|
|
Post by ComfortZone on Apr 29, 2024 9:29:15 GMT 12
As for the snowflakes at vic uni. If anyone has a pair of balls for sale, perhaps we could send them to the vice chancellor down there, might need a section of spine as well. I guess at least he (she??) tried to have the conversation. But for crying out loud, tell the noisy minority to fark off. Or perhaps even attend and join in. Interesting that the snowflake students are now framing the free speech union as right wing. Last I heard they were against the banning of gang patches. Wellington really really does seem like an incestuous cesspit of left wing activists. www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2024/04/vic_uni_shows_how_under_threat_free_speech_is.htmlVic Uni shows how under threat free speech is
The new Victoria University Vice-Chancellor decided to have a forum at the university about free speech and academic freedom as it is obviously a topical issue, and the Government is looking at legislating some carrots or sticks for universities to uphold their obligations under the Education and Training Act. They had a great panel of five speakers, being: Law Professor Nicola Moreham from Victoria University (expert on media law) Emeritus Professor Jane Kelsey from the University of Auckland (activist and academic) Dr John Byron from the Queensland University of Technology (former president of the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations) Jonathan Ayling from the Free Speech Union Michael Johnston from the New Zealand Initiative (former VUW Associate Dean) There were 600 people keen to attend. The VUW staff also reached out to others with an interest in the area and had us do a two minute video segment with our views. It’s the sort of event that is so badly needed. But it got cancelled, or at least postponed. Why? The Post reports: Five academics and public figures were set to debate free speech on university campuses on Monday, but backlash within Victoria University has seen the event postponed.
More than 600 people had registered their interest in attending the event, a panel discussion about the role of universities in free speech.
But earlier this week the university postponed the event with a notice saying “the mere framing of this event has surfaced a depth of feeling and a polarisation of views on how we should proceed, that has made it challenging to even schedule a conversation about how to have challenging conversations”.
So what does that mean? We find out: Student association president Marcail Parkinson said that context had not been clear and people “freaked out” when they saw the panel line up, which looked like a platform for “right wing voices”, with the involvement of Free Speech Union president Jonathan Ayling and the New Zealand Initiative’s Dr Michael Johnston.
She was glad to see the event was postponed and being reformatted. “That’s 100% the right thing to do in this scenario, when you make a mistake, to say actually we realise we made a mistake and we’re going to try and fix it.”
Student protests had been planned for Monday’s event, Parkinson said, and it remained to be seen whether they would go ahead for the reformatted event.
So the panel got cancelled because it had two speakers on there who might have right wing views (the same views the majority of the country voted for at the last election). Some (I bet very few) students were unhappy that two people whose views they disagree with would be allowed to be heard by 600 people who wanted to hear from them. If ever one wanted proof of how free speech on campus is now a crisis, this is it. You can’t even have a panel discussion on the topic, unless it is exclusively made up of people with left wing views.
The forum is well intentioned, and I hope it still happens. But the cancellation or postponement has starkly shown more than ever that the status quo is unacceptable, and the Government does need to intervene to ensure universities live up to their statutory obligations around academic freedom and free speech. Sean Plunket interviewed Marcail Parkinson this morning and challenged her to cite factual reasons and examples to justify her "cancel" position. She was hopeless and could not answer any of Plunket's questions nor provide any justification whatsoever |
|
|
|
Post by muzled on Apr 29, 2024 9:45:55 GMT 12
I'm amazed she actually agreed to talk to such a heathen! Have a read of the student council bio's. It's worse than going into the launch section of trademe and seeing loads of Azimuts for sale by quite some light years...  www.vuwsa.org.nz/vuwsa-exec |
|
|
|
Post by muzled on Apr 29, 2024 17:27:08 GMT 12
Michael Laws has a good attempt at explaining why vic uni and the student crazies are wrong. Didn't get through because the students are fighting the good fight, and that, is the only fight, and only they can be right. Life in an alternate universe, one full of rainbows and unicorns... theplatform.kiwi/podcasts/episode/henry-broadbent-on-the-cancelled-vic-university-free-speech-debateThis is the one with Sean Plunkett CZ mentioned this morning. theplatform.kiwi/podcasts/episode/vuwsas-marcail-parkinson-defends-deplatforming-jonathan-aylingBasically they hate Jonathan Ayling and refuse to listen to him because he supported posie Parker and Graham Linehans right to talk. Their answer is to ban Ayling. Genius. As Ayling said, Vic uni have painted themselves into a corner. Either they ban Ayling and shoot themselves in the foot because that's the opposite of free speech. Or they allow him to speak and the prissy students will have a wa wa. Either way, if the forum goes ahead, it'll have a shitload more attendance than it would have if they'd just gone along and debated. �🤡world |
|
|
|
Post by muzled on Apr 30, 2024 14:06:54 GMT 12
Good lordy, Vic Uni students association just gets better and better! theplatform.kiwi/podcasts/episode/grant-schofield-has-academic-freedom-improvedVic uni mgmt trying to get students back on campus. The student association got involved and said no no, some students may get triggered, they may not feel good coming on campus as they may not feel safe. So all lectures at the law skool have to be run in 'dual mode'. So students can potentially never come to campus! Shit oh dear... |
|
|
|
Post by muzled on May 9, 2024 18:19:02 GMT 12
Absolute gold from the Auckland University Debating Society. Well done chaps and chapesses. www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2024/05/a_great_partnership.htmlFree Speech Union proud to be New Zealand Schools’ Debating Council 2024 named-sponsor In line with the Free Speech Union’s commitment to invest in a culture that values free speech and debate, we are excited to announce our partnership with the New Zealand Schools’ Debating Council (NZSDC). We will support them in presenting their finals debate at Parliament this year at the end of May, says Nick Hanne, the Union’s manager for education partnerships. “Alongside our work in high schools around the country through our ‘Speak Up’ programme, and supporting events at universities (such as the free speech moot we hosted yesterday with the Auckland University of Technology Mooting Society), we are excited to help champion the important work of the Debating Council. We’re pleased to join our name with theirs in championing a new generation of critical thinking, free speaking, debaters. “The work of the NZSDC aligns with our own organisational mission of promoting a culture of free discourse and independent critical thinking amongst young Kiwis. This gives me some hope for the future, that at least school debaters still want to actually debate. Already at university level you have the Auckland University Debating Society refusing to take parts in any debates involving the FSU. So it is great to see the NZSDC in this partnership. Debate is the enemy of censorship, and we should welcome it. |
|
|
|
Post by eri on May 22, 2024 21:45:22 GMT 12
The age of grievance is being fuelled by an "itch to be offended" in modern culture and it is undermining democracy, US writer Frank Bruni says. People invent grievances where they do not exist, Bruni told Afternoons, thereby diverting attention from matters of genuine concern. "grievance entrepreneurs," who look at the world through a single lens. He said an example was when basketball player Brittney Griner was imprisoned in Russia. "She was horrifically and unjustly imprisoned in Russia and it was unclear whether or when she would get out," But some of the commentary was saying that because Griner was a woman of colour and gay, the Biden administration was ignoring her case."That was ridiculous. She was, by dint of being a celebrity, getting more public attention and more public statements from the Biden administration, than other political prisoners had gotten - far more. "And so, when the grievance entrepreneurs tried to attach their arguments to circumstances where it's clearly not the case, they undermine the more important work they do.www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/517448/the-itch-to-be-offended-is-undermining-civil-society-us-writer-says |
|
|
|
Post by muzled on May 23, 2024 13:12:53 GMT 12
|
|
|
|
Post by muzled on May 27, 2024 20:28:35 GMT 12
|
|
|
|
Post by ComfortZone on May 28, 2024 20:37:30 GMT 12
Alleged responses to Otago Uni shaking the can at its alumni
Date: 22 May 2024 at 8:08:15 AM NZST
Letters to the VC of Otago University
Letter From Dr Barnett Bond
Subject: Your letter asking me to donate
Attention: Hilary Burral
Attention: the Vice-chancellor
My name is Dr Barnett Bond - Alumni ID 13971
You wrote to me an undated letter which I received today, and you asked me to donate funds to the university for scholarships and other things. But a short time ago you announced that you were spending 1.3 million dollars changing the name of the university to have a new (changed) Māori name. Really? 1.3 million? Can you give me a cost break down on that? Which individuals and which organisations do re-branding work that costs 1.3 million?
How many additional doctors would $1.3 million train? Teachers?
My own extended family has lots of Māori and lots of non-Māori in it. It is quite clear to me that there is not just the one Māori world-view that you write about on your web site. There are many Māori views and none of my Māori whanau want to see New Zealand divided along racial lines. None of them think that a victim-oppressor view of European migration is in the slightest helpful to relationships in our family and nation today. All my Māori whanau think that the outlawing by the European migrants of Māori inter-tribal slavery and cannibalism was a very good thing.
There were two Māori students in my classes when I was at Otago University. I had many Māori friends at primary school and high school and in my sports teams. My father’s battalion fought with the Māori Battalion in WWII at Monte Casino. My father was in the signals corps and he crawled on his belly night after night from the base near the railway station weathering German sniper fire from the Casino on the hill to deliver fresh batteries for the field telephones of the Māori Battalion on the front lines. He had nothing but respect for their incredible bravery in battle and they had enormous respect for his putting his life on the line night after night for them.
My favourite brother-in-law is Māori. My niece is Māori. None of us regard each other as different. We all regard ourselves as part of a single family and we are all New Zealanders, and we love and respect each other. I work in a medical practice where more than 60% of my patients are Māori. Many of them cannot afford to buy groceries and many others are homeless and sleep in the streets of Auckland. I am additionally responsible for chairing a group of doctors and nurses at Starship Hospital that is focussed on just one disease, Acute Rheumatic Fever, which affects only Pacifica and Māori. I work very hard to make a difference for these patients but not because of their race. If I was given an additional 1.3 million dollars, I would not spend a cent of it on a branding exercise.
But you on the other hand are spending an eye-wateringly large sum of donors’ money to make sure that we all think that racial differences are important. $1.3 million worth of importance. Your actions divide our university along racial lines and, as students graduate, you will have indoctrinated them with attitudes that will divide our nation along racial lines. You will no doubt grant privileges to some students based on their part-Māori ancestry. You dress this up as “equity”. You try to justify it as combating the effects of colonisation. You write of adhering to Te Tiriti principals; principals invented by the Waitangi Tribunal and not mentioned in the original text of the Treaty of Waitangi, nor agreed by New Zealanders at large.
You must be intelligent people to hold the positions that you do in the university, but you are not very smart. You spout a particular oppressor-victim version of “history” without seeming to understand that you will create an attitude of victimhood in some of your students, and a sense of guilt and responsibility among another group of students. Neither group chose their ancestors. Imagine for a moment the effects of your university’s teachings about colonisation on the relationships within my mixed-race family. Imagine for an additional moment what the relationship between my father and the Māori battalion would have been if your victim-oppressor attitudes had been successfully inculcated in New Zealand society before WWII.
I am at a time in my life and stage in my career and businesses when I am well off financially. Any thought I might have had about donating to the University of Otago has been scuppered by your pronouncements and decisions over the last several years. It fills me with sadness to see the neo-Marxist race-focussed direction my alma mater is being led in. I loved the University of Otago that I graduated from, and it pains me greatly to see what you are doing to it. There are plenty of places you could spend $1.3million that would make a lot of difference to the lives of the most disadvantaged Māori in New Zealand, but re-branding the university is not one of them.
Please delete my name permanently from all your mailing lists; I do not wish to be reminded again of your profligate waste of precious educational money on race-based virtue-signalling.
Dr Barnett Bond.
Auckland
___________________________________________
Response from Dr. Hylton Le Grice
Subject: Change of name of Otago University to one of MĀORI at a horrific $ cost
As a very proud graduate of Otago University Medical School I recently wrote to Otago University in response to advice that the University had adopted a Māori name. My letter had similar angry sentiments to that of Dr Barnett Bond - but differed in that I have no Māori in my genes - but instead a mixture of English, Scottish. French and other genes - just like all Māori activists, who claim their Māori race but seem to forget the majority of their genetic make up as a result of the acceptance of colonisation by their family predecessors.
How anomalous also when the disgraceful, biased, neo-Marxist, Waitangi Tribunal says that ‘colonisation’ is denying so much for Māori . Oh, yes ! - Let them do without modern medicine & surgery, antibiotics, the wheel (they did not have such before the arrival of non- Māori,) motor cars, planes, railway, buses, TV, Radio etc. etc. - how absolutely ludicrous. Our honoured parliamentarian and historian, Hon. Dr Michael Bassett, who served on the Waitangi Tribunal for 10 years, says the Waitangi Tribunal should be abolished, forthwith.
Instead, I complained to the biased unthinking hierarchy of Otago University that their actions in changing the name of the University was simply ridiculous. Otago University is the oldest in NZ and was founded by SCOTTISH forward thinking immigrants - and had NOTHING to do with Māori.
I received no reply to my letter.
It is amazing how many Otago University Graduates I have talked to these past weeks, who have similar sentiments - and have decided they will no longer respond to requests for money from our ‘Alma Mater’.
Dr. Hylton Le Grice CNZM, OBE. M.B.Ch.B., FRCS.,FRACS., FRANZCO., DO(Lond.) DipObst(NZ) FInstD.
Sounds like they are going to get the same lesson Harvard did when they pissed off their donors/alumni
|
|
|
|
Post by GO30 on May 30, 2024 14:36:37 GMT 12
I agree with Bond... Dr Bond.
I have also tweaked our donation/support away from mobs who got all a little to political/virtue signalling like. Not because of their political leanings but just because they are doing it and I don't believe that is part of their role in society.
One bank a week or 3 back asked about what we do to reduce CO2 and started down some path that suggested if they didn't like the response they may do something. I replied 'by not responding to organisations who job is not to be my mummy or Nana'.I also tacked in 'I hope no one asked you the same question as that'll be horrendously embarrassing for the bank won't it?'. Never got any reply.
|
|
|
|
Post by muzled on Jun 19, 2024 14:48:16 GMT 12
The Free Speech union got a nice W here.
And have to give a nod to the council that they've met agreed to the terms the FSU set out and recognised their mistakes.
This is a short note to celebrate a big win!
Another fight goes to the goodies as we stand up to the bullies.
Last week, I contacted you about the incredible decision by Marlborough District Council to refuse to allow Let Kids Be Kids to use a public meeting room because they didn’t seem to be ‘inclusive’.
Our team saw this for what it was straight away: an illegal, discriminatory, and unacceptable decision, where council staff were taking it upon themselves to ‘protect’ the public from ‘harmful’ perspectives — we certainly can’t have these opinions expressed during ‘Pride Month’!
We prepared our legal opinion and were convinced this was a clear breach of the Bill of Rights Act. We told the Council they had until Friday to meet with us and fix the situation, or we’d see them in court.
I met with the Mayor, the CEO, and the General Counsel yesterday. Excuse the phrase, but we had them by the balls, and they knew it!
There were three demands which they had to meet in order for us not to pursue legal action:
1. The Mayor must write a public apology to Let Kids Be Kids on behalf of the Council (not blaming it on the staff, but as our democratically elected representatives, taking responsibility for not running the Council in a way that respects ratepayers’ basic rights. We told her there must be no ‘nose holding’ — no vague inferences or questionable aspersions about the group; it’s not up to Council to decide who has or doesn’t have an ‘acceptable’ opinion.
They agreed! We’ll have the letter by Friday.
2. The CEO must host the Free Speech Union in Marlborough to run an education seminar for the Council staff, where we will outline why free speech matters to public bodies like councils, why we all benefit from this basic liberty, and how we all lose when we neglect this freedom.
They agreed! We’ll have the opportunity to do this by the end of next month.
3. The Council must review the policy that led to this whole issue, and change it so Council staff no longer feel they have the right/responsibility to ‘protect the community’ from ‘harmful/hateful’ views. Do we really think our local librarians are the ones we should be trusting to decide who can use council facilities? This policy was too vague, and needs clarity around the duties the Council has to respect basic human rights.
They agreed! This policy will be amended within the next 30 days.
I think there are three reasons we’ve been able to achieve this result:
1. You: With tens of thousands of Kiwis standing together behind us (and many of you contacting the Council and criticising their decision), we had the confidence to know we weren’t standing by ourselves. Without our members and supporters, we couldn’t do any of this.
2. Previous wins: Because we’re committed to taking up the fight whenever Kiwis’ free speech is threatened, whether we agree with them or not, we’ve got a strong reputation and good case law. The General Counsel for the Marlborough District told me that they had reviewed all the other cases on access to public venues we’d worked on: it was enough to convince them they didn’t stand a chance in court.
3. Our talented team: Because of your partnership with us, we have some passionate, talented members of our team who are able to “professionally stick it to the bullies!” 😂
The Council noted that our team were firm, but constructive. Our work to represent you, Murray, in a principled, moderate, credible way is paying off.
With all the fights coming down the pike, it’s nice to see the work getting results.
We believe your voice is worth defending — thank you for standing with us to ensure these wins are possible. If you’re a supporter of our work (receive our emails, sign our petitions, etc) but aren’t a member (haven’t paid to be part of the work we’re doing), it would be great to have you join.
If the Free Speech Union hadn’t taken up this cause, it’s likely Let Kids Be Kids would simply have had to accept that they weren’t welcomed to use public venues in Marlborough. If they had decided to challenge it, it’s likely the court case would have cost over $100,000.
Joining the Free Speech Union for just $200 seems like a fairly good return on investment!
Back to it — there’s certainly lots more to get done.
Thanks again for standing with us.
Jonathan Ayling — Free Speech Union CEO
______________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
Post by ComfortZone on Jun 28, 2024 9:27:47 GMT 12
Family First have published a Woke rating for companies wokeup.nz/maybe they could expand it to include those promoting climate catastrophisation and maori wonderfulness..... |
|
|
|
Post by sloopjohnb on Jun 28, 2024 19:48:55 GMT 12
What an interesting web page.......omg what pack of w**kers some companies are!!!!
|
|
|
|
Post by muzled on Jul 1, 2024 7:35:53 GMT 12
Read if you dare... Weaving Mātauranga Māori and western science to strengthen our understanding of the Alpine Fault www.geonet.org.nz/mbl/news/7jQ9BUiWfkBi59jzpiCl6fThe weaving together of different knowledge strands, Mātauranga Māori and western science, strengthens our understanding of our whenua (land) and supports conversations on how we can be better prepared for natural hazard events, such as an Alpine Fault earthquake, together.
The Alpine Fault is the longest naturally forming straight line on earth. It marks the meeting of two large tectonic plates and has formed over millions of years, stretching longer, lifting our landscape up out of the ocean, and creating the peaks of Kā Tiritiri o te Moana (Southern Alps) with every large earthquake it generates.
According to Ngāi Tahu creation stories, earthquakes are caused by Rūaumoko, the son of Ranginui (the Sky Father) and his wife Papatūanuku (the Earth Mother). Māori have experienced rū whenua, which means ‘the shaking of the land’ for centuries.
Science tells us that Rūaumoko rumbles the Alpine Fault about every 300 yearsThat was more than enough and I read no further. The funding of this rubbish needs to stop. |
|
|
|
Post by ComfortZone on Jul 1, 2024 8:07:20 GMT 12
meanwhile across the Tasman this was posted on Linked In by a former colleague of mine about the Australian Institution of Professional engineers
all the so called professional bodies have been captured by the PC/Wokist/DEI culture. I regret having just paid my annual sub to them.
|
|
