Posts by Joe Wylie
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Hard News: War, now and then, in reply to Bart Janssen,
I know almost nothing about his experiences let alone his feelings associated with those experiences. He simply couldn't and wouldn't talk about them.
That sounds very much like the condition of so many NZ veterans. Beyond the shallow comradeship of the blowhard heavy-drinking RSA culture there was a sense of things that could only be darkly hinted at in the cheerfully determined postwar world.
In a way all returned soldiers are aliens in their own country, with experiences they're forced to contain. I'm old enough to remember the hostile attitude of middle-aged WW2 veterans towards a pacifist generation who "wouldn't fight the next war". Presumably these were much the same people who as old men at my father's RSA funeral were keen to unburden themselves in an almost confessional manner about what it was really like. But even then they'd shy from talking too specifically. We're so lucky to have avoided all that.
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Hard News: The war over a mystery, in reply to Ross Francis,
I'd add Philip Sturm, another case that glared false conviction
I must confess I don't know much about this case other than what's been reported.
Me too. If it hadn't been for Simon's expressed concern at the time I'd have taken the media coverage at pretty much face value.
While I'm not usually party to inside info on these kind of things, I'm still occasionally troubled by a story from a particularly unpleasant crime being investigated in West Auckland in about 1980. A normally discreet acquaintance who had regular contact with one of the detectives involved was sufficiently disturbed by his approach to unburden herself.
It seemed that the police were confident that they had their suspect, a Pacific Island guy who'd been doorknocking in the area seeking odd jobs. In the course of building their case they spoke to a supposedly good neighbourhood boy, an adult with a pronounced intellectual disability. Quite unexpectedly he told them that, while he had no involvement in the crime, he'd dreamed about it, and went on to reveal details of his 'dream' that only the perpetrator could have known.
He was eventually convicted with the help of what was at the time a groundbreaking forensic technique. The disturbing thing about the police attitude, though, was when the detective involved was asked if the police intended to apologise for detaining their Pacific Islander suspect, he was supposed to have confidently replied that they'd "get him for something."
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Hard News: Did Holopac change everything?, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Tupacrophilia
Precisely. Dug up & dry-humped.
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It's been a whole twelve years since reviewers gushed over the CGI of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within as heralding the dawn of digital actors replacing the real thing ("Why only the other week I was enthusing about the princess in Shrek"). Yet FF dropped from sight into some kind of uncanny valley, while Shrek achieved a sequel success second only to Toy Story.
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Hard News: The war over a mystery, in reply to Russell Brown,
The VUW psychologist Marianne Geary has a great presentation about the creation of memories through the kind of practices they used. They are the reason there are young people walking around today believing they were sexually abused at the creche.
Not to mention the very substantial ACC payouts made to alleged 'victims', in most cases before Ellis and his colleagues had even gone to trial. Now that St Elmos Courts has been demolished it's too late to check whether those ninja turtles reportedly seen on the fire escape by a young witness during one of Ellis's outings might have left any telltale traces of DNA.
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Southerly: Coming Up For Air, in reply to nzlemming,
Pagani is bac in the mix. #fail
Some mixes seem doomed to fail.
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Southerly: Coming Up For Air, in reply to Hebe,
the refusal to engage and deflection is a PR ploy got down to an artform by the Key government and its parts.
"Too busy" is currently being invoked by whoever's fielding new Local Government Minister Carter's calls. Interested parties got no part in the hustle.
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Southerly: Coming Up For Air, in reply to Sacha,
As far as I know, Mallard is still involved in Labour's strategy/comms. That needs to change.
Wouldn't surprise me if he farms the work out to his blubbery cycling buddy, who needs the work to pay his legal bills.
Denis O'Rourke at the Ilam candidates' meeting last November, where Brownlee was too 'busy' to show up. Of the half dozen present, he and the Greens' Kennedy Graham wound up in parliament.
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Southerly: Coming Up For Air, in reply to Sacha,
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Southerly: Coming Up For Air, in reply to Sacha,
I think I got that Sacha. In practice, O'Rourke has been taking the fight to Brownlee et al in a manner that would shame Mallard if he had a shred of principle left.
And BTW, whatever happened to poor old Clayton Cosgrove? Devoured by the cat that got Megan Woods's tongue?
