Posts by Jake Pollock
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TGS wasn't in disarray in the '90s, it was just under construction. I mean, there was plenty of rioting after hours and the odd fake bomb scare, but it was all in good fun.
But on second thoughts, maybe it is best to steer clear of the place. All of them seem to turn into hipster musicians, fashion designers, and PhD students. Distasteful, I know.
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The Anthology of American Folk Music is what you want. Four discs jam packed with depression-era 78s.
I've had thankfully little experience living with babies, but when I did a student exchange my host family's one-year-old was nuts for The Macarena.
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I heard him speak at the University of Pittsburgh today. I stood outside the Allegheny County Soldier's Memorial, with a sizable crowd, listening over the PA system whilst he spoke inside. The Americans were getting into it, clapping and whooping about the various issues, but frankly it didn't mean that much to me. For all the hype about his oratory, I felt as if he was still kissing babies (which he mentioned doing), and promising everyone mom and apple pie.
I guess because I'm a dyed-in-the-wool cynical New Zealander I wasn't able to be persuaded by the unity and hope messaged that framed his speech, and the rest of it was your usual sound byte stuff that he's supposed to have a reputation for not doing. I care about the children! Every American child is our child! I'm prepared to defend America from people that wish us harm without hesitating! I don't like corporate interests! He even said "fat cats". How are you supposed to take someone who uses "fat cats" to describe anything but obese, domesticated felines seriously?
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viewable audio for the ol eyes.
Everything after that feature on the playstation where you could play CDs and it would make pictures of multicoloured dolphins swimming around has been gilding the digital lily, if you ask me.
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I see what you mean. I wasn't trying to argue that the Treaty contains any rights or is a constitutional document, but that, historically, the Treaty is what allowed the declaration of sovereignty in the first place. Without it, or some other legal reason for declaring sovereignty (right of conquest or discovery, for instance), they simply couldn't have done it.
Which is not to say that the Treaty has any role in legislation. It doesn't. But without it, there couldn't have been a moment when New Zealand passed into British sovereignty, and thus all rights come from it in the sense that it allowed, historically, the extension of British laws and rights, and made parliament's declaration of sovereignty possible.
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My understanding of the airwaves as Taonga is that the treaty extended British legal jurisdiction into New Zealand and provided a legal basis (such as it was) for property rights etc. to be developed there. All things in New Zealand that were to become part of that system needed to be appropriated into it, such as land, forests, seafood etc. They didn't automatically become part of it until they were surveyed, divided up, and sold. That's what article two says.
The airwaves can be part of those claims because, although Maori didn't use them at the time, neither did the British. They were never appropriated from Te Ao Maori into the British legal system; they were just used, and divvied up into licenses by the government. What right did the government have to do that? Where did it come from? Insofar as all rights in New Zealand come from the Treaty (not because it says what they are, but because it allows them), new resources in New Zealand that were previously unknown (that aren't tied to something like land that has already been incorporated) shouldn't be assumed to be automatically appropriated by the state.
Just taking them, in that context, was really a kind of land grab combined with a foreclosing on a common resource.
Of course, my interpretation is based almost entirely on a very shallow reading of Locke, and is probably kind of ridiculous. I still prefer a (probably much stronger) juridical argument for this sort of thing though, as opposed to the 'giving Te Reo a fair crack' line, which, as pointed out above, is external to the Treaty, and not really consistent with the legal arguments which have guided the Treaty process for well over a century.
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I guess dropping a small thermonuclear bomb on Tauranga would be beyond the pale?/
It would probably raise some eyebrows, yes.
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I've only really encountered both of them through my computer screen, and frankly I always find it a little hard to tell.
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We can be pretty sure he's a member of the Libertarianz party. Or at least a devotee.
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Actually, New Zealand made me.