Posts by Matthew Poole
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The Dunedin merger was equivalent in scale to the Auckland's.
What Sacha said. Dunedin now, merged and grown, has a greater population than any of the three districts (Franklin, Papakura, Rodney) within Auckland Region, but is distinctly smaller than any of the four cities. It's not even a third of Auckland City, and only marginally more than a third of Manukau City.
If you're meaning by land area, then you're about halfway there. According to Wikipedia, Auckland region's land area is 6,059 sq km while Dunedin's is 3,314 sq km. -
Caleb, sorry, public nuisance wasn't what I was after. Disorderly behaviour was. There's also wilful damage, and disorderly (Summary Offences Act) or unlawful (Crimes Act) assembly. Pick any or all of them. Plenty of flagrantly illegal misbehaviour going on, with consequent legitimate interest on the part of the police in causing the group to disperse.
Sorry, Rich, the police were entirely justified in seeking to cause the group to disperse. Even without the liquor ban they were still breaking multiple laws.
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The majority, Rich, don't have your level of anarchistic belief. Also, courtesy of the existence of ACC, if people want "want to fuck themselves up setting fire to sofas" the rest of us pay for their treatment. That gives the state a distinctly vested interest in stopping them from doing it.
That rugby, etc are legal is utterly irrelevant. The benefits from exercise are undisputed - though I wouldn't be terribly upset if rugby were banned on the grounds that it's glorified violence with an unacceptable level of injury - and even unhealthy food provides sustenance for continued living. Burning sofas provides what social benefit, exactly? Or do we now have to support tagging and other forms of vandalism on the grounds that temporary relief of boredom by way of damaging property is an acceptable trade-off?
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Rich, although I agree that drinking in public for an event such as this should be allowed, I heartily disagree with you about tolerating acts that are actually dangerous. The hazards of burning sofas were demonstrated admirably during the 500 (see the article about the young man who ended up in hospital), and misuse of motor vehicles has caused more than a few deaths in this country in recent times. All the nice wishes in the world can't change the reality of drunk people doing stupid things, and thus needing to be kept away from flaming furniture or heavy, wheeled weapons.
Even at the Big Day Out, where the police turn a blind eye to a lot of consumption of "recreational substances", people doing things that are dangerous to themselves, or particularly to others, will find that they get a distinctly chilly reception from the authorities.
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Rich, who started the violence? The police didn't do anything more than demand compliance until after they were under attack by a numerically-superior group.
Also, when a group of people are engaged in illegal behaviour (drinking in public is an offence in that part of Dunedin, and burning couches in the middle of the street is creating a public nuisance throughout the country) they lose any argument about their "right" to be where they are. The police were attempting to break up a gathering that was definitely not law-abiding. -
Sacha, that'd be second-smallest. We're behind Singapore, again.
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nobody has been charged with a crime with a non-police victim, such as assualt against a member of the public or criminal damage.
That suggests to me that the violence was mostly a result of the police attacking the students in order to try and force compliance with various social control laws, such as alcohol bans and the like. Had the cops kept their distance
If you watch some of the video, rich, you'll notice that the cops didn't attack first. They formed a line, stood back, and gave verbal orders for the crowd to disperse. Then the missiles started, and the crowd failed to disperse.
Why should they "keep their distance" when they're being attacked? Why should they "keep their distance" when lawful orders are being disobeyed? Whether or not you like them, their job is to enforce the law. People who break the law can expect to become of interest to the police, and when that law-breaking consists of throwing things at the police and failing to disperse when ordered they've really got it coming. The police didn't even charge in when the first objects were thrown, either, they still gave the crowd a chance to leave of their own accord.
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Most genuine conspiracies have been simple, complicated only by their botch-ups.
Simplicity is, well, simple. Complexity is not. Complexity tends to involve increasing numbers of people, and I think it was Benjamin Franklin who observed that "Two people can keep a secret. If one of them is dead." Eventually you involve somebody who can't keep their mouth shut, or who is sufficiently inept that they bring down the veil of secrecy.
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I do think its interesting just how much goalpost shifting goes on in mere Conspiracy Theorising
It's very hard to be in a debate where the automatic response to any evidence contrary to the opposition's position is "That's what they want you to think." If counter evidence is simply evidence of conspiracy, you're doomed right from the get-go.
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The problem with conspiracy theories is that they necessarily require that people keep their mouths shut about what went on. In the case of the moon landings, thousands of NASA employees would've had to be in on it, and remain silent over the intervening decades. Nobody has ever come out and said "I worked at NASA in 1969, and we didn't go to the moon." To my mind, that is quite sufficient proof that it happened as planned. Oh, that and the fact that the USSR was totally capable of tracking spacecraft and would've happily blown the whistle on any fuckery that might've been tried by the Americans.
With the WTC conspiracy, controlled demolitions are very precise, planned events. They require a lot of time to setup, and they're not something that can easily be done in secret for buildings the size of the WTC towers. Somehow this was all done by people from a very small group (the demolitions community is not large, especially when you get to ones competent for a project necessarily of the scale of trying to blow up the WTC) without anybody else noticing, and then have them practice their craft over a period of months in an occupied complex, complete with real cops and real fire fighters going in and out on a daily basis (FDNY used to respond to at least one fire alarm activation at the WTC complex every day), and nobody noticed a fucking thing?! There's this beer that has a great saying for situations like that. How does it go again? Oh, that's it, Yeah, right!
I know that Russell doesn't want this discussion going any further, so I'll finish my one contribution by saying that the talk I attended by three FDNY officers (Lieutenant, Captain and Deputy Chief), one of whom survived the collapses of both main towers , was quite clear that the "official" story is totally plausible.