Utopia, you are standing in it!

Dave Granlund takes a look

Given that this is a topic that will be an ongoing political issue in NZ for some considerable time – this is the first in a series of posts about this issue and related matters

So Andrew Little has released the approach being taken regarding the cannabis referendum

There are several immediate concerns which come to mind and no doubt as things are clarified over the coming months some will prove to be unfounded. Though I will be pleasantly surprised if that proves to be the case.

First though let us address the rather peculiar interpretation placed on the concept of binding used by Mr. Little (from Jane Patterson at RNZ)

Cabinet ministers have agreed the referendum will be binding, based on agreement by all three governing parties.

“The voters’ choice will be binding because all of the parties that make up the current government…

I’d like to call your attention to a fairly new feature of The Atlantic that began last fall: a series of columns and short pieces gathered under the rubric (and webpage) called “The Speech Wars”. Click on the screenshot to go there:

The topics and viewpoints are diverse, but all have something to do with the rights of people to say what they want, and the counterspeech against it.  There are pro- and con-columns about Ilhan Omar’s statements, columns about hate speech, about the demonization of Harvard’s Ronald Sullivan, a house master and lawyer who is defending Harvey Weinstein as a client, and so on. Here’s a small screenshot:

You won’t agree with everything—how could you when the pieces sometimes take diametrically opposed stands?—but you’ll probably benefit most by reading things you don’t agree with. After all, isn’t that one of the great boons of free speech?

On the afternoon of May 4^th – some five and a half hours after terrorists in the Gaza Strip had begun launching an intense barrage of rocket attacks against Israeli civilians – the BBC News website published an article headlined “Hostilities flare up as rockets hit Israel from Gaza” and tagged “Gaza border clashes” on its ‘Middle East’ page.

In the hours that followed the article was updated sixteen times. The final version – which will remain on the BBC News website as ‘historical records’ – includes some notable points.

The immediate background to the story was portrayed by the BBC as follows:

“Four Palestinians, including two Hamas militants, were killed on Friday after an attack injured two Israeli soldiers.”

Under the sub-heading “What triggered the latest unrest?” readers were told that:

“The violence began during weekly Friday protests in Gaza against the tight blockade…

Bored Panda has a heartwarming story of a Scottish man who, cycling around the world, came upon a stray tabby (click on screenshot). The rest is history.

This three-minute video, embedded in a tweet, tells the tale:

Some photos and text from the article:

In September 2018, Dean Nicholson had one goal – to cycle across the globe solo – and he began his long journey riding from his hometown Dunbar, Scotland. The 31-year-old Scottish traveler was tired from his nine-to-five job as a welder so he wanted to change his lifestyle and see the world from a bicycle seat.

The trip went great as he traveled south, passing through eight different countries and sharing his wild adventures online. But when he was crossing the Bosnian border into Montenegro, his plans…

In his latest weekly “Interesting Times” column in New York Magazine, Andrew Sullivan lays out why he thinks Joe Biden might be the best candidate to beat Trump in November, 2020.  I think I agree with him, though it’s certainly early days. Some Leftists, though, are saying we need a woman candidate or a minority candidate. Even Pete Buttigieg, who’s openly gay and married to another man, has been dissed by some Leftists for being “just another white male.”

My own view is that it’s far more important to get rid of Trump than to run a candidate who isn’t the strongest one we have (that could, of course, be a member of a minority who isn’t gay).  Right now Biden is the strongest candidate, at least according to the polls, and his numbers run far above those of the other contenders. And I don’t see him as “too…

Donald Trump is an incoherent mix of good policies and bad policies.

Some of his potential 2020 opponents, by contrast, are coherent but crazy.

And economic craziness exists in other nations as well.

In a column for the New York Times, Jochen Bittner writes about how a rising star of Germany’s Social Democrat Party wants the type of socialism that made the former East Germany an economic failure.

Socialism, the idea that workers’ needs are best met by the collectivization of the means of production… A system in which factories, banks and even housing were nationalized required a planned economy, as a substitute for capitalist competition. Central planning, however, proved unable to meet people’s individual demands… Eventually, the entire system collapsed; as it did everywhere else, socialism in Germany failed. Which is why it is strange, in 2019, to see socialism coming back into German mainstream politics.

TheGuardian today published a review by anti-Israelwriter Ben Ehrenreich of a book called Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel‘ by Andrew Ross.

Ehrenreich’s review – which naturally avoids any semblance of balance or nuance and toes the desired Guardian narrative of Zionist original sin – includes the following claim:

[Jews] constructed a brand new modernist city distinct – and segregated – from its ancient neighbour, Palestinian Jaffa, which was built of weathered stone. In 1948, Jaffa would be cleansed of 97% of its Arab population

The word “cleansed” of course would suggest to most readers that 97% of Palestinians were expelled or in some way forced out by Israeli forces that year – a claim totally at odds with the historical record.  As CAMERA, and commentator Dr. Petra Marquardt-Bigman, recently demonstrated in response to a NY Times article, the overwhelming majority of Jaffa’s Arab…