Tuesday, September 22, 2009

It couldn't happen here - or did it?


As if their reputation as the nation's premier sheep shaggers were not enough, Lincoln University students recently decided to descend on a fancy dress party dressed as Nazis and as concentration camp inmates, and to play all sorts of jolly drunken games with batons and gags. As images of the weird sadomasochistic prank flash around the world and prompt apologies from Lincoln's vice chancellor, New Zealand Jewish Council president Stephen Goodman is suggesting that Kiwis need to be better informed about the Holocaust, so that they no longer feel able to trivialise the event.

The murder of six million Jews in Nazi concentration camps is something which humanity should never be allowed to forget. Fortunately, the Holocaust has not been forgotten: hundreds of books, movies, and television programmes attest to a continued preoccupation with the subject. Even treatments of the Holocaust and Nazism which leave much to be desired, like Stephen Speilberg's excessively stylised Schindler's List or Ian Kershaw's massive but insufficiently contextualised biography of Hitler, play their part in keeping the subjects in our consciousness. The story of the Holocaust is taught in many New Zealand schools, and is remembered by a museum in Wellington and a permanent display at the Auckland War Memorial Museum.

I am not sure, then, whether we can attribute the Lincoln students' appalling error of judgement to simple historical ignorance. The students obviously knew enough about Hitler and the Holocaust to stage their dismal joke. It is not ignorance of the Holocaust so much as a feeling of distance from the Holocaust which seems to have been behind the students' insouciance. For them, the Holocaust seems to have happened far away, in a very different world, like the obscure atrocities that Genghis Khan or Tamburlaine committed many centuries ago in vanished Asian empires.

It is possible that the Lincoln students' attitude is related to a tendency common to white settler societies like New Zealand. Whether it is American, Canadian, Australian, Caldoche, or Kiwi, the white majority in these societies has always resisted the importation of the concept of genocide from the Old to the New World. In his important book Telling The Truth About Aboriginal History, Bain Attwood argues that the descendants of colonists 'are happy to talk to talk about genocide in Europe', but that they erect 'temporal and geographical boundaries' to keep the concept out of their own societies. Genocide happens 'over there, not here'.
Yet Europeans have never been in doubt about how to characterise the bloodier parts of New World history. In the 1920s Hitler praised the way that the United States had dealt with its 'Indian problem', and promised to use similar methods to dispose of the degenerate peoples of Europe. When he created the first definition of genocide in the 1940s, the Polish Jew Raphael Lemkin cited the Tasmanian Aborigines as early victims of the policy.

Australia offers an appalling number of choices for would-be scholars of colonial genocide. Although John Howard and a coterie of second-rate historians have mounted a rearguard action against what they call the 'black armband view' of their country's past, the facts are hard to deny: of the roughly seven hundred Aboriginal nations which existed in 1788, when the colony of Australia was founded, less than two hundred existed a century later. Michael Mansell, a modern leader of the Aboriginal people of Tasmania, has noted that, in statistical terms, the indigenous peoples of Australia suffered even greater losses during the nineteenth century than the Jews of Europe did during Hitler's reign. Hundreds of punitive expeditions, many of them prompted by incidents as minor as the theft of stock, claimed thousands of lives. Mayors and newspaper editorials spoke openly of the necessity of 'exterminating the black race'. In the twentieth century the massacres slowly tapered off, as more bureaucratic measures like forced sterilisation and the removal of children from their parents were employed in the quest to 'whiten' Australia.

Other parts of the Pacific have also seen genocide, or something approaching it. On Kanaky, the Caldoche responded to repeated rebellions by driving the indigenous people into isolated mountain cantonments where they were allowed to starve in huge numbers. Many small Pacific islands which never experienced full-scale colonisation were nevertheless devastated by the raids of blackbirders, who dragged the healthiest young men off to work as virtual slaves on plantations in South America and Australia.

White New Zealanders are not fond of discussing events like these. In some cases, we have constructed narratives of Holocaust denial to account for the side-effects of imperialism in the Pacific. Instead of acknowledging the decimation of the population of Easter Island/Rapa Nui by blackbirders and pirates in the nineteenth century, for instance, we have embraced Thor Heyerdahl's absurd and racially-motivated theory that the island was reduced to near-ruin by its prehistoric inhabitants' contempt for their natural environment. Jared Diamond's fatuous bestseller Collapse has given this theory renewed public credibility, so that Green Party co-leader Russel Norman thinks nothing of citing the supposed irresponsibility of the people of Rapa Nui as a warning to the world in his speeches.

Pakeha reserve their keenest resistance for attempts to use the concept of genocide to understand aspects of their own country's history. In 2000, when she was still a Labour Minister, Tariana Turia spoke of Maori suffering genocidal policies during the nineteenth century; talkback radio phonelines rang hot for weeks, letters flooded in to newspapers, and fellow Ministers felt compelled to distance themselves from her. Turia's statement was a broad one, and it certainly did not describe the experience of every iwi in the nineteenth century, but it could have marked the beginning of a mature discussion about New Zealand history, rather than the beginning of the Pakeha equivalent of Ingsoc's Hate Week.

If Maori generally maintained more of their land and independence than the Australian Aboriginals, then this had much to do with their performance in the wars that punctuated nineteenth century New Zealand history, and little to do with the morality of the Pakeha. At least one of the invasions of Maori-controlled areas of New Zealand - Colonel Whitmore's incursion into the Ureweras in 1869, which saw villages being torched and crops being pulled up in a successful attempt to create mass starvation - resembled a larger-scale version of the punitive expeditions which were used to 'teach the natives a lesson' across the Tasman. Others military adventures, like Chute's brutal march around Mt Taranaki and Cameron's descent on the Waikato, involved unsystematic but persistent attacks on civilians and civilian property.

Government policy towards Maori was governed by the same toxic mixture of Social Darwinism and Christian civilising zeal found across the Tasman, and by the last decades of the nineteenth century the Pakeha colonist was as certain as his Aussie cousin that the indigenous peoples of Australasia were quickly dying out. The obelisk on Auckland's One Tree Hill, with its elegy for the doomed Maori, is evidence of the curious mixture of guilt and pleasure that the colonist felt at the prospect of inheriting Aotearoa from its vanishing natives.

The one alleged case of genocide which Pakeha do like to discuss relates to the conquest of the Chatham Islands by two Taranaki iwi in 1835. It has become fashionable for Pakeha opponents of Maori nationalism to argue that the enslavement of the indigenous Moriori people of the Chathams by Ngati Mutunga and Ngati Tama is an illustration of the genocidal nature of traditional Maori society.

While the Moriori certainly suffered genocide at the hands of the Taranaki tribes, who slaughtered and ate hundreds of their distant relations and worked hundreds of others to death, this genocide owed more to the social and economic system that settlers had brought to the Pacific than it did to any features of pre-contact Maori society. Ngati Mutunga and Ngati Tama had arrived on the Chathams after losing their own homelands to invaders armed with European weaponry, and they used their Moriori slaves to grow huge amounts of potatoes for the settler cities of Wellington, Sydney, and San Francisco. Although slavery was a feature of pre-contact Maori society, it did not normally occur on a large scale. Only the arrival of a cash economy in the Pacific made a permanent army of slave labourers economically desirable.

We should not remember the past in order to feel guilty about it, but in order to understand it. As Hans-Georg Gadamer pointed out, we only understand a past event or idea by relating it to something we already know - something that is closer to our own experience. The students at Lincoln University have not understood the genocide of Europe's Jews because this event seems to have nothing in common with the society in which they live. The Holocaust is something that happened 'over there', something that is unimaginable 'down here'. It is not part of their history. If we want to make the Lincoln students and others like them understand the genocide of the Jews of Europe, then we should talk about the bloodier parts of the history of our own part of the world.

103 Comments:

Blogger Edward said...

This is a timely post in my opinion Maps. The historical amnesia so rife in this country is a disturbing by-product, in my view, of a socially unwell nation. So much of NZ's history is either swept under the rug, or, worse, transformed into politically motivated drivel. As Victoria University Maori Department Head Peter Adds recently commented at the NZAA conference, 'it really is a national scandal'.
As you correctly pointed out, the students at Lincoln Uni know full well what the holocaust is, it is just that they don't really care. As abhorrent as their behavior is, it is our society which has helped foster it in the end. The same way it fosters the uncritical rhetoric about the only genocide ever talked about, and usually found on the tongues of bigoted fools, the so-called Moriori slaughter by "Maori and Maori alone".
Colonial countries like Australia and NZ need to have a long hard look at themselves in the mirror, as that is the place in which change begins. The alternative is more of the kinds of behavior the Lincoln students have disgraced us with.
Finally, while I will acknowledge that the forging ahead of time will have an effect on the ways in which we all acknowledge the past and can emphasize with it, I think your words that with history it isn't about feeling guilt but rather about understanding, are very wise and very apt.
I am glad we have you to articulate what some of us have trouble expressing. Thanks.

10:25 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

.. or maybe it says something about Lincoln and the yuppified generation which can afford to go there.
Sad. I used to think that education was the cornerstone of an informed demos or democracy. In JohnKeyStan it is money which talks.

10:44 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

what may have happened is the students got their validation to enact out their roles from Tarantino's recent film Inglourious Bastards - where WW2 and the holocaust is used as a setting for Tarantino to tell a stylised fairytale. It makes for uncomfortable viewing when at the end of the first scene German troops shoot machine guns through the floorboards of a French farmhouse slaughtering a Jewish family hiding there, and as they shoot the camera shot becomes obliterated by wood splinters flying up (you can almost hear the opening riff of Pulp Fiction playing behind it), it's not the sort of incident you want to see stylised.

So it's not unlikely that the Lincoln students saw the film, and thought that the subject matter is now fair game to be used for entertainment.

10:47 am  
Blogger Edward said...

Must admit I haven't seen the film yet, nor do I intend to. Call me precious, but it still seems too soon to let Tarantino anywhere near the subject. My poppa is still very much alive and fought in that war. I wonder what he might think of it..

2:08 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I thought the tasmanian aboriginals were extinct?

3:49 pm  
Blogger Jayne said...

There was a recent comment from an Aussie shock jock who suggested that one of our comedians should visit a concentration camp to lose more weight; there were the few ignorant idiots who couldn't see what was wrong with the comment, so with garbage like that in the general media there's no wonder the future generations feel no respect towards past suffering.

No, the Tassie Aboriginal Peoples were not made extinct , though not for wont of trying.
A large majority of different Indigenous Peoples throughout Oz were murdered and their descendants were classed as "white" while the official record stated that the tribes were extinct.
The vastly different treatment of Aboriginals in Oz to the treatment of the Maori still amazes me; no one would believe an Aboriginal if they reported a killing by a white person, Aboriginal People were branded as ignorant by the colonial media and discouraged from attending schools with white children (as late as the 1950s). In many areas this racial discrimination continues.

4:22 pm  
Blogger Richard said...

The treatment by whites of colonial peoples has an equivalence to the Holocaust.

These tragedies will happen again.

It may be that humans are inherently flawed.

9:46 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Human beings are inherently flawed, though I believe the point of education is to diminish that flaw. Perhaps the Lincoln mob’s actions are indicative of the narrow curriculum that has become part of university life. Adding ethics to their core subjects would probably be considered too expensive.

A while ago I attended a talk by a Tasmanian Aboriginal. He was blonde, pale-skinned, and only found out about his Aboriginal ancestry when his Grandmother died – he found a bible amongst her things and discovered she had been on a mission. The intriguing thing is that his inner sense/soul had always led him towards this part of his ancestry. He was always drawn to Aboriginal people, although his siblings didn’t feel the same. He was a history student too, eager to write the missing stories. Bless him.

11:45 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Agree with your comments re. NZers general denial of what has happened to Maori under colonisation.

But I also think there has been a rather sanctimonious reaction to this costume party incident. Yes, it was tasteless.

Just as its tasteless to have actors paid to dress up as Nazis for any movie which seeks to make a profit for its investors. Spielberg and others have been criticised simply for trying to represent the Holocaust, even with the best of intentions.

The carnivalesque mockery of party dress-ups has always been possibly offensive in somebody's eyes, whether it's transvestism, 'cowboys and indians', Osama bin Laden at the rugby sevens, etc. etc.

Transgressive laughter is always risky, but it can be liberating too. Just ask Mel Brooks about 'Springtime for Hitler'.

Unfortunately we can't ask Billy T. James for his thoughts...

9:43 am  
Blogger Jayne said...

Imrb - intentional or not the phrasing of your observations are racist and could be seen as being designed to discourage people from openly discussing their heritage, Aboriginal or otherwise.
Substitute the word "Aboriginal" for "Jewish" in your comment - would you still even feel the need to post your comment, let alone remark on the colour of the person's skin?

4:34 pm  
Blogger maps said...

Hi Jayne,

I appreciate your remarks, and I'm sorry you've stopped updating your very interesting blog, but I think it's only natural that someone should be surprised on finding that many Tasmanian Aboriginals are very fair-skinned. I was surprised when I saw that Michael Mansell had fair hair and blue eyes.

The fact that Tasmanian Aboriginals are often so fair-skinned is a testament to the ferocity of the oppression they faced. It's something we shouldn't be afraid to comment on.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there also an issue surrounding the authenticity of *some* of the people who claim to be Tasmanian Aborigines? Whilst Mansell and his Palawa group are universally accepted as the descendants of white sealers and Aboriginal women exiled to the Bass Strait islands, the 'Lia Pootah' group, which claims to be descended from Aboriginals who were not removed to the Bass Strait in the 1840s, has been treated with a great deal of scepticism by historians and Aboriginal groups, and currently does not receive government funds for its projects. Some of the leaders of the Lia Pootah have made quite dubious, New Ageish statements about Aboriginality that have annoyed the Palawa.

People like Mansell and historian Henry Reynolds have suggested that Lia Pootah members are descended partly from whites and partly from black convicts or Maori sealers, and not from a 'lost tribe' of Aborigines who evaded the round up and exile of their people by hiding in the forests of Tasmania. I'd be interested to know whether the speaker 'lmrb' encountered was a member of the Lia Pootah group or not.

6:31 pm  
Anonymous Keri h said...

Fascinating! I hadnt known that there were 2 differing groups of Tasmanian Aboriginal folk...commenting on light skin/eye colour is one of the things a great many Kai Tahu encounter: we had inter-racial relations from very early on, and while we (Kai/Ngai Tahu) know and accept anyone who is on the whakapapa, a lot of North Island iwi routinely poke borax at us - "While we were fighting 'em, you were fuckin' 'em" is *still* a relatively common sneer.

So, Map'c comments are quite pertinent...

incidentally, Kai Tahu were the first indigenous people to hold their own census (as far as we know.) The 1848 Blue Book -

7:26 pm  
Blogger Jayne said...

Hi Maps and Keri H,
It is a bone of contention here about skin/eye colour in Aboriginals or those of Aboriginal descent.
Tasmanian Aboriginals were originally dark skinned like mainland Aboriginal People (with obvious colour variations) but as European settlers began getting Indigenous women pregnant the lighter-skinned children were removed from their families to be brought up as "white" (right across the nation).
This is where the disagreements begin - because the Govt declared for years that "half-caste" children were "white" this is what has been drummed into the national psyche, with many a debate/argument over skin colour granting a person the right to claim their Aboriginal heritage.
There are many who believe that light skinned Aboriginal People/ those of Aboriginal descent have no right to openly claim their heritage and should keep quiet about it, this view is still aired in the general media with many agreeing and whipping up racism thinly disguised as "debate".
In effect, they want the whole ugly mess ignored so will do their best to discredit anyone who brings up our ugly history - if you're dark skinned you're too stupid to have proof to back up your claims and if you're pale skinned you have no right claiming your heritage or speaking about it.
The whole subject here in Oz is perched on a knife edge and it comes back to what was stated in the post - each country is happy to acknowledge mistreatment of people in other countries but not their own.

9:38 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jayne:
Perhaps I didn’t explain myself very well. It was racist attitudes that forced his family to hide their ancestry – that was my point. I was merely recounting his story, I wasn’t making my own observations, or making my own remarks on his skin colour. He was the one who spoke openly of his skin colour. The most wonderful thing was that he always had a sense of his Aboriginality - the thing beyond skin, the thing called culture that sinks in far below the surface. It wasn’t skin colour that told him who he was.

His story struck a chord in me – my former husband and I suffered racial prejudice during a long marriage. The different colours of our skin were what mattered to the many racists we met over the years. Colour didn’t matter to the two of us, it was just our beautiful love story that mattered. The only time colour mattered was when one of us got horribly sunburnt at the beach (and that was an attempt to bring some humour into this exchange, in case you missed it). My lovely ex and I met just after the end of the white australia policy – say no more, OK?

Maps:
I can’t answer your question, I wish I could.

10:31 pm  
Blogger Jayne said...

Apologies, Imrb, I took your meaning to be very different from your intended message.

12:33 am  
Blogger maps said...

Hi Jayne,

I agree entirely that talk of people not being 'real' Aboriginals because they are not 'full-bloods' is untenable. It goes back to nineteenth century European ideas of racial purity, and seems to have nothing to do with the way that Aboriginals themselves identify. We've had the same nonsense thrown at Maori over here.

However, there is a separate issue in Tasmania, which is that an entire community of people - the Lia Pootah - has formed, claiming to be descended from Aborgines were not deported to the Bass Strait islands in the 1840s. This claim is problematic for many historians, and for the descendants of the deportees, because it has not been clear that any Aboriginals were left on Tasmania after the deportation (though some did return, a few years later).

Many of the Lia Pootah claim that their ancestors escaped deportation because they were part of an uncontacted tribe that existed in the fastness of the Huon River region south of Hobart. Evidence for the existence of this tribe is slim. The Lia Pootah are very angry at the Palawa group, which brings together the descendants of the deportees and denies the existence of an uncontaced tribe, and even speak of being the victims of a new 'genocide' because they are not officially recognised as Aboriginal.

Many Lia Pootah claim, as lmrb's interlocutor claims, to have known instinctively that they were Aboriginal. Some have angrily refused suggestions they have DNA tests to prove their ancestry. The whole situation sounds rather messy.

The closest parrallel we have here in New Zealand probably involves the Moriori, who are another people who were pushed to the brink of genocide. There has been some controversy about whether certain people who claim to be Moriori have the ancestry, but it doesn't appear to be on anywhere near the scale of the debate in Tasmania.

Here's a link to the transcript of an ABC report on the subject which includes the opinions of some Lia Potah and also of Henry Reynolds, who is one of the great scholars of Aussie history and also a long time activist for progressive causes:

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/s659321.htm

12:49 am  
Blogger Jayne said...

Maps,
I'm only 40 and I was taught in school that all of the Tasmanian Aboriginals were wiped out; now a mere 20+ yrs later the truth is widely known that there are many still very much alive.
Something the Tasmanian Aboriginals fought long and hard to have recognised in the 'official' record and should appreciate the same struggle in others.

Extinction was claimed for many mainland Aboriginal groups, justification for taking away their traditional lands, etc, even despite the fact many Bunurong women (for example) were kidnapped by sealers/sailors from as early as 1809 and were 'wives' on remote islands in Bass Strait. These people were not considered Indigenous yet they can directly trace their ancestors back to the Bunurong People. Technically the Bunurong are still alive yet officially they were wiped out!
Many Tasmanian Aboriginal women were taken to be 'wives' to sealers on islands and mistresses to farmers, etc, on the mainland, not part of the group who were exiled to Flinders Island - do they get to claim their Tasmanian Aboriginal heritage or do they get disregarded, too?

Theoretically the Lia Pootah could very well have existed in hiding after European arrival but, as you're no doubt well aware, 'the victor writes the history' and without a written language (although that has come in for debate recently) and traditional oral language histories broken by the dispersal of the Indigenous People to far flung areas, whole facts and histories have been lost.

Like Caesar claiming that the Celts were a backward, ignorant people - when it's now known they were quite advanced and even recognised womens rights, going so far as to allow them to own and manage property, and vote (which horrified the Romans) and the fact Caesar did not engage them in battle to defeat them...but he was the victor and wrote the history (which was widely accepted for centuries) to favour himself and his country, wiping out the Celts' culture and history as it didn't square with what he'd claimed.

Anyone not dark skinned claiming their Aboriginal heritage gets mocked long and loudly here in the media with this just a small example, so with "official" Tasmanian Aboriginal People denying the existence of the Lia Pootah they would be getting very little support.
Hopefully it will be less than another 20 yrs before the truth is widely known and the question settled for good.

NB- I came across a reference recently to another 'new' Aboriginal group who some claimed didn't exist before 50 yrs ago in NSW, in regards to land rights being divided between the two Peoples.
Seems everyone lives in harmony until the mighty $ raises its ugly head.

1:06 pm  
Anonymous spam said...

Read some freaking history books maps. You call everyone a racist but you are one yourself. Genocide and slavery (happened or happens) between whites on whites, blacks on whites, whites on blacks, blacks on blacks and so forth. What about the native people of England? Will they get compensation from Rome from when the Romans slaughtered thousands of Gauls? Will Little tribes in Africa get compensation from bigger tribes who do the same thing? Will Maori IWI's start trying to sue each other for past atrocities committed against each other post and Pre European settlement?

3:52 pm  
Blogger maps said...

Which books in particular do I need to read, Spam? Just curious what you've been reading. Whilst I agree that no society should be elevated above any other, the 'X is bad too so let's not talk about Y' manoeuvre is often a way of shutting down discussion.

7:25 pm  
Anonymous spam said...

Well Maps, you could start by reading books about ancient history to get a full background. How is Thor Heyerdahl's theory absurd and racially-motivated? I've read some of his books so far, and he seems to have the up most respect for the Polynesian people? Is it because he talks about the oral history and traditions of Polynesian tribes? I know this is taboo in some certain circles because it points out contradicting evidence to to days 'proper history' of Polynesia. I guess if he had sailed from Asia in a fiberglass twin hull outrigger funded by Germans, his theory might not be so absurd.

Who said I was shutting down the discussion? I was just pointing out you seem to be quick on the draw to blame the white man for every atrocity that has happened in the world.

No atrocity should be denied
spam

11:45 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Spam, isn't there a hell of a lot of irony telling maps to 'read some freaking history books' and following up with 'What about the native people of England? Will they get compensation from Rome from when the Romans slaughtered thousands of Gauls?' You might want to look up Gauls on wikipedia.

And 'freaking'? Say fuck when you mean it, it's allowed.

7:59 am  
Anonymous spam said...

Well im glad someone picked that up. I used gaul instead of celt because i thought the usually celtic bashing would start. Maybe swearing is a sign of low interlect in some circles anom. and whos to say children arn't going to read it. Have some respect anom

8:38 am  
Blogger maps said...

Spam,

my take on Heyerdahl and Rapa Nui comes from archaeologists who study the island now - there's major research project based partly at Auckland Uni. They point out that Heyerdahl believed that the people of Rapa Nui were incapable of creating the famous sculptures on their island, because they were too primitive - that's hardly a glowing endorsement of Polynesian culture.

Heyerdahl felt that some earlier, 'advanced' race from South American must be responsible for the material culture of Rapa Nui.

Heyerdahl's theory that the Polynesians themselves come from South America has surely been rendered untenable by the DNA tests that show a link back to the coastal areas of Southeast Asia five thousand years ago.

We can also trace the development of Polynesian material culture from the western to the eastern Pacific - we can go from what is now Melanesia to the 'Polynesian triangle' in the central Pacific to the eastern Pacific, and then up to Hawaii and down to New Zealand, and see the connections between artefacts and also the linguistic connections. Maori and the other Polynesian languages clearly belong to the Austronesian family, which comes from the west -from places like present-day Indonesia and Malaysia - not the east.

The discovery of the bones of a Polynesian chicken in a cave in Chile a couple of years ago suggests that Polynesians made it to South America, which helps explain the origins of the kumara.

I don't think you can say that just because Heyerdahl made an epic sea voyage his theory is validated. DNA and the trail of material and linguistic evidence counts for more in my book.

9:50 am  
Blogger maps said...

PS thanks for the remarks on the Tasmanian Aboriginals, Jayne - very interesting. I'm only just learning about this subject.

I blogegd about the fragmentation of some Maori groups, as the Treaty process unfolds, here:
http://readingthemaps.blogspot.com/2009/08/should-moon-tell-truth-about-maori.html

9:55 am  
Blogger s. said...

I would love it if, when ppl talk about the 6 million Jews that died in the Holocaust, that they include mention of the 7 million others who were also killed -- including but not limited to gypsies, communists, and homosexuals.

10:02 am  
Blogger Edward said...

Oh the irony of spams assertion that Maps should read more books. Seems like spam is very selective in what he/she reads and is incapable of doing even the slightest research before, well, spamming blog sites.

As Maps points out, despite what you might wish, politics doesn't have anything to do with Thors hypothesis being rejected. Rather, it is that it merely runs contrary to all the other kinds of varied and sustained evidence.

As for oral histories being a taboo, I think you'll find the opposite. Every piece of reseach will usually have a background or cultural section outlining and examining the oral and cultural traditions. Of course, if your knowledge of how academic research is carried out and what the traditions say is based only upon sites from carpenters like Doutre on his 'celtic NZ' site, then of course you probably think that.

Anyway, at the end of the day what reason do you have to so vehemently argue something you don't fully understand. You make the claim, as is usually the case, that it is about 'truth'. But really, at the end of the day if you break it down it is about reinforcing your own worldview and beliefs. Such as it is, when reason and evidence wont persuade someone.



Stephen,

I thought they did acknowldge the other attrocities. In fact, i'm pretty sure they do. What's your point? (note: that prob sounds abbrassive, but its an honest question, not an offensive statement).

2:43 pm  
Blogger s. said...

Edward

"The murder of six million Jews in Nazi concentration camps is something which humanity should never be allowed to forget. "

My point was that it would be nice if humanity also remembered the murder of 7 million other non-Jews (gypsies, communists, homosexuals, etc.) in the same Nazi concentration camps.

3:48 pm  
Blogger maps said...

I think those deaths are remembered in various ways. I also mentioned the Gypsies but, at the risk of being pedantic, do the deaths of, say, German communists count as part of a genocide?

I would tend to understand a genocide as the attempt to wipe out a people, rather than a particular political party or class. Where does the figure of seven milion extra deaths come from? I'm not suggesting it's inaccurate, just curious.

I suppose that, in addition to the people who died in the camps, we could also count the incredible number of civilians died in the war Hitler started with the USSR, many of whom were of course not Jewish?

4:02 pm  
Blogger Edward said...

Stephen,

Ok. But I think in the context of this post - being a post situated around the Lincoln Uni students 'Nazi and Jews' party, commneting on the genocide of Jews during WWII is kind of the point don't you think? The students were belittling how Jews specifically were wronged as far as I can tell. I suppose they could have had a party systematically making fun of all of the different range of groups which were killed, but they didn't. So, I guess I have come back to the question again. What is your point? Again I mean that as an honest question. I understand what you mean I think: in modern pop culture (as it apparently is nowadays) WWII is usually only spoken of in terms of one group commiting genocide against another, while the other groups go unmentioned. But again, this post deals with a specific context which came from an external event (the party) and wider sentiment, rather than Maps denying other attrocities. In point of fact, Maps is one of the few people I know who has enough critical insight to acknowledge the wider context of WWII. So I guess I don't understand such nit-picking in such a context. Unless of course it hides some deeper opinion or sentiment perhaps? Hence my question as to your point.

4:57 pm  
Blogger Edward said...

btw I appologise for my over-use of the word 'context' in my last post. I'm having a rather odd day.

5:00 pm  
Anonymous Keri h said...

Thor Heyerdahl actually believed that a group of Anatolian/European stoneworkers were responsible for all the boatbulding/painting/carving/empire-creating/ travelling/innovations/discoveries that have been falsely claimed for Egyptians/South Americans (yes! That broad a brush!) o - and 'Polynesians'...

While I loved "The Kon Tiki Voyage" as a kid (I still have the copy my Nanna bought me for my 10th birthday) he was a nutter.

6:41 pm  
Anonymous spam said...

how do you all explain the luzia woman then?

8:06 pm  
Blogger Edward said...

Spam,

I would think we probably explain it exactly the same way as a first year archaeology text book would, seen as it is mentioned in them. It is hypothesised that 'she' was part of a wave of migrations which moved into the Americas via the Bering Straight. The same route, in point of fact, that is already a given archaeological fact attested by the evidence. Not really much of an anomaly there at all really. It is simply a question of chronology rather than super celts, or, 'gauls'. So, probably not really the best example of evidence to hold up as though it runs contrary to the scientific consensus, orthodoxy, or perhaps 'the man'. After all, populations are capable of moving in two seperate directions are they not? Besides, how do you account for all the evidence Maps spoke of?

So, I suppose, yeah, I think, we probably would in fact, just stick to the first year textbook. Sorry if that bums you out, as i'm sure you probably thought it was of such paradigm shifting relevance that only seekers-of-the-truth such as yourself would know about it or acknowledge it, but, alas, if you had bothered to do even the slightest research before spamming this site as I had recommended, you would know that even first year undergrads know of 'Luzua Woman'.

As I said, arguing a point when unequiped with knowldge about that point, merely shows you're not interested in learning, but merely reinforcing your own beliefs. No hard feeling meant, but come on. This is just silly.

12:49 pm  
Anonymous spam (maps spelt backwards) said...

nothing like this bums me out Edward. I can actually read and do research i do have 7 national and international qualifications just not in this area,i now very well about how the current theory on how 'She' got there. I mealy mentioned her because maybe 'she' (her race) is the 'inferior' race many Polynesians cultures have in their oral history ( Maori, and Hawaiian both state there were and inferior people living on the islands when they arrived) and before you start about then whole moriori issue i know about that too. Maybe 'she' was responsible for the kumera and other things from SA to the Pacific islands. have you thought about that? Just becasue i don't have qualifications in this area does not mean i am stupid. and the name spam is a piss take of maps. It is maps spelled backwards. You are right this is just silly, maybe i will talk to more open minded people who are not brainwashed to think inside the square

4:15 pm  
Anonymous keri h said...

spam has to be
a)a troll
b)a really stupid/and/or/possibly totally fonged person.
It's all a bit sad really, given the high calibre of Edward, Jayne, Maps & others' comments. And the general subject under discussion-

7:17 pm  
Anonymous spam said...

hahahahahaa you guys crack me up. as soon as someone questions you lot you attack their intellect. so thats the best you can come up with? who's the stupid person. not much intellect there kerih?. i'll leave you lot to pat each other on the back

This outlines you lot to the T.


"It seems that many scientists and authors of articles that disagree with mainstream ideas on prehistory have been repeatedly ridiculed and condemned for their work. Archaeological sites and genetic studies that have had the potential to upend mainstream views have been refused funding repeatedly. Conversely, graduates are given copious amounts of funding for doing research on subjects that stroke the ego of the professor in control of the program, creating an end result that is far from the truth. The longer these professors sit in their ivory towers ignoring the truth the more foolish they will become. Bizarre and obscure theories such as the 'fast train', 'slow train' and 'entangled bank' have confused the issue even more, driving people away from subject in a cloud technical jargon and misinformation. Unfortunately, as time moves on, legends, culture and language is lost and it becomes progressively harder to find the truth and easier for so called authorities on the subject to distort the facts, hide the truth and ignore areas of study which might debunk their own fragile hypothesis.

Although this website's main objective is to explore the genetic and geographical origins of the Polynesian people, in so doing, it has led me far back in history, leading me to realise that it is not merely Pacific prehistory that has been misinterpreted. Unexplained parallels between civilized societies around the world have perplexed researchers ever since the study of world cultures began. Supernatural or cosmic intervention has often been the only way such parallels could be explained, but it seems the answer is much simpler - sea trade. " From http://www.polynesian-prehistory.com/

7:27 pm  
Anonymous Keri h said...

That explains *quite a lot* spam/Peter.
I've bookmarked you on my nutter page.

7:39 pm  
Blogger maps said...

Fair enough, spam - alternative views about history and prehistory should be considered carefully. I don't think anyone here would disagree with that.

In my most recent post I talk, as a fascinated layperson rather than an expert, about the contest between the Out of Africa and the multi-regional theories of human evolution and dispersal. This is a live debate which seems to disprove the notion that mainstream prehistorians and archaeologists have monolithic views on all important subjects.

I don't know if you can complain too much about be treated aggressively. You turned up fulminating against me, I asked you to explain where I was ignorant, you cited my dismissal of Thor Heyerdahl, and I tried to explain why I reject Heyerdhal's ideas about prehistory, but you haven't taken up and disputed any of the points I made in favour of the theory that Polynesians came from the west, not from South America. This failure to engage may have led some observers to consider you a troll.

Why don't you clarify matters by laying out your own argument, or your own interpretation of Heyerdahl's argument, in detail?

I'm curious as to how this 11,000 year old skeleton supports the notion that the Polynesians came from South America to their present homes. Do you agree that eastern Polynesia, which logically ought to have been the first stopping off point for hypothetical migrants from South America, was only settled about a couple of millenia ago?

Are you suggesting that the skeleton you cited belonged to a distinct group of people who moved out into the Pacific before the Polynesians and were superseded by them, or are you saying that the South Americans who moved into the Pacific retained memories of a distinct people that remained behind on the continent?

Either way, how does this relate to Heyerdahl's claim that a race of whites built the statues on Rapa Nui?

I'm curiois, too, as to what relevance you think the Moriori have to all this.

7:44 pm  
Blogger Edward said...

Spam,

I don't really care if you have 7 international and national qualifications, that doesn't mean you have done your research on this, which, as I suggested, is pretty basic. If you had, as yet again you claim to have, you would know about a little thing called chronology (i.e. the dates for Luzia don't even match up with ancestral polynesian culture), archaeological evidence (i.e. there is no material evidence in the Pacific for a 'secret culture' before the Polynesian peoples - not a single adze, fish hook, midden or hearth, perhaps they subsisted on thin air and never interracted with their environment?), and critical examination of ethnography.

As for your rather uncritical interpretation of oral histories with regards to older inferior peoples which are not supported by any physical evidence, I suppose you should extend that to believing in the fairy folk of Ireland who were occassionally encountered, yet, mysteriously left no physical trace of themselves (perhaps the Irish equivalent of DOC is systematically destroying those sites too I suppose?).

As for 'her' bringing the Kumara to the Pacific, of course! All this time and it never crossed my mind that someone belonging to a culture predating the early pacific people by tens of thousands of years without the requisite marine technology to make such an excusion into open sea, at a time before agriculture and hence kumara cultivation had even been concieved of, who's culture is based on hunter-gatherer subsistance patterns, were the ones responsible all along. How foolish of me. Thank you for doing the sterling research and reading you said you've done, otherwise I would have been stuck for the rest of my life thinking that such a series of blatantly illogical inferences were wrong! Thank god we have seekers-of-the-truth like you to show us the error of our evidence based ways.

As for you not having archaeological qualifications, I never even mentioned anything about qualifications, let alone accuse you of being stupid. The vast majority of people I know aren't archaeologists, yet they don't make the blatanly illogical, fundamentalist-belief-fuelled claims you make. Further, like Maps, they are more than capable of critically reading through the literature to educate themselves which, apparently, is more than you are capable of. I suppose the 'Celtic NZ' website and others like it count as 'research' for you though huh? Not at all a bit one sided you think?

Lastly, as for your "maybe i will talk to more open minded people who are not brainwashed to think inside the square" statement. Grow a spine and stop trying to use the 'oh woe is me, here I was, simply asking honest questions with no ideological agenda, and the arrogant, brainwashed mainstream meanies are being harsh'. You are the one who came on here with your 'clever' piss-take name, telling Maps he was an ignorant racist and that you, in your insightful glory, knew the truth which you made quite clear was the only truth you would accept. In short, you had no intention of an open discussion, and certainly didn't approach it in an honest or humble way, but merely spammed in the usual ranting and raving way about things you know nothing about in order to pat yourself on the back and reassert your own racist belief structure. Here's a quote of the first line of your first post as apparently you are so terrible at reasearch you can't even read what you yourself wrote:

"Read some freaking history books maps. You call everyone a racist but you are one yourself."

Wow, what a wonderful way to open an 'honest' discussion with people.

Peace.

7:49 pm  
Blogger maps said...

I've just had a very quick look at the website spam gave the URL for - it seems to make the claim that a very advanced civilisation existed around the whole Pacific area about 12,000 years ago and was wiped out about 5,000 years ago, and that the Polynesians and some other Pacific peoples are partly the descendants of the remnants of this civilisation.

The ancient civilisation seems to have had a Caucasian element, and it was these people who were apparently responsible for the structures on Rapa Nui.

There are many other claims on the site, which are put forward quite breezily, considering their counterintuitive nature - we are told, for instance, about Phoenicians visiting Tasmania and leaving their writing and Egyptians visiting Australia and bringing home the boomerang.

Leaving aside the many other questions that the website raises, I wanted to echo Edward and say that I am more than a little confused by the way the site plays around with chronology. I don't see the relation between the ancient Egyptian and Phoenician presence in Australia and the ancient super-civilisation that supposedly existed around the Pacific. I mean, unless everything we know is wrong, the Egyptian and Phoenician civilisations came into being some time after the collapse of the supposed Pacific super-civilisation. So where is the logic in suggesting, as the site seems to do, that the Egyptians and Phoenicians either had contact with or were in some way part of that super-civilisation? Perhaps spam can explain.

PS Since Muzzlehatch was facetiously claiming at last night's book launch that I like to stoke debates on this blog by donning pseudonyms and stirring people up, I'd like to assert that Maps and spam are not the same person. I'm sure spam'll back me up on that one! (Actually, if he really were a psudonym of mine, he'd also back up my assertion, wouldn't he? Never mind...)

8:13 pm  
Anonymous Keri h said...

Was it "Holocaust" that was candyman to Peter d'y'think?
I am totally reassured by the knowledgable & temperate responses from both Maps & Edward- sorry, untrained but widely/wildly/ passionately knowledgable brain - which is always ready to learn- cheers! Mihi mahana!

8:18 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hehe this is funny. It has got me interested in Polynesia though. Never really thought about it to tell you the truth. What are good books and websites to read about the pacific history? i think spam meant that you would say the moriori where the inferior race the Maori spoke about

9:31 pm  
Anonymous Keri h said...

Since Moriori were, and are, of South Island Maori descent, what kind of point were you trying to make?

9:59 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i wasn't trying to make any point. i was just pointing out what i thought spam ment. i am maori. gees i think spam is right about you guys

10:05 pm  
Anonymous Keri h said...

That last Anon seems to have a very similar lack of spelling ability...just like spam...

" I am maori. gees" - really? No wai koe?

It might seem petty to pick up on this kind of stuff BUT -it can, if not called out, cripple really good sites.

11:28 pm  
Anonymous just asked a question! said...

Keri māhunga wai.

i simply asked a question and you did what spam said you guys would do.

** spam said...
hahahahahaa you guys crack me up. as soon as someone questions you lot you attack their intellect. so thats the best you can come up with? who's the stupid person. not much intellect there kerih?. i'll leave you lot to pat each other on the back




(so i may have spelt something wrong. i bet if you went through all the posts everyone would have too. sorry im not perfect like you


**
maps said...
PS thanks for the remarks on the Tasmanian Aboriginals, Jayne - very interesting. I'm only just learning about this subject.

I blogegd

(OH MY GOD! A SPELLING MISTAKE!!!!)

about the fragmentation of some Maori groups, as the Treaty process unfolds, here:
http://readingthemaps.blogspot.com/2009/08/should-moon-tell-truth-about-maori.html

9:55 AM

MAPS must be spam ( if we go by keri's assumption about spelling, and we all know what assumptions causes)

4:24 am  
Blogger maps said...

Oh fer goodness' sake. How about the substantive discussion, anon and spam?

As far as Polynesian books go, I'm not a great guide, because I tend to take articles out of journals, especially the Journal of the Polynesian Society and read em - it's cheaper that way.

The Doug Sutton-edited The Origins of the First New Zealanders is very interesting because of the way its contributors relate wider trends in Pacific settlement to the problem of where precisely in the Polynesian the ancestors of the Maori came from. I blogged about the book briefly here:

http://readingthemaps.blogspot.com/2009/06/twenty-of-best-or-bibliography-for.html

Michael King's fine book Moriori: A People Rediscovered is always worth reading if you're interested in that subject.

9:35 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

what about keri? she started it all. a bit bias there maps?

10:54 am  
Blogger Edward said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

11:17 am  
Blogger Edward said...

btw last anon, appologies if you are indeed not the same anon and spam character. It gets confusing when people use aliases all the time.

11:20 am  
Anonymous Keri h said...

Thank you, Edward.
That most articulately, authoriatively, & satisfyingly
vented my spleen too!

Teh intertubes are a wonderous resource (ooo! 1892-1992 of the JPS up there for free!) but people with a bee-in-their-bonnet can waste a lot of bandwidth-

9:11 pm  
Anonymous spam said...

very nicely said Edward. But still has not put me off. Why did you remove the post?

Just so you know this is from a mainstream site so you lot do get upset.

Here is a nice article about an Aboriginal Village. I like the last part.

Ken Saunders:
Well you couldn’t have a blackfella telling that story. So to prove it we had to have a white person doing the scientific research to say this is real.

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s993544.htm

And you call me a racist. which i am totally not.

And i suggest you watch the BBC Series The Incredible Human Journey ep 5.
it talks about a pacific crossing past the ice over the land bridge.

sorry if this debunks everything you have learned at uni.

dont worry i wont be annoying you lot anymore since you can't handle it

11:44 pm  
Blogger maps said...

Maybe you wouldn't be as unhappy as you imagine studying anthropology at uni, spam. Nobody would raise an eyebrow there if you asserted that Aboriginal Australians maintained extensive networks of eel traps and built stone shelters in some places. In fact, I recall an anthro friend who was writing an essay about the subject for a postgrad paper.

When I was in Aussie recently there was a tour company ofering to take people round the sites of ancient eel trapping complexes in the upper Darling area. I don't know why you imagine this is some sort of secret knowledge. Do you?

9:02 am  
Blogger Edward said...

Spam,

Firstly, I removed my post as I felt that while it felt good to vent my frustrations at your complete and sustained ignorance, it wasn't in the end a very constructive thing for me to do.

Thank you for posting a mainstream site for me. But I don't see your point. That aboriginals had semi-sedentary communities in some areas is well known, and is taught, yet again, in undergraduate text books. And, note I say some, as apparently, you put all of the varied indigenous groups in Australia in the same box.

As for your suggestion I watch the BBC doco, again, i'm sorry but you really do seem moronic as you continue to come back at me with very obvious and well-known examples as though they run contrary to the scientific consensus. A Pacific crossing over the ice land bridge...I have already mentioned the Bering Strait to you previously when you brought up Luzia Woman...You know, the land bridge to North America by which people moved into the Americas? I thought you told me you had done your research!? Well, obviously not as it turns out. How embarrassing for you yet again.

As for these two examples "debunking everything I learned in Uni", hahahahaha!! You obviously have less than no clue as to what we learn in uni. As I said, your two examples are taught in Undergraduate text books!! More of your 'sterling research' aye? And yet it just keeps on coming! Its like arguing with a fundamentalist with brain damage - even when I give you pointers you keep getting it wrong. I would have imagined with your "7 international and national qualifications" you would at least be capable of researching what a first year knows? Or at the very least doing wikipedia searches. I think I shall have to repeat what I wrote earlier for you as apparently you reading comprehension is pretty poor:

"
So, I suppose, yeah, I think, we probably would in fact, just stick to the first year textbook. Sorry if that bums you out, as i'm sure you probably thought it was of such paradigm shifting relevance that only seekers-of-the-truth such as yourself would know about it or acknowledge it, but, alas, if you had bothered to do even the slightest research before spamming this site as I had recommended, you would know that even first year undergrads know of 'Luzua Woman' [or the Bering Strait, or the eel traps Aboriginals used, or (insert pretty much whatever else you think you know that makes you feel special)]."

So, at the end of the day, yet again for the umpteenth time, you are arguing a point you have no even basic knowledge of, and reading selectively into what you wish, all in the name of reinserting your racist worldview. And yes, I do think you're a racist, as you keep bringing up irrelevancies to try and prove some twisted point that the indigenous peoples of the world owe all to some imaginary white ancient culture. You don't know what you are talking about, yet just keep on trying to argue it, so what else can we reasonably assume other than that you're a racist pseudo-science/history loving individual? Again, i'm embarrassed for you. I've 'debated' a lot of people like you, but I don't think i've ever come across one quite as ignorant of the most basic facts as you. Well done.

10:25 am  
Blogger Jayne said...

Maps I think what spam is getting at is the fact that the eel traps, stone shelters, etc, are little spoken of in Oz due to the conspiracy theorists.
I've had a few "excited discussions" (read heated arguments) with rednecks who claim these traps and shelters (and other similar finds) were created recently, that it is a conspiracy to create the false impression that Indigenous People were more advanced than they really were (not my words, the arguments used by dropkicks to dismiss the evidence).
I cannot impart to you how very, very racist this country remains.

4:38 pm  
Anonymous spam said...

you are all dumb arses! did i say the abo eel farm was a conspecy theroy???????!!! NO!!!! Stop putting words in my mouth!!! I simply like what the guy said about the legend acually being ture!! for fuck sake do i have to spell everything out to you self rightous pompus gits who have your heads so far up your arses you can see the back of your theeth!!! what is the education system teaching you guys at uni? not how to read and to make stupid assumptions thats all i can see. and as for the land bridge ed. they say in the tv program they used boats for fuck sake. IDIOTS

4:54 pm  
Anonymous spam said...

i will do a antro course just not at auckland uni because if you are the examples for the students there i not going there. MY background is I.T $50000 student loan top marks and i sure as hell am not a fucking racist!! another fucking assumption on your part! did i ever make any raciest remarks?? NO! the only thing i said was 'celt' and instantlly i am a NZ Celtic fuck wit! why for saying one word? CELT i never new that was such a bad word! if you are the type of people coming out of uni and are going to run this lovely country god help us all

5:10 pm  
Blogger Edward said...

Spam,

More of your 'woe is me' tactics is it? Here's what you said, so you can't accuse me of putting words in your mouth:

"sorry if this debunks everything you have learned at uni."

I merely pointed out that it did not, as do none of your examples. Further, I merely pointed out yet again that this stuff is very basic and well established.

As for the rest of your verbal excrement, well, if you had approached the topic with honest questions and were open to an honest debate than you wouldn't have met such opposition. I am open to alternative hypotheses so long as they are reasonable and backed up with evidence. Your assertions are not, and neither did you approach the topic in the spirit of open and honest debate.

As for your backpeddling on the eel traps etc. no one said you were saying it was a conspiracy, but you did quite obviously imply that it was something only 'skeptics' or seekers-of-the-truth like yourself knew of and accepted, and tried to hold it up as evidence linked to wider racist pseudo-science ideas such as the one in the link you provided, and that Universities are teaching us 'biased lies' or some such tripe. You can try and squirm out of it with definitions, but the content of your posts speak for themselves.

As for what uni's are teaching us, one thing is critical thinking which you are apparently lacking. And I think we've has enough of you "spelling it out for us" because, as far as I can tell, every single thing you have asserted has been shown false. Drivel doesn't really count as debate sorry.

As for the land bridge thing, again, while i'm sure somewhere in the depths of your mind, floating somewhere between the wind-up toy chimp banging symbols together and the other inanimate objects floating around in the black void, you are thinking to yourself, 'wow betty, i've really got him on the ropes now', but unfortunately for you, you've merely misunderstood and gotten something wrong again. Yes, they probably used some sort of simple boat/raft as it is likey there were areas of the Bering Strait which required marine transport in short bursts, but, and heres the thing sunshine, the context of such an occurance would have been sea travel with land in view in the same way south east Asia and western Oceania were settled. This is a completely different set of skills and technologies than those needed to go straight from northeast Asia across the largest ocean on the planet to the Americas. Get it? Oh, oh no, please don't stop, just keep on digging that big 'ol pit you've dug for yourself there, because, honest to god, I think i'll just collapse with dissapointment if you don't keep on keeping on with the embarrasing assertions you make. Oh, and the imbecille who keeps missing the point calling everyone else "IDIOTS" gag, hilarious. I really enjoyed it.

And, i'm sorry if you don't realise many of the ideas you've been so avidly defending are, quite blatantly racist, but they are. Hence my accusing you of racism. Celt isn't a bad word, it is the 'whites are superior and indigenous' bs that goes along with it in this context which is bad. The same branch of bs which you have been pedelling this whole time so you can take your 'i'm innocent' rhetoric and stick it up your white superior posterior thank you very much.

6:26 pm  
Anonymous spam said...

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA what ever you dick i dont care what you say as i will never meet you fuck wit go brown nose maps some more moron

6:38 pm  
Anonymous spam said...

are you too stupid to see i am using Social engineering

6:44 pm  
Anonymous spam said...

i will spell it out to you.

I read maps blogs
I did research on history
I found your weaknesses and played them against you

i hope you can work out the rest if you have the intelligence. I did this so you can get the feel of how it like to have your work criticized like you guys do to everyone else

6:49 pm  
Anonymous spam said...

and just so you dont read the wrong website look here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_(security)#Social_engineering_techniques_and_terms

6:58 pm  
Anonymous spam and anon said...

just so you know incase your head is still up your arse-

i was spam and anon ( last 3) but not the pacific pre history guy you guys assumed i was him because i posted his website. well keri did and you lot blinded followed like the auckland uni sheep you are

7:06 pm  
Anonymous spam said...

what do you say about that? are you going to blab more facts from your precious text books and call me a racist and what ever else i await your responses

7:10 pm  
Anonymous spam said...

and i am not maps or anyway affiliated to that self righteous pompous git with an honorary phd. who did you blow to get that? paul moon?? oh no he might condemn me!! i can see it now. "paul moon condemns spam"

and before you make more assumptions as you lot like to do, i am not anyway affiliated to celtic nz so you can drop that thought too

blog about that cock

8:21 pm  
Anonymous spam (your friendly hacker i wont hack your pc...yet) said...

come on ed maps and keri. i miss your stimulating conversations. Or cant you have one about a topic thats not in your text books?

10:13 pm  
Blogger Jayne said...

Spam, I think you're the one exhibiting anal retentive tendencies with an inserted cranium causing SOL.
Dear, sweet, naive little Spam...how I do love playthings such as yourself; cute wee things who are all shiny and no substance, blathering tepid air ( too much effort to blow hot) and not even enough of that to puff out a birthday candle.
Not once did I suggest you were rabbiting on about conspiracy theories, nor did I call you racist but now I am.
Your comment = "you are all dumb arses! did i say the abo eel farm was a conspecy theroy???????!!!
That word I placed in bold -that YOU used - is a disgusting name that has long been recognised as racist, discriminating, denigrating, disrespectful - shall I go on or do you understand English?
If you have the education of which you have been bleating then you would be well aware of the banning of this word.

10:17 pm  
Anonymous spam said...

im sorry i used that word. I was in a hurry as i am working on an security assessment and i am doing this while i wait for things to complete to pass the time. I like aborigines and indigenous people, i respect their cultures and knowledge of nature and their oral histories really interest me. thats how i came about the eel farm. I think its cool what they did. It sickens me to think what happened to them. My uncle lived in Aussie and told me how they were treated like animals, that really disgusts me

10:30 pm  
Anonymous spam said...

and as i said my background is I.T (computers) and my education is I.T based so i am bound to make mistakes. we don't cover English in IT. only computer stuff

10:42 pm  
Anonymous spam (your friendly hacker i wont hack your pc...yet) said...

jayne maybe before you jump to conclusions , and start abusing people you should read what they have said i clearly said my education was I.T ( information technology) aka computers, and not just pick out what you want to read. so as i'm your "plaything" and you love playthings like me, play with me then

10:52 pm  
Blogger Jayne said...

Education is education is education and basic manners cost nothing.
If you don't wish for people to jump all over you then can I suggest that you treat others the same way in which you would like to be treated yourself?
Or you may find your rudeness coming back to bite you, quite savagely, on your arse, sweetums.

10:59 pm  
Anonymous spam (your friendly hacker i wont hack your pc...yet) said...

well as i said i am doing this to pass the time. so what ever comes my way comes my was sweet cheeks

11:01 pm  
Anonymous spam (your friendly hacker i wont hack your pc...yet) said...

you there sweet cheeks? my ass needs biting

11:11 pm  
Anonymous spam (your friendly hacker i wont hack your pc...yet) said...

Jayne i suggest you read that link i posted. ill post it again
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_(security)#Social_engineering_techniques_and_terms

it will give you an insite into some of my I.T education

11:21 pm  
Anonymous spam (your friendly hacker i wont hack your pc...yet) said...

Here this is a basic overview

Social engineering techniques and terms

All social engineering techniques are based on specific attributes of human decision-making known as cognitive biases.[1] These biases, sometimes called "bugs in the human hardware," are exploited in various combinations to create attack techniques, some of which are listed here:
[edit]Pretexting
Pretexting is the act of creating and using an invented scenario (the pretext) to persuade a targeted victim to release information or perform an action and is typically done over the telephone. It is more than a simple lie as it most often involves some prior research or set up and the use of pieces of known information (e.g. for impersonation: date of birth, Social Security Number, last bill amount) to establish legitimacy in the mind of the target. [2]
This technique is often used to trick a business into disclosing customer information, and is used by private investigators to obtain telephone records, utility records, banking records and other information directly from junior company service representatives. The information can then be used to establish even greater legitimacy under tougher questioning with a manager (e.g., to make account changes, get specific balances, etc).
As most U.S. companies still authenticate a client by asking only for a Social Security Number, date of birth, or mother's maiden name, the method is effective in many situations and will likely continue to be a security problem in the future.
Pretexting can also be used to impersonate co-workers, police, bank, tax authorities, or insurance investigators — or any other individual who could have perceived authority or right-to-know in the mind of the targeted victim. The pretexter must simply prepare answers to questions that might be asked by the victim. In some cases all that is needed is a voice that sounds authoritative, an earnest tone, and an ability to think on one's feet.


Im still willing to be your plaything

11:23 pm  
Anonymous Keri h said...

Lemme guess:
Isolated acned semi- intelligent thwarted really dumb (o -look! it's coming up an Aspergers profile!)socially-inept & uncouth TEENAGER!
Gotcha Spam!

Word verif.: tudges what one does, sighing as yet another uncouth semi-coherent crappy post emanates from aforesaid -not really bright- juvenile- dutifully plodding through-

1:46 am  
Anonymous spam said...

look at what you have just said keri. that is an absolutely bias and ignorant backwards thinking hillbilly way of thinking. go and have a look at IT students these days. are they what you describe? i bet if you said that to them they would have something to say. what i earn in an hour more than what you will ever earn in a day. show how much you know. and plus im not a teen. You have to have years of experience to do what i do. Just shows how much you know. You make yourself look stupid. By they way you talk. You have to have maps and ed to back you up. Then you come up with some stupid post that does not even make sence.

7:13 am  
Anonymous spam said...

what word are you verif? (Word verif.)

explain to this 'Isolated acned semi- intelligent thwarted really dumb (o -look! it's coming up an Aspergers profile!)socially-inept & uncouth TEENAGER!'

so are you making fun of people with Aspergers and mental illness? thats very nice of you. Your as bad the the racists. still living in 1980

7:20 am  
Anonymous spam said...

Your just fucked off i shot you down.

which you will probably refuse to say, but it is in plain site for everyone to see Keri Hulme.

7:27 am  
Blogger Edward said...

Spam,

Yet more drivel. Social Engineering? You merely came on here talking shit. What did you expect. Not really a matter of 'I.T. intelligence' to know if you act aggressively with posts full of pseudo and racism you'll stir up a response. Although, i'm sure in that black void of a mind you think its some kind of important example of how you 'got us' again, just like your other amazing examples (cough, cough).
Also, you like to accuse others of not knowing anything about I.T., yet you sure as hell seem to assume you know everything about archaeology and history. I like to call that hypocrisy.
Also, trying to criticise Keri by saying you'll "earn more money in an hour than she'll earn in a day" is a bit irrelevant and stupid is it not? Who cares what you earn, where does money factor? You might earn more than all of us in the space of an hour for all I know, but at the end of the day you're still a knob end :)
Lastly, the only thing I see in plain sight on here is a long long line of your drivel and your refusal to acknowledge or answer any of the logical points or refutations we make against your assertions. You just tackle it head on by avoiding an answer all together and coming back with more retarded statements.
Don't get me wrong though, I've rather enjoyed playing your 'well planed social engineering game' (OMFG! haha), but its dragged on long enough. You aren't interested in debate or honest enquiry, so all you are going to get are well deserved insults, at least from me. So why bother?

9:03 am  
Blogger Edward said...

Oh, and by the way, for such an enlightened seeker-of-the-truth, social-engineering-genius, and I.T.-money-earning-wonderkind, its a bit lame you need to hide behind an alias. Makes me agree with Keri and think your even more full of shit than your posts show. Cowardly little ignoramus with the intellectual aptitude of a deranged squirrel.

Hugs.

9:14 am  
Anonymous spam said...

more stupid assumptions on your part ed. more drivel. did i ever say people had no idea about IT? Jayne said " If you have the education of which you have been bleating then you would be well aware of the banning of this word."

i was just pointing out what type of education i have even though i clearly said it was I.T before hand.


like i said if you had bother to take it in

" I did this so you can get the feel of how it like to have your work criticized like you guys do to everyone else"

i don't care about the topic. i am mearly keeping myself occupied while i work,like i said in my post. another one who only chooses to read what they want. If you can't handle what people don't post on a blog.

once again you have totally missed the plot ed. i never said i was a history expert. I mearly read while i work. show me where did i say "you know everything about archaeology and history." you lot think you do. and as the money factor goes i dont care. money is pointless. Im doing the job i love and get paid for it. i'll do it for less but i get paid for the work and experience i have

9:18 am  
Anonymous spam said...

this is boring. you lot will just keep on 'bleeting' the same bullshit.

you Marxist fools

9:33 am  
Anonymous spam said...

to what you said about 'its a bit lame you need to hide behind an alias.'

its called a Pseudonym

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudonym

many people do it.


best of luck in your cushioned little world ed

9:38 am  
Blogger Edward said...

Spam,

My what an intellect, to avoid yet again the issue and merely paraphrase what i've been saying to you all along (i.e. drivel, missing the point etc.). What's the matter? Used all your braincells up already so resort to copy and pasting other peoples phrases?
As for your usual tactic of "I never said..." again, your assumptions as to intimate knowledge of a subject matter which you know nothing about are more than evident in all of your posts. I'm sorry, but your lame attempts to define your way out of a corner are as common as mud with imbecile 'debaters' like you.
And you haven't criticised our work, as you haven't even been dealing with any of our work. You merely came on here talking shit. A criticism would have to be legitimate for it to matter.
As for you not caring about the topic and all your other bs about 'social engineering', I really just think you didn't know what you were talking about, kept losing arguments and getting shown up for the fool you are, and so decided to shift tactics to the old "oh, yes, I knew all along and here, I shall now reveal my master plan to which you all fell for! mwahaha!".
I don't buy it. And even if you were that 'clever' it is completely irrelevant and pointless. As I said, it doesn't take a genius to figure out shit stirring.
As for psuedonym / alias, who gives a crap, they have the same intent and you're still a cowardly little snot.
As for my cushioned little world, thanks, I rather like it in here, lounging around eating grapes all day long while sitting on puffed up cushions and getting bathed by servants. Of course I don't have it as hard as a multidisciplinary expert like you who earns 'a lot' of money per hour doing I.T. Wow, I bet the I.T. world is full of hard yakka, a really 'gritty' job.

And i'm more than capable of handling the rubbish which passes for a good argument from you, as you're so pathetically ill-equipped for this kind of discourse I merely find it funny. Your anti-intellectualism, psuedo-science loving, egocentric, and racist ideologies are bare for all to see. You can continue to snivel and squirm and define and drivel and back peddel and paraphrase all you like, but it doesn't change a thing. You are simply a troll with a small brain and a big ego.

A big 'ol ball of love and hugs sent your way spammy.

10:26 am  
Anonymous spam said...

thanks for you love and hugs there ed. i like your blog

http://theuncritiqued.blogspot.com/2009/05/new-zealands-hidden-story-of-super.html#comments

esp this comment dave said...
Shit Edward do you write childrens' books; the graphics would be beaut too!

May 9, 2009 1:43 AM

well i'm totally board of your banter. i do the same thing as you and you criticize me for it. how contradicting of you. oh well never mind. as i've said be for, i will never meet you and i don't care what you say. just keep this in mind, a good hacker leaves no trace that their victim has been hacked. now you will probably bleet on like the sheep you are that i have told you that i hacked you , which i did, i did this simply to let you know that the whole scenario i did at the beginning was fake. to get you to bite. and by work i mean everything you have worked to get to where you are today.

and as you say i.t is a really gritty job. who do you think keeps your bank records save at night while you dream of your sterile and lame text book ideas.

sweet dreams eddyboy

12:18 pm  
Blogger Edward said...

Spam,

No worries, you make me feel all warm inside, so I just wanted to return the favor.
I'm bored of your banter now also, as i've already spent too much procrastination time on being entertained by you.
As for you doing the same as me, I don't think so. But i'm happy you like my quasi-blog. Though quoting a comment on it doesn't really seem to qualify as hacking to me.
And I don't think you hacked me, but if you did then that just makes you all the more the pathetic looser you are.

As for "and by work i mean everything you have worked to get to where you are today."
I don't even recall you saying 'work' you numb nut. And it seems you have a god complex a little bit there 'neo'. Threatening people on the internet, what a catch you are. I guess that's why you keep saying "we'll never meet", because you're a spineless coward.

I've no issue whatsoever with I.T., but your brand of it just seems to be a nerd sitting around making up stories all day long about how great of a 'hacker' you are and how you can control everyone's funds. 'Sterile textbooks' lol, you really are quite thoroughly retarded aren't you?

Do us all a favor and crawl back to kiwiblog where you belong you complete and utter mouth breather.I'm over it.

2:33 pm  
Blogger s. said...

Yeah. That oughtta do it.

2:36 pm  
Anonymous spam said...

a successful hack then of social engineering then.

maybe we will meet one day. i might be that guy sitting behind you at uni one day. gathering information

2:42 pm  
Anonymous spam said...

whos the numbnuts?

spam said...
i will spell it out to you.

I read maps blogs
I did research on history
I found your weaknesses and played them against you

i hope you can work out the rest if you have the intelligence. I did this so you can get the feel of how it like to have your work criticized like you guys do to everyone else

6:49 PM


learn to read

2:56 pm  
Anonymous spam said...

and i guess by your ignorance, you never looked up that wiki page i linked. Here this will sum it up

"Social engineering is the act of manipulating people into performing actions or divulging confidential information. While similar to a confidence trick or simple fraud, the term typically applies to trickery or deception for the purpose of information gathering, fraud, or computer system access; in most cases the attacker never comes face-to-face with the victim."


bye bye eddyboy sweet dreams, i might see you at uni one day.

3:24 pm  
Anonymous spam said...

Oh how rude of me.

Bye DR Maps

Bye Keri Hulmes (Hope you get over that phobia of mental illness you red neck)

Bye Sweetcheeks Jayne


PS don't judge people by the way the spell, articulate or their lack of knowledge.

3:45 pm  
Blogger Samuel said...

Here endeth the troll-feeding?

3:11 pm  
Blogger Stephen said...

Anon at 10.47 brings up Tarantino’s film Inglorious Basterds, and Edward follows with “Must admit I haven't seen the film yet, nor do I intend to. Call me precious, but it still seems too soon to let Tarantino anywhere near the subject.”.

Film critics like Daniel Mendelsohn and Johnathan Rosendaum have commented on this film rather unfavourably, with the former suggesting the film turns “Jews into Nazis” and latter saying: “I’m waiting for any of the enthusiasts for Inglourious Basterds to come up with some guidance about what grown-up things this movie has to say to us about World War 2 or the Holocaust — or maybe just what it has to say about other movies with the same subject matter. Or, if they think that what Tarantino is saying is adolescent but still deserving of our respect and attention, what that teenage intelligence consists of. Or implies. Or inspires. Or contributes to our culture.”

However, I think this rigorous defence is well worth reading, in my opinion:
http://www.amoeba.com/blog/2009/09/writings-from-the-holy-texan/the-tarantino-solution-1.html
I recommend the film.

1:08 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think maps is right spam. There is no way polynesians came from South America. The Aztecs were way more mentally superior than polynesians. They used gold and built pyramids. They also had writing. Islanders only live in straw huts and eat each other. History 101

11:59 pm  
Anonymous jh said...

Bully Hayes, an American ship captain who achieved notoriety for his activities in the Pacific in the 1850's to the 1870's, is described as arriving in Papeete, Tahiti in December 1868 on his ship Rona with 150 men from Niue, who Hayes offering for sale as contract labourers.[13] The expansion of plantations in Fiji and Samoa also created destinations for blackbirders. The number of ships involved in the blackbirding trade resulted in the British Navy sending ships from the Australia Station into the Pacific in order to suppress the trade. The activities of the ships of the Australian Squadron, (HMS Basilisk, HMS Beagle, HMS Conflict, HMS Renard, HMS Sandfly & HMS Rosario), did not put an end to the blackbird trade, with the islands of Melanesia and Micronesia also suffering the predations of blackbirders.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbirding

Shocking how we were all involved and supportive of blackbirding isn't it Scott?

PS I take it your oposts aren't to be taken as serious academic work (as would be) subject to peer review?

7:39 pm  
Anonymous jh said...

While the Moriori certainly suffered genocide at the hands of the Taranaki tribes, who slaughtered and ate hundreds of their distant relations and worked hundreds of others to death, this genocide owed more to the social and economic system that settlers had brought to the Pacific than it did to any features of pre-contact Maori society.
...........
Yeah right:

I realise Keri Hulme says that Earle was writing for the wow factor of a home audience but:

1832 – Earle, A. A Narrative of a Nine Months’ Residence in New Zealand, in 1827
The scene I have just described brings into consideration the subject of slavery, as it now exists in New Zealand. That slavery should be the custom of savage nations and cannibals, is not a cause of wonder: they are the only class of human beings it ought to remain with. Here slavery assumes its most hideous shape! Every one they can effect a seizure of in an enemy’s country becomes the slave of the captors. Chiefs are never made prisoners; they either fight to the last, or are killed on the spot, and their heads are preserved (by a peculiar method) as trophies. Children are greatly prized: these they bring to their dwellings, and they remain slaves for life. Upon the number of slaves a chief can muster he takes his rank as a man of wealth and consequence in society; and the only chance these wretched beings have of being released from their miseries, is their master getting into a rage, and murdering them without further ceremony.
“On entering a village, a stranger instantly discovers which portion of its inhabitants are the slaves, though both the complexion and the dresses of all are alike. The free Zealander is a joyous, good-humoured looking man, full of laughter and vivacity, and is chattering incessantly; but the slaves have invariably a squalid dejected look; they are never seen to smile, and appear literally half starved. The beauties characteristic of a New Zealander are his teeth and hair: the latter,
in particular, is his pride and study; but the slaves have their heads half shorn. The male slave is not allowed to marry; and any intercourse with a female, if discovered, is generally punished by death. Never was there a body of men so completely cut off from all society as these poor slaves; they never can count, with certainty, on a single moment of life, as the savage caprice of their master may instantly deprive them of it. If, by chance, a slave should belong to a kind and good master, an accident happening to him, or any of his family, will probably prove equally fatal to the slave, as some are generally sacrificed on the death of a chief.
Thus these poor slaves are deprived of every hope and stimulus by which all other classes and individuals are animated; no good conduct of theirs towards their master, no attachment to his person or family, no fidelity or long service can ensure kind treatment. If the slave effect his escape to his own part of the country, he is there treated with contempt; and when he dies (if a natural death), his body is dragged to the outside of the village, there to be made sport of by the children, or to furnish food for the dogs! but more frequently his fate is to receive a fatal blow in a fit of passion, and then be devoured by his brutal master! Even the female slaves who, if pretty, are frequently taken as wives by their conquerors, have not a much greater chance of happiness, all being dependent upon the caprice of their owners.”
http://www.enzb.auckland.ac.nz/document?wid=300&page=0&action=null

7:44 pm  
Anonymous JewOppressionWillEnd said...

You guys are all frickin' crazy! The HOLOHOAX was just that - a big frickin' HOAX! Some jews died mostly by starvation - the allies cut off food supllies to the Germans and thus their prisoners were at the end of the food chain. Deal with the truth or FUCK OFF!

3:13 pm  
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10:48 pm  
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What a vast landscape! Hope you took lots of pictures.

The Memories Place

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