Poneke on John Minto
January 29th, 2008 at 10:35 pm by David FarrarPoneke has an insightful post on John Minto. I’ll quote much of it:
John Minto was one of the heroes of my formative years.
At the time, I thought Minto was driven by the same kind of repugnance of the racist apartheid system that motivated the opposition of many other New Zealanders. Apartheid was a stain on humanity.
In 1995, Mandela visited New Zealand for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting being held in Auckland. He was mobbed in the streets everywhere he went. He was a hero of almost everyone of my generation and of almost everyone who had marched against the Springboks 14 years before. The one anti-tour protester to whom he was not a hero was a profound surprise. I went to a meeting Mandela attended at the St Matthews in the City church in Auckland. To my astonishment, and dismay, John Minto, who was there, hectored the great man for not kicking private enterprise and transnational companies out of South Africa after apartheid ended. A bewildered Mandela asked Minto how he expected people to find work if their employers were banished. It was at that moment I realised Minto was not driven by opposition to racism but by opposition to the entire capitalist system.
Indeed.
No tag for this post.
January 29th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
The capitalist system that enables him to enjoy charging his tenants rent and realising the capital gains on his lovely villa……nice hypocritic socialist…all the while banging on about property rights for the poor.
Vote:January 29th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
John Minto is a letf-winger?
Hold that front page!
As for whaleoil banging on about exploitation, I wonder how his advertisers would react if they, hypothetically of course, found he was faking his blog stats?
Vote:January 29th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
or alternatively sonic we could return to the topic of the post, which is about john minto and his politics – sorry to interfere with your trolling
Vote:January 29th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
According to Poneke he’s anti-capitalist sonic. That just makes him an idiot. If he advocated for the rights of those SA whites qualified for a job but disqualified because for political reasons because they gave the job to a black, I’d believe he was a principed man.
Instead the nation slowly descends into the socialist hell-hole.
Vote:January 29th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Nelson Mandela would disapprove.
Vote:January 29th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
“sonic we could return to the topic of the post, which is about john minto and his politics”
I’m happy to return to Mr Minto’s principled stand, I note it was Mr Oil who started the personal attacks, he can dish it out but needs his friends to ensure he does not have to take anything back it seems.
Vote:January 29th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
Yes Reid, I’m sure all of our hearts bleed for those poor South Africans who lose opportunities because of their racial origin…
Vote:January 29th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
There is principled opposition and there is unprincipled opposition. Minto strikes me as having principled opposition to capitalism, and post-apartheid, to the replacement of a white kleptocracy with a black one. In fact, one of the bitter disappointments of anti-apartheid activists is that they thought majority rule would cure all evils in south Africa. Not quite so, although one can argue that the current regime is less murderous than its predecessor. If only its citizens were likewise.
Vote:More generally, one might disagree with his stance on capitalism, but I see no reason to doubt John Minto’s integrity. If only there were more people of principle–whatever their cause–and less opportunists around. Worse yet, principled idealists get derided for the conviction of their beliefs, while unprincipled opportunists get ahead while being aplauded for their cunning and nous. Winston anyone? In fact, is there anyone on either front bench who can be properly called a person of principle, much less integrity? We can do much worse than John Minto–in fact, we have!
January 29th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
The anti apartheid protesters who believed majority rule would cure all evils should have had a look at the rest of Africa.
Vote:Do not take that comment in any way as a suggestion I supported apartheid.
Sonic, Whaleoil is very good at pointing out and pricking the hypocrisy of public figures, the Minto case is a good example.
I find myself saying this a lot tonight.
Sonic, you need to bang yourself against a wall for a bit until you’re less rubbish.
January 29th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Bill, are you saying that Apartheid and white rule would be better?
Are you for reimposing it?
You say “Do not take that comment in any way as a suggestion I supported apartheid.” but that is the entire implication of your post.
Could you clarify?
“Whaleoil is very good at pointing out and pricking the hypocrisy of public figures”
But not himself, which is my sole point.
Vote:January 29th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Maybe Minto was under the impression that the ANC was the communist party it said it was?
In this light, disappointment at the lack of nationalisation of the assets developed prior to majority government and the disappointment at user pays charging for basic public services (which many of the black poor cannot afford) is understandable. The hopes of many not being realised – albeit for all the “realpolitic” reasons that were offered.
Many Russians feel that the wholesale looting of their public assets into the hands of a few in the 1990′s was a similar betrayal.
For both countries the road back to real justice is not an easy one and both countries have yet to emerge from dependence on the “stability” that one party government provides traumatised nations.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 12:02 am
“It was at that moment I realised”
What is it that enables charlatans like Minto to fool so many people for so long? I blame much of it on the mainstream media. A collection of partisan liars and layabouts who disgrace the trade of journalism and who have for decades refused to report what is really going down. Who conceal the truth with platitudes and propaganda. Who by their deceit or ineptitude allow Minto and his ilk a credibility that is never their due.
Read Trevor Loudon’s site, or Front Page, or World Net Daily for the information the mainstream propagandists have been hiding from you for decades. The deceit of Minto is the tip of the iceberg. Almost every modern leftist cause is underpinned by the same artifice. Environmentalism. Multiculturalism. Feminism. Unionism. Socialism. The worldwide indigenous people’s movement. (including Maori separatism in NZ) The anti war movement.
All are fueled by the same basic ideology and pushed and developed and introduced into the mainstream by the same shadowy groups made up of the same grey people all with the same core motives.
But without they’re media comrades, they would not be able to fool Poneke and so many others. Journalism is thoroughly dishonoured. It has become the craft of liars and propagandists. It has become the paramount means by which charlatans like Minto advance their sick ideology. An ideology always concealed within some kind of Trojan horse that the lying propagandising media knowingly and willingly lead into our midst.
Funny that Poneke should single out this particular matter. Of course the media have not told us the truth about Minto, but this pales into utter insignificance compared to the lies they have told about Mandela. Wonder when Poneke will wake up to that deception?
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 12:19 am
sonic, it’s not about you. it almost never is. look outward, grasshopper, to the actual topics at hand.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 12:24 am
I spoke about the topic at hand Francis, blame the people who tried to derail the thread with personal attacks, not little old me
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 12:30 am
Minto is as vile a human as has ever trod NZ soil.
HART
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 12:33 am
There was more, but somehow it got chopped off.
HART, Richards, Newnham and others pissed me off, but I grew to accept they were more right than I was in 1981. But Minto never fooled me. He hated us all and it’s no surprise that he’s revealed as a lover of a quasi religion that murdered 100 million in 100 years.
JC
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 12:36 am
John Minto is not a trendy leftie; he is a hard out revolutionary Marxist. It is an ongoing cause of shagrin to me that I stood shoulder to should with the low life outside the big I in the middle of a cold wet winter’s night protesting the Cavaliers tour. And don’t you just hate it when the older generation gets to say I told you so.
So it was like waking up in a parallel universe this morning to find that he was criticising South Africa! But of course reality struck and I realised it was not the totally corrupt filthy cronyistic tribalism he was criticising but the lack of beggaring the whole population just for the sake of getting rid of the “greedy multinationals”
Unfortunately the road to hell really is paved with good intentions and if I had one wish it would be to swap the trendy white “anticolonialist” subhuman scum who have done this to Africa for some Kenyan refugees right now.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 12:48 am
I read somewhere that he owns a house.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 12:49 am
It seems to be a day for revelations and laying the cards on the table. If anyone wants a really good emetic, go and read Anderton’s verbal diarrheic Orewa speech where he outs himself as a far left wealth redistributing “equality of outcome” politician.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 12:51 am
Is he still married to that woman who was in the thick of the unfortunate experiment scam?
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 1:13 am
Ironically Nelson Mandela wrote a pamphlet entitled “How to be a good communist”, so Poneke had better strike him off his hero list
The pamphlet included such gems as
“2. HOW TO BECOME THE BEST PUPILS OF MARX, ENGELS, LENIN AND STALIN.
At the beginning of these lectures, we defined a communist as a member of the Communist Party who understands and accepts the theory and practice of Marxism, Leninism as explained by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. ”
How to become the best pupil of Stalin? Who could not want to achieve such a lofty aim!
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 1:14 am
Sonic:
Hmmm. Did you mean this opening contribution from you?
Surely you can do better than this? I’d like to see a substantive comment from you what Poneke said about John Minto. That’s the topic of this thread – not Whaleoil’s blog stats (unless I’ve missed the relevance, in which case please enlighten me). Do you agree with John Minto’s sentiments or not?
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 1:15 am
or at least I assume he wrote it….I cant guarantee the unbiased nature of some of the websites that contain this information!
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 1:22 am
Peak Oil Conspiracy, did I make the first comment on this thread?
Thought not.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 1:24 am
Well, I realised years ago that Nelson Mandela wasn’t the hero I was told he was at school. At best when he was released from jail he was a mascot rather than a great statesman.
South Africa is fvcked. You think we have infrastructure problems here? Check out their power cuts at the moment, and all the brilliant solutions they have for the power shortage.
They cant even power their mines, a huge earner for the nation, and an industry many black communities rely upon. They have entered contracts to supply Botswana with power for the next 5 years and they cant even generate enough for themselves!
The leaders were told of this impending crisis years ago, but did nothing worthwhile to avoid it.
Their leaders are corrupt, but I think that goes without saying.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 1:28 am
Sonic:
*Sigh*
We can engage in witty banter. My exact words were “this opening contribution from you” – that is, your first comment. Your first comment was in response to Whaleoil’s comment:
Or we can debate the issue. Whaleoil’s comment was a strongly worded attack on John Minto’s politics. It said nothing about blog stats. And it wasn’t an ad hominem attack on you either, Sonic. Instead of digging yourself into a hole, how about answering my question: do you agree with John Minto’s sentiments or not?
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 1:29 am
To be slightly pedantic, John Minto’s sentiments (as recounted by Poneke) – as some here may surprise me by denying Minto would have said such a thing.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 1:49 am
The ANC was at one point a hard-left, socialist organization, so Minto’s surprise may be understandable, putting to one side the quality of his views.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 1:50 am
“Whaleoil’s comment was a strongly worded attack on John Minto’s politics”
Whaleoils comments were part of his squallid little witchhunt against anyonewho is against his extreme-right agenda. No discussion of ideas, no reasoned debate. Just an appeal to hate and violence.
Feel free to associate yourself with him peakoil, your funeral as they say.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 1:51 am
Oh and peakoil, I do agree with Minto on refusing this reward, it shows that, unlike yourself, the man has principles.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 2:04 am
Sonic:
*Sigh*
Feel free to smear me by association if that’s your idea of constructive debate. For the record, I don’t know Whaleoil personally and, happily, I’m capable of forming my own opinions without blindly following the good Labour/bad National mantra (or vice versa). Perhaps you should try it sometime.
I’ll point out your smear but otherwise ignore it. Now, you admire consistency to principles, but at what point does blind adherence become irrational dogma?
Reframing that question in terms of this thread topic, if I were to take your position at face value, what alternative do you say Minto should have offered when “[a] bewildered Mandela asked Minto how he expected people to find work if their employers were banished“?
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 2:23 am
He won’t answer it. He never answers anything. He’s just another sad ignorant politically one dimensional commie robot. Why waste your time allowing him the credibility you might allow someone interested in debate?He’s a small minded coward who comes here to smear and slander and malign. All he’s ever been, and all he’ll ever be.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 2:37 am
“[a] bewildered Mandela asked Minto how he expected people to find work if their employers were banished“?
presumably Minto felt the mines etc should be nationalised.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 6:15 am
Sonic to Bill at 11:56 – That’s got to be the dumbest lapse of logic I’ve ever seen. Bill clearly says that he thinks anti-apartheid protesters who believed majority rule would cure *all* evils were silly. That’s *all* evils. He clearly specifies that he is not pro-apartheid, yet Sonic tries to say that he does imply this.
Sonic – It’s as if I said “It’s silly to think that driving with headlights is the only precaution that can improve night driving” and you said “So you’re opposed to headlights?”.
Just because someone says that something isn’t the only good, doesn’t mean they don’t think it’s good. Is this how your brain actually ‘works’?
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 7:25 am
Sonic bangs on about some conspiracy theory he thought u that somehow I am fiddling my stats without offering up any proof of such. All other attacks have failed against me and now we have this one.
It is ironic too considering the left consider me to be “dumb”, “stupid”, “a fool” and yet somehow I am able to manipulate my stats. Well Fuck me!
Sonic also threatens in another thread “that this is the last you will hear about this I promise”
Whoopdy do.
Meanwhile back to the case at hand, John Minto…..precisely what did I say about JM that isn’t true….he is using the system he despises so much to increase his personal net worth. There is a word for that and it starts with H.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 7:27 am
I would love to have been a fly on the wall when those two giants of the twentieth century kicked back and rapped about politics. You have Mandela, the freedom fighter who was incarcerated for over twenty years, finally emerging to redefine the future of South Africa and preside over the destruction of the very system that jailed him and massacred and tortured his own people. Mandela went on to actively promote cohesion and harmony rather than divisiveness and hatred in the post-apartheid system, eventually being granted the Nobel Prize. Imagine his excitement and apprehension as he finally got to meet that other giant – and equally iconic figure. John Minto.
Gosh! it must have been a real meeting of minds wish I’d been there.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 7:38 am
It’s moments like these, you DON’T need Mintos or Sonics.
Sonic, but for your antics, this blog would be readable.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 7:46 am
yeah Lee, just imagine if it had been Minto who took power in South Africa. Revenge, retribution, mass nationalisation, forceable re-education camps for whites, and the immediate Mugabeisation of south africa.
Instead a statesman led the nation.
Sadly, its only with his exit from the scene that the ANC has allowed its soft marxism and endemic corruption to erode the institutions and infrastructure of what had been Africa’s most successful economy.
Minto isn’t fit to have cleaned Mandela’s shoes.
That said, I share the disappointment with South Africa’s failure, its just that my take on why is the exact opposite of Minto’s. And I also share Whaleoil’s humour in noting a communist taking full advantage of the institutions of private capitalism.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 7:48 am
yes deity Minto’s got a house in the ‘burbs, and Mandela owns a defining moment in twentieth century history. Says it all.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 7:51 am
True, Lee. Its at times like this that I need to look in the mirror and remind myself that there is a god!
history is a bitch isn’t it?
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 8:19 am
It would seem the SA govt knows nothing about Minto being offered any sort of award..
http://stuff.co.nz/4380861a10.html
How strange. Did Minto make this up? Perhaps he could explain.
I dont mind the left enjoying the fruits of capitalism, god knows it aint a perfect system but its better than anything else. But if Minto truly had “integrity” shouldnt he eschew such trappings?
Vote:Oh silly me, I forgot in Socialist world, “some pigs are created more equal than others”
January 30th, 2008 at 8:34 am
It would seem the SA govt knows nothing about Minto being offered any sort of award…
Well, they certainly know about it in the South African media. Mike Trapido, a specialist criminal attorney and journalist there, has posted a link to a blog item he has written on a South African newspaper website. He is derisory of Minto and concludes:
“Now he wants to thumb his nose at authority again; this time at our expense — build the Minto legend. All he has achieved is to show South Africans that we were misguided in trying to give him the award in the first place — what he actually represents is exactly what we were trying to get away from.”
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Sonic.
In 1999, I spent 6 months in SA doing volunteer work for teenagers from the townships around Johannesburg. During that time the second round of free elections was held leading to the election of Thabo Mbeki.
Even at that time it was apparent that the cabal of leaders that was being put forward by the Black Majority lacked the skills to do the job and were surviving on charisma and promises of a BMW in every driveway.
I watched South African current event programmes where Black South Africans looked back on aparthied with fondness, because there was order. Infrastructure was built and maintained, and the economy, even though they were isolated, functioned.
Now before you go and call me a racist bastard Sonic, let me state for the record that I am fully against aparthied, and supported HART in 1981.
The problem is that the transition from one system to another has been poorly managed, far too quick, and that those with the skills to make this transition work, have been ignored for racial reasons.
Order is collapsing. Industry is having to deal with rolling power blackouts with 2 hours on, 2 hours off. The gold mining industry is shut down.
This is the product of Black Majority Rule. This is what Minto said he wanted, and the result is a country in chaos. It is not zimbabwe yet, but just wait.
Of course Aparthied is the root cause of the problem, as it denied the majority the opportunity to learn the skills necessary to run the country. But the remedy for that should have taken years, if not decades. The pressure of the international community demanded that remedy happen in months.
But for Minto to reject the honour offered him smacks of Hipocrisy.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 8:52 am
I’d like to have it put on record that I too have refused many awards in my time. I turned down Queenie’s offer of a Garter to take Ed’s place when he popped off, saying that Britain should clean up its monarchy and allow me to produce a palace edition of my famous reality series ‘Delusions Of The Rich And Famous”
I also recently turned down the Legion d’Honneur because I thought that the French antics at the Football World Cup was nasty and their recent moves towards un-socialist government shows that deep down they are smelly garlic suckers.
Actually, I have refused so many international awards, that I am seriously thinking of publishing the list on my very own web site. I could add my friends’ refusals too. Has anybody else reading this refused some good awards recently…?
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 9:03 am
I think Minto’s pissed off because Communism failed and South Africa didn’t want to take up the cause.
Still we have nutjobs in South America having a go where they improvise and stave thier people.
Minto’s interest is not in raising people’s stand of living it’s all about destorying them.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Why should Minto be annoyed communism has failed in South Africa, it has failed everywhere. The guy should study history rather than ideology.
Especially in Africa where tribalism still dominates the politics.
Anyway, another 20 years and SA will be another Zimbabwe. People should get out now while their assets and currency are still worth something.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 9:53 am
Sonic wouldn’t care who did what or when to who… he’s just interested in bashing those who question his extreme left wing views. Whaleoil had a good point, how can anybody preach extreme socialist beliefs and yet be a landlord? Sonic would usually be the first to jump sweating and panting all over something like this.
We have hundreds of thousands South Africans over here in the UK Sonic. SA is fucked beyond compare and last year were flirting with Zimbabwe style policies which would cripple it. An utter waste of a very beautiiful country.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Just thinking about the cavaliers tour. Was in SA at the time and drove around with “All blacks rule” painted on the side of our landrover. Went down a treat until we went to Lesotho and were arrested as apparently only the King was allowed to rule there.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Does Minto not see the irony in a white guy from Sandringham telling one of the greatest black leaders of the 20th century how to run his country, having previously supposedly fought for freedom and self-determination for all South Africans?
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 10:52 am
The greatest follow on effect of what John Minto did, was ensure that provincial areas of New Zealand were able to get general medical practitioners.
Vote:Those migrant doctors would not be in New Zealand if Minto’s mates had not stuffed up their old country.
I need to remind my friends of this; particularly those who went with me to see Waikato thrash the “Boks” on 25 July 1981.
One of them remarked that IF the greatest rugby playing country in the world was Israel then he would have gone to see them play Waikato. And any protester that said by doing so he was sanctioning the Jews kicking the living daylights out of the dispossessed and defenceless Palestinians; he would have spat in their faces. That bloke has visited Dachau and Gaza, and Dachau did not seem too bad.
January 30th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Minto is an attention seeking blowhard. I too am embarrased that I stood near him in 1981. As for Sonic, whenever I read one of his posts I come away feeling dumber.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 11:47 am
sonic, you clearly did not take my advise last night, your thread jacking is ruining this blog.
Vote:You need to bang yourself against a wall for a bit until you’re less rubbish.
January 30th, 2008 at 11:48 am
David Horowitz, who made the transition from Red Diaper baby, Vietnam war Protester, “New Left” founder: to the “Neoconservative” that he is today, has a lot of very interesting writings on this sort of thing.
He says, for example, that the left emphasize and exaggerate every perceived failing and injustice of free capitalist societies, IN COMPARISON, NOT TO THE REALITY OF THE RESULTS of THEIR preferred ideology every time it has been applied, but to the UTOPIA that “SHOULD” result from the application of their preferred ideology.
He also says that Reason supported by Truth is not sufficient to dislodge from the human heart, a lie grounded in desire.
This important writer SHOULD have HIS books taking up the display space in NZ bookshops that is currently full of Chomsky and Pilger. It is an indictment on the way we are heading as a nation that the most damaging authors of the most ruinous ideologies get all the space, but authors like Horowitz are not in stock in NZ at all.
“Left Illusions” by Horowitz, is a “must read”.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Forget NZ’s bookshops. Full of politically correct crap. (see how they promoted the lying fat fool Michael Moore?) Get them off the internet. Starve the left of income. Its the only way we’ll ever be rid of the parasitical censoring control freaks. They only exist in numbers relative to the amount of other people’s money they can access.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
So when did socialism raise citizens standard of living? NZ is on an escalator to the bottom of the OECD statistics, and proves decisively that Marxism is not the answer.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
I remember (bitterly remember) the 81 tour, there were those who accused Minto of being a communist stirrer, the left hammered anybody who dared to suggest this and accused them of being racists.
It turns out that those who accused Minto of being a commie were correct all along.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
bwakile – Elvis was the king of Lesotho?
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Not knowing a lot of detail about Mr Minto, I would have taken the position espoused by gnadsmasher:
The fact that I disagree with Minto’s avowed stance on most issues would not have prevented me from admiring what appeared to be a principled and unwavering stance on those issues.
Until, that is, Whaleoil’s much-maligned expose of Mr Minto not just as a property owner but a landlord. Therefore it’s more a case, as clintheine puts it:
Anyone as avowedly socialist as Minto holds himself out to be would, if he were true to his principles, offer any excess property he owned to the poor and homeless, or the working poor crammed into a share house, or those in a makeshift ‘home’ in someone’s caravan or garage.
Instead, he chooses to profit from that most basic of human needs, the need for shelter. Nothing intrinsically wrong with that – unless you represent yourself as a anti-capitalist.
A once-admired figure who allowed people to see only a part of his real agenda and who now grasps the benefits provided by the system he railed against.
John Minto – the left’s Winston Peters.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Here is what Minto needs to read. It was a famous letter from David Horowitz to his onetime comrade, the English Communist Ralph Milliband. It begins, “Dear Ralph”, but it could begin, “Dear John Minto”, or substitute the name of any other rabid Marxist. DO READ THIS, EVERYONE. IT IS A CLASSIC of anti-Marxist criticism.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guides/The%20Road%20to%20Nowhere.htm
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Big Bruv – remember that many of us were young uni students, in our teens. What did Churchill, Clemenceau and Guisot say….something along the lines of ….”If you’re not a liberal when you’re 20, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative when you’re 40, you have no head.”
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Yep and if I’m not mistaken Bob Dylan repeated it, along with something like “I wrote my songs for the money, I’m a composer, thats what composers do”.
DPF call be overly sensitive perhaps because we had family friends in concentration camps and one of the most horrific events in my life was when my son interviewed one for a school project but I do find Tauhei Notts’ comment rather distasteful.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
I hope that John Minto doesn’t use electricity, internet via a computer, telephone or drive cars, since those things are a product of capitalism? Does anyone see John Minto walk everywhere, use candles at night? Minto is a hypocrite.
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
….”If you’re not a liberal when you’re 20, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative when you’re 40, you have no head.”
True Brian, except that NZ is a country so immersed in leftism at the expense of any other ideology, that people fail to think outside the leftist square because they are completely unaware that there is anything else to think about. Narrow brainwashed communist idiots. How can they ever grasp the ideas behind any other ideology when the alternative is deliberately misrepresented or concealed from them?
Vote:January 30th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Sonic said…
it shows that, unlike yourself, the man has principles…
Yes, that’s correct Sonic, the man’s principles : reject capitalism, but I bet you that if you walk into his house, you find that it is connected to electricity (ie, to one of those capitalist power companies).
And that is the principles the man stand for.
Vote:January 31st, 2008 at 12:27 am
“I hope that John Minto doesn’t use electricity, internet via a computer, telephone or drive cars”
Why not? they are all made by the working class.
Indeed the working class is itself a product of capitalism, as is Marxism.
I do find it amusing when people with no knowledge at all about the praise Marx heaps on the capitlaist system (describing it as laying the groundwork for socialism) suggest that being a lefty means living in a cave.
Vote:January 31st, 2008 at 8:19 am
sonic, in order that I can understand your position better. Please define “working class” and “the rich”?
Vote:January 31st, 2008 at 9:11 am
Sonic said…
Why not? they are all made by the working class.
What’s the difference between working class (or just say people) in Tonga, Samoa , Fiji (3rd world countries in general) who sit around with no jobs (yes, there is no capitalist producers to give them one) and the working class in NZ or any other developed country who manufactured those products , that John Minto is enjoying? Without the entrepreneurs that give the working class jobs, which enable the manufacturing of material things we enjoy, having a resource of unemployed (employable age), is just similar to living in a cave (nothing to do). This is exactly what Mandela told Minto. It is not the availability of working class that matters (in 3rd countries, there are millions of them just sit and do nothing), but the availability of capitalist producers. Capitalist producers (and their products) is what Minto despises.
Do you get it Sonic? Or you still think that working class is what you need in the first place?
Vote:January 31st, 2008 at 11:53 am
In John Minto, I see a ‘I know better than you’ mentality that seems to pervade all anti-capitalists. I don’t believe being anti-capitalist means you have to give up modern coveniences, but I think Mr Minto is still misguided – he seems to believe that some personal financial success is OK (at the expense of the ‘wealthy’, but what happens when those from the working class get a lucky break, or have a million dollar idea? I wonder what John Minto would have to say about them then.
As for being a landlord, I would hold fire until I knew if John was charging market rates for his properties – if he were, there would be some hypocrisy there for sure.
Vote:February 1st, 2008 at 12:31 pm
And “the working class” “makes” these things because of………? Some “workers committees” sitting down and putting their heads together? Some “central board” at the Kremlin telling them to?
BWAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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