Victoria University disenrolls former VUWSA President
In a sharp rebuke for their part in the burning of the New Zealand flag at the Mount Street Bar on 6 May, former Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association (VUWSA) President Joel Cosgrove, and fellow Workers’ Party members Ian Anderson and Alistair Reith were this afternoon disenrolled [Kinda like expelled. See the Student Conduct Statute pdf here. JJW] from Victoria University.
Former VUWSA Activities Officer Marika Pratley was issued with a written warning for her part in the actions in aiding the burning, which took place during the Student Representative Council meeting to discuss VUWSA’s stance on ANZAC Day.
Pro-Vice Chancellor and Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences Deborah Willis said the decision was made in light of the four former students’ “disregard for the safety of others,” and a conscious decision not to attend two meetings to discuss the incident at the University’s invite.
“The University has a statutory duty to provide and maintain a safe environment for all its students and employees and we view these students’ conduct very seriously,” said Professor Willis.
In response, Cosgrove and Workers Party Secretary Daphna Whitmore released a statement that rejected Victoria’s “draconian actions”, and expressed a defiant attitude towards the disenrolment.
“The 20-second flag burning, which took place outside in the rain, posed no danger to anyone,” Whitmore said.
“Universities are supposed to be the critical conscious of society. The actions of the University are political harassment and an attack on political freedom of expression on campus.”
Cosgrove too was defiant.
“We haven’t taken part the University’s process so far, because they’re trying to make it out as a health and safety issue when it’s actually them coming down on us for political reasons,” he said.
“They said, ‘You can meet with us at this time to present your evidence’—they were talking in those sort of judicial terms, and I was like, ‘Hang on a minute. There’s no court here. Just Deborah Willis sitting in her philosopher’s queen throne passing judgement,”
The four intend to picket outside the University’s Kelburn campus next Friday.
83 Comments
26 May, 2009 at 9:27 pm
“I have fielded two calls from friends of mine in the army asking me to put the hurt on ‘those fucking pussy cunts’.
I have seen first hand what these boys can get up to when they are unhappy about any given situation. I hope for my friends sake that they never meet Joel or the other two, i dont want them on assault charges . . . again.
“In saying that, there is now an open invitation for Joel, Alastair, and Ian to visit the Linton Military Camp. I wonder if they are so willing to ‘do it again’ in front of the people who hold the exact counter argument of the trio.
I can pass on phone numbers”
You know Jeff, that the Bourgeoisie used the fascist organization to do it’s own bidding, first of all, a radical group like the WP attracts the Police’s attention, then the University happily, like the petty-bourgeois servants whom run it and refuse to take up the ‘class’ subject in their courses, do the bidding of the capitalist ruling class, and in this reactionary period, you have ignoramuses’ like yourself making stupid worthless comments. I do not support the WP organization, but that you have friends in the army is a concern, you should ask them to reconsider their allegiances. To the working class of the world who constitute the only progressive force created by capitalism to create a new higher stage of society, or the old outmoded nation-state system, which is the source of bourgeois private ownership of means of production. Trotsky’s ‘War and the International’ is a brilliant response to any further ignorant defense of the fatherland and it’s flag (though burning flags is not in my mantra.)
“The forces of production which capitalism has evolved have outgrown the limits of nation and state. The
national state, the present political form, is too narrow for the exploitation of these productive forces. The
natural tendency of our economic system, therefore, is to seek to break through the state boundaries. The
whole globe, the land and the sea, the surface as well as the interior has become one economic workshop,
the different parts of which are inseparably connected with each other. This work was accomplished by
capitalism. But in accomplishing it the capitalist states were led to struggle for the subjection of the
world-embracing economic system to the profit interests of the bourgeoisie of each country. What the
politics of imperialism has demonstrated more than anything else is that the old national state that was
created in the revolutions and the wars [5] of 1789-1815, 1848-1859, 1864-1866, and 1870 has outlived
itself, and is now an intolerable hindrance to economic development.
The present war is at bottom a revolt of the forces of production against the political form of nation and
state. It means the collapse of the national state as an independent economic unit.
The nation must continue to exist as a cultural, ideologic and psychological fact, but its economic
foundation has been pulled from under its feet. All talk of the present bloody clash being a work of national defense is either hypocrisy or blindness. On the contrary, the real, objective significance of the War is the breakdown of the present national economic centers, and the substitution of a world economy in its stead. But the way the governments propose to solve this problem of imperialism is not through the intelligent, organized cooperation of all of humanity’s producers, but through the exploitation of the
world’s economic system by the capitalist class of the victorious country; which country is by this War to
be transformed from a Great Power into the World Power.
The War proclaims the downfall of the national state. Yet at the same time it proclaims the downfall of
the capitalist system of economy. By means of the national state, capitalism has revolutionized the whole
economic system of the world. It has divided the whole earth among the oligarchies of the great powers,
around which were grouped the satellites, the small nations, who lived off the rivalry between the great
ones. The future development of world economy on the capitalistic basis means a ceaseless struggle for
new and ever new fields of capitalist exploitation, which must be obtained from one and the same source,
the earth. The economic rivalry under the banner of militarism is accompanied by robbery and
destruction which violate the elementary principles of human economy. World production revolts not
only against the confusion produced by national and state divisions but also against the capitalist
economic organizations, which has now turned into barbarous disorganization and chaos.
The War of 1914 is the most colossal breakdown in history of an economic system destroyed by its own
inherent contradictions.
All the historical forces whose task it has been to guide the bourgeois society, to speak in its name and to
exploit it, have declared their historical bankruptcy by the War. They defended capitalism as a system of
human civilization, and the catastrophe born out of that system is primarily their catastrophe. The first
wave of events raised the national governments and armies to unprecedented heights never attained
before. For the moment the nations rallied around them. But the more terrible will be the crash of the
governments when the people, deafened by the thunder of the cannon, realize the meaning of the events
now taking place in all their truth and frightfulness.
The revolutionary reaction of the masses will be all the more powerful the more prodigious the cataclysm
which history is now bringing upon them.
Capitalism has created the material conditions of a new Socialist economic system. Imperialism has led
the capitalist nations into historic chaos. The War of 1914 shows the way out of this chaos by violently
urging the proletariat on to the path of Revolution.
For the economically backward countries of Europe the War brings to the fore problems of a far earlier
historic origin—problems of democracy and national unity. This is in a large measure the case with the
peoples of Russia, Austria-Hungary, and the Balkan Peninsula. But these historically belated questions,
which were bequeathed to the present epoch as a heritage from the past, do not alter the fundamental
character of the events. It is not the national aspirations of the Serbs, Poles, Rumanians or Finns that has
mobilized twenty-five million soldiers and placed them in the battlefields, but the imperialistic interests
of the bourgeoisie of the Great Powers. It is imperialism that has upset completely the European status
quo, maintained for forty five years, and raised again the old questions which the bourgeois revolution
proved itself powerless to solve. Yet in the present epoch it is quite impossible to treat these questions in
and by themselves. They are utterly devoid of an independent character. The creation of normal relations
of national life and economic development on the Balkan Peninsula is unthinkable if Czarism and
Austria-Hungary are preserved. Czarism is now the indispensable military reservoir for the financial
Leon Trotsky’s 1914 The War and the International: Part 1
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1914-war/part1.htm (2 of 25) [06/06/2002 15:21:00]
imperialism of France and the conservative colonial power of England. Austria-Hungary is the mainstay
of Germany’s imperialism. Issuing from the private family clashes between the national Serbian terrorists
and the Habsburg political police, the War very quickly revealed its true fundamental character—a
struggle of life and death between Germany and England. While the simpletons and hypocrites prate of
the defense of national freedom and independence, the German English War is really being waged for the
freedom of the imperialistic exploitation of the peoples of India and Egypt on the one hand, and for the
imperialistic division of the peoples of the earth on the other.
Germany began its capitalistic development on a national basis with the destruction of the continental
hegemony of France in the year 1870–1871. Now that the development of Germany industry on a
national foundation has transformed Germany into the first ‘capitalistic power of the world, she finds
herself colliding with the hegemony of England in her further course of development. The complete and
unlimited domination of the European continent seems to Germany the indispensable prerequisite of the
overthrow of her world enemy. The first thing, therefore, that imperialistic Germany writes in her
program is the creation of a Middle European League of Nations. Germany, Austria- Hungary, the
Balkan Peninsula and Turkey, Holland, the Scandinavian countries, Switzerland, Italy, and, if possible,
enfeebled France and Spain and Portugal, are to make one economic and military whole, a Great
Germany under the hegemony of the present German state.
This program, which has been thoroughly elaborated by the economists, political students, jurists and
diplomats of German imperialism and translated into reality by its strategists, is the most striking proof
and most eloquent expression of the fact that capitalism has expanded beyond the limits of the national
state and feels intolerably cramped within its boundaries. The national Great Power must go and in its
place must step the imperialistic World Power.
In these historical circumstances the working class, the proletariat, can have no interest in defending the
outlived and antiquated national “fatherland”, which has become the main obstacle to economic
development. The task of the proletariat is to create a far more powerful fatherland, with far greater
power of resistance—the republican United States of Europe[6] as the foundation of the United States of
the World.
The only way in which the proletariat can meet the imperialistic perplexity of capitalism is by opposing
to it as a practical program of the day the Socialist organization of world economy.
War is the method by which capitalism, at the climax of its development, seeks to solve its insoluble
contradictions. To this. method the proletariat must oppose its own method, the method of the Social
Revolution.”
Think before you type, Jeff.
regards
Woe To Deserters!
27 May, 2009 at 9:52 am
It wasn’t a political statement, it was an attention grabbing statement. Joel Cosgrove is as much of a political activist as the pope is an athesit–he is only out to seek attention. Joel has no practical agenda, just the Karl Marx back-catalogue and a need for validation amongst his communist peers. He has dragged VUW’s name through the mud and been nothing but a parasitic cyst on the entire system that is giving him his over-extended education–one he appears to be completely ungrateful for. Dis-enrolling this pathetic excuse for a huming being for the trimester is nowhere near enough, send him to the Gulags so he can go and experience how great life in the communist motherland really is and actually EXPERIENCE what he keeps harping on about, instead of living his insular little university lifestyle.
Товарищ, вы являетесь предателем родины. Вы должны быть отправлены в ГУЛАГ сразу!
27 May, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Oh i feel so sorry for you Woe To Deserters,
Having to hide your true name and copy and paste another persons work to justify a rather weak argument. What was it again? Ah yes, the fascist organization is being used to control the free workers of New Zealand and perhaps even the world.
For the record i fully endorse the fascist organization. I am a spy for: the nz police; the sis; the army; the salvation army; kiwiblog; dildo users inc.; the FBI; the CIA; Hezbollah; Mossad . . . shit the list is actually endless because as a member of the bourgeoisie, i am just a vessel for the corrupt practices of the capitalist ruling class, along with all my fellow middle class brethren the world over.
By crikey i wish i had been so savvy, as to have used a pseudonym. I hope the man doesn’t now oppress me. Oh wait, thats right im just a follower, they need ignoramuses like me huh.
I do query your request of my friends though. Who would you like my friends in the defense force to change allegiances to? You? Joel? the WP? How about we just let the duly elected government of the day decide what the army gets up to aye.
Its also worth keeping in mind that just because you are at university and you have free time to read up on contextually void theories, it doesn’t mean that the community you live in gets the same choice. The real workers go to work daily and enjoy the small things, they don’t get bent out of shape over silly nonsense like this entire episode.
Jeff McGregor – Oh look i can use my real name. Fucking amazing!
27 May, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Mr McGregor I make No apology for my method and means of argument and discussion. “A rather weak argument”? Your mistake starts from assuming the ignorance of those who read your trite rubbish, is at your own theoretically banal level. My argument, which the WP members disillusioned by protest politics tried to put across, is the bankruptcy, historical doom of ‘imperialism’ the contradiction between the world productive forces and the nation-state system i.e. Trotsky’s War and the International written in 1915 and BEST applicable today: “The forces of production which capitalism has evolved have outgrown the limits of nation and state.” And “What the
politics of imperialism has demonstrated more than anything else is that the old national state that was
created in the revolutions and the wars [5] of 1789-1815, 1848-1859, 1864-1866, and 1870 has outlived
itself, and is now an intolerable hindrance to economic development.”
These lines speak prophecy to the doom of capitalism today: “The nation must continue to exist as a cultural, ideologic and psychological fact, but its economic
foundation has been pulled from under its feet. All talk of the present bloody clash being a work of national defense is either hypocrisy or blindness.
“On the contrary, the real, objective significance of the War is the breakdown of the present national economic centers, and the substitution of a world economy in its stead. But the way the governments propose to solve this problem of imperialism is not through the intelligent, organized cooperation of all of humanity’s producers, but through the exploitation of the
world’s economic system by the capitalist class of the victorious country; which country is by this War to
be transformed from a Great Power into the World Power.
The War proclaims the downfall of the national state. Yet at the same time it proclaims the downfall of
the capitalist system of economy. By means of the national state, capitalism has revolutionized the whole
economic system of the world. It has divided the whole earth among the oligarchies of the great powers,
around which were grouped the satellites, the small nations, who lived off the rivalry between the great
ones.
“The future development of world economy on the capitalistic basis means a ceaseless struggle for new and ever new fields of capitalist exploitation, which must be obtained from one and the same source, the earth. The economic rivalry under the banner of militarism is accompanied by robbery and destruction which violate the elementary principles of human economy.
“World production revolts not only against the confusion produced by national and state divisions but also against the capitalist economic organizations, which has now turned into barbarous disorganization and chaos.
The War of 1914 is the most colossal breakdown in history of an economic system destroyed by its own inherent contradictions.”
“All the historical forces whose task it has been to guide the bourgeois society, to speak in its name and to
exploit it, have declared their historical bankruptcy by the War. They defended capitalism as a system of
human civilization, and the catastrophe born out of that system is primarily their catastrophe.”
“The only way in which the proletariat can meet the imperialistic perplexity of capitalism is by opposing
to it as a practical program of the day the Socialist organization of world economy. War is the method by which capitalism, at the climax of its development, seeks to solve its insoluble contradictions. To this. method the proletariat must oppose its own method, the method of the Social Revolution.”
These mighty words, which I must repeat again, make clear the historical bankruptcy/failure of capitalist imperialism. I believe it is the task of the revolutionist to expose this to all, in the Workers Party’s case, they have categorically failed to do so, instead resorting to desperate protest-politics and attention seeking stunts.
Such stunts have no affect at all on workers, students in any progressive way, those somewhat interested in their outfit, see that it having to resort to such actions means it is in crisis, others “sit on the fense” as Cosgrove has said and the rightward individuals, like Mr. McGregor expose their reactionary character, who unthinkingly “fully endorse the fascist organization” in such cynical mannerism, he knows full well that “the man” has no interest in “oppressing” him as he is a willing ideologic tool of the historic mode of production and it’s social relations CURRENTLY IN EXISTENCE. The changing of allegiances of masses of people is part of an objective development which an international revolutionary party, not the WP, seeks to develop, i.e. political consciousness in accordance with the objective nature of the crisis of capitalism/imperialism. “How about we just let the duly elected government of the day decide what the army gets up to aye.” The near-future role of the army and defense forces will be at the service of the working class against any such forces of reaction after the formation of a workers state, then and only then can one be content with the tasks of history being consciously undertaken instead of under the blind interests of national bourgeoisies who have nothing to offer but barbarism. As to your last empty statement, read Marx’s The Holy Family. He replied to that sort of argument almost 150 years ago! The historic and most basic interests of the working class are in complete opposition to that of the ruling classes and their govts.
In conclusion you did not bother, though I am not surprisedm ,to actually reply to the content of my argument, in this it is clear your differences are not just with me, but with Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, the founders and greats of scientific-Socialism, who and only whom have foreseen and ACTED upon the bankruptcy of the current social order in a progressive manner.
regards
Woe To Deserters.
27 May, 2009 at 5:34 pm
wall of text not reading may a well have quoted the last 40 pages of ulysses
27 May, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Whether Jeff M or Jeff McGregor or Jeff Amanda Hugginkiss you are still the tosser who wants his army boyfriends to beat up Joel and co.
Peter Mangledbrain: quack quack quack!
NZ Patridiot: go back to your siily little Christchurch based ‘militia’ and play with your paint guns (and the word is ‘atheist’ not ‘athesit’ Kyle).
By the way I’m not at university, I’m in Alice Springs dressed in drag.
27 May, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Don’t go insulting the last forty pages of Ulysses with comparisons like that, or I’ll start quoting from Joyce’s letters to Nora. That’ll heat things up more’n a flag burning ever could. Fools.
That said, Jeff is pretty creepy.
27 May, 2009 at 8:30 pm
The “wall of text” is quoted from Leon Trotsky’s ‘War and the International.’ Assimilation and study/clarification of this major historical issue is of major importance. Particularly as the desperate actions of Cosgrove, Reith, Pratley and Anderson has only scared off those they may have been trying to attract, only attracting a flurry of reaction, unclarification, confusion, and police inquiry in being “radical” and forming up a “protest” on friday, all planned to assist the desperate WP situation, and not of any educational value at all.
“Woe to Deserters from now on they will be hunted from one end of the soviet land to the other.”
28 May, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Felicia Jollygoodfellow, this isn’t Kyle Chapman. I love both capitalism and my country, but I hate christchurch and meat pies. Well, I do like pies, but not as much as Kyle Chapman does.
Joel’s a lisping fucking faggot who wants to flamboyantly parade his worthless ideals around in a desperate cry for attention. You know it, I know it. THIS WHOLE COURT ROOM KNOWS IT.
28 May, 2009 at 10:58 pm
My apologies NZ Patridiot… you apparent lack of meat gristle and Watties tomato sauce stench means you are unlikely to be ‘the Pieman’. Don’t worry, your Love for Big Brother will prove to be your undoing.
“Joel’s a lisping fucking faggot who wants to flamboyantly parade his worthless ideals around in a desperate cry for attention.”
I love lisping faggots Darlink, especially the desperate ones. What a turn on!
29 May, 2009 at 9:31 am
T’was a helmetted student named Joel
Penis lover and wannabe prole
Who set fire to the flag
That “imperialist rag”
what a witless and boring arse hole
29 May, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Woe to deserters; SHUT THE FUCK UP!
Just because you can quote bullshit propaganda from bullshit books doesn’t mean you have a valid point. You seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that just because you idolise fools, their words are right. You and your idols have no substantive argument; you simply say capitilism is bad, everything is capitilisms fault. What’s all this bullshit about capitilism’s historical bankrupcy/failure of capitilist imperialism? Those “mighty words” did not highlight or showcase shit! They ranted and raved.
Capitilism is still going strong, still cruising, so obviously its day isn’t done. Notice there is no socialist superpower? Socialism and communism are the ones which are done and dusted, give up, you’ve lost.
And WW1 wasn’t caused by capitilism failing, you prat.
New Zealand is not bloody Imperialist you cretins. Capitilism isn’t to blame for wars either; last time I checked, Communists did the same shit, the Soviet Union was no peaceful giant, it was a monolithic steamroller, flattening anyone they could. Life is better in New Zealand under capitilism than it ever would be under Communism.
Stop the bullshit about the bourgeoise ruling elite pushing barrows. Some have money, that doesn’t make them all evil bastards. The world works best when some lead, the rest follow.
Giving idiots like Joel Cosgrove power is a bad idea, people who know how to lead should lead. Someone who runs a business is better qualified to lead because they understand money.
Screw the Workers Party, you pricks wouldn’t have jobs if it wasn’t for peope having ideas, setting up businesses and hiring whining, whinging shits like you. Fuck off to China, see how well you do bitching over there. Not everyone should be paid the same amount, some people deserve more than others, deal with it.
How is burning a flag and ranting inanely about imperialism a valid protest?
Let’s reinstate aristocracy!
29 May, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Oh and fascist organisations? WTF? (btw, you’d be better spelling organisations the way New Zealander’s do, the Yanks spell it with a z, and they’re very, very capitilist)
29 May, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Capitil suggestion there, Josh K.
29 May, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Josh K you have not actually acknowledged nor understood my analysis and argument instead resorting to blind hostilit, sophistry and self-encouragement for a lack of correct spelling, grammer and paragraphing.
It would be nice if you could actually spell ‘capitalism’ correctly, but you are an idiot with no brains or pretension of having one. Nor do you Josh K understand Mr. Trotsky’s argument which is far to complicated for your low level of intelligence.
Woe to Deserters did not say ‘capitalism bad’ he said that capitalism was once progressive, now it is a fetter to further progression. It has not ’stopped’ as he did not say that, BUT… it has broken down, a whole previous mode of accumulation, of market bubbles, etc, co based on deindustrialisation, attacks on social position/national income of the working class has completely collapsed, as ‘bourgeois’ economists themselves state. Woe to Deserters nowhere stated anything about ‘idol worship’ instead he stated clearly that if any person’s analysis/theory is correct/validated by historical experience, than it remains of important contemporary value irrelevant of the amount of time that passes from that analysis/theory being developed.
‘You and your idols have no substantive argument’, if you don’t read, nor quote an opposing view but simply state as what Josh K has written then you can get away with anything with out looking to damn stupid. [typical in postmodernist scenes.]
“Capitilism is still going strong, still cruising, so obviously its day isn’t done.”
This argument is based on ignorance: capitalism is only in existence due to 2 subjective factors: stalinism and social democracy. Without these two, it wouldve been destroyed 6 decades ago, nor is it ‘cruising’, Josh looks at surface appearances and sees rosey gardens of dandyness, but behind this surface, the contradictions of capitalism have brought it into the very same, nay, worse crisis it has faced since world war 1 and the great depression. Private ownership of means of production is still in existence that is obvious, it is also the fact that the recent government budget will and HAS made massive attacks to the pockets of the working class, cuts to superannuation fund, education, no tax cuts, a $9.3 billion govt budget deficit, surpluses ‘not expected til 2016′ (a nice way of saying ever), govt borrowing of $34 billion over next 4 years, 43 ‘gross debt’ % of population to GDP, a shrinking of the economy by 1.7%, 70000 unemployed for this year + and to all that surface appearance rosey capitalist forecast, independent earner rebate scrapped, “the cupboard is almost bare”, public service job cuts and MORE on the way, this is the very real nature of the failure of the capitalist system in New Zealand and in every country around the world, particularly the imperialist nations like US, EU, China, Russia, Australia/NZ, India. In ww1 and 2, when the workers and soldiers drowned in blood the very real bourgeoisie swam in lucrative profits and greed, this world crisis is no different.
“Notice there is no socialist superpower? Socialism and communism are the ones which are done and dusted, give up, you’ve lost.And WW1 wasn’t caused by capitilism failing, you prat.” Mr. Trotsky answered this in his piece called ‘Stalinism and Bolshevism, read it, read a book, and socialism/communism can hardly have failed when they have never existed, when the workers have never (except in the former soviet union) held power with their own organs of power, your essentially blaming the failure of the current real social order on a phantom ghost which you fear, you must be a very weak individual. A failure of explanation, again a worthless, irrelevant individual like yourself repeats, don’t make me laugh, read a book, go back to secondary school if your really in need.
“New Zealand is not bloody Imperialist you cretins.” Read the NZ herald you tool. Thats all that need be said to such a stupid statement. Come back when you have actual content to argue/explain, you just sound like a illiterate fool who just came out of a cave and found a computer and media propaganda. Exacty you follow blindly like a sheep. “Someone who runs a business is better qualified to lead because they understand money.” Someone like J. Key who “understands money” and how to manipulate paper in order to reap profits without actually doing any work of any social value. Nice argument. Fit for ignorant primitive cavemen who can’t spell for shit!
“you pricks wouldn’t have jobs if it wasn’t for peope[nice spelling lol.] having ideas, setting up businesses and hiring whining, whinging shits like you. Fuck off to China, see how well you do bitching over there. Not everyone should be paid the same amount, some people deserve more than others, deal with it.”
The working class create jobs by creating surplus value for the property owners in order to “create jobs” but the need for jobs, to create value for which capitalists and exploiters, profit, is essential a creation of the necessary social labor time of the working class themselves. As the workers in France would have said “we work, they profit.” Jobs are not created from idealist capitalists sprinkling ‘ideas’ from their heads, jobs are created from the working class’s capacity to recreate surplus value for the property-owner class, for without that capacity, you, YOU would NOT find yourself in work, as is NOW THE CASE AS 70,000 workers find themselves join the dole queue. Read a book, learn to read and write and spell. You need it. Capitalist “communist” stalinist China is hardly a good example. It has done well for the world capitalist system, the majority of the worlds toys, goods, ipods, goods and products are created from this country thanks to the betrayals of Maoism against the working class and oppressed. So if those you hate should go to China, they surely will either end up in chains or guess what in chains in prison or in slave labor work. The majority work as they own no private bourgeois property, the minority with their labour and ex-stalinist lieutenants and trade unionist traitors own private property of means of production with the aid of the petty-bourgeois and it’s institutions and widely accepted ideologies. Don’t follow, learn to think you tool. Burning a flag is their protest, their right, the university is not tolerating this desperate dissent, thus the vic admin should be denounced for their actions, of using “health and safety” as a pretext to attack the rights of students, as the 2004 overturning of Phil Ferguson of the WP’s conviction basically means that the Vic Administration are essentially creating their own rules, against the very laws/bill of rights which defends political protest/’freedom of expression’ in favor of the outdated ‘flags, emblems, names protection act’ which the 2004 case overruled thus rendering obsolete. The Vic Uni knows this, can’t tackle the 3 wp protesters head on so it has to create a pretext. Such actions are unacceptable and an attack on democratic rights no matter what way you see it. CASE CLOSED. You lose J K amateur.
WTD.
30 May, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Does anyone else find it amusing that these people are members of the Worker’s Party when they’ve probably never done a day’s work in their lives.
30 May, 2009 at 11:32 pm
Yes. Yes I do. I also find it amusing that they write so much and expect people to read the whole thing.
WALL OF TEXT DOES NOT EQUAL WIN.
31 May, 2009 at 10:36 am
I don’t get why that cleaner guy of the workers party didn’t clean up the confetti that some douchebag threw, shouldn’t he clean it up for the country, or was he just not WORKING that day.
31 May, 2009 at 10:43 am
On another note “our civil rights are under attack, stand up fight back” where was the fight? I’m keen to beat down commies
31 May, 2009 at 11:18 am
“I’m keen to beat down commies”… Is that a sexual thing?
31 May, 2009 at 12:58 pm
I wonder if any psych students have considered using Salient online comments for a Phd thesis? I love how using pseudonyms allows people to say what they really think no matter how inane, politically extreme or just plain wrong.
Also, I hope the comments are being preserved somewhere – in 20 years time when Joel Cosgrove is being tried for domestic terrorism and is about to receive the first death sentence after its reintroduction, I want to write a biography.
31 May, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Workers Party trivia: Did you know The Australian Workers’ Party (they used correct grammar) was formed in the 1970s as an ANTI-SOCIALIST, FREE MARKET LIBERTARIAN party by businessmen. I think they were thinking “people without jobs should just look harder and have no access to welfare”. What a fucking contrast!
31 May, 2009 at 10:58 pm
“Yes. Yes I do. I also find it amusing that they write so much and expect people to read the whole thing.”
Woe to Deserters isn’t from a Workers Party member, if you wade through the teal deer you’ll find it’s criticising our tactics. I suspect it’s from the WSWS, an even smaller Marxist party that thinks we’re all sellouts.
1 Jun, 2009 at 12:16 am
This mountain of nonsense—this petty and pathetic playing field where you largely irrelevant dupes are playing a ridiculous game of tit-for-tat—I don’t even know what you’re fighting for anymore, and I doubt very much that you do either.
The 8000 word pieces of self-indulgence masquerading as informed insight; the witless pranks; the extraordinary need to pick at the pages of a student magazine to amplify a message nobody’s fucking listening to; the childish grudges; the embarrassing squabbles—do you think Salient’s audience is listening? Do you honestly think 21,000 students give a fuck about anything you Worker’s Party/VUWSA clowns are doing? They’ve got exams! They’ve got jobs! They’ve got boyfriends, girlfriends, friends, families—troubles, happinesses, lows, highs. They’ve got shit to do.
VUWSA, you have 21,000 employers out there who deserve, by hook or by crook, the very best you can give them. Your constituents do not want to hear “My bag got stolen, not my problem” — they want to hear “We’ve strengthened our security processes by doing this, this, and this. It will never happen again.” They don’t want to hear, “The misogynistic Worker’s Party wouldn’t hold my baby.” They want to hear, “I’m working my ass off for each and everyone of you by doing this, this and this.” And they sure as hell don’t want to hear, “Ahhh, the political perversions of imperialism is ruining our country’s fragile discourse blah blah blah.” They want to hear, “Some guys set a flag on fire. The fire lasted about 20 seconds and left a soppy meth-soaked mess on the floor of Mount Street. That’s it.”
Does Salient have a duty to report this sort of nonsense? Does Salient have a duty to be the arena where extremely marginal political entities duke it out? Or does Salient have a duty to its 21,000 employers to cater to what’s in their best interests? From the guy named Nick in a t-shirt and jandals just doin’ a BA, to the 45-yo accounts manager who’s come back to do some post grad? Absolutely. Unless it is directly relevant to the people who’re filling your pay cheques every week, I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to see a single word about Jasmine Freemantle vs The Worker’s Party. I don’t give a fuck about Joel Cosgrove—gimme a News in Brief when that guy pays his $1200 back, but that’s it, and I sure as hell can’t be arsed hearing about the Wellington chapter of a political party that will never amount to anything.
Give me news in why my tutes are cut. Give me news on what’s happening around my campus, and my city. Give me news on what the Minister in charge of Tertiary Education is doing. Give me news that’s relevant. Give me news that’s important. Give me what I’ve fucking paid for, and cut the rest of this blithering nonsense out. You owe us that.
1 Jun, 2009 at 8:50 am
Dude, do you even read Salient?
1 Jun, 2009 at 11:09 am
hello friend
1 Jun, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Matthew Donaldson: What Shitkicker said, “do you even read Salient?”
1 Jun, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Where has the story about Latimer rolling Freemantle gone?
1 Jun, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Hmmm… It seems to have accidentally been deleted when we were doing the uploading. Sorry for this. It will go back up as soon as I can find a copy.
1 Jun, 2009 at 9:28 pm
Matthew Donaldson:
“Give me news in why my tutes are cut.”
http://www.salient.org.nz/news/tutes-guillotined
http://www.salient.org.nz/news/vic-to-“who-goes-to-tutes”-students-feeling-les-miserables
“Give me news on what’s happening around my campus…”
http://www.salient.org.nz/news/vbc-deed-signed-sealed-delivered-its-yours/
http://www.salient.org.nz/news/shit-food-discussed-within-earshot-of-shit-food/
“…and my city.”
http://www.salient.org.nz/news/pro-chancellor-kia-oras-mayor’s-20000-trip
http://www.salient.org.nz/news/wellington-super-city-like-could-be-totally-super-close/
Give me news on what the Minister in charge of Tertiary Education is doing.
http://www.salient.org.nz/news/holy-shit-an-interview-with-anne-tolley/
http://www.salient.org.nz/news/the-great-tolley-hunt-a-birds-eye-view/
“Give me news that’s relevant.”
http://www.salient.org.nz/news/vice-chancellor’s-booze-memorandum-“dodges-main-issue”
http://www.salient.org.nz/news/interest-free-loans-aint-goin-nowhere-no-how/
Give me news that’s important.
http://www.salient.org.nz/news/ka-kite-highly-confidential-food-bank-info-ka-kite/
http://www.salient.org.nz/news/students-boycott-lecture-to-protest-cuts/
“Give me what I’ve fucking paid for, and cut the rest of this blithering nonsense out. You owe us that.”
As per every other time someone has complained about what I am doing as editor, I extend an invitation for you to come talk to me. The door to the office is always open for those who want to engage in honest and rational debate with me. I hope the above examples prove that we’re doing more than just fanning Joels fire. But maybe you should try reading the magazine before getting indignant and claiming that Salient’s hard working staff aren’t doing their jobs.
1 Jun, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Matthew Donaldson you got pwned biatch.
Back to kindy for you.
1 Jun, 2009 at 11:09 pm
And even if we can’t be bothered writing news about important stuff, we’ll just fake it anyway.
“Audience invited to hear how delinquent became Prince of Bel Air”
Now THAT’S news I can believe in.
1 Jun, 2009 at 11:21 pm
To be honest, I think we’re all tired of hearing about Mr. Cosgrove, but he just seems to weasels his way back into relevancy somehow, someway.
The interesting question for me is whether or not he’ll make use of VUWSA’s advocacy services, despite still owing the association quite a sum of money.
I imagine if aforementioned services are requested, VUWSA will do its utmost to follow the book by the letter and not let any mitigating factors inflect upon the standard of advocacy offered.
But seriously, how fucking awkward. This is daytime soap opera scriptwriting shit right here, or at least something out of the world of professional wrestling.
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