Ruminations on the eve of March 21st, 2019
So which is it? Is our now internationally-acclaimed Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern absolutely spot-on - in saying the former...or are the nay-sayers correct? How about this self-contradictory conclusion: neither...or rather, both. And at the very same time...
Technically, the guy was an Aussie...who, moreover, came over here with the express purpose of 'proving' that this kind of massacre/atrocity/tragedy could actually happen anywhere...
(Or at least once he'd arrived here he gestated/germinated just such a fiendish objective.)
So - strictly-speaking - he really, actually, isn't 'one of us', all the more ironic because that of course was why he targeted the Muslim folk he did; in his own mind, 'they' were not truly 'us'. Although it could equally well be the case that, egged on by endless *talkback radio discussion and the like, he simply didn't trust Muslims; supposing that, even if they'd happened to have been living in New Zealand for a long time, generations even, they were potential jihadists: Sissii Internationale sympathisers, even terrorists, in his own (very twisted) mind...
All fair enough suspicions, seeing as - surprise, surprise - we can't actually read his mind...nor would very many of us even care to, truth be told...-subterranean, cavernous sewers and cesspits never really being particularly inviting places to visit, even on a nice day...
*But so as no-one gets the wrong idea here, it's exceedingly rare, virtually never that I at least - and as an avid consumer of NZ's major talkback radio station, Newstalk ZB (in addition to 'Government Radio' or 'Radio Stalingrad', as some of its noteworthy detractors have ever referred to RNZ National), I happen to know whereof I speak - have ever heard what is in standard lingo referred to as (either) 'xenophobia' or 'hate speech'...though one (wo)man's hate speech or xenophobia ain't necessarily the next person's...
Indeed, whenever I've heard someone (usually a fellow) evidently about to launch out upon such a diatribe of dangerous 'drivel', the particular host invariably pushes the 'cutoff' button...something incidentally that usually doesn't happen whenever folk (including some hosts) on RNZ spout their typical anti-Christian, as in (arguably) blasphemous, 'Christ this or that or the other' abusive speech...but of course anti-Christian language doesn't apparently amount to such intolerable 'stuff'.
But having said that, my conscience reminded me, a little while post-our **9/11, that a number of months back I'd meant to - and indeed I might well have, but I don't believe I actually got round to it - 'inform' a particular talkback host that he ought to take note that certain statements either he or certain guests had made (around that time) ***could possibly be taken - by unstable 'minds', that is - and used for malicious purposes...but naturally nothing - remotely - of the magnitude, let alone kind, of what occurred in Christchurch upon March 15th was upon my mind when I planned doing such...
**As someone has stated, including on a (hitchhike) ride the other day when said driver mentioned how someone had calculated that if the kiwi tragedy had occurred in the U S of A the equivalent death toll would've been 3,200 or so (I believe, based upon my now calculating that 50 people out of a population of 4.75 million or so NZers is around about 1 in every 100,000 people...and so we come to America's own 9/11 itself, whereupon 3,000-some folk died. So if anything - and of course only in sheer numerical terms - NZ's 50 murdered equates to 3,500 or so in the United States)...
***Indeed, though the ****BBC item gave every appearance the other day of tying any and every instance, presumably, of low-level racist talk as indicative of the potential for NZ's recent massacre - obviously problematic in the extreme as such a thing, thereby implicating large proportions of populations in nations all around the world and moreover from time immemorial, as potential mass murderers, is obviously not only far-fetched but really rather slanderous/libellous and over-the-top to the nth degree - was soon enough countered by this particular former kiwi (now residing in Texas) herself...when she included this all so important caveat: that the individual concerned had first been radicalized...
****But in the (necessary) defence of the particular BBC journalist concerned, he was only making reference to how NZers themselves, or rather their media - had discussed the atrocity...i.e. in terms of such even low-level racism being suggestive of the possibility of such awful events. But insofar as kiwi media have themselves been only too eager to fall over themselves in thus conflating any and every such incidence of 'Islamophobia' into a potential massacre scenario, I'll have more to say both here and elsewhere in the not too distant...including a complaint I intend lodging with our Broadcasting Standards Authority following the (ongoing) implied association of not only the Trump victory and administration with such 'white supremacy', but - as often as not - the United Kingdom's Brexit...and that, to this fair-minded individual, is quite simply a step way too far...and then some...
So which is it? Is our now internationally-acclaimed Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern absolutely spot-on - in saying the former...or are the nay-sayers correct? How about this self-contradictory conclusion: neither...or rather, both. And at the very same time...
Technically, the guy was an Aussie...who, moreover, came over here with the express purpose of 'proving' that this kind of massacre/atrocity/tragedy could actually happen anywhere...
(Or at least once he'd arrived here he gestated/germinated just such a fiendish objective.)
So - strictly-speaking - he really, actually, isn't 'one of us', all the more ironic because that of course was why he targeted the Muslim folk he did; in his own mind, 'they' were not truly 'us'. Although it could equally well be the case that, egged on by endless *talkback radio discussion and the like, he simply didn't trust Muslims; supposing that, even if they'd happened to have been living in New Zealand for a long time, generations even, they were potential jihadists: Sissii Internationale sympathisers, even terrorists, in his own (very twisted) mind...
All fair enough suspicions, seeing as - surprise, surprise - we can't actually read his mind...nor would very many of us even care to, truth be told...-subterranean, cavernous sewers and cesspits never really being particularly inviting places to visit, even on a nice day...
*But so as no-one gets the wrong idea here, it's exceedingly rare, virtually never that I at least - and as an avid consumer of NZ's major talkback radio station, Newstalk ZB (in addition to 'Government Radio' or 'Radio Stalingrad', as some of its noteworthy detractors have ever referred to RNZ National), I happen to know whereof I speak - have ever heard what is in standard lingo referred to as (either) 'xenophobia' or 'hate speech'...though one (wo)man's hate speech or xenophobia ain't necessarily the next person's...
Indeed, whenever I've heard someone (usually a fellow) evidently about to launch out upon such a diatribe of dangerous 'drivel', the particular host invariably pushes the 'cutoff' button...something incidentally that usually doesn't happen whenever folk (including some hosts) on RNZ spout their typical anti-Christian, as in (arguably) blasphemous, 'Christ this or that or the other' abusive speech...but of course anti-Christian language doesn't apparently amount to such intolerable 'stuff'.
But having said that, my conscience reminded me, a little while post-our **9/11, that a number of months back I'd meant to - and indeed I might well have, but I don't believe I actually got round to it - 'inform' a particular talkback host that he ought to take note that certain statements either he or certain guests had made (around that time) ***could possibly be taken - by unstable 'minds', that is - and used for malicious purposes...but naturally nothing - remotely - of the magnitude, let alone kind, of what occurred in Christchurch upon March 15th was upon my mind when I planned doing such...
**As someone has stated, including on a (hitchhike) ride the other day when said driver mentioned how someone had calculated that if the kiwi tragedy had occurred in the U S of A the equivalent death toll would've been 3,200 or so (I believe, based upon my now calculating that 50 people out of a population of 4.75 million or so NZers is around about 1 in every 100,000 people...and so we come to America's own 9/11 itself, whereupon 3,000-some folk died. So if anything - and of course only in sheer numerical terms - NZ's 50 murdered equates to 3,500 or so in the United States)...
***Indeed, though the ****BBC item gave every appearance the other day of tying any and every instance, presumably, of low-level racist talk as indicative of the potential for NZ's recent massacre - obviously problematic in the extreme as such a thing, thereby implicating large proportions of populations in nations all around the world and moreover from time immemorial, as potential mass murderers, is obviously not only far-fetched but really rather slanderous/libellous and over-the-top to the nth degree - was soon enough countered by this particular former kiwi (now residing in Texas) herself...when she included this all so important caveat: that the individual concerned had first been radicalized...
****But in the (necessary) defence of the particular BBC journalist concerned, he was only making reference to how NZers themselves, or rather their media - had discussed the atrocity...i.e. in terms of such even low-level racism being suggestive of the possibility of such awful events. But insofar as kiwi media have themselves been only too eager to fall over themselves in thus conflating any and every such incidence of 'Islamophobia' into a potential massacre scenario, I'll have more to say both here and elsewhere in the not too distant...including a complaint I intend lodging with our Broadcasting Standards Authority following the (ongoing) implied association of not only the Trump victory and administration with such 'white supremacy', but - as often as not - the United Kingdom's Brexit...and that, to this fair-minded individual, is quite simply a step way too far...and then some...
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