Posts by Rich of Observationz
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maintaining an adequate degree of transparency in a Western Democratic sense
A good reason to avoid going to war, if more were needed.
It's useful to remember that NZ avoided substantial warfare for 43 of the 56 years up to 2001. Britain did rather better, with around 48 years without major conflict (except NI) (my father had a long and successful career in the RAF without ever firing a shot in anger).
I reckon that's something we should aim to revert to.
[EDIT: Gulf War 1 and Former Yugoslavia]
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trained for those sort of scenarios at the armoury in Birkenhead
And not at the armory in San Francisco? NSFW! By a factor of N! I just typed the link, i didn’t click it. Be warned!
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These wild conspiracy theories do rather detract from some fairly demonstrable facts about the runup to the attacks.
The US government was pretty happy with Islamic fundamentalism in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, in corrupt client states (primarily Saudi) and where the fundamentalists formed a geopolitical buffer (Pakistan).
Several of the Bin Laden family were facilitated to flee the country on the only non-military flight allowed in the skies after the attacks. Pakistan remains in a wierd ally/enemy limbo (and if terrorists ever get nukes, the ISI will have been involved). And Saudi, from whence most of the money came, is still a special friend - their sloshing of ample bribe money around, some of which goes to western politicians, can't but help.
That's all very fully documented - isn't it a big enough indictment without making up stories about controlled demolitions?
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AFAIK if you want to have explosives nowadays you need an approved handler permit from ERMA and to be a fit-and-proper person?
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I have no real objection if neo-nazis want to play paintball with real live ammo and high explosives, providing they do it in a suitably remote area, and leave the wounded to rot rather than troubling the medical system.
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The courts don't seem to treat firearms offences all that seriously though, as long as the perpetrator is a white male without left-wing links.
This guy, whose offending (selling guns to (other) criminals) must have been at the very top end of the scale, got 21 months.
And this police employee got a discharge without conviction for having illegal machine guns hidden in his house.
Not to mention a certain right-wing blogger who keeps his gun license despite meeting several of the disqualifying criteria.
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Hard News: Everybody's News, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Chaos mate.
Anyway, the whole CSI thing is (like most other stuff) fiction designed to support an entirely different narrative, that of the infallibility of law enforcement in detecting and charging perps. In reality, those low count PCR things are equally likely to result in a match to the bloke who had a blow job in the toilet from a girl who bought an NZ Pure from a barperson whose day job is an ESR lab assistant but was a bit slack on washing her hands that morning.
Truly.
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Hard News: Te Qaeda and the God Squad, in reply to Andre Alessi,
There are a few alternatives.
The US has satellites that can intercept microwave spillage from fixed links between cell sites. The on-air encryption used by GSM has been cracked allowing eavesdropping on voice/text/data.
And I'm not that convinced that it wouldn't be possible for GCSB to install a "lawful access" box into places like France St that purported to only divert monitored traffic but in fact took a much wider slurp.
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Hard News: Te Qaeda and the God Squad, in reply to Paul Campbell,
There are no laws AFAIK that allow warrantless wiretaps.
However what I'd suspect them of doing is obtaining initial leads via (illegal) warrantless interception, possibly via another UKUSA state, and then getting a warrant for further activity.
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I guess it's possible they chose to leave at the end of their meal and we happened to be next on the waitlist but..
I hope you didn't deprive his protection officers of their donut course. You'll be a marked man if you did that...