Posts by Simon Grigg
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Student radio used to be experimental, colourful, interesting, broadcasting for the peeps by the peeps.
Matt's a nice guy n'all but is there nobody close to target demographic and under 30 who could do the job? Maybe not. Maybe older is the target demo now. I dunno.
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But since we're talking great cover versions by English divas (and since this thread has drifted downwards from Malcolm McLaren to Elton John and needs some help to stay credible and afloat):
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Dire Straits - love, love, love.
Jackie, there is a line and you've just crossed it. We likely will never converse again.......
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Me, I blame Supertramp. And Smokie. And Queen. Even Sailor, a little bit.
and lets not forget that America didn't really get punk at all until they found Nirvana who were able to offer a nice corporatised version of it for the masses.
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The decision to protect the Emperor had been taken, and the victors would ensure that "their" justice would produce a suitable outcome.
And moved into absolute and final revisionism when the war in Korea, to protect a dictator who was little better than the one in the North, but was ours, demanded it and those who built the Japanese war machine had their guilt expunged were encouraged to ascend again by MacArthur.
It was when US military expediency took precedence over the lives of millions of dead across Asia in WW2.
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the kids of '76 should've reached the heights of cultural power and influence by now but 34 years later mainstream NZ culture is -- barring a few obvious examples -- more anti-DIY, anti-local, anti-community and anti-political than it was then.
I don't think there was any greater political meaning to '76 beyond 'you can do this' despite the posturing. Overwhelmingly it was just fashion and fashion moves on.
But a lot of people did do things. The whole indie label boom which I think thrived and continues to do so, and in a way the ethic which defines the internet grew from that era.
Besides, for most people growing up in the punk and post punk eras, their defining music was Pink Floyd and Dire Straits..y'know the people who now fill the National Party and scribble vicious little diatribes on KiwiBlog :)
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So yes, for me the pilot is the primary guilty party for it was he who pulled the trigger when he had the choice as a moral being to refuse to do so.
I don't think the WW2 trials allocated primary responsibility to those that pulled the triggers. They said rather than orders can not be used as an excuse to evade responsibility for your actions.
Nuremberg and Tokyo made it very clear that the primary responsibility for the more wide ranging crimes that led to those orders still lies further up the chain of command, as the sweeping indictments in those trials made evident.
And that's the bigger issue here for me right now..those further up the chain in the US have, for decades, sidestepped the responsibility for all acts done in their name, funnelling all responsibility downwards. Look at My Lai, at Haditha and Abu Ghraib. The fundamental moral responsibility that command implies, all the way to the top, in the USA, no longer exists. And when there is such a ethical vacuum in the chain of command it rolls downward with some force.
None of which, of course, excuses those who pulled a trigger.
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I learnt when I first went travelling that "you can make anything happen if you want it badly enough" - and although I thought I'd figured that one out for myself, in retrospect I think it was a concept that was already sitting in my brain, planted there by all the punk bands I ever saw, and ever loved.
Uhhh, yep, word....
And that, as I was trying to say in my clumsy way earlier, went very quickly around the world. We were reeling with the possibilities in Auckland by the end of 1976. Pretty much everything I did musically over the next few decades grew from that seed.
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but this is possibly the worst possible example with which to illustrate it.
I'm not sure if there are any good examples left. The militarisation of the US since WW2 to a place where the having performed service to the state now overrides the ethics of what they did when they were in uniform horrifies. I cringe everytime I hear an American say We thank you for your service.
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Washburn testified on a panel that discussed the rules of engagement (ROE) in Iraq, and how lax they were, to the point of being virtually nonexistent.
"During the course of my three tours, the rules of engagement changed a lot," Washburn's testimony continued, "The higher the threat the more viciously we were permitted and expected to respond. Something else we were encouraged to do, almost with a wink and nudge, was to carry 'drop weapons', or by my third tour, 'drop shovels'. We would carry these weapons or shovels with us because if we accidentally shot a civilian, we could just toss the weapon on the body, and make them look like an insurgent."
Hart Viges, a member of the 82nd Airborne Division of the Army who served one year in Iraq, told of taking orders over the radio.
"One time they said to fire on all taxicabs because the enemy was using them for transportation.... One of the snipers replied back, 'Excuse me? Did I hear that right? Fire on all taxicabs?' The lieutenant colonel responded, 'You heard me, trooper, fire on all taxicabs.' After that, the town lit up, with all the units firing on cars. This was my first experience with war, and that kind of set the tone for the rest of the deployment."
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"There was a tall apartment complex, the only spot from where people could see over our perimeter," Hicks told Truthout, "There would be laundry hanging off the balconies, and people hanging out on the roof for fresh air. The place was full of kids and families. On rare occasions, a fighter would get atop the building and shoot at our passing vehicles. They never really hit anybody. We just knew to be careful when we were over by that part of the wall, and nobody did shit about it until one day a lieutenant colonel was driving down and they shot at his vehicle and he got scared. So he jumped through a bunch of hoops and cut through some red tape and got a C-130 to come out the next night and all but leveled the place. Earlier that evening when I was returning from a patrol the apartment had been packed full of people."
There is so much of this stuff out there, backed up by people who were there and available to anyone with 5 minutes and google, to make any claim to the video being an awful exception or to the discipline of American forces inane.