought of the USA as a (really) “honest broker.”
Nor have they/we seen the USA as an “honest champion of democracy”, especially in situations where the results of that democracy would/have not suited the USA.
The interests of the USA, and its views of the World, have always intruded into its (sometimes incredible) largesse … sometimes to the serious detriment of the people it was supposed to help.
November 19th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
bj:
There are still a lot of people in the world outside the USA (and outside China.)
Homo sapiens is a successful species and will most likely survive for quite a while yet.
I probably take a longer view than you do, partly because I am older, and because I married a German whose family was on the opposite side to my family in two World Wars and two post war “Occupations” (the second of which was happening when we were born and very young), and mainly because I had parents ( born in early 1900s) who took a very keen interest in human behaviour and the chaotic world events/history that such behaviour creates.
You have (sensibly) chosen to come to Aotearoa/NZ. Despite what our TV indicates, and the fact that we speak English, we are NOT a clone of the USA. We are capable of different alliances and we are capable of thinking for ourselves. South America, and United Europe (which has “been there and done that” as far as fighting is concerned) are just two places worth talking to, as well as our important Pacific neighbours with their cultural ties to us.
I believe that we should take our good reputation and use it to good effect … to join with other peacer seekers to strengthen the United Nations.
This is what we need to concentrate on now.
We also need to make sure that our politicians and our fellow citizens do the same (including the National Party who would have taken us into the current war “because the USA said so”.)
November 19th, 2006 at 9:53 pm
bj..
is this glass half empty…or half full..?
btw…the romans thought no civilisation could/would succeed them…
and that without their guiding hand…chaos..!
(well..you know how it goes…)
hubris’ll do that for you..eh..?
it’s been a real short empire…eh..?
less than 100 years before serious/terminal cracks in the foundations appeared…..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
November 20th, 2006 at 2:07 am
Phil
The Romans lacked atom bombs and had not managed to suck the wealth out of the whole of the inhabitable planet… and one can also point to the “dark ages” that followed that empire… we got some rough times ahead IMAO.
Eredwen - Points taken. Some of my comment has to do with America’s self-image, and some of it has to do with countries that we used to regard as allies. However, low opinions of US foreign policy in the past were not so commonly held as they became after this mob did its thing in Iraq. It was never the case before IMHO, that an American President could be ranked as a greater threat to peace than the lunatic in charge of North Korea. That’s where the British put him. He had a good run at reaching number one, being more dangerous than Osama as well.
That was never the case before now.
The truth of your statement is perhaps considered as an indictment of the rather less perceptive majority viewpoint among our allies. No keen observer of the US foreign policy was deceived, as you say, but now the curtain is entirely torn away. The naked self-interest is clear to everyone.
respectfully
BJ
November 20th, 2006 at 2:19 am
And to drag this topic kicking and screaming back towards the OP (original post) the failure of most people to perceive the naked self-interest in American foreign policy can be laid squarely at the door of a media, particularly Television, that has in large part abjured journalistic integrity in favour of profits.
Some of this comes from government pressure, licensing and access issues. Some of it comes from corporate pressure, owners of media groups are “players” who can sway elections, and they are courted for their power and co-opted by the system.
The rest comes from the people themselves, who more often than not do not wish to hear the truth.
Which makes journalistic integrity even more precious. The only saving grace for places like NZ is the wide selection of news we can choose from, which allows us to gain balance by taking on views of both sides.
respectfully
BJ
November 20th, 2006 at 8:07 am
Well said bj.
November 20th, 2006 at 9:27 am
so..bj..the glass is half-empty..
i mean..yes..yes…’atom bomb bad’…but they aren’t blasting them off every week are they..?
(aren’t you getting a tad alarmist/purple-prosey there..?..bj..?..)
and ‘..suck(ing) the wealth out of the whole of the inhabitable planet..”
only adds to that purple ‘tone’..eh..?
and yes..it is quite likely we will face difficult/’rough’ times ahead..
but i am cheered by this (new) recognition by many/most of the issues to hand…
and as far as yr homeland is concerned….many of the states there are streets ahead of the federal government (and us.!) in their legislative moves to counter/deal with those imperatives…
you seem..bj…to share that deep gloom of many of the environmental refugees from your part of the world who ran here….
constantly glancing back over your shoulder for (your predicted) mushroom cloud….
there are three stages to solving problems bj…
the awareness of that problem..
the will to ‘fix’ that problem..
the actions required….
currently we are halfway between one and two…
but events are moving fast..
esp in comparison to the glacial pace of awareness spreading of recent decades…
(gore noted that in his speech last week….how he gave his first climate-change warnings..expecting epiphanies from those he told..
but that wasn’t to be…)
so..bj…i reckon it’s half-full..eh..?..that glass..?
we are certainly light years ahead of where we were before the ‘denialists’ got routed..eh..?
did you know an environmental coalition/umbrella group has given a new green democrat heavyweight..a 92% rating on her voting record..?
barbara boxer is her name…and she becomes an environmental heavyweight in this new democrat-dominated political world in washington…
i don’t know about you..but i am cheered by news such as this..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
November 20th, 2006 at 1:09 pm
“Sam: Not very pacifist … but not very combatant either!
(The NZ Government walking a careful line to stay onside just enough … but if our Government had been National led??)”
On side just enough for what? Enough to keep asking for a free-trade agreement which, thank heavens, the US government isn’t very interested in? And the SAS in Afghanistan appear to be very combatant, although that’s a secret.
“You say pacifism never works (dunno - we can’t ask Gandhi, he’s dead - maybe we could ask Mandela?)”
You can make a pretty good case for saying pacifism never works, problem is, you can make a pretty good case for saying violence never works as well. Pacifism is only effective if deeply entrenched in social values - you can’t expect pacifism to work if you tolerate violence, injustice and authoritarianism in their milder forms. These have to be nipped in the bud before they get out of control and can only be dealt with by counter-violence.
Don’t know if Mandela would have much to say about pacifism - he was locked up for organising a bombing campaign (this gets rather glossed over in his autobiography, but it is briefly mentioned) and steadfastly refused to reject political violence during his imprisonment. The wider anti-apartheid struggle was fairly violent, although the social democrats are rather fond of pretending it wasn’t - ‘necklacing’ for instance, wasn’t particularly peaceful.
November 20th, 2006 at 1:51 pm
Sam
I agree, it always amazes me that when people talk about Mandela they conveniently forget about his past.
This is not to say that I do not have the up most respect for the man just that my respect is for the deeds he performed AFTER he left prison.
We must make sure that when the story is told about our history makers that the ENTIRE story is told, one of the kids came home the other night from school and proceeded to tell me all about a man called Gerry Adams and how he and another man called McGuinness (sp) had stopped the violence in Northern Island
Obviously i asked the child if they knew who started the violence in the first place and the answer came back “the British, as they have always done”
I cannot wait for the next parent teacher evening..somebody is going to get an earful, we have a duty to teach our kids the truth, not the latest version of it approved by Comrade Clarke and her central committee.
November 20th, 2006 at 5:15 pm
Yeah, I think the guy was an impressive political operator, I just don’t get why left social democrats have to try and pretend he was a pacifist of some sort.
As for Ireland, I guess there’s some truth in blaming the Brits if we’re talking about Oliver Cromwell, but even in those days there were other British who opposed the colonisation. But I’m not sure this can be laid at Helen’s door. Much of it is just the stunningly short and superficial memories of the media, teachers and others.