Posts by Kyle Matthews
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The riroriro here have a slightly different tune from the riroriro around my parents' place in Taranaki. Regional accents?
It's the classic urban/rural divide. The ones at your parents place prolly vote national, the Wellington one is Labour or Green. John Campbell never stops going on about it every election night.
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OK, should I start counting up the posts on PAS complaining that Kiwiblog is a cesspit of bigoted fucktards and David Farrar doesn't ban people enough?
The difference being, kiwiblog is run by him, so it'd be his job to moderate comments if it's done.
If you post videos to public places that aren't yours, like youtube, you should expect that people might comment on them. And it's up to youtube, not your own delicate political sensibilities, if they get moderated.
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Check out the first comment. I'm really struck by the arrogance of some of the people in the "activist" movement, but I suppose I would say that, being a bourgeois enabler and everything.
There's a lot of nutters around activist groups. The number of meetings I've sat through while some person with some serious delusions has spoken up.
It's the price of having open meetings and encouraging everyone to attend and contribute. Or having open internet sites covering those sorts of topics.
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I would expect pretty much what he indicated: a few people will have said very, very stupid things in emails, phone conversations and possibly rooms. Things amply sufficient to warrant the interest of the police and upset the middle classes. What else are all the Indymedia types telling each other (and Bomber) to keep schtum about?
It's entirely possible that there is that evidence that you mention. Certainly the police actions would tend to indicate that.
However I would take very little notice of conversations now along the lines of "hey don't say a word to the pigs."
In 1993 I was one of a group of students that got run over and hit by police at a protest here at Otago University. In 1995 I was arrested at the Commonweath Heads of Government Meeting protests. A siege mentality develops on both sides of the protester/police divide. There are secrets, but they're not necessarily about illegal stuff, they're about keeping the police from knowing what you're doing. It might be information about someone who has done some graffiti or about an upcoming occupation or something else similarly harmless.
It could be exactly what you think it is Russell, and other evidence seems to point to that, but when I was younger I was those young protesters not saying a word, and I would give even odds that it means nothing.
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but the way those stats were presented implies that without guns, all those lives would be saved.
I don't think that's what it was implying at all. I think what it was implying was that if the 96% of guns that weren't registered, had to be registered, then there would be more gun safety in our society.
It's not an uncommon view on both sides of the gun control debate, though there's a large bunch that don't want it obviously.
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Yeah, NZ is full of 'soccer mums', just like those all those NZ bureaucrats and politicians working in 'the Beltway'. Let's not use US cliches people ...
Soccer mum is definitely part of the Enzed vernacular these days.
The things that Bomber is hinting at coming out sounds very concerning.
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Northern Ireland just somehow passed you by?
Northern Ireland isn't a spark that started a conflagration.
Northern Ireland is a few hundreds years of oppression, war, religious division, and an occupying army, with periodic bouts of revolution.
What it's certainly not is a couple of dozen guys out in the busy playing with guns and molotov cocktails, inspiring a previously non-revolutionary population into wider revolt.
How is Northern Ireland a valid comparison with NZ?
even the waco one is a poor example.
Yeah, there's not even any weirdo religious cults that I could think of that have gone on modern western uprisings. I was finding a best fit. Manson maybe? Still didn't go anywhere, he was reviled by everyone, including the left that he supposedly came from.
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Large conflagrations start from a few sparks.
I don't think that's the case Neil. There's evidence for that in non-Western countries, but only in an environment where things were ready to catch ablaze. Fidel landing on Cuba was a very small spark to start with, and practically incompetent for the first few weeks.
But domestic violent uprising of some sort, in a Western country? Various European terrorist organisations, Baader Meinhof, Weather Underground - none of these went anywhere. They were all widely renounced, even when, such as the WU, there was broadspread support for their goals, if not their methods.
The closest you could find in Western countries of what you're talking about are religious cults. Waco, TX, and that whack group that went down to South America and committed mass suicide. And lets be honest, the only widespread conflagration they were involved with was dying.
There's no scenario that you could think of where a few dozen sovereignty activists suddenly commit violent acts, shoot someone, and then hundreds more join them in. They would be renounced across the political spectrum, cut off from their non-violent base, and taken down by the police.
Maybe a few people out there are foolish enough to believe that it's possible, but lets not take the whack jobs seriously.
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Animal Rights groups with fire bombs for example, and the Earth Liberation Front with even more firebombs. The Unabomber, who killed 23 people, was an anarcho-primtivist who had writings published by Green Anarchy magazine.
Then you've got Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph, a survivalist nutter and a Christian terrorist respectively. So it can happen.
Well those are all overseas. If this was happening elsewhere I'd be taking it more seriously, but after 12 years involvement on and off with the NZ peace movement, I'm particularly dubious about any peace activists having anything to answer for.
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And since when do "real terrorists" need a popular support base? You mean like Bader Meinhoff, say?
Baader Meinhoff arose out of widespread civil disobedience, and state crackdowns on them. A student was killed and a number of the protesters decided to go the violent route.
Weatherman, or Weather Underground as it came to be known, arose out of massive demonstrations in the late 60s, which they wildly misjudged the mood of the demonstrators and thought that tens of thousands of them would follow them into a civil war.
Che's right. There's no support for any uprising or sectarian conflict. There's nothing going on at present for those people to arise out of. There might be sufficient disgruntlement amongst some Maori for a bunch to go over the edge, but once you list environmental and peace activists in the mix, I'm really dubious.