Posts by blindjackdog
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Southerly: A Trip to Canberra with Alan Bollard,
I felt that the metaphor (in NZ dialect) was consistent with the dubious character of the narrator. Perhaps this isn't sufficiently clear (and let's face it, I'm wrong about lots of things) -- so sincere apologies if any offense was caused. I'll think about it some more while we're travelling over the next couple of days.
Comparison of two dissimilar things using "like" or "as"? Ms Crotchett always told me that was a simile. Guess that's why the metaphor's unhappy: it's trapped in a simile's body.
Don't apologise, Haywood -- it's a slippery slope (as parliamentary privelege allowed Winston Peters to describe Pansy Wong).
Next thing you'll be grovelling to all those erectilly dysfunctional radio sport listeners because of your casual and insensitive over-use of the f-word -- tormenting them with their inability to satisfy their wives' constant need for opportunities to assure them that they are, indeed, satisfied.
And don't think about it: while I'm sure you are wrong about lots of things, I also doubt that heavy, morally-clouded cogitating is going to relieve that situation.
On the PhDs, you clever kids: it's a surprise our universities haven't noted the potential profits they're missing: why not put a price on something that they're already giving away?
Unless there's no demand, I guess, and the current clearing-house approach bespeaks a product of no value beyond that of a slightly curious, antiquated relic -- about as useful as a five cent piece, but as cumbersome and embarrassing as a scud missile.
ps I do hope Cameron Bagrie can make a cameo with Bollard someday.
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'Salright Sara. Thank you.
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There was a young blogstar named Tze Ming,
Who'd write with the bite of a bee sting:
Hypocrisy's slayer,
Forsooth a truth-sayer,
We sure gonna miss all that she bring. -
I won't carry on this kind of discussion with the heartless. It makes me sick.
Heartless and mindless. Good on you Sara: I don't think anyone else is reading, and these creeps really aren't worth the effort.
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In addition to condemning utterly, and being sickened by, child abuse, may I say that I find murder a very bad thing indeed and express my gratitude for the invitation to make that radical opinion clear.
Actively plotting murder with the genuine intention of carrying it out is also a very bad thing.
(My facetiousness should not be taken as lack of sincerity, but rather as indignation at being [I feel] called upon to make such a manifestly unnecessary statement.)
As one who has practised it, though, I am reluctant to speak too strongly against the idle suggestion of killing someone one despises. I don't defend it: I simply have no strong views on something so vague and context-dependent.
An earlier suggestion by Russell that the accused have been represented as "heroes" I find difficult to fathom: I can't recall anyone on these threads expressing such a view. Personally, I have few heroes. Among NZers, perhaps David Lange was one.
There are essentially two conversations going on here: one related to the semantics of truth and information, which through translation and decontextualised representation have been rendered virtually opaque in terms of the topic under discussion; and one examining broader patterns of social and cultural behaviours. Some posters are more interested in the latter conversation, which they see as actually relevant to their own and others' lives; periodically, though, they are dragged back into the former by the snide pedanticism of those who are (self-)satisfied with cheap sophistry.
In simple terms (and I enter here the terra mauvais of speaking for others and offer all appropriate caveats) what Sara and friends are interested in is the FACT that if the same evidence was gathered "incriminating" a bunch of builders, plumbers, shearers and bus drivers, all pakeha, all living in Riverton, the police operation would have looked significantly different. And they're asking why.
As for:
Jesus Christ, Sara. Try and examine what you're writing.
You moved on from using the phrase without a shred of evidence to putting "cavity search" in quotes as if it appeared in some claim from an actual person. This is hysteria.
Jesus Christ, Russell. You accuse anarchists of being patronising? Sara's is pretty much the least damaging of the many examples of hysteria we've seen surrounding this particular issue. And frankly, "hysteria" is a dangerously loaded word, up there for thinking women with "fascist", "nigger" and "nazi". Best left out of the old lexicon of polite debate. Besides, Sara did say:
I am not particularly concerned that you accuse me of making up the cavity search. I believe the person who told me and she believes the accuser who told her.
Sara's merely entering the much-vaunted I-know-something-you-don't-know game, which has pretty much been the trademark of this discussion from the beginning.
the ridiculous meme that this was just some racist, Bush-fellating plot to put the frighteners up some uppity nig-nogs and tree-huggers
Craig, this is an absurd simplification and misrepresentation. Others may, but I do not perceive any "plot" as such. But the police/media/public (re)actions bespeak the disturbing levels of underlying racism within our society, whether you're inclined to notice it or not. The Bush factor merely points to the power of this term "terrorism", whether it refers to anything real or not. And the fact that some of the accused may have used the term themselves is merely, to my mind, corroboration of that, not any firm indication of their intentions (and that others would take their use of it as such an indication is even further corroboration). (Terrorists in this world are merely renegades: why don't we call them that?) And as for putting the frighteners up nig-nogs and tree-huggers, frankly, my less-than-active conspiracy alert has yet to come up with any compelling "motive" behind the gross display of state power that took place in Ruatoki. More frighteningly, I see it as simply the natural playing out of human brutality and mindlessness.
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Paternalism. There it was, all the time, staring me in the face.
Like a gun to the head.
Never had a gun to my head.
You?
Bears cogitating upon.
Course, not everyone gets to feel like their life's suddenly turned into a movie, which is the going definition, I believe, of "real and worth giving a fuck about", so they shouldn't complain really.
(For a moment or two, Patricia and the police shared something kind of special: Hollyreal. Until it turned awful and ridiculous and obviously sick, at which, of course -- nation of heroes -- the first person to show some fucking "leadership" was one of the captives, walking through the impotent weapons that were trained upon her, while their mindless masters wondered who would tell them what to do next: never know, maybe there'd be a reason to bash someone's head in; or maybe do a haka; or pass a joint; or whistle at some chick in a short skirt; or laugh hollowly in embarrassment -- please, anything, just get me the fuck out of here!)
Ach.
Paternalism a la JS Mill is one thing; but when it goes more Mark Lundy you gotta start to wonder.
Course, you know, those officers couldn't be sure. What would the public've said if they, like, let those people go inside for blankets and then they came out, nan and the kid (butch and the kid?), guns blazing, suicide bombing, all that.
Eh? Eh?
All very well to criticise, but they're the ones on the frontline of this heavy shit; they're answerable to the nueu zilund "people"; they gotta weigh these things up.
Cocksuckers.
Sara: yes yes, we have a culture alright: it's all around us.
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we react with a visceral, almost instinctual violence
Or with a head-in-the-sand acceptance of / blindness to such violence.
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The nearest I can get to putting it in a sentence is this:
Common identity - which we all, really, long for in some shape or form - is so fragile in this country that we react with a visceral, almost instinctual violence against agencies that lay claim to local identities that defy or belie or challenge the current myths.
That does seem like paranoia. Is it also racism? I don't think so; I think the racism, or selfism, thank you, comes later, finds expression, when the paranoia seeks to rationalise itself, moves to justify its anger.
So it's not really racism as such, because even as we speak it we don't actually believe it: but it sneaks out because it's the only way we can sustain our underlying belief that whatever we're feeling must be right. Selfism.
As I tried to suggest on another thread, on another day: the kind of racism we're talking about (subtle, institutional, consensual - not the hoods and lynchings, inveterate hatred kind - though we sure have that in NZ too) is not an experience of being racist; it's an experience of being on racism's receiving end (I think I was suggesting that maybe pakeha aren't the best judges of the existence, or not, of this). For the perpetrator it's something altogether different: merely the lonely manifestation of selfism's necessary identity crisis. Hence all the silly semantic disagreements.
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Well, yeah, Sara, you are alone sorry because I'm not sticking around.
But if you didn't see it and want to look, James George's (or George James's - can't remember) post in the first long discussion on this topic was quite worth reading re the conspiracy angle.
Sorry, can't be arsed trying to find it for you. It was a Hard News article called Te Qaeda and the post in question was around page, oh, I think somewhere between 7 and 12. Big long ramble, and he goes off topic sometimes, but it was pretty good. I think.
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Whole theme of Othello is how easily seemingly sane people can be misled if you know how to manipulate the signs that they believe in.
Looks like we've come full circle after all....