Posts by Kyle Matthews
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I believe before Baycorp gets involved the world bank gives you money on the basis that you restructure your whole economy and welfare system and your people riot in the streets.
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And if you say well it doesn’t matter, because almost everyone is in fact happy with being treated like a contractor, then I’d have to ask – why change the law?
Once you've got another $34 million on top of the already hefty tax rebates that NZ provides, you just want to go back for one more thing to see how much you really can make the PM of NZ crawl.
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Dropping bombs on Iran, surgical or not, isn’t an attack?
Yes, but the problem that they faced was that Iran had already dispersed all their sites, and they only knew where half of them were. Hence they considered it and rejected it as impractical, along with all the other issues.
The US no doubt had plans for a land invasion of Iran, along with a bunch of other countries that they never got close to invading. Keeps them busy I guess.
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And that employers aren't able to decide what set of rules they want to follow with their employees, no matter what the reality of the relationship. Employment and contract work are very different relationships, you can't just push people from one to the other and expect them to be happy with it because you're paying them.
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After a particularly prodigious toilet-training breakthrough last week, Bob demanded that Sally be summoned to admire the contents of his potty. I tactfully explained that Sally was busy at work, but assured him that I would give her a detailed description the next time we meet. She’ll be thrilled no end, I’m sure.
I was quite glad to read this, see there was a photo underneath, scroll down, and find it wasn't photographic evidence.
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If legal extradition is unlikely to work (I don’t know the ins and outs of the US-Sweden extradition treaty), the only way the US can prosecute Assange is either for him to slip up and travel through the US (not going to happen), or get him to US soil by extra-legal means.
The discussion seems a little silly, given that the people mad enough to do it (the US legislature) have no power to make it happen. Obama certainly isn't that mad, and even if the Republicans win the next presidential election, and their candidate is that mad, or it happens by some non-governmental means, they'd have to find a whole series of judges up the chain who would ignore about 15 fundamental flaws. The US supreme court has been known to occasionally uphold the rule of law.
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You’re misreading who was actually in charge, but more importantly the little professional military advice that I’ve read about from credible analysts was clear that attacking Iran was not militarily achievable. Israel having a crack at them was the more plausible scenario, with equally worrying outcomes for the region and for their US sponsors.
Israel several years ago wanted to do this, and discussed it with the US who opposed it. Their concern was what would the US do if the Israelis went ahead and overflew Iraq – would the US stop them, and if they didn’t, wouldn’t they be seen as supporting Israel by Arab countries.
Neil, common sense tells anyone that you don’t make a person ambassador to the most high profile job in the US diplomatic corps to hide them away or get rid of them.
Maybe not now, but certainly 50 years ago. The Kennedys were very concerned about Adlai Stevenson having to front at the UN over the Cuban Missile Crisis. The UN Ambassador was considered to be a place to hide politicians who weren’t competent enough for important jobs, domestic or overseas.
Bush, apparently, was a “moderating influence in contrast to his reputation”. A peacemaker I guess.
Bush’s policy on Iran was applying and ramping up sanctions through the UN, while refusing to talk to them. I think the discussion, if we can call it that, that Neil and Simon are having is a bit irrelevant – the US was never seriously looking at attacking Iran. The only thing they considered was surgical air strikes on key nuclear facilities, but they put that aside for the sanctions (which were pretty unsuccessful). The Saudis could have offered to provide free oil forever and the US would have been unlikely to attack Iraq – they didn’t have the capacity to open a third front in the Middle East and didn’t want to.
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No! Really?
But yes. I think there’s enough evidence now to establish that the making of the case for Iraq does amount to an actual conspiracy.
Ah whoops. Where I said Iraq there, it should be Iran. I'll re-post it to make more sense:
I’m partway through a book which quotes a senior adviser saying that Cheney was desperately looking through intelligence for an excuse to get into Iran.
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This throwable magnet design strikes me as a bad idea in practise
Also, much of my car body is plastic.
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The only way to pry the purse open in the face of such bigotry and ignorance is to justify it in terms of “It’s important for the economy.” Anything else is “It’s just those fucking Aucklanders taking more of my hard-earned money!”
They both sound like pretty awful arguments to me.
I note that the economy argument does get used elsewhere - Tranmission Gully in Wellington for example. I just would have thought that the only argument you'd need for investment in Auckland's public transport system is that it has tended to suck for several decades, and the century of the car is the one that we just had, that won't fly fifty years from now, and the tremendous amount that needs to be spent on roads, bridges etc if the population doubles during that time.