Posts by Tom Semmens
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Now now Craig... You seem to spend most of time on Public Address going over the edge into all sorts of intemperate personal attacks lately.
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Me thinks that whenever anyone examines his links to the National Party, David Farrar doth protest too much.
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You want some comedy?
How about Christine Rankin being appointed as a Families Commissioner?
How I laughed! How I wept!
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Apparently Molenaar "smuggled weapons out of the army" when he left the cut-lunch commandoes. If he got automatic weapons that way, that should trigger an urgent inquiry.
The drug aspect of this seems rather irrelevant. It seems to me that Molenaar was a roided up bomb waiting to go off. The police could have been their to check a complaint about a dog and he would have gone off the deep end.
Without getting to philosophical about it, guns are at the end of the day are just a tool. A special tool, given they have only one purpose, but a tool none the less. Given their special nature, it is correct that rules and regulations surround their ownership and use. But you can't control society from above with bans and laws. People must consent to follow the rules, and if some nutter doesn't then there is not a lot you can do about it. Molenaar didn't have licence, and had illegal automatic weapons. He wasn't quite your average shooter with an over and under shotgun for ducks and rogue dogs worrying the mob of sheep and a semi-auto .22 for rabbits and possums.
Oh and Greg O'Conner? How loathsome to start to politicise the shooting to what he perceives to be his advantage before Mr. Snee's body was even recovered.
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Sacha: Our Frigate de-ammunition as soon as they arrive in port, and the ammo, torpedoes and missiles are barged around to kauri Point to stop some any sort of accidental or deliberate use of the weapons.
One thing that was rather comforting in a strange way - when the LAV carrying Len Snee's body came back down the hill, the driver (despite having been shot at with an automatic weapon) remembered to indicate before turning right.
We are still a fundamentally law abiding society.
I would just like to be reassured all the right legal boxes were ticked before the army were called in.
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And yet for all the media coverage, very, very little was made of the sensational use of the light armoured vehicles in this seige. It is without precedent in New Zealand, and yet was barely remarked upon. Eye witness accounts say the LAV may even have returned fire when recovering Len Snee's body. Surely this is possibly the MOST unusual aspect of this seige?
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Actually Jake you are right on that detail. The more I think about that article the more I feel sick at at the realisation at exactly how nasty, how clever, and how close the National Party PR machine and the Herald are.
It is a real piece of black propaganda that may stand as a model of the genre. The clear intention of the article is to implant in the voters mind the idea that Melissa Lee is the brave, battling choice of the future for the ethnic minority in Mt. Albert in the face of racist, backward looking Labour voting Pakehas.
Subtle, sinister and brilliant in manipulation mascarading as news.
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That is an interesting story you've linked to there Craig, not the leas because you have to wade through three quarters of the story - wholly sympathetic to Melisa Lee - before you get to hear about the ront running candidate, who is of course introduced with a National Party attack line - "a reputation as a grey United Nations bureaucrat".
Typical of the Herald's pro-National propaganda. -
All bar one of the results of Reid poll mentioned in The Aucklander was ignored by the Herald. Interestingly, the only part of the Reid poll mentioned by the Herald - the even split in opinions on the Maori seats - was in a story that was used to reinforce the 'reasonable, open minded' John Key meme consistantly pushed by the NZ Herald.
The Herald appears to have made an editorial decision to try and muzzle dissent by ignoring opposition to the supercity and effectively seems to have abandoned any attempt at even handed exposure of different points of view.
Yet again, it appears Tim Murphy is prepared distort and ignore and basically use his paper as a propaganda vehicle for the Remuera business elite if it suits him.
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JoJo - Ugh. You couldn't make up stuff like that.