Posts by Tom Semmens
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Fletcher also said:
"First of all it would be illegal if we were doing that and we don’t act outside the framework of the law, that’s a really important point to start with”.
Which sadly when spoken by an intelligence chief of a five eyes nation nowadays simply brings to mind the old observation that the Nazis never acted outside the framework of the law, either.
"The kind of security I am referring to is not censorship, nor really anything to do with content. Rather it is the kind of framework of law and order, supporting our ability to go about a lawful business, which we have built up so painstakingly and painfully in the analogue world, really since civilizations began."
Which sound awfully like justifying the use of surveillance allowed under anti-terror laws to chase copyright and intellectual property criminals, whom presumably our little Yankee lap dogs are more than happy to re-designate as terrorists. After all, you send a squad car to arrest a copyright infringer who fails to appear in court after a summons. You launch a helicopter raid on a terrorist’s mansion.
Anyway, I have absolutely no doubt our GCSB is as guilty of surveillance over-reach as all the other intelligence gathering agencies in the five eyes countries have been proved to be. The GCSB would never wanted to have been exempted from taking part in mass surveillance. Why would you trust their denials now? The British and Americans and Canadians lied repeatedly about their spying, lying then constantly exposed by Snowden’s revelations. They are all part of the five eye hive mind, behaving like a federation of deep states. If there is one thing we know about the culture of our intelligence community and their minister it is they all desperately want to be in the United States cool kids club. I have zero doubt that Fletcher’s words contain (for him at least) some sort of mendacious weasel words rationale that will allow to claim he wasn’t lying when the truth comes out. And it will come out, eventually. In a democracy you can't keep all the spooks silent all the time. Just ask Edward Snowden.
-
Hard News: The sphere of influence, in reply to nzlemming,
hat strains more than a straight answer from Key.
I agree, but the biggest problem now facing National is the web of informal power by which the establishment elites do business, and which largely favours National, has been partially exposed and is being questioned in the media.
-
Yeah, nah. I can’t see how that relates to Donghua Liu.
Holyoake Industries, owned by rich-lister Noel Holyoake, is a large supplier of air conditioning and ventilation systems and is a big player in the construction industry. Liu was given citizenship at least partially on the basis of a proposed $70 million construction project.
I wonder who Liu planned to give all the ventilation and air conditioning contracts to...?
-
just... Astonishing.
-
"...This government has a smooth, effective relationship with friendly media... ...the reach and precision of the current government’s system is remarkable..."
The weird part is the crossover with Auckland celebrity culture.
And here is the Online Editor at The NZ Woman’s Weekly chipping in with a puff piece in support of Collins in the NZ Herald, right down to the bizarre Putinesque photo of Collins firing a pistol.
In these celebrity culture soaked times the strategy isn't particularly weird of you think about it. It is a variation of what I call the artificial scarcity of the velvet rope. National is branded as a nightclub where only the successful can party. The doorway to the club is roped off with a velvet rope, which bouncers - ever so aggressive to those who are not connected - will happily unhitch to allow preening insiders to queue jump. On the other side of the velvet rope and looking on is the (artifical) queue of aspirational punters, who don't realise that the simple act of having to queue means you'll never get in. Everyone in the queue wants to be on the other side side of the velvet rope, where with a bit of luck Rachel Glaucina might even report on your presence.
-
Righto then, I'll leave you all to rail about annoying plebs and their love of cheap holidays in the raified atmosphere of Russells kindergarten.
-
My point is that if NZ is going to participate in an experimental program with new reactor designs
“we” means “we, the people of earth”. If we don’t adopt nuclear, how do we keep the lights on without thermal power? Wind might work for a tiny population living on an island with uninterrupted access to the roaring forties, but it won’t for two billion Chinese and Indians.
If nuclear is the lesser of the evils (better a world with nuclear power and polar bears) then we (the people of planet earth) might as well design and build the safest and least polluting.
slow air/sea travel cheaper.
Sea travel will never be cheaper than flying, because unlike cargo people need to eat, have somewhere to sleep and things to do on the 15-18 day passage on a high speed liner.
-
Isn’t it better to use our imaginations to come up with cleaner ways of powering ourselves around the world?
It is weird to me that there is so much focus on the (non-gasoline) transport net in this thread. Much as I would also love to take the overnight sleeper electric airship to Sydney (if the demand was there, the technology to build such an airship has existed for almost a century) it isn’t flying to Bali or LA that is fueling global warming, it is the road trip to the mall and SUV commute to work multiplied by 10 billion times a day. The three biggest contributors to global warming are:
1. Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning power plants.
2. Carbon dioxide emissions from burning gasoline for transportation.
3. Methane emissions from animals, agriculture, and from Arctic seabeds.It seems to me that if we could replace coal, oil and rubbish (i.e. plastic) fueled thermal power stations with nuclear power, and get as many people and as much cargo as possible off the roads and onto bikes, trams, trains, ships, barges and buses then we could huge inroads into carbon emissions with an agenda that might have a realistic chance of making it past consumers. And when it comes to stopping the cows farting it seems to me that is exactly the type of agricultural scientific inquiry that New Zealand should be a world leader in.
-
My preference would be to tax aviation fuel
Yeah, well… I see this comment as classic Green Presbyterianism. Lecturing people and trying to force them to do something they don’t want to do is always a good way to win an election… or not. So good luck getting anyone to vote for that proposal. Cheap, safe and reliable air travel is one of the miracles of the modern age. Why would you want to stop that? Let’s work on finding alternatives to coal fueled thermal power stations (i.e. safe nuclear technologies like Thorium) before we start pinching hard working peoples cheap holidays to the Gold Coast or Thailand.
I’ve always been a bit envious of my early 20th century predecessors of the International Settlement era and their long home leaves and travel by ship.
Everyone would love to have crossed the Atlantic in the gilded age, but only because we all imagine we’d be in first class. Ocean travel for all but the mega-rich was always much more dangerous, boring, expensive and uncomfortable than air travel.
As for airships they have very limited potential not because of speed – they go around 160 kph, would be fine for overnight mail and cargo from Sydney or sub three day delivery from the USA – but because they cannot fly above the weather, which means they would have to fly around/sit out bad weather. And that means they can’t guarantee delivery times, which is a commercial death sentence.
Dear New Zealand, that’s what happens when you show leadership.
Talking of environmental leadership, to go on a slight tangent – the much maligned EU moved decisively several years ago to halt the slump in eel numbers across Europe. Every member state, including the British, were required to develop and enact a waterway management plan to save the European eel. The results speak for themselves. Remember, these are countries with many tens of millions of population and heavy industry and all sorts of competing interests. Now let’s compare and contrast that with the attitude of our government who rule over just 4.5 millions, who see rivers mainly as convenient open sewers for cow shit.
-
If councils are so worried about it, why don''t they open their own outlet to sell it responsibly and shut down the other stores? As I understand it, as long as you have somewhere to go to buy the stuff, the council is complying with the law.