Posts by blindjackdog
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Oh, and yeah, "individualism" seemed about right. But would you mind if I went with "selfism" as a working title for now?
Don't be so selfist!
He's a real selfist prick!
Your perspective is so unbelievably selfist. -
i'm like a rash.
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The power and authority of facts (well, ok, alleged facts):
18 suspects and fourteen firearms
Yes, 18 suspects. Not twelve, or seventeen: eighteen goddamit, and fourteen firearms.
two days before the arrests happened.
Oh my God, did you say two days? Well if I'd know that. I mean, I thought it was like, um, well, a different number.
Perhaps it was the six different camps
SIX? Holy fuck!
and the hundreds of rounds of gunfire
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, hundreds of rounds of gunfire.
Now, please, if you have a heart condition do not read on. This next piece of data is so shocking, so disturbing, so utterly disagreeable to good thinking people and outside the realms of normal possibility, that we cannot even attribute a discrete quantity to it.
a number of individuals wearing balaclavas, listening to scanners capable of hearing ordinary police communications.
Indeed, a number.
WEARING BALACLAVAS.
LISTENING TO SCANNERS.
And:
instructions into military manouevers ... where individuals were taught how to ambush a vehicle, extract a wounded colleague under fire, and the counter-interrogations techniques where firearms allegedly pointed at the backs of fellow "campers".
It all sounds very camp. Though I've never seen a firearm point at anything: but if I did I'd be sure and tell him he was being rude.
So johnno, to answer your question: I'm prepared to be convinced that a few people were "training" for a war that doesn't exist and will not exist, and I'm sure they knew that too. Ever been to a dress-up party Johnno? You know that really you're just going to some flat to hang around and talk shit or whatever, but the dressing up part is such fun, it even becomes the real event. Maybe this playing dress-up in the bush involved "no good" in your eyes, but nothing that a quiet word or two in the right direction couldn't have put a stop to.
Now, will you answer Sara's question more directly?
You pretend to here:
Maybe it was some of these things that meant the police decided not to send in unarmed iwi liason officers.
And I really like the way you finish with that send in flourish, because, yeah, as you've shown, this was like hostile territory.
Sara's question was about why the police actions were so over the top and out of proportion. Your answer, as far as I can tell, is: "Well, they weren't."
Is that it? It looked like a war, they treated it like a war, kind of thing.
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blindjackdog begs leave to suggest that if the Maori Party are looking to win twice as many electoral seats as they'd get through their party vote, casting one of the latter in their direction is essentially "wasting" your vote.
Yet the dog also acknowledges that in an environment where we hate ourselves for dignifying the process by even taking part, a symbolic vote is not, perhaps, such a bad thing.
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And trying to subject claims of 'racism' to categorical evidence is equally insane.
I'm sure, Finn, that members of your family could tell you about prejudice and mistrust and forms of alienation expressed in intonation, bearing, gesture and careful attention to vocabulary.
'Racism' is not something that can be identified in a narrative of 'facts' (the playthings of lawyers), but is a visceral experience of being that includes the sanctioned messages of popular culture, the commodification of indigeneity, the attitude of a gaze, the eloqent tightness of a smile, or the self-conscious, ham-fisted friendliness of a liberal.
And while I find claims of Jackson's inflammatoriness almost incomprehensible, I do wonder whether the word 'racism' is simply too untenable to people's sense of dignity-in-decency to be of much value in terms of meaning anything (when people effectively refuse to hear it).
Equally 'neo-colonialist', 'fascist' etc.
Thus a challenge to the thoughtful folks of PAS: I want a word, unmudddied by the waters of historical/linguistic associations, to describe the kind of naive reductionism whereby we are all seen as born without a past, into a present without contingency, enjoying a future of equality. And where flagrant belyings of this view are denied by arguments that rest, as Wilson Harris put it, on "patterns of elegant tautology".
The word is allowed to evoke matters of gender and class, but not to the exclusion of colonialism, culture, language, and 'race'.
Onepeopleism?
Futurism?
Consensualism?
Deniestism?
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Surely you all can do better than me.PS Yeah, Neil, I'm a 'recent convert' to nigga lovin. But you know what they say 'bout goin black, right? Ah just wish ah could get me some a dat 'remedy' you's talkin about, cos my soul, it's in need a some healin....
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Nice. Thanks webweaver for saving me time.
"The public interest in fair trials is actually more important than the public curiosity."
Nice also.
Thing is, though, Kyle is living proof of the fact that you throw the T-word around enough and people actually start assuming it must be signifying something real out there, whatever the relevant legal opinion might say to the contrary.
I wonder Kyle: Would you scoff in derision at the suggestion that the unavailability of the evidence is quite convenient for the police because they thus won't be humuliated by how absurd that evidence actually is? While enough NZers have uncritically accepted their suggestions about terrorism, none of which have been substantiated.
Because I privately scoff in derision at your apparent belief that the police are not basically an arrogant, conservative, bullying organisation with enough power to think they should have more and should exercise for the "betterment" of this society.
But that aside, I think something we should really keep in mind (even if the law may be unable/disinclined to acknowledge it) is that there's a major major difference between one or two people doing something terrorist-like (ie committing arbitrary violence in the name of their ideals -- which is the only possibility I'm even slightly -- very slightly -- inclined to entertain in the current NZ situation) and a "culture of terrorism" whereby partaking in such activity (and accepting its concequencies) is a norm among a certain demographic.
Because I think public conceptions of the two scenarios have been clouded in recent times. And they're very very different.
Clouded by cops and irresponsible media, incidentally. (And as for the discussion of who actually said what, give me a break. The cops knew they only had to drop the word, for god's sake.)
Moana Jackson is a stunning example of a culture of patience and reason that belies this pathetic sensationalism.
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Thanks guys. Nice to feel welcome.
Think I've said my bit for now though. (It took all day to compose and was rehearsed somewhat vehemently over lunch to a couple of startled colleagues.)
But I'll keep reading along. Nothing like observing the communal mind at work.
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No Kyle, there's a third possibility, which goes something like this:
The police have strong evidence of people doing broadly irresponsible and probably illegal things with guns and possibly other explosives. They have effectively put a stop to these activities, and the Solicitor General lauds them for that. Fair enough, right? "Disturbing activities" or whatever the phrase was.
The police have further, less compelling, evidence of some degree of "organisation" or at least conversation along a vaguely "revolutionary" line. It proves absolutley nothing and would be laughed out of court, but the SG is professionally compelled to state that the police did the right thing in bringing it to his attention.
(Like the principle pats the prefect on the head when brought a list of all the third form boys sighted in the vicinity of the bike sheds.)
It's spin in the sense that it's the truth presented in such a way that nobody within the justice system is seen to be at odds. But that's simply the way such systems work. It's about presenting a broadly coherent and united front. But that doesn't make anybody corrupt or dishonest. Just careful with language.
Here's what I find disturbing:
Everyone seems to agree that the TSA was "incoherent" here because it was drafted for the sake of fulfilling NZ's international obligations re "the war on terror."
Now there's been an attempt to apply said law domestically and nobody's been charged.
And as far as I know there's no terrorism going on in NZ.
Yet apparently the TSA now needs to be redrafted to deal with NZ's domestic terrorism problem.
Although we never needed such legislation before, and it's only there in the first place because of our international obligations.
So these guys and girls were guilty of terrorism, just they didn't get charged, let alone convicted?
Cos Greg O'Conner says so?
So everyone who was "waiting before making a judgement" has decided that their judgement is: Guilty (only not, um, under law, but, you know, that's cos the law's no good).
Or something.
So, conclusion: There's active terrorism in NZ; bad legislation meant it went unprosecuted; if only we'd had better legislation you'd be seeing now just how freakin scary this stuff is; better get that new, improved legislation.
Yeah?
Am I missing something, or has the world gone mad?
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"I see as much misery outa them movin to justify theirselves as them that set out to do harm." -- Doc Cochran.
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In fact, Pita Sharples is one of the few who haven't jumped the shark.
It seemed to me that on Checkpoint he was simply weary with having to explain that this all wasn't about "law and order" and has more to do with a tradition of mistrust and totally grotesque displays of power.
And the brilliance of it is that it doesn't actually matter how the evidence "comes out" because the results are all the same: the rednecks will see the native savagery they're inclined to see; the moderates will see the healthy triumph of democracy and the rule of law; and anyone with half a brain will see manipulation of prejudice aimed at complacent acceptance of the status quo. (Because, as has been amply demonstrated elsewhere, it's grossly inappropriate to talk about fascist tendencies until you actually have concentration camps and genocide, and advocating any kind of critique of the current version of reality is foolish, naive, paranoid, patronising, whatever.)
And we'll all happily forget the pronouncement of guilt, BY THE PRIME MINISTER FFS, of those yet to face trial. (In a healthily functioning democracy that recognises the rule of law.)
Grow up New Zealand. Get reflective. Repeal the Foreshore and Seabed Act. Fuck rugby.