Posts by Joe Wylie
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Hard News: Dropping the Bomber, in reply to peterpeasant,
How the hell did we wind up here via Tauranga?
You sound as if you're stuck on a submerged seamount.
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Hard News: Dropping the Bomber, in reply to 3410,
. . . makes you look like a craven opportunist, and not a very smart one at that . . .
Is it just the way he comes across, or are Crosby|Textor handling all his photo ops?
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to hamishm,
. . . he doubts the vessel would have had any “significant impact” on the situation.
Like the thermos flask, that most marvellous of all inventions that keeps hot things hot and cold things cold, while somehow mysteriously knowing which is which, Joyce just knows.
Tenth-longest coastline in the world but hey, who needs an emergency cleanup boat? Ffs.
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to 3410,
What is this yellow stuff coming out of Rena?
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Sacha,
Actually, the abortive mining in National Parks proposal seems to tap the same widespread visceral connection with the environment.
Did it what.
Despite Brownlee being used in his usual steamroller role, and David Farrar’s sneering attempt to portray the protesters as mindless dupes, it was white-knuckled fists to the panic button from Key’s minders.Smart
Like +++
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Hard News: About Occupy Wall Street, in reply to Simon Grigg,
I've often looked at very old people in China and pondered just what they might have seen across their long years. Much of it is likely beyond my comprehension.
And probably even more so mine, as I've spent less time there than I might wish to. Mo Yan's novels open a tiny dizzying window into a not-so-long vanished world that's probably almost as alien to present generation Chinese as it is to me.
I once saw a woman with bound feet in Penang. It was 1975, she must have been almost the last one left. Embroidered slippers, like hooves, giving her the aspect of a little grey-haired satyr in brocade jacket and pants. On a family outing with what were probably her grandkids, she scampered about like someone half her age.
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Though missing red zone items turned up at a demo firm’s salvage yard, it wasn’t them, it was looters wot got in first. Honest guv.
Outside the red zone, Sunday’s protest against CERA’s woeful lack of communication with orange & white zone residents will go ahead in the botanic gardens, despite “Council botanical services operations team manager” Jeremy Hawker’s huffing that the protest could not proceed without council approval and was probably not the right sort of activity for the Botanic Gardens.
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Hard News: About Occupy Wall Street, in reply to Lilith __,
“Colonisation” generally means a war against peoples who can’t hope to win.
One of the most intriguing things about the history of colonialism is how cheaply it was achieved in its early stages, with so little resources. For example, there's no way that the British could have taken India without exploiting the rivalries between squabbling states. Local factions could always be brought on side to advance their interests by facilitating the eventual foreign takeover.
Like so many postcolonial despots the Suharto family pillaged their own people while playing to the myth of the morally pure indigenous. Despite having overseen the murder and imprisonment of his own people on a scale that rivalled anything in his country's colonial past, the old horror had the gall to claim a shared history of victimhood from Dutch colonialism when attempting to buddy up to Nelson Mandela.
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Paul Williams,
I know of some good lawyers and law students who have a very, very poor opinion of Power. He’s viewed as a provincial conveyancing lawyer out of his depth . . .
I think I’m suffering from not being the country as I’m not sure what this refers too?
While it probably doesn't help, I heard almost exactly the same description used of John Howard in Australia in the 90s.
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Steve Barnes,
. . . we choose to go to the Moon because Deborah Coddington says there are people there.
Just as we'd almost forgotten the Yellow Peril brainfart she dry-humps the Glorious Dead.
A timely reminder that she'll never be house-trained.