Wednesday, May 21, 2008

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Special Anteroom !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - Urgent!!!

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GO STRAIGHT FROM HERE AND READ THE AMAZINGLY ASTUTE AND INSIGHTFUL BLOG DONE BY POET AND WRITER SCOTT "MAPS" HAMILTON


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>>>>>>>!!!!ESPECIALLY!!!! >>>>> RECENT POSTS <<<<<< -BUT HIS BLOG IS SHAPING UP AS GREAT RESOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE OF MANY ASPECTS OF N.Z. AND OTHER CULTURES AND MAORITANGA -POLITICS -ESSENTIAL NEWS AND GREAT OBSERVATIONS OF HIGHLY MEANINGFUL EVENTS IN NZ AND THE WORLD - NOW AND IN THE PAST

THIS BLOG IS ESSENTIAL READING TO ANYONE IN NZ OR COMING HERE OR READING ABOUT THIS LAND - AND 'MAPS' LINKS ALSO TO THE "GREATER" WORLD VIA HIS POLEMICS AND INSIGHT IN TO E.P THOMPSON AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR.BUT HIS KNOWLEDGE OF N.Z. HISTORY AND REALITY IS EXTRAORDINARY. NOT ONLY IS HIS READING AND INTERPRETATION HIGHLY ACUTE AND VERY WIDE - AND NOT ONLY IS HE A PHD IN SOCIOLOGY AND LITERATURE ETC ETC BUT HIS GRASP OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHICAL AND CULTURAL-HISTORICAL MATTERS IS MASSIVE - BUT HE IS NOT JUST AN ARMCHAIR PHILOSOPHER AND TAKES PART IN MANY PROTESTS AND ACTIONS.

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[ IF LIKE ME YOU SOMETIMES TIRE OF THE RELENTLESS NATURE OF POLITICS ETC - - YOU WILL FIND THAT 'MAPS' - ON HIS BLOG - HAS A VAST RANGE OF TOPOS TO LOOK AT ESP. IF ONE GOES BACK THROUGH HIS PREVIOUS POSTS - OK A LOT OF IT IS POLITICAL AND SOMETIMES A LITTLE "TOO" POLEMICAL - BUT WE NEED SOME REASONED PASSION AND REALITY OUT THERE OR OVER HERE IN NZ. THERE IS AN UNDERLYING LOVE OF PEOPLE (A REASONED CONCERN DEEP EMPATHY) IN N.Z. AND INDEED THE WORLD AS WELL AS A FASCINATION WITH IDEAS AND HISTORY THAT COMES THROUGH INTO MAPS


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ALSO



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BUT START BY GOING TO "READING THE MAPS" THERE IS CURRENTLY SOME VITAL ASPECTS OF NEW ZEALAND HISTORY THERE - HERE -


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MAPS > !!!!!! SCOTT HAMILTON !!!!! < > GO TO THIS LINK!


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14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Commented on maps blog about the political expediency of the lower class right wing faction who do the dirty work for the left wing intellectuals and can be discarded later this is not a theory but experience however unsettling...

Richard said...

tertius -the political infighting can be dispiriting - I'm more or less out of "active" politics but I retain an interest -and that does happen - but overall some good work is done - but Maps brings a a lot of insight despite one might disagree - I have learnt a lot from him - albeit we don't agree (quite a few issues -but agree I think overall) any more than I get along on everything with Jack Ross who tends to avoid politics... but in sense "politics" is everywhere - there are certain areas of human experience we might say are not - I think that hope lies in science (wisely used) -some Marxism and certain of the liberal sciences - psych, sociology and so on...

Apart from history and politics we need also to develop - each of us as social beings (we are that) but we need to work on war, community differences,ethnic problems and prejudices, tolerance, communication and so on - the macro and the micro so to speak...) Maps is also a great poet ... when I first met him he had no interest in politics atall...eschewed it - I was also moving away into certain hetrotcialdraem worlds - still do a bit - Maps helps to keep me anchored a bit!

His areas of interest are far more hat politics in the narrow sense...

Of course the sun doesn't shine from him! But...

Lol just been playing chess online - some bloody good players out there! But I play also of 3 minute games and so on ... occasionally I play masters or grandmasters - I beat one once!!

I played about 40 continuous games of chess in what they call Rapid (that's not on the internet but face to face) and I won three tournaments and lost only about 3 games! [but many of my opponents were quite low ranked] But usually players who are young are the best players -so the average age of (very strong chess players) is about -anything from 14 to 20 or 35 at the most - a lot are only 13 or 17!!) One of the best players in the world is only 18 I think Carlsen (from Norway - he is about no 7 or so...) ..as as the best players are young - I am doing well at 60 to win few games!! I've been playing off and on since I was about 10...

The ranking of player is almost direct correlative of their IQ - Kasparov was had an IQ of at least 170... Fischer would have been much the same level...even at 14 he was almost unbeatable except by a few ex world champions!

Well it keeps me off the streets - Vic plays computer games...

Anonymous said...

Have observed certain commonalities in the Muldoon era, Labours reforms, in America with the Reagan democrats, in Australia with Liberals Howards 'battlers' and this Obama Clinton Mccain malay...

Anonymous said...

The attacks by bob feith on you and communism at maps' blog is one reason I avoid politics its far more dirty than the sleazy street which I have called home as their is no murkiness there like chess its black and white... the tower and the street ...

Anonymous said...

I can recall Vic reciting at the Shakespeare... lots of Revelations and Armagedon, the most poetic book of the Bible and a macro chess match on a grand and profound scale...

Anonymous said...

How naive are your detracters to believe there are no conspiracies, by its very definition. A 'social contract' exists from birth to death, without a degree of socialism there would be less health care, rubbish collection, roads and public services. The ownership of these institutions are of a different consideration...

maps said...

Thanks Richard - I'm flattered!

I certainly think that your blog is probably the most original of any kept by a NZ writer, and also the most visually striking.

Tertius - you're not the legendary Hamish Dewe, are you?

Richard said...

Do you want to be revealed tertius!

I don't know who this Feith bloke is - I have to watch Maps! - he sometimes mucks about - he is a good fellow but he is sometimes an "anonyomous" on his and other blogs! (I have been once or twice also I must confess... - we joke about how it could be Jack Ross and so on -but it is so far in good fun - I saw a programme on Dr Phil and the problems of the Internet for a lot of people...esp young woman - but there was one young black man with a family who was attacked (racially and death threats) just for winning games (computer games of some sort) on line... on my chess sites I can "switch off" anyone who says anything negative which is what I do - but apparently a lot of people take it to heart - if I win I thank my opponent for the game - if I lose (sometimes I get angry actually with myself when I "blunder"!) also if I have time and I never abuse people as it is just a game!!)

I'm not "in" politics per se - Feith is going on about the mid 1970s but I wasn't in anything at all then. I was very interested in Mao and the Chinese revolution and I experienced the corruption of the unions - remember I also had an insight into what was going at Head Office as my father (who was an architect)was working with Alan Hellaby while I was working in the Slaughter House or in the Offal Dept.!! It was both less and more "sinister" than people think if that makes sense...the trouble is a lot of what is "fact" in politics is hearsay or speculation or (hopefully) intelligent extrapolation...

I also know a fellow whose father was in the SIS in the (50s to 70s?) he found eventually that one of his "jobs" was to infiltrate the communist party...

I was at Berger Paints in 1972 and we had a strike - now that was from us the workers - that kind of unionism is good - but we got very little support from Skinner - now Skinner I heard was thick with Muldoon - so I suspect that Skinner etc staged various strikes to allow Muldoon to rave on about Communism - it's an old ploy - happened in the US where they basically broke the Unions...Skinner, who was the nominal head of about 20 Unions lived not far from where I lived (near Remmers in a huge house) once and also he started a dairy just down the road before he got into the unions - that was in the 40s to 50s...for a lot of workers unions are a rod to power and money and trips overseas etc!

But there are good union men and women...I support unions in principle and I think there are new unions now who are better than the old ones...You and I are working class.

I wonder if Feith is Clark Titman? I defended his right to speak once - he was a rabid pro the Vietnam war right winger but the rumour was he had actually dodged the draft and now wanted to get back in the good books with the US !!

The most fervent warmongers are usually non combatants...war at a distance...I understand that...

Now they rave on about terrorism -I suspect 9/11 was a jack up - also the one in Spain possibly even Bali. In any case war is terrorism always. So the war in Iraq and Afghanistan are acts of terror

This Feith bloke
(if he is for real )is right off the beam! I don't know the people he is talking about at all...

I just read a great book 'The Most Dangerous Animal' by David Livingstone Smith about why humans go to war - it is partly bred into us - but to kill we need to switch off certain parts of the brain/mind - its quite complex but makes sense if studied with evolution in mind...

Richard said...

Maps - thanks for you comments on here - I really think you are buzzing on your Blog it is great...

This bloke Feith keeps going off onto Maoism!!

Either its you or a crackpot! ... lol

Well out here in Panmure there are plenty of those around!! Myself included...

BTW at one stage I was a Union delegate at Hellabies or an assistant and some bizarre things happened! I started working there as a quiet young man with fairly conventional beliefs....

What transformed me was working at the Railway Workshops a Communist fellow lent me 'Rape of Vietnam' by H G Slingsby - it had a profound effect on my thinking. The I got involved with the PYM...actually there is a lot more to the story than that but...hmm...sometime...

Anonymous said...

Identity should be hidden for now please RT, left u ample clues n you alone as a matter of respect...

Anonymous said...

Who wrote this: "...Clark Titman ...was a rabid pro the Vietnam war right winger but the rumour was he had actually dodged the draft and now wanted to get back in the good books with the US !! ...The most fervent warmongers are usually non combatants...war at a distance...I understand that.."
Clark Titman enlisted the US Marines in November 1941 one month before Pearl Harbor when he was 16 1/2 years old.
He served on Guadalcanal during the second half of 1942. His period of active service effectively ended in September 1942
after the Aircraft carrier he was on, the USS Wasp was torpedoed by Japanese submarine off Guadalcanal just prior to the Battle of Santa Cruz.
He was honorably discharged from the US Marines in early 1946 with the rank of Corporal.
He first came to New Zealand as one of the survivors of the sinking in October 1942 and then returned in 1949 to study at Auckland University. The United States did not have a draft of any kind at this time. Drafts and call ups, as far as I know, were only re-instituted after the communist nations China, The Soviet Union and North Korea conspired to invade South Korea in June 1950.
Clark Titman's political interests did not begin with Vietnam and were certainly not limited to Vietnam.
His first big political interest was World Federalism. This led him in late 1946 to tear up his US passport and declare himself "Citizen of the World". He was the second person in the world to do this.
The result of this action was that for over twenty years he became a Stateless person. It wasn't until 1969 that the NZ would finally grant him New Zealand citizenship.
During the late 1950s and early sixties was a founding member of the NZ anti-apartheid movement. He was one of the founding members of Citizens for Racial Equality (CARE) and led the protestors out onto the tarmac at Auckland airport in 1960 to try and stop the plane taking the All Blacks to South Africa from departing.
For this he was arrested and put on trial. He was acquitted.
During the Vietnam War he was virtually the sole opponent of the so-called Peace movement here and certainly the sole defender of the government of the Republic of Vietnam here in New Zealand.
He walked from Auckland to Wellington in 1968 pulling a quarter-ton cart containing South Vietnamese flags pamphlets about the war as well as his two children. This was done as a counter-march to one organised by the Progressive Youth Movement. He walked the whole way. The PYM marchers, in contrast, walked through towns and when they knew reporters were present and then bussed the rest - but when they got to Wellington said they had walked the whole way.
During the Vietnam War Clark Titman was on occasion assaulted and threatened with assault.
(This was not an uncommon outcome with people who stood up to the Peace Movement in NZ, I might tell you.)
On one occasion a gang of male Peace Protestors attempted to drown him in the fountain at Albert Park because he was heckling one of their meetings.
During the 1972 Moratorium Against the War palaver the Police came to his hotel in Wellington and warned him hat if he went to the meeting organised by the Protestor that evening he would be hospitalised by members of the Seaman's Union acting on behalf of the Peace Movement.
When he went anyway, it appeared some attempt was made on him in the toilets at the meeting hall, but the attackers lost their nerve.
In 1970 Clark Titman was invited to visit Vietnam by the government of the Republic of Vietnam. He ended up visiting both Vietnam and Cambodia, staying for a total of 70 days and traveling widely throughout both countries.
Of course in 1970 it was not particularly dangerous in Vietnam. This was after all two years after the Tet Offensive, when the communists had been comprehensively defeated by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and a popular rejection of their terror by the people of southern Vietnam (and a measure of very much over-blown help from the United States armed forces.) It would be another two years before the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (communist North Vietnam) would have managed to build up sufficient forces to launch a massive conventional North Korean-type offensive against the Republic of Vietnam. (And of course the ferocity of the Vietnam War in 1970 was only a fraction of what it would become after the Americans entirely abandoned and left Vietnam in early 1973. Casualties - civilian but especially military - rose substantially once all American combatants were out of Vietnam in the face of a constant North Vietnamese offensive).
Nevertheless, Clark Titman get at least a whiff of war while he was there. He was showing booby trapped paths and in Cambodia became the first foreigner to interview North Vietnamese soldiers captured deep inside up to then neutral Cambodia. On the Cambodian border he went to villages less than 48 hours after they were attacked by Viet Cong remnants crossing from Cambodia. And in Cambodia itself he went to towns temporarily taken over by the Khmer Rouge. He actually brought back to New Zealand broken and exposed x-ray plates from the hospital in this town that the Khmer Rouge had ransacked during their occupation.
He was actually supposed to stay longer in Indochina. But as those of you with a memory or some knowledge of history may know, in early 1970 Prince Norodom Sihanouk was deposed as leader of Cambodia by his government and Cambodia declared itself a Republic and immediately asked for help to rid the country of the North Vietnamese and Vietcong and Khmer Rouge communists who had been occupying their country for several years, with the grossly corrupt Sihanouk’s acceptance.
These events were actually ongoing when Clark Titman visited Cambodia and he ended up being asked by representatives of the government of the new republic to return to New Zealand and do what he could to get support for Cambodia against the communist aggressors. You must know that at this time Cambodia had practically no army and was very, very poorly armed in any way to fight the communists. The Cambodians had been hopeful of support from the United States, but after the Kent State massacre in Ohio where 9 or so American students were shot by National Guardsmen the United States ceased offering any practical ground support to the Cambodians and they were - except for secret bombing campaigns,( partially organized by US Airmen acting entirely against Presidential orders and out of their own sense of responsibility for the fate of the Cambodian people) - pretty much abandoned by the US.
Knowing and seeing clearly how evil the Khmer Rouge in particular were and how desperate the Cambodian’s plight was (he witnessed Sihanouk’s former palace guard drilling with broomsticks while he was there) he immediately returned to New Zealand.
He tried his best, almost to the point of a nervous breakdown to get some sort of military assistance for the Cambodians. He had been reasonably friendly with Keith Holyoake over the years and Holyoake was quoted as saying Clark Titman was the most knowledgeable person he had ever met on the Vietnam conflict. So his efforts may have had something to do with the SAS sending a paltry training mission to Cambodia in late 1970. But by and large his efforts in this area came to naught.
He did try to tell the news media here about what he had seen in Vietnam and what he knew of the Khmer Rouge. But the bias of the news media was so great that his warnings about what might happen in Cambodia if the Khmer Rouge came to power were greeted with ridicule and were not printed.
As a result of this experience and numerous other experiences of press bias he pressed for a parliamentary investigation of Television bias against the Republic of Vietnam by New Zealand television. He presented parliament with his own and others research about every known TV news report aired in NZ for a three year period or so pertaining to the Republic of Vietnam and the war. His analysis clearly showed – in truth, the facts were plain all the reports were seen, without any need for “analysis” – that not a single news item could be seen to be in any way favorable to the South Vietnamese and in fact every item contained some sort of anti-RVN sentiment. The parliamentary committee that heard this evidence declined to recommend anything be done about any of this. (However the head of news programming for the NZBC did privately concede that NZ television reporting on Vietnam was “disgraceful”).
Clark Titman continued doing what he could to help the Vietnamese against the communists and their allies here to the end. After the - excuse my language- “cluster fuck” of the 1973 oil-shock that sent South Vietnam’s oil bill sky-rocketing, the lousy 1973 Paris Peace Accords which allowed North Vietnamese army troops to remain in militarily significant (but non-inhabited) areas of South Vietnam they had invaded during their 1972 Spring Offensive and then the Watergate debacle which destroyed the mana of Richard Nixon to use the only ace he had left himself, namely a resumption of bombing if the communists launched another all-out offensive, things went steadily and then rapidly down-hill.
Within a month of the beginning of the final Hanoi offensive of spring 1975 Titman, seeing clearly that the US would not do anything to help Vietnamese people decided to organize a force of New Zealand Volunteers to go there to do whatever they could to help the Republic of Vietnam Government keep fighting. The hope was the sight of white people laying down blood for the Vietnamese might in some way, by some miracle, encourage some sort of change of heart in the halls of power in Washington. He wanted 20 people, but very quickly got a group of 200, most Vietnam Vets together who were committed to going there. Arrangements were well under way when, less than a week before the surrender on April 30 1975, a telegram came from the office of penultimate President of the Republic Vietnam asking them not to come.
The years immediately after the communist takeover were very depressing ones for Clark Titman. It became clear, despite the nonsense to the contrary by the ex-members of the Peace Movement, that the situation in Indochina was much much worse after communism was imposed than before. Amnesty International, then a very despicable left-led organization, reported in 1976 that it had good evidence that “up to 26” people had been executed by the Khmer Rouge during that year. (1976 was the year they made their “global issue” the ending of the death penalty in the US. At this time Khmer Rouge radio was regularly stating they intended to make the new Kampuchea “a sea of blood”. And friends of the Khmer Rouge like Noam Chomsky were maintaining “at most a few thousand” had died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, and anyway, it was the American bombing of 1970 that made them do what they did)
Still Clark Titman did work hard during the 70’s and early eighties to organize an “Operation Aroha” to help rescue boat people. To do this he tried his best to work with rabid left-wingers who (I guess somewhat to their credit) were doing something on the boat people issue. Here he had to witness and try to do what he could against first the early animus of the 70’s Labour government against South Vietnamese refugees and then the constant attempts by the left-wingers helping the boat people to quash the nationalist and anti-communist feeling of the refugees. Making them take down and erase from their property the flag of the defunct Republic of Vietnam for instance.
During the late eighties, when effective international pressure finally came on the Vietnamese communists to get of Cambodia, Clark Titman did what he could in New Zealand to push the case of the non-communist anti-Sihanouk anti-Khmer Rouge pro-republican pro-democratic Cambodian liberation movements that had been fighting the Vietnamese communist occupiers. As with so many of his other political decisions, it turned out he had backed the right, but in the end losing side. A pro Vietnamese, Pro-Beijing ex-Khmer rouge communist faction friendly to Sihanouk led by Hun Sen ended up prevailing in the UN-sponsored electoral process – and rule to this day there.
Clark Titman did a few more things in the years that followed, as the years took their toll, and before his death in 2004. But let’s leave his story in the early nineties
I began with the question “who wrote that Clark Titman was a rabid pro war right winger and a draft dodger and a warmonger an a non-combatant who only saw war from a distance and only wanted to be in the good books of the US?” I end by asking you what gives you the right to say such filthy lies about a man who always stood up against those who offer violence as the way to rule the world, who loved the US but saw other countries and other peoples as equally important and deserving of help and who throughout his life took some risks to achieve what he believed was right? And with the passing of the years and the flowering of democracy in the world much of what he believed seems even more justified now. And all of his struggles in his life were usually alone, or very very much in the minority. You might see yourself as some sort of defender of free speech because you once let him speak. I just see you as just one more oppressor of a good human being. To hell with you…

Richard said...

anonymous -I presume you are Clark Titman,or know / knew him well? I
haven't read all of this - BTW I was in the PYM and I doubt anyone tried to drown him!!

If some of what you say is true there is lot to admire - but he was very irksome...

And he was quite wrong about the Vietnam war - read "Rape of Vietnam." (And much much else on the subject)... "Or Watch "Apocalypse Now" or whatever...

But the fact is people of intelligence (except the very right wing or those ignorant of history) are also almost universally agreed on the brutal, stupid and in the end useless, while very murderous, and fascist nature; of the US attacks on Vietnam and Korea. The other suspicion was that he was a CIA agent or agent provocateur but he may have just have been an harmless crank - I haven't read all you have written here yet.

The people in the PYM and at Resistance (taken as a group) were very well educated ... e.g. Dick Fowler and his mother... many others. Bill and Barry Lee went to my school so I knew the as teenagers. If he was arrested at Wellington - I cant recall him jumping the fence - I was there...but I know Shadbolt did go over - now he (Tim) was NOT in the PYM BTW - I am pretty certain only Shadbolt had the courage to jump the fence... if Titman was an agent he was not going to be beaten up by the police course. We know there were SIS agents (at least one in any case) in the Communist Party (I was not in it BTW )...

But I will read the rest of this later...

One point - I actually defended his right once to speak - he was not liked by anyone - almost more because of his obnoxious mannerisms than his (mostly quite erroneous and seemingly naive) views - he was personally very aggravating...and always flourishing his (clearly full of fatuous US propaganda "White Papers") .. The "drowning" (probably more a dowsing - or perhaps they were trying to baptise him!!) was probably a good idea! I didn't witness the incident... The PYM was loose group and very diverse - but there were many passionate and idealistic young people in it. But I doubt it was more than an angry "prank"...

Perhaps Titman was the Bobby Fischer (or the Ezra Pound) of politics in NZ!!

Richard said...

Point of fact - I see 1960 - I was thinking of 1969/70 - this may well be true then.

Richard said...

The above comment by anonymous can be dismissed as bilge and US Imperialist propaganda. We will leave it there but pass over the anti-working class traitor Titman in silence.