Posts by Tom Semmens
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Hmmm. When I saw the new Supreme court my first thought was someone should mold in bronze some old pairs of sneakers tied together and hang them from the bronze work.
After all, you'll usually be able to score a tinny off someone in the building. If not from a defendent then definitely from a lawyer.
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The new Scenic Hotel Te Pania manages to be beautiful and curvy and of its beachside location without the need for fibreglass sunbursts or chevrons.
Yeah that's not bad and benefits from being away from most other buildings so there no direct contrast with Art Deco.
You guys are joking, right? That hotel is an epic fail of the basic kind - function. That one would build a glass wall that faces the rising sun and not consider airconditioning as an essential component calls into question the general competence of the architects who designed it; From the Marine Parade road front the hotel presents a somewhat tatty wall of discolouring curtains and strapped on aircon units. One is left suspecting the curve is a happy accident of shoddy concrete pouring, not deliberate design intent.
The Art Deco Trust has killed architecture in Napier, so that everything that is built must be a pastiche of a pastiche.
Well, possibly. But at least it has allowed Napier to have a debate about architecture in it's CBD. The way the Napier City Council treats other aspects of it's local architectural heritage probably more accurately reflects the fact Napier is the hometown of two notable provincial barbarians that have made it to the national stage, Anne Tolley and Chris Tremain. Anything not Art Deco (and therefore recognised as valuable) is knocked down. In particular the California-style bungalow, the iconic housing style I recall from the endless summers of my youth in Napier, are knocked down without pause for thought.
The Napier architectural curse was and is, of course, Paris Magdalinos. He built a couple of half decent places that had some merit. But when the locals woke up to the possibility of some actual contemporary architectural merit in their midst their subsequent aping of his style merely reinforced the truism that provincials are, well, provincial. Most of what has been produced is in a truly hideous, uniform style. If one were to take most of these monstrosities (one hesitates to call them "houses"), re-locate them to the Pas-de-Calais and put a 155mm gun in the lounge then they would look much more at home as part of the crumbling remnants of Hitler's Atlantic wall.
If you want to see a particularly good example of blind Kiwi architectural vandalism, where economic, cultural, and architectural philistinism comes together in form and function, check out Napier's Charles Street and especially West Shore Esplanade. West Shore beach is itself a victim of environmental vandalism of the Port Company, which was never held to account by a council to terrified to upset a major local business. Where once was a beautiful,classically Kiwi seaside street of 1930's and 1940's weatherboard bungalows there is now a monument to ostentatious bad taste, full of aspirational kitsch "Magdalinos" McMansions that I regard as an abomination, but is probably peopled with John Key's base.
The barbarians of West Shore have stolen my childhood.
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This is terribly interesting to me, largely because to me the replies show how quickly any person attempting to start a rational discussion is shouted by an virtual lynch mob of people who have little idea what they are talking about beyond a kneejerk dislike of guns.
but rather as a literal call to arms including the vague suggestion that "disloyal" overseas Chinese populations were somehow part of the military threat.
So... saying we need a national security about China, its goals and ambitions and whether or not we should think about rearming is a call to arms? Don't be stupid.
Kieth - what form would such a conflict take? Paul Buchanan noted in 2007 that Chinese ambitions clash directly with the United States' outer two defence perimeters in the Pacific. We are therefore likely to see much greater proxy clashes in this region. A scenario might be a military intervention to topple the Suva dictatorship if Washington got wind of a deal to allow China to build a Naval base at Nandi. Currently we don't have the military power to make the forcible removal of Bainimarama an option. Should we? Should we use military force to prevent the establishment of Chinese military outposts in the South West Pacific? Or how would we defend our fisheries from aggressive Chinese fishing fleets?
Second point - I think China is an unreformed corrupt one party state run by people whose thinking about realpolitik is still in the mid-twentieth century. China has big problems that it leadership seems to think it can assuage through economic growth. At the moment that is progressing peacefully, but that growth cannot be infinte, especially for 1.3 billion people, and given China's growing power we have to ask ourselves if the Chinese regime won't resort to simply taking what it needs if it is powerful enough to do so.
3) Who do you think “they” are?
From what I read, the Chinese government can turn a shrill nationalism on and off like a tap. A common view of Chinese seems to think freedom of expression mean "never criticise China". It often seems to be never very far from the surface. Given China's intolerance of dissent that shrill nationalism is rightly a cause of concern to smaller powers like New Zealand.
I have no doubt no one in China wants a war, but to quote Admiral Fisher - "all nations want peace, as long as it is a peace that suits them."
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Oh dear, good old PublicAddress, eh? Dissenting POV's welcome, as long as they don't actually dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy...
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And before you start flinging more insults, my Grandfather was with the Maori battalion during the 2nd World War, so stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
And my family has left dead at Gallipoli, Passchendaele, the Western Desert and in Bomber command, so what is your point?
Unlike what seems to be popular media perception these days, the Maori battalion wasn't the sole New Zealand combat formation in WWII.
And I stand by my comment only a fool would regard a Chinese hegemon as even equal to that of the United States. China is a brutal, repressive, totalitarian state that routinely suppresses freedom of expression and has amongst the worst human rights record on the planet.
I am not entirely sure why it is such a crime to point out the growing threat of China in its current form, except that maybe it is a message a lot of New Zealanders don't want to hear.
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Oh, like casually slagging off immigrants from China as disloyal? Yep, pretty speedy.
Yes, I do happen to think China has an active policy of using migration of pro-Beijing Chinese to create reasons for interventions in other nations internal affairs.
And if I had a working fusion plant and a pony I could supply clean electricity to the entire country, too.
You illustrate one of the big problems in trying to debate defence issues in the wake of the "deep peace" that the defeat of Imperial Japan and subsequent conversion of the Pacific into an American lake has created. Namely, the crass ignorance of almost all New Zealanders to the nature of modern warfare.
Warfare today has little to do with numbers. Modern weapons allow even small numbers of advanced weapon systems to inflict devastating damage. The key lesson of the Falkland's war was that warships are almost completely defenceless in the face of modern air attack and have no defence whatsoever from nuclear powered attack submarines.
As an advanced, albeit small, first world nation with huge sea frontiers New Zealand is ideally placed to benefit from defensive advances in modern robot weaponry.
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Actually if you are going to rearm - and I said we need to start thinking about it, not do it - then it is my view you must have conscription, and that is for three reasons - firstly, modern political/military elites hate conscription, because they feel it actually restricts their military options. When Daddy's little princess of Remuera might actually get killed the public take much greater note of where and when they fight. Much better to have a "modern" professional army made up of what are effectively paid mercenaries who just happen to (mostly) be of the same nationality.
Secondly, perverse as it may sound to most politically correct ears, military service is fundamentally a privilege (or, less controversially, a duty) of citizenship.
Thirdly, our military tradition and population size demands a citizen militia army that is formed for a specific purpose, then disbanded.
but you think the USA is any better?
If you think they are not, then you are a fool.
If we are going to base our global military strategy on what Hilary Clinton and the USA DOD tells us, then we really are in for a nasty surprise.
Our security is utterly and inextricably tied to that of Australia. And Australia is a close ally of the USA. Anyone who thinks New Zealand could - our should - stand aside if Australia became involved in a serious regional conflict is deluded. So if a new superpower conflict is brewing in the Pacific then it seems logical to me we will be drawn into it and we should do so as a willing member of the Western alliance.
it frightens the white people
I am picking that as a new record speed for even Publicaddress to introduce identity politics into a foreign policy debate.
Oh, good, I was hoping we'd get to fight China at some point. And I may be a wishful thinker here, but I do so like our chances.
We are a first world nation with a formidable military tradition and a brave and inventive people. If we had to defend our home islands, then we have considerable advantages - we are surrounded by vast oceans, we have powerful allies, we have quite a strong first world economy. With an efficient Air Force equipped with adequate modern weapons we could hold off anyone short of the United States Navy.
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It's nice of you to post these historical documents about what people said one hundred years ago about the yellow peril, but how about a bit more 21st century thinking?
In the space of 15 years China has moved to become the third largest aid donor to the fourteen Pacific Island Forum (PIF) nations, after Australia and Japan.
China is engaged in a major military build up, and is seeking to develop a strategic reach.
The Chinese are actively seeking to dominate resource extraction in the Pacific, controlling the largest nickel mine in Papua New Guinea and most of the illegal logging companies in Indonesia. The Chinese tuna fleet constitute the majority vessels operating in the region. China has encouraged emigration from the mainland as part of establishing a permanent Chinese presence in Oceania.
In 2007 China was the second largest investor in this region.
This has seen a tenfold increase in Chine-PIF trade between 1995-2005, a 32 percent increase in trade in 2006-07, coupled with the opening of number of Chinese diplomatic missions and a wave of Chinese migration in the first nine years of the millennium.
I know it takes a long time for anything new to penetrate all the way to Dunedin, but how about you update your thinking for the 21st century rather than sticking your fingers in your ears and going "la la la"?
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I think this Google policy change is linked to a wider American losing of patience with China.
Since before WWII US policy in particular towards China has been marked by a remarkable wishful thinking, but I predicted after President Obama was humiliated in Copenhagen, kept sitting around whilst the lower level Chinese functionaries he was talking to "consulted" with Beijing, that the Chinese would live to regret that gratuitous act to the leader of the most powerful - and proud - nation on earth.
It should be obvious to everyone that the whole concept of economic engagment with China to bring about political change has been a failure. It was always nothing more than an insincere figleaf that allowed Western business to make profits out of Chinese serfs, and it does little beyond provide muscle to an old fashioned, twentieth century totalitarian regime with a nineteenth century mindset bent on imperial aggrandizment.
Colin James in the Dom Post on Monday described NZ in the 2010s as a "safe and distant" country. Well, he is is dreaming IMHO. Personally, I've been very uneasy about the "new China" since well before all the shrill anti-Western rhetoric leading up to the Beijing Olympics and when I witnessed the disloyalty to New Zealand of many New Zealand resident Chinese in Aotea Square around that time it just confirmed to me China is a threat to us.
We need to pull our heads out of the sand and quit our wishful thinking about the threat China poses to our country and region. There is a new confrontation brewing in this, the new Pacific century, and with our ANZAC/US allies we will be in the front line.
Hillary Clinton is here tomorrow for John Key's first bilateral since he took office. Expect an announcement on resuming joint training. Expect to start to see offers of cheap (or free) military equipment from the United States. Make no mistake, from Canberra and Washington we will see an increased expectation to rearm to confront China's continuing 21st century totalitarianism. From trying to tell us what to do over Falung Gong and the Dalia Lama to interferring in our region (economic aid to stymie our attempts to oust the military thugs in Suva being but a single, prime example) to insisting on free immigration be built into our FTA, It should be clear which country is currently posing an increasing danger to our country.
Time to start thinking about rearming, folks.
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I haven't bothered even checking their websites for the TV news since December 24th. Why? Because I predicted before Xmas that the news would be about Santa, the weather, drunk young women (preferably with film of scantily clad, pretty white middle class girls falling about drunk) and people drowning.
And lo, it appears it has come to pass.
And I didn't even need a crystal ball.