distant ruminations

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the sheer childishness displayed by so many of my fellow Kiwis. The two things of the title of this post? Two examples:

Take a look at this description of the recent protests outside the Labour Party conference. Now, I’ve met a lot of Kiwi activists, I’ve seen a lot of protesters in action, I’ve been one of them on many an occasion, and this description strikes me as being pretty fair (although I can’t be sure, of course). Sure, the childishness is not limited to the protests, but it would seem that it was mostly protesters who needed timeout, or whatever the latest punishment fad is these days. Having taken part in many protests in New Zealand, I can confirm that 9 times out of 10, the police are restrained and even respectful.

But that’s what really pisses me off about modern Western “leftists” (scare quotes because most of them wouldn’t recognise genuine left wing politics even if the world’s best political science professor explained it to them in terms a three year old could understand): They’ve got their heads stuck so far up their own self-righteous arses they wouldn’t know real oppression or an actual abuse of human rights even if it happened to them. That’s enough abusing that particular sentence pattern.

Secondly: Why is it my fellow Kiwis are so completely incapable of handling fireworks like mature adults? Two things: The Union of Soviet Socialist Helengrads Nanny-State approach will not solve the issue. It may minimise the problems the Fire Service and hospitals have to deal with every year in the early part of November, but it won’t solve the main problem: Too many Kiwis are so hopelessly immature they can’t be trusted with even the pathetically weak fireworks that can be legally bought in New Zealand.

I mean, having seen the sheer amount of often very heavy ordnance detonated every Spring Festival in China and the generally responsible behaviour towards said ordnance displayed by the overwhelming majority of Chinese people, I really can’t figure out what is so wrong with New Zealanders.

And why do we still bother with that silly English holiday, anyway? Really, the only good thing that can be said in connection with Guy Fawkes’ Day is that Guy Fawkes was the only man to ever enter parliament with honest intentions. Saw that spray-painted on a wall in Wellington one election year. 93, I believe- that would fit with the circumstances under which I saw that grafitto.

Rant ?? (I wonder if those two characters display properly?), better get back to the office.

It’s a disturbing headline to begin with: Italy expels migrant population after brutal murder. The kind of headline that leaves you hoping the story redeems itself. But the first three paragraphs don’t offer much hope:

They sat forlornly on the banks of the Tiber while the shantytowns they had called home only hours before were demolished.

Already outcasts from the mainstream of Italian life, now they have been banished from whatever impromptu shelter they had found.

And the city rejoiced at their misfortune. Three small kittens and a hungry-looking mongrel are the last remaining inhabitants of the Roma squatter camp on the northern outskirts of Rome.

Nor does this:

A new law on security has been creeping through Parliament: one of its central provisions is that foreigners belonging to EU countries and resident in Italy can be expelled on the orders of local prefects if they are a threat to “public security”. No trial is necessary.

On Wednesday night, at the urging of Walter Veltroni, the Mayor of Rome and leader of a new centrist party, the Democratic Party, that provision was extracted from the law, quickly redrafted as a “decree-law”, a sort of diktat, and signed by the President overnight.

So that section of the proposed law that would allow prefects to expel citizens of other EU countries resident in Italy because they are a threat to public security without the usual benefits of a free and fair trial (simply on the whim of the prefect, in other words?) was taken out of the proposed law and made law in its own right overnight by Presidential fiat.

And just to make it clear: So far as this article tells us, the murder that triggered this mass expulsion is still under investigation, one (yes, only ONE) man is accused, but the 5000 expellees are being expelled simply because, like (apparently) the accused and the woman who raised the alarm, they are Roma (Gypsys, for those who haven’t caught up with modern times yet).

Does anybody else smell the foul stench of the Europe of, oh, um, say the 1930s, by any chance?

I suppose I could insert into this post a certain word starting with a capital eff and ending in -ascism, but that would upset people. Need to keep things harmonious.