Posts by Idiot Savant
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But I think it’s a straightforward and valid point: in denying the accused the right to be tried by a jury of their peers, the judge has ensured that a fairly substantial part of the public will not regard any verdict as valid. He has locked in a permanent, and justified, grievance against the system.
And I don't think you have to view the accused as guilty in order to see that as a problem. The justice system is undermining itself here. And that's not good regardless of the particular case in question.
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So (skeletal staff notwithstanding) why no mention at all in any of our media outlets?
The charitable interpretation is that the Auckland High Court has been closed since xmas eve, and won't open until Monday, so no-one can get a proper copy of the judgement to confirm they are able to report. Of course, the relevant documents are floating around on the internet.
I am surprised that they're not also leaping on the story of the website (which we shouldn't name, to avoid contributory breaches) being prosecuted for breaching the suppression order. They could report ont hat without naming names. But I guess its only news if its WhaleOil.
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I should note that there has, in my view, been some crazy stuff said about the likelihood of Assange's extradition from Sweden. Both the Swedish-US extradition treaty specifically and extradition law in general excludes the very kind of "crimes" the US is thinking of pinning on Assange. If the Americans try it, they will not find it easy.
I don't think extradition is a legal possibility, given the inherently political nature of the "crime" and the punishment the US is likely to impose (hint: 23-hour a day lockdown in a SuperMax prison - which is what they're doing to wikileaks' source right this minute - is regarded by the European Court of Human Rights as torture. Sweden can not legally extradite or refoul someone to such treatment). I think the real concern is not extradition, but rendition. And the Swedish government has a dirty history with the US there...
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Kyle: Well, when the US starts prosecuting its torturers, and those who gave the orders for them to torture, then I'll change my view of them. Until then, I think I'm perfectly entitled to regard them as a torture state, whose government should be treated as an international pariah.
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Yes, Bill Rowling, Alan Mac Diarmid, Dame Anne Salmond, Gareth Farr
Sir Jon Trimmer, Dame Marie Clay, Dame Jean Herbison, Anne Meade, Ron Paterson, Jamie Belich, Sir Kenneth Keith, David Baragwanath, Wiremu Kaa, David Cunliffe, Iosefa Enari, Simon O'Neill, Roger Hall, Bill Manhire, Joan Druett and Michael King should all be very ashamed of their Fulbright scholarships.I think public perceptions of the United States in this part of the world have changed a bit since then - and not just because of their national insanity over the war on terror.
What a ridiculous argument. It's proper to scrutinise journalists in this context (ideally by doing some work, finding what what the scheme is, what they did, what they wrote, etc) but the idea that any recipient of an exchange grant or scholarship has the blood of an entire host nation's foreign policy on their hands is insane.
Nice straw man. I'll say it clearer so you can't misquote me:
"Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas"
Seriously, that's all this is. And if these journos don't like it, maybe they should have thought a bit more carefully about who they were snuggling up to.
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The journalist or MP concerned needs to declare the source and deal with the consequences of that themselves.
And the same applies if the source is the US. If people feel their reputation has been tarnished by the public reminder of their involvement in the program, then perhaps they should have thought about that before taking money from a pack of torturing warmongers.
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Over-egg and half bake, liberally garnish with bullshit and you have a hot steaming #heraldfail pie!
Its because they don't have anything else. There were Herald staff grovelling publicly on Twitter yesterday for any information about NZ in the leaks. I'd have thought they'd do what journalists do, and ask Wikileaks directly...
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It also mentioned Turkey and VAT - the Vatican? Not sure what's going on there.
The 22 Dec 1997 cable (PGOV, ECON, PINR, NZ) will be about Jenny Shipley's overthrow of Bolger.
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For anyone who is interested: thanks to Danyl's perl-fu, we now have a spreadsheet of NZ cable headers. I've extracted a frequency list of the tags here.
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I suspect we'd find from those that Russia has behaved in a highly criminal fashion.
I suspect we'd also find they're not safe to release. The US may be the Evil Overlord with poor fashion sense, but they can't get away with just murdering leakers. Whereas it happens on a monthly basis in Russia.