Posts by Joe Wylie
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Hard News: This Anzac Day, in reply to Sacha,
(Germany not properly defeated)
Are you suggesting that the conditions imposed upon Germany after it's WW1 defeat were excessively punitive? That seemed to be the dismayed consensus of Robert Graves and his fellow junior officers in Goodbye to All That. As a participant in the "Christmas Truce" of 1914 he ended his military career predicting that the extortionate reparations demanded by the victors of WW1 would eventually provoke another conflict.
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Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Paul Campbell,
Tremain’s latest (this morning’s ODT editorial cartoon)
Yeah well, these things tend to take on an "animal husbandry" tone once they filter out to the provinces.
Settle down, Cletus. -
Hard News: This Anzac Day, in reply to Hebe,
This household was woken on Anzac morning by a biohazard team stripping out the neighbouring house before demolition. I’m unsure whether to be peeved or pleased.
Heh.
I'd thought that Australia was a little tougher than NZ when it came to enforcing the sanctity of ANZAC proper, but it seems that Mammon must be appeased. From my experience of finding myself within earshot of the occasional Sydney Lower North Shore property auction, they sound like rabble-rousing political rallies on the verge of breaking into full-blown civil disturbances. -
Hard News: This Anzac Day, in reply to andrew gunn,
Bad taste biscuits, fake trenches, John Key – by all means call out these low hanging fruit, but really is that all you’ve got? I couldn’t spot many of the 25,000-odd in Cranmer Square this morning who were there for the glorification or entertainment.
Are you replying to someone's specific post? Because given the thoughtful and sometimes highly personal nature of much of what's been shared here, implying that it's little more than a bunch of petty gripes marching in lock-step comes across as a very cheap shot.
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Hard News: This Anzac Day, in reply to Hilary Stace,
Interesting how Peter Jackson and Weta workshops’ version of the War have become the new reality.
Indeed it is. It was the curiously North Korean aesthetic of Richard Taylor’s Rugby World Cup sculpture that first brought into focus for me how Weta had somehow become the arbiters of state-sanctioned capitalist realism. Personally I find the parallels between Weta and North Korea’s Mansudae Art Studio more than a little disturbing.
While Weta seems to enjoy a substantial popular goodwill I’m not aware of their being particularly philanthropic. Around a decade ago the Levin Rotary Club decided to mark their centenary by gifting a bronze statue to the town to commemorate the Chinese market gardeners who’d contributed to the district. Being good public-spirited NZers they naturally thought of Weta Workshop. I understand that the artist who eventually carried out the project did so for a fraction of Weta’s prohitively high take-it-or-leave-it quote.
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Hard News: This Anzac Day, in reply to Hebe,
Where are the tone police when they are needed?
Speaking of which, I felt that this fits well with the refreshingly BS-free tone of Russell Brown's piece. Glen Le Lievre from tomorrow's SMH.
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Hard News: This Anzac Day, in reply to James Butler,
People use the word ‘sacrifice’ a lot to refer to the war dead. The defining feature of true sacrifices, to me, is that they achieve nothing. No one says that though.
Every statistical casualty can be converted to political capital. In declaring himself to be a pacifist on ABC radio a few years back the Australian poet Les Murray explained that it was because he didn't believe in "human sacrifice". To illustrate his point he offered that "Even a crappy old idea like Britannia can start to look pretty good if you pile up enough dead bodies around it".
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Hard News: This Anzac Day, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I’m surprised Aldi didn’t jump on that bandwagon as well.
German veterans could become associate members of the Australian RSL since at least the 1960s, though I imagine that sieg heiling during the silence would have been frowned upon.
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Hard News: This Anzac Day, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Companies attempting to use ANZAC day to raise their own profile had best be very wary – overstepping the mark could result in an ugly backlash.
It’s happened in Oz with Woolworths.
They’ve been nibbling at the boundaries for some time. Twelve years ago there was a BNZ TV ad that played up the bank’s association with rugby. In what I recall as the final scene the camera panned along hallowed sporting relics such as jerseys displayed in glass cases in a clubroom. Just before the cut it stopped briefly on an array of portraits of what were presumably past sporting greats in military uniform. The implied connection was close to subliminal but, knowing something of how every frame counts in a 30 second TV spot, it couldn’t have been anything other than deliberately intended.
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Envirologue: What has Neoliberalism Done…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
tiny house design
Ye've only to believe in the little people.