6 May 2005

Prufrocks vandalism costs him $1500

| bonfire
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I see mr Prufrock [Aidan Bruford] has been fined $1500 [ABC Online] for his artistic endeavours.

[ED – The Chief Minister is taking a more conciliatory line in these comments on ABC Online.

“Aidan lost his job, he’s now unemployed and he’s suffered a very, very significant penalty, so he has I think really taken a significant [blow], but I concede he brought it on himself,” he said.]

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It wasn’t “Loyalty to staff” is was a belief that the rules which apply to the rest of us don’t apply to a select group. determined as is convenient to the Chief Executive.

Personally I think that’s a big issue.

I didn’t have anything else to say on the issue until the CM put out his bizarre childish rant.

Oh, John, you’re hardly anybody’s father-confessor here.

Frankly, yes, he should have moved on from this – it’s not something that’s going to get better, no matter how much he talks about it. But, at the same time, it is kind of noble that he does show at least a little loyalty towards his staff. There are remarkably few bosses out there who’d do the same.

And it’s not as if you’re exactly “moving on” from this, either, are you? So what does that say about your soul? That you’re a typical journalist, and will chew away at anything without thinking much about what kind of effects it might have on people, and that the pursuit of the abstract “the truth” is always a good idea?

While the legality of the war in iraq is debatable, the worthlessness of international law in protecting the weak is well established.

Either way people will hold different opinions.

Aidan’s method of expression was fundamentally intolerant as he denied the property rights of others.

But it’s the CM’s inability to move on from this that has made it such an insight into his soul.

ahh i see – randomwanker is from the liberal bad labor good u.s. bad school. as i said – a softhead.

he has no real concept of the ideas and philosophys behind international events, no comprehension of the motivations of the various actors – he just parrots softhead mantras.

he still thinks its ok to damage a local businessmans property because of a causethat local businessman had absolutely no role in. why exactly should he be subjected to prufrocks criminal attention ?

only softhead logic, a nebulous and ever shifting furphy driven melange can answer that one.

Randomwanker2:04 pm 06 May 05

Sorry Ari, i should have known better. Your ‘way of life’, your way of thinking, is the best. Let’s assimilate or destroy all those that oppose it eh? That should lead to world peace.

Thumper: I wasn’t making an Iraq/Vietnam analogy, just using them as two examples of US violence.

Here we go with the moral equivalence, again.

Discussion over – pointless to continue.

Randomwanker1:28 pm 06 May 05

yes, I thought that would be your response. The ultimate moral argument. My view is that opposition to one form of extreme violence (eg. bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki, attack on Iraq) does not equate to support for another (Imperial Japan, Saddam Hussein, terrorists). All are idiotic fancies of juvenile political egos. But supporting one kind of ‘moral’ violence over another is tantamount to supporting all forms of moral violence. It just reinforces the “I know better than you, so I am entitled to kill you” idea, which motivated Hitler just as it motivates Bush.

I doubt if I’d change my mind, were Hitler and Imperial Japan to invade the ACT.

Randomwanker1:15 pm 06 May 05

Yes, of course, it depends. No doubt the ones that left were happy to see their political enemy toppled, and no doubt the ones that stayed (and have lost their livelihoods, their loved ones, and their homes) would probably disagree.

As for the SC resolution, you may think he breached, as did the US, UK and Australian governments, but you don’t get to decide, the UN SC does. They disagreed. That’s how international law is supposed to function.

I think you know of all the examples of US war. I think all wars involve tyranny and yes, i include the firebombing of Germany and the nuclear attack on Japan in that list. Where we disagree is that you think the killing of hundreds or thousands of people is ‘worth it’, and I think you would change your mind on that if war ever came to Canberra, whatever the political stakes were.

Depends which Vietnamese and Iraqi families you ask. I know people from both nations who were/are in favour of US intervention.

As I said earlier, Hussein had to comply with both destruction AND verification. He fudged verification so his neighbours (and us, incidentally) would be in doubt as to whether he had the weapons or not. This breached the UN Security Council resolution.

As for “assuming the US policy is never tyrannical” I don’t see that assumption in what I’ve said. Nevertheless, the US acts in what it sees as its best interests, as we would expect. Could you supply a few examples of it being “tyrannical”? I’ll take the old nostrums of Vietnam and Nicaragua as noted already.

For the most part US intervention in the rest of the world has been to the benefit of the regions involved (e.g. Europe in 1917, and again from 1942, Australia from 1942, the Marshall Plan).

Randomwanker12:50 pm 06 May 05

Ari, I was too young to know what was happening at the time of the Iran/Iraq war, but now that I do know, of course I was opposed to US policy, as I am opposed to any government that stokes horrific wars and feeds arms and money into the perpetrators.

As for assuming the US policy is never tyrannical, well you might want to ask certin Vietnamese and Iraqi families about that. They would be the ones that have lost everything as a result of some cock-eyed view that we know what’s best for them.

As for you bonfire, they should sign you up for the George W Bush propaganda bandwagon… no, hang on, even the staunchest republicans have now acknoweldged there are (and were) no weapons. Looks like you are on your own.

So you were against US policy at the time when it was propping up Hussein.

But when the US changes its policy and starts going after Arab tyrants you are against that as well.

Does that mean the best option is simply to stick our heads in the sand and hope it all goes away?

softheads often buy the party line and refuse to acknowledge facts.

there was a UN mandate for an invasion.

and as for there being no WMD’s, all i can say is that there is a hell of a lot of empty desert in Iraq.

Randomwanker12:38 pm 06 May 05

yes, there was UN authorisation AND there were weapons stockpiles all over the place. I think the tooth fairy was also recently spotted handing out 5 dinar notes to malnourished and toothless Iraqi children.

Randomwanker12:35 pm 06 May 05

But seriously Ari, the Iran-Iraq war? I thought ‘we’ were against the ayatollahs at that time. That was when Diamond Donny Rumsfeld was pictured happily doing weapons deals with “our friend” Saddam, so please, no crocodile tears now.

Agreed that the UN is irrelevant, but there was technically already a UN mandate, the argument before invasion was a political exercise to re-state the mandate and shore up support for the US-led invasion.

Boring references to the exact resolutions involved follow:

UN Security Council resolution 687 (1991) required Iraq to destroy its weapons of mass destruction and comply with verification. It seems to have done the former, but not the latter.

UN Security Council resolution 678 (1990) “authorized Member States to use all necessary means to uphold and implement its resolution 660 (1990) of 2 August 1990 and all relevant resolutions subsequent to resolution 660 (1990) and to restore international peace and security in the area”. The weapons of mass destruction and compliance resolution (687) was covered by this.

Randomwanker12:26 pm 06 May 05

Yes Ari, let’s talk about Canberra…. been to the mall lately?

“UN mandate for the attack on Iraq? No, sorry, maybe in 1991, but not this time.”

This is not true. There was an existing mandate to take action if Hussein failed to live up to certain undertakings.

He didn’t, but instead of just invading, the coalition went back to the UN to get an even more explicit statement (which wasn’t agreed to).

As for the claim that numbers of coalition-caused civilian casualties are approaching Hussein’s toll – that’s rubbish. The Lancet study (based on very flawed methodology) came up with a figure of 100,000. I don’t accept this as true, but for argument’s sake let’s just agree it is. The numbers of civilian dead under Hussein were in the 100s of thousands (quite apart from the millions killed in the Iraq/Iran war)- every week they kep finding more mass graves. Why not ask a Kurd or marsh Arab if life was better under Hussein?

Sanctions were not the cause of children dying, there were UN programs to provide medicines etc. These failed due to rorting at the UN and Hussein’s own diversion of money and aid to his own ends. One of the saddest stories to come out of Iraq since the war was the way Hussein forced people to keep the bodies of dead children so he could collect them for a huge parade in front of the media to pander to ill-informed western viewers.

Anyway, could we please get back to Canberra topics?

"I voted for a dragway"11:40 am 06 May 05

Bonfire, bonfire. Learn about things before you make claims. UN mandate for the attack on Iraq? No, sorry, maybe in 1991, but not this time.

As for freeing people from the jackboot of tyranny, if you do the sums, you’ll find that the US and allies are quickly approaching the numbers of dead achieved under 35 years of Saddam Hussein. In fact, if you count all the kids that died due to the decade of sanctions, you are way up over a million. Not to mention the boom in Leukemia and birth defects that have resulted since the wars began.

yay for freedom!

BTW, I have a new slogan for your website: “History will forget us, because we are forgettable!”

mong on. you are a soft headed idiot.

if freeing people from the jackboot of tyranny is wrong, what in your blinkered world is right ?

an army exists to enforce a nations diplomatic aims. our armed forces went and did that. along with many many others, under a UN mandate.

mr prufrock committeed acts of vandalism. he admits it, it doesnt matter what his reasons were – for all i know he felt sad cos his mum took his rubber dolly away.

Army of zombies.

I guess when Stanhope raises his own army and sends them to Iraq then it will be relevant to this website.

Stanhope COULD raise an army you know.

He’s also lost his job and has to pay a fine of $1500, as well as carry a conviction with him for the rest of his life.

Should’ve thought about that before he took the spray can out.

Not taking consideration of the (possible) full consequences of one’s actions is a sign of both immaturity and stupidity.

Randomwanker8:47 am 06 May 05

I love the way this gets twisted. Read the report: he accepts what he did was wrong and illegal. He paid the costs of cleaning. He’s been slandered in the media and on lame-brained chat sites like this. He’s also lost his job and has to pay a fine of $1500, as well as carry a conviction with him for the rest of his life.

And then certain people come on here and bang on about how that’s democracy and equality and that’s what the public wants, therefore it must be right. It’s a stupid media-driven campaign. It might have been titilating for Canberrans for a day or two, i can understand that, but the whole thing has been so outrageously overblown, as if it’s some huge issue of pulic morality. Give me a goddamn break.

Mong-on, I have no doubt that Mr. Prufrock cares very deeply about the war in Iraq. That’s not really the issue.

For instance, I care very deeply about a number of things, some of which you probably either don’t care about or disagree with me about (which, beleive it or not, is something people are perfectly entitled to do. Yes, people are allowed to support our continued involvement in Iraq. I know it may sound crazy, but there are people who do. If they wanted to spray paint on your wall “don’t abandon the Iraquis to get slaughtered again”, would you support it? Probably not).

That doesn’t mean that I have the right to spray-paint propoganda about the things I care deeply about on your personal property, just becase I happen to care deeply about them.

You can’t do whatever the hell you like just becuase you care deeply about something. The method is completely separable from the message. The only way Mr. Prufrock’s message would not be separable from his method is if he spraypainted “Everybody should be able to spraypaint wherever they want”.

Randomwanker8:31 am 06 May 05

Is this name OK, johnboy, you “unscrupulous person”?

There goes the moron relativist again. Just because things are similar does not mean they are equal.

And yes, you can, and should, separate the means from the end.

You’re a terrifyingly unscrupulous person.

My question was about the war, not about the wall. You can’t separate Bruford’s message from his method. Now about that war…?

And I proudly wear the crown you’ve placed on my head, but I thought we weren’t allowed to swear on this site?

Well Mong-On, he was always free to stand anywhere he liked and SAY whatever he believed.

Frankly, if you think vandalism of ther people’s property is OK as long as you agree with their reasons, then you’re a prize wanker.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Personally i choose to judge actions rather than motivations.

So very dated I know.

Thanks bonfire. I’m just pleased that Mr Bruford had the cojones to stand up in court and say that the war was wrong. How do you feel now about it? Enough said.

"I voted for a dragway"5:43 pm 05 May 05

Yes, and on the same day a number of drink drivers were given a mere slap on the wrist for their misdeeds. The magistrate wanted to “send a message to the community.” So much for equality before the media… I mean “law”.

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