Posts by BenWilson
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Whoever won the auction would be disappointed, because the revolution would never be as advertised, or the delivery would take a heck of a long time.
I can just see the trader feedback:
"This guy promised me a revolution then said he'd already sold it. But he took 3 weeks to refund my money and was really rude. Z--- never trade with this crook"
:-(
Response
"I never said I'd give you a whole revolution, just a rolling body. It was an unfinished project, I said so clearly in the comments section when dad4justice asked. Then you demanded a transfer immediately, but I'd already spent the money on another revolution project, so I had to flog off my ..." <truncated>:-( right back atcha.
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I love it when you get your gay on Craig
Me too, especially 'hold the gold, girlfriend, cause this bitch slaps back'. It's a beautiful image. I'm ashamed to say I usually just get annoyed by gay-talk, but when it's witty it's a different matter.
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It struck me today, hearing what people who got caught up in searches had to say, that the thing that really freaked people out was the cops were armed. I have to say when I first went to Ozzie and had my first dealings with cops there, the fact they were toting a pistol on their hip did frighten me a great deal. We're not used to it here.
I kind of agree with Craig when he says the NZPF enjoys extraordinary levels of public respect because it is open to criticism and scrutiny, not in spite of it but I also think that the police are more respected than feared here, and guns can reverse that quite easily.
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It's a good column by Trotter. But we're still in an information vacuum. Key's quite right in what he says - reserving judgement will lead to the highest chances of being right in what you say.
But we're still gonna discuss a lot of hypothetical issues. Violent protest, taking arms against the state, when they are justified, what levels of police action are appropriate, etc, these things can be discussed and will be.
I'm still thinking the fizzout is a strong chance, that Terror laws will not end up being used, and the biggest upshot will be some minor criminal charges relating to firearms and drugs. I think this because even in countries where terrorism does actually happen, it's notoriously difficult to actually bust anyone for terrorist acts which have not actually been committed yet. There is always the question of whether it's just tough talk, and that the accused might have actually changed their mind right up until the last moment.
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OK Kyle, fair enough. If what you want to know about is what those people think, then yes, listening to them is the best way to find that out. My point was that what those people think is not the only relevant factor in any decisions about the subject matter of what they think.
I don't know if I'll ever take up arms against the state. It would have to get a whole lot worse first, that I do know.
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Can't resist this:
The Christchurch Star, 17 Oct07, page A7, covered the 50 firearms recovered last Friday with no drama and a buried story in a free rag.
Must have been a big rag or some pretty small firearms.
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UNINTERESTED, please!!
I stand corrected on my poor Te Reo Pakeha. It's interesting that I could be both disinterested and interested at the same time. In fact I think that sums up all of my opinions on politics.
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Kyle, sorry I missed your response:
Does the story apply to NZ? No, at least not as far as I know. But I note Ben, you're applying your viewpoint to what other people should be doing and the choices that they should be making. They'll be applying their view of the world and given that they're the ones that are/have/could be making those choices, it's really their view that we should be most interested in.
I'm not sure what to make of that logic. Yes, I apply my viewpoint to my judgments, and so do others. If the viewpoints come out with opposite views, then it's quite possible one of the views is false. And I personally think it's the truth or falsity of the view, rather than viewpoint, that matters. Only on matters where there is no truth is the collection of a multitude of viewpoints the only way forward.
The question at hand is 'is violence against the state sometimes justified in NZ today?'. I like to think this has a yes/no answer. It's not 'yes, if you're Maori and answering the question, no if you're not'. It's yes or no, or you need a different question. Perhaps it could be 'Is Maori violence against the state sometimes justified in NZ today?'. Again, the truth of the answer is not dependent on the ancestry of the answerer. Nor is the question a Pakeha question because I am a Pakeha. It's just a question and it has a yes/no answer, or it's unspecific and needs to be rephrased.
The factors to be considered in answering it should naturally draw from many viewpoints. But there is not a 'viewpoint we should be most interested in', although I'm sure there is a 'viewpoint you are most interested in'. On this question my viewpoint probably is quite uninteresting because it's so damned common.
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3410, LOL, I'll stop if you do. You stop first :-) The outcome I was talking about was the NZ government suspending civil rights under Terror legislation, and I stand by my statement that only people who love violence for it's own sake would seriously want that. It's a hypothetical statement. If that was not a likely outcome, perhaps violence would be justified. Or if it was going to happen anyway. Or if it had already happened.
I'm probably not right about a lot of stuff, but I hope I'm usually accurate in my memory of what I said. Or perhaps I'm just the only one who cares :-)
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Repulsed? cos you're a smelly hippie who won't fight properly? :D
and
"repelled", surely.
http://www.allwords.com/word-repulsed.html
3410, I never said it was unjustified. After 13 years of studying various martial arts, I'm fully prepared to use them if the need arises. But the more I consider it, the less often it seems justified. Which is why as I've studied more, the less fights I've got in. Usually just bearing witness and saying 'stop' breaks up most fights. And giving in is an option, no matter how much it hurts the ego. I'd rather have a hurt ego than a hurt body, or to have hurt another body.
Stephen, I think repulsed is a good word. You want to put the other person off fighting by whatever means. You want them to think that what they are doing is dishonorable and not to their advantage. In fact, you want them to think, period. If that's achieved by being a smelly weak looking hippy saying 'be cool' then mission accomplished.
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