Tag Race

Entries 6 Total

Whanganui or Wanganui but why not Whanganui/Wanganui

Sep 17, ’09 8:22 PM

I’m in Aotearoa New Zea­l­and for a couple of weeks and driv­ing about provided me with the great priv­ilege of catch­ing up with the sea of enlight­en­ment that is NZ talk­back radio, in this case the lovely Leighton Smith. Flip­ping through the chan­nels I just had to stop and listen to one of Smith’s callers com­plain­ing that if they had wanted to call Wan­ganui “Whan­ganui” all that time ago they would have used a bloody ‘F’. Suf­fice to say Smith didn’t offer up any wis­dom to his schol­arly caller.

I’m nat­ur­ally inclined to side with cor­rect­ing the spelling mis­take but I’m also sym­path­etic to the view that the “Wan­ganui” spelling is indeed an import­ant part of the his­tory and cul­ture of the area, even if ori­gin­ally a res­ult of ignorance.

Which is why I have to agree with Read­ing the Maps on the mat­ter. Use both.

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Israeli best seller challenges Zionism

Oct 16, ’08 3:14 PM

Jonathan Cook on Dr. Shlomo Sand’s new book:

Dr. Shlomo Sand argues that the idea of a Jew­ish nation — whose need for a safe haven was ori­gin­ally used to jus­tify the found­ing of the state of Israel — is a myth inven­ted little more than a cen­tury ago.

In addi­tion, he argues that the Jews were never exiled from the Holy Land, that most of today’s Jews have no his­tor­ical con­nec­tion to the land called Israel and that the only polit­ical solu­tion to the country’s con­flict with the Palestini­ans is to abol­ish the Jew­ish state.

… he pre­dicted a rough ride from the pro-Israel lobby when the book is launched … in the United States next year.

In con­trast, he said Israelis had been, if not exactly sup­port­ive, at least curi­ous about his argument.

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NZ Election: Rodney Hide chasing the redneck vote

Oct 14, ’08 8:10 AM

No Right Turn on Rod­ney Hide’s recent com­ments about the Maori Party and its poten­tial to influ­ence the next government.

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Where does this lead I wonder?

Jul 18, ’08 12:43 PM

Today I watched a bus driver in Lon­don half pull up to a bus stop and then pull away before stop­ping when he saw the only per­son wav­ing him down. She happened to be a little old lady with dark skin and a head scarf. There were mur­murs of dis­taste from the two people stand­ing nearby her but she dis­missed the prob­lem with a wave of her hand and walked off.

There seems to have been a notice­able uptick in this sort of thing over the past few months.

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Why the meaning of “anti-Semitism” has changed

May 29, ’08 7:48 PM

Here’s just another example of why the term “anti-Semitism” has increas­ingly come to mean “mild cri­ti­cism of Israeli gov­ern­ment policies,” rather than “hos­til­ity to or pre­ju­dice against Jews.”

Some­thing I’ve exper­i­enced myself.

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Paul Holmes loves darkies

Sep 26, ’03 4:55 PM

The one thing I hope Kiwis take from Paul Holmes’ recent verbal diarrhoea is that Aotearoa does not rep­res­ent the beacon of racial har­mony the white middle class of New Zea­l­and often likes to por­tray it as. Most of us know Holmes is a wanker but his com­ments say more about his audi­ence than they do about him­self. His self-praising apo­logy brought only satire to mind:

Satirical Tui billboard about Paul Holmes

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