Posts by Matthew Poole
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As a saver (I'll ignore my student loan. Everyone else ignores theirs!), this cut is yet more shitty news for me. The only upside is that I've just arranged to loan my brother his way out of his large credit card debt, at an interest rate that is advantageous to both parties. More so to him than to me, obviously (I can't loan-shark my brother!), but still more than the bank will be paying me.
It's yet another reminder that our economy revolves around houses as the currency of the realm, to the detriment of real investment - which, as I said in an argument with friends last night, I consider to be money put into things that stimulate economic production. The RBA is long overdue for a refocussing from inflation in isolation, because it's harming our economy in the process.
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No, it's not fair. And re-reading what I wrote, I can see that an alternative interpretation to what I intended is that I consider that the West, with historical growth having come at great environmental cost, shouldn't be saying that China needs to try and avoid being a polluter. What I meant was that, to China, it very plausibly sounds hypocritical and self-interested to be telling them that their economic growth needs to be considered in terms of the environmental cost. Which in some ways it is, but the self-interest is overwhelmingly environmental rather than economic.
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Craig, comparing various national assemblies to gatherings of children is probably quite apt, and rather accurate. Have you not noticed that the countries that don't have recent histories of this or that misbehaviour have far more international credence when it comes to decrying that misbehaviour by others?
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It wouldn't be unreasonable to expect the Chinese to take a little responsibility for the effect of their actions on the world, and not just in emissions either.
No, maybe not. But that attitude would be a whole hell of a lot more palatable to the Chinese if it wasn't being espoused by residents of developed nations that have spend many decades polluting far in excess of what's sustainable.
The West is hopelessly compromised when it comes to trying to tell developing nations to stop polluting. Especially the US, which with ~5% of the world's population consumes about 25% of the world's energy and has only just this year been overtaken by the country with over 1/6 of the world's population as the planet's largest source of pollution. China needs to come to the realisation on its own terms, not through being brow-beaten by a bunch of countries that were quite happy to pollute with impunity and now, having done that polluting and established their economies, wish China to halt its own economic growth just as it's really getting started. No wonder they're not keen on Kyoto!
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I thought Stephen's point was that Israel is at least as, or more, vigorous than the USA in its response.
Israel's got an ongoing and unquestionably real threat, though. The US may or may not have. Israel's also developed these measures through decades of suicide bombers and the like. Which was more the point. Israel can point to the fact that, despite these measures, they're still subjected to attacks. The US hasn't been attacked since 11/9, but that hasn't stopped them from on-going attacks on civil liberties.
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umm, not my acquaintances. The only friend of mine I've mentioned in this thread thinks that the terrorists haven't won because Americans keep flying. Nothing about comparative deaths, etc.
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Matthew, have you been to Israel?
At minimum your bags are searched on entry to any public building - hospital, shopping mall, whatever. There is an active secret police and censorship regime - trifling in comparison with its neighbours, but onerous compared to most Western democracies. And there is unlimited "administrative detention", ie imprisonment without trial, which includes citizens.
I said: "if Israel, Spain, or even the UK, responded to their historic (in Israel's case on-going) terrorist situations with the same vigour as the Americans have behaved post 11/9...". Please point to where anything any of you has said contradicts that.
All you're doing is completely missing my point, which was that, whatever the security situations in those countries are like now, if they'd behaved as the Americans have it'd be so much worse!
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Gio, that's not a result of terrorism, though. And does Italy have arbitrary detention in a military prison, without trial or legal advocacy?
I realised that NZ's attitude to the kind of surveillance society that the UK is building is exemplified in the legal requirements for toll roads, where any system must have at least one anonymous method of payment. Until it's legal to require anyone who uses your roads to register with a system that'll track their movements, we're a long way away from their nonsense.
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I'm surprised OTOH at how in the US the whole surveillance thing - which goes so much more against their ethos and tradition of government - doesn't seem to have shocked the conscience quite as much. But maybe I've got this thing completely wrong.
No, you've pretty much got it right. And as Andrew Smith put it "When I told my colleagues that the US is a paranoid nation, they just smiled nicely and told me that NZ had never suffered an attack with 3000 deaths."
That's their justification. They're terrified out of their wits because their feeling of superiority and invulnerability was thoroughly shaken, and they want to get it back. Anything that can be done "to catch the terrists" is "a good thing"[tm]. They don't get that every step down the path of suppression of freedoms is another victory for the terrorists. My "I don't care about future generations" friend, every time I say the terrorists have won, responds "No they haven't. Americans still get on planes. They still fly. They still have jobs."I've observed many times that if Israel, Spain, or even the UK, responded to their historic (in Israel's case on-going) terrorist situations with the same vigour as the Americans have behaved post 11/9, everyone would be forced to walk their streets naked, if they were even allowed out at all, and houses would have to be constructed entirely of transparent glass so that the authorities could observe all goings-on therein.
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I think the registration of your name and address when you buy a cellphone is necessary, and I wish NZ had a similar system. I am one of many many people in NZ who has been troubled by obscene and/or threatening text messages sent from an unregistered prepaid phone. And surely some robust form of ID, such as a passport, is required to stop some people giving false details.
It won't solve the problem. It'll deter people who casually misuse phones, but unless there are stiff criminal sanctions for on-selling a phone without updating the register it won't matter a damn. And many people are likely to be firmly against wasting the courts' time on something so trivial, so stiff penalties is a non-starter.
Plus, there are so many phones out there that aren't registered that the market for unregistered phones will continue for years after any registration requirement were passed. Unless it becomes illegal to sell topup credit without proof of registration (how many new bureaucracies do we want to create here?!), a phone can be used anonymously until it dies. Which can be a very, very long time if they're treated with a modicum of care.