By Michael Field
Predictably DipTchgMAWell,PhDMassey took exception to my commentary on his RFMF Glee Club website.
This is, of course, his right and I am quite content to take on the chin whatever he decides to dish out.
That said, it does feel like I have gone five rounds with the Kapiti Coast Grey Power League....
He's still going on about dark natives and all that stuff.
No, my one big problem with DipTchgMAWell,PhDMassey is the way in which he so willingly gives a platform to a collection of bitter and twisted anonymous postings.
I will generously presume that they are not DipTchgMAWell,PhDMassey in some form of neo-colonial drag.
Doubts linger.
He does, after all, let people get away with saying all kinds of outrageous things.
A message for DipTchgMAWell,PhDMassey.... you are measured by the friends you keep.
And the shadowy creeps you have on your website suggest you have some rather low company.
Its all the more surprising really as DipTchgMAWell,PhDMassey decided to lecture me on academic debate; play the ball and not the man as if the whole Fiji thing is some kind of game theory in a geo class somewhere.
Of all the websites dealing with Fiji, his website has the most off-side, unpleasant collection of racist contributors seen anywhere.
Why doesn't DipTchgMAWell,PhDMassey edit them out?
What's he doing? He's retired after all...! He lives on a pension, completely free of any military control.
All he has to do is spike the anonymous people.... Clean up your site man - its not a toilet.
As for DipTchgMAWell,PhDMassey view that some how I should deal with all this as some kind of Political Studies 101 paper, I think this rather sums him up. Fiji is a retirement hobby.
I prefer the words of that great philosopher Tana Umaga: "this is not a game of tiddy-winks."
This is about freedom and rights - not some undergraduate essay.
20 March 2010
- INTELLIGENT RESISTANCE -
Free. Fair. Fearless. Intelligentsiya is made up of Fiji Islanders who are libertarians in their own way and who cherish the free flow of news, ideas and information and will peacefully resist any attempts by the country's military rulers to stifle free speech. intelligentsiya will also bear witness, report and discuss human rights abuses by the authorities.
1 comment:
Croz Walsh has an interesting quote on his website from Bergen Evans opining that "Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think!"
One can only wonder what he is trying to imply by this as his heroes in the Fiji Military obviously have zero freedom to think (and very little ability to do it at the upper echelons, either).
But I'm guessing that he is taking a typical neo-colonialist slant with this and implying that Fijians are not free to think by dint of their backward culture. So the post-coup, "make-it-up-as-you-go" disaster of the Bainimarama regime presumably needs to be looked at in the light of an attempt (however unsuccessful, costly and damaging), at throwing off that yolk of backwardness.
The problem is of course, that you have many, many forward-thinking liberal types who are also implacably opposed to the regime and its methods! So opposition to the regime clearly has nothing to do with either backwardness, or forwardness.
I suggest therefore that if Croz is going to pin up throwaway lines like that on his website, perhaps the best thing he could do in light of it is to try and demonstrate his own freedom and ability to think usefully first!
He might like to start by offering us a thoughtful and useful "way forward" for Fiji in light of either one of Wadan Narsey's recent articles!
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