Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Time to move on, in reply to 3410,
Presumably, the pun is meant to fit the crime.
Oh, bravo sir.
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Hard News: Time to move on, in reply to Joe Wylie,
I’m amazed that Bradbury has enjoyed any credibility since his claim back in 2007 to be down with the activists while simultaneously channeling the anxieties of middle NZ. I’m also mildly surprised that he wasn’t rounded up at the time on the strength of his dopey nickname.
He sounded off after some of the young activists spilled the beans to him. He was actually largely right about the evidence from police surveillance, but not about the middle-class outrage. The public had moved on by the time it got to court.
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Hard News: Time to move on, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
He wasn’t charged with that? So either those things aren’t illegal (do you mean ’ a grenade launcher or a flare launcher ‘ or ’ a grenade or a flare launcher ’?) or there was no reasonable evidence.
There was evidence given by the owner of the arms store. Kemara tried to contra off the purchase by offering to build him a website. The deal didn’t go through in the end.
And as I understand it, the same equipment can be used to launch grenades or flares. It’s been described both ways in reports.
Jamie Locket was also not charged with anything.
Largely because the police bollocksed up their case so badly. Given his past, he’d be the one I’d worry most about doing something stupid. If the affidavit is eventually released, there are a couple of interesting (non-terrorist) things in there.
Lockett’s weird mate, John Murphy, was never charged, but he said some interesting things to the Sunday Star Times back in 2007:
The Star-Times had a bizarre conversation with Murphy last week.
Murphy: “The police are listening to our conversation at the moment. But we’ve got members of our group, our foot soldiers, as young as 12, that are quite verse with the forest. They go to the likes of Kings Prep on the northern slopes of Remuera, they’re very well spoken and they’re very, very nice young men, and they go under the code of PT.”
SST: “What does that stand for?”
Murphy: “Just remember PT.”
Further attempts to draw Murphy on his involvement with Iti were unsuccessful.
Fuck knows what he was on about.
The young kids who were held at gunpoint by armed cops? The people who spent time and jail and were never charged with anything?
All the sympathy in the world for the former. Some, but not that much for the latter. They chose to get involved in the gunplay.
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Hard News: Time to move on, in reply to Grant McDougall,
They were acting the part, but there was no way it was anything serious. Sure, they might’ve said things, but there was no way they were actually going to do anything.
Well, apart from buying quite a few weapons and other military equipment and scaring the hell out of some of the people they involved. But I think it is hard to draw the line on how much you choose to ignore if you're the police.
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Just noticed that this thread is getting on for a quarter of a million views. Yowza.
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Hard News: Te Qaeda and the God Squad, in reply to Rob Stowell,
So the trial is over- we hope.
Quite. It will be interesting to see what the papers do in the morning, because in theory there could still be a another whole trial with another whole jury to prejudice. It could make commentary difficult.
I do hope the police don't proceed.
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Hard News: A fiction of unalloyed darkness, in reply to 3410,
I don’t get this. Why would anyone expect a theatre piece to be literally true?
Because it was presented as such by its author, both on and off stage.
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Hard News: A fiction of unalloyed darkness, in reply to bronwyn,
This article http://grist.org/media/mr-daisey-and-the-fact-factory touches on a point about what makes good storytelling: the building of trust in a particular, not necessarily “real”, world; and of course when that trust is broken, people feel very angry.
Although in the comments, it's striking that several people have been able to convince themselves that Daisey's translator is a stooge put up by Apple and the Chinese government. The fact of Daisey's confession doesn't seem to be an impediment to their beliefs.
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Hard News: The Vision Thing, in reply to nzlemming,
Anyone offering a pool on when this becomes ‘long considered National policy’?
Curiously enough, Maurice Williamson was touting such a policy in the months before National was bundled out in 1999.