Posts by Simon Grigg
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Phil Warren...one of the greats, and a true bastard at times. I went to see him when I was 15 for advice, ended up in a joint venture with him when I was 29 for a year or two. We agreed to part ways after that, but remained true friends....I picked up the phone to him dozens of times for advice, and we used to talk weekly.....his stories were incredible. I miss him terribly....
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The Christchurch indie / electro scene is a really vibrant, exciting place to be at the moment, but it couldn't succeed if we didn't have the enthusiastic, supportive crowds that we do have.
I think it sounds incredible, and to be honest, I've been waiting for something like this to happen in Chch, where historically the leftfield always seems to blow up in an interesting way that simply takes NZ by surprise. If any town is NZ's Manchester....
Just about anything that's ever excited me musically in NZ has come out of quirky little local scenes that creep up under the radar.
Like RB says...got any web sites or audio? Somebody should do a compilation now before it gets too polished or picked apart...
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No only that, but SmokeCDs really does deserve support, as does Amplifier. Both really go the extra mile in sourcing stuff, local obscurities.
SmokeCDs had no stock, I told them I was leaving the country. They rushed a copy from Christchurch and couriered it to me, keeping me in touch with the progress by phone and email. All at a much reduced price from the bigger guys.
Brilliant...
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legendary Fall In A Hole live album on Flying Nun, recorded in Auckland during their landmark 1982 tour here.
ahemmmm.....nobody is supposed to mention that album....
worth big money now, no?But The L.E.D.s...damn it was hard to find in Ak. Real Groovy / Marbecks / Rhythm...nobody had heard of it
The power of word of mouth though...more buzz than a front cover on Rip It Up and a TV 1 campaign combined. I guess Smoke will have the privilege of selling a few more...the album is hard to find even on there (search seems not to pick it up)...so:
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I think we are fleeced on books, CD's, DVD's as well.
I tried to buy a cellphone in Auckland this week. Having held off in Jakarta two weeks ago when I saw it (Sony Ericsson K810) everywhere for about $390, the cheapest I could find it in AK was in the parallel import shop for $700. I'll wait...
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and to perpetually perceive threat.
and then there is the "new" threat to Bali and Indonesia as per the new MFAT travel advisory from Australia. I was told yesterday by a neigbour from their consulate that there is no new information or threat, just a worry that too many Australians are coming here (btw you are twice as likely to die violently in Australia as you are in Indonesia).
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Neil, did you actually bother to read through the documents at that link I posted, and the affidavit. Your statement re US support for Saddam simply is untrue and I would suggest is, in the absence of any contrary evidence, to use your words "not based in any way on facts". Just saying something, as James does, does not make it true.
There is seemingly a volume of evidence to back the support (military support way beyond a few MiGs and Mirage F1s), and I doubt you'd find anyone in any authority in the US government to refute it. The denial is little more that that, repeated over and over in the hope it becomes regarded as a truth. Another link, and another, and another, and another, and another...that took me about ten seconds to find
I too have read Colls' book, but you only tell part of the story. I think links to quite a few other documents that counter your, what can only be called a hopeful re-writing of history, have been posted here a couple of times. Suffice to say that Blin Laden's then organisation was funded to a large part by the ISI which Coll agrees was CIA funded, both directly and via the Saudis, who also contributed after intense US pressure.
Here is Coll in 2004 (some months after the book)
A very broad pattern was established in which the CIA subcontracted the anti-Soviet jihad to ISI. Pakistani intelligence is a division of the Pakistani army and not organized as a civilian intelligence service. ISI is generally commanded by a two-star general, and its cadres are drawn from the officer corps of the Pakistan army.
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I find no evidence that the CIA had direct contact with bin Laden, but they were allies with Saudi intelligence during the 1980s. The formal alliance with Saudi intelligence was a check-writing operation in which the Congress would appropriate covert funds each year and then somebody would fly to Riyadh where Prince Turki al-Faisal would write matching-funds checks, which would go into the formal accounts of the CIA administered out of Washington, Switzerland, and elsewhere.
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Here bin Laden would have collaborated intimately with the Afghan Bureau of ISI, and so the whole structure that we became familiar with ten years later—ISI, al Qaeda, and Saudi proselytizing money and official money and murky money—was constructed in the mid-1980s, and Saudi intelligence was right there on top of it in a fairly operational way.
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America is a great country, but it's also a great hypocrite some (alot) of the times.
One of the very simple points that eludes James, when he does his skewered variations on history lists that often, rather irrelevantly, pepper his responses to current events. Oh, and Noriega was also a cheap little thug who ran cocaine for Ollie North and the CIA and knew too much...not that that had anything to do with his demise.
And you are telling me that the "end result is little different"? So you would be just as happy living in Afghanistan under the Taliban as you would be living in Germany Japan or South Korea? Really?
Simon, I can't get into your head, so I don't know how you came to this view of the world, but it is about as twisted as a pretzel.
Point, meet James...he completely missed you again. What in gods name does Japan, Germany, or for that matter China have to do with anything my post. So what...
Then again, as both Danielle and Joe quite well point out you are as seemingly ignorant of history as you are of contemporary events. Remember, Pearl Harbour took the US by surprise because they could not envisage how "short sighted" orientals could possibly navigate or fly modern aircraft. The US's defence in the Pacific was centred around racial bigotry.
Prior to WW2 Japan was one of the most industrialized nations in the world....you had P-26s in Manilla when they came in in Zeros.
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James,
I was going to ignore your posts, but ah, f**k it....Was there any comparison between the Hussein regime's activities in Abu Ghraib and the US Army's? No, but Kennedy's ridiculous and offensive remark about Abu Ghraib opening under new ownership was typical of the hyperbole and overreaction on the subject by so many.
my torture is better than your torture, and like virtually everything else you've said today, makes me feel a little queasy when I hear it as a an excuse, an ugly copout, that's repeated ad nauseum by people like you.
Most everybody I know doesn't give a rats arse whether the regime of torture began under Bush or Clinton or what Kennedy said. None of that gives people like you a get out of jail free card for the blood, mayhem, and gore you've visited on large parts of the world. You have blood on your hands just like any Islamic terrorist chanting Allah Akbar" (so what James, don't millions of people going to their end evoke their maker...what a silly statement driven by blinkered bigotry). And yes, bombs were going off prior to 9/11, but history didn't begin on that date, and neither did the production of the AH-64 helicopters and Hellfire missiles that Israel uses. And the targeting information for the Iraqi mustard gas on Iranian soldiers provided by the NSA predates 9/11. These things, and thousands of other things that have occurred over the past decades and far before all count in bringing us to the place we are at now. It's not all about those big old bad "islamofascists" James, its not that simplistic, although in the remaining hard right wing rump I guess it still is. Bush didn't even know the difference between Shias and Sunnis when he invaded Iraq, for gods sake.
Nobody is giving Radical Islam a free pass (me least of all, I live in Bali), and neither should they, neither should fundamental Christianity (I'm part way through Glen Greenwald's new book as I type, read it before you waft back with the routine "where are the Christian terrorists?") be given a free pass. And neither should the flag wavers like yourself. That, as stated above, over 50% of Americans now want to see Cheney impeached is a start, but that's all it is.
You sit back and ruminate about Osama. Why is he any worse than you (both singularly and as a mass)...you've killed far more people...you've championed more death and destruction, more torture, the disappearance of thousands of people into a gulag system which tortures and kills in a way that Castro has never come close to (in law if you hire proxies, you are still guilty) than him. And Abu Ghraib, completely missing the simple point, or ignoring it when it's inconvienient as you seem to, is merely symptomatic, that's why there is the outrage.
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Uzbekistan ... isn't that the place where they boil people alive as a form of torture? Can't be.
and a delivery point for processing for some of those rendition flights authorised by Human Right's protectin' GWB