Posts by Kyle Matthews
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Cheers Kyle but I'm not sure you can exclude CTAG from SIS by saying it's hosted by it.
Well OK, up to you.
CTAG co-ordination is a good thing, just need to follow the rules & be up front when one area crosses over to help the other. As CTAG includes NZDF - CTTAG is part of NZDF they could well play a part in CTAG.
I don't think you understand what they do. CTAG is a threat assessment unit. They gather evidence across multiple agencies, look at it, and inform the relevant agencies and the Prime Minister etc. They're not a command and control group, they don't have any military, police, or other 'active' staff under them. Their job is threat assessment. People from the various parts get seconded to CTAG to work on threat assessment. They're a bunch of spooks and intelligence professionals and senior suits from the four agencies.
CTTAG are soldiers. Here is a photo of a CTTAG soldier. They don't collect intelligence, they don't assess intelligence, they're the guys who get all dressed up throw in stun grenades and storm the farmhouse/plane/building whatever.
The only connection between the two is that they are parts of an anti-terrorism process. CTTAG might act on information collected by CTAG, but only under orders from the Prime Minister/Minister of Defence/Head of the Defence Force. There's no connection between the two, and CTAG has no command and control authority, that continues to reside with the independent organisations that make up CTAG.
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CTAG isn't part of the SIS, it's a Combined Threat Assessment Group, and includes SIS, Police, Defence Force, and GCSB. It's hosted within the SIS but it's more a gathering together of the four rather than any great big new unit.
My understanding, and someone else might know more, is that CTAG is a threat assessment group. They assess information gathered across all intelligence gathering agencies.
CTTAG is a response group, they're at the other end, and they kick down the doors and shoot the bad guys and rescue the hostages and whatnot. They're SAS trained soldiers. CTTAG are defence force entirely, and they'll come under the command of the defence force. I'm not sure what it would take to activate them, but I presume it has to come from the Prime Minister or Minister of Defence.
I can't imagine there's any relationship between the two. CTAG would be top officials from the four agencies sharing intelligence, CTTAG is a SAS group of soldiers.
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Your constuct of a demographic will say when white nuclear families beat their children it's not serious by their virtue of being white.
And/or, mean that we should conduct close surveillance on all people who fit the demographic (umm, brown people on welfare with previous convictions?) while we wait for them complete their inevitable assault on their children.
Neither's at all good.
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The direction of that departure is the direction that Burma has gone, but a fine is still much less worrisome than the violence we've seen recently in Burma.
Hmm. I haven't done a survey, but I don't think anyone has been arrested/dragged off/killed, for failing to give their name and address in Burma. I think it was the bits before the name and address that gave them the problem, not something we have a big issue with here.
I mean, I think it's silly if you have to give your name and address when making an election related speech, as my understanding was that the bill was about electoral finance, not electoral activity. But I don't have high expectations of the current parliament in terms of producing quality legislation.
ACT could solve their problem with lack of MPs by getting more people to vote for them?
If only they'd thought of that before the last election ;)
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Yes, Kyle, just as Sir Geoffrey should be identified as 'rich c**t lobbyist and big ticket Labour donor' if you want to throw around inflammatory language like that. So I'd stick to 'whatever'.
No, just saying that it'd be a good start if the media were to label commentators for the job they're doing when they're commentating.
If Farrar is commenting as part of his job with the national party, then 'National Party XXX' would seem to be a good tag to use.
If Palmer is commenting as part of his job with ChenPalmer, then 'Lawyer, ChenPalmer' would seem a good tag to use. Not a tag relating to what he did 17+ years ago.
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As currently worded, the bill would restrict your freedom to stand in the Octagon, telling the general public to "vote for a party that cares about the environment"; unless you also tell them your name and address, you will have wilfully contravened section 53, and will be liable for a fine of up to $10000. If that was enforced, we'd be quite far in the Burmese direction.
I'm not sure how this will turn out - there seems to be debate on the issue, but the bill was a confused mess so I gave up trying to understand it.
But I don't see that as a restriction on your freedom of speech, I see that as a tagline you have to add to your speech. "This message by me, here's my address." Inconvenient, but not exactly oppression.
You can still say that, or pretty much what you want. That's a long way away from the Burma direction, where the monks didn't just forget to give the home address of their monastry. They were dragged off for the message.
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A first time offender drunk driver who runs from police but gives themselves up before they dause an accident would be extremely unlikely to get anything like 9 months supervision, to put this sentence in perspective.
I'm not sure how you compare the relativities of drink driving to assault.
But since apparently it's possible, surely the difference there is, the drunk driver hasn't hit anyone. The person committing assault has hit someone.
If the drink driver had hit someone, I suspect they would have got more than 9 months supervision.
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What is your definition of a flunky?
"Word that I'll use since I have no idea what his actual job title is." er. "Person who does political party work but isn't an MP" is probably how I'd define my use of it.
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Kyle, you seem to be saying that I should be free to express myself in some ways, but not in others.
As far as I'm concerned, you can express yourself how you want. Interpretative naked dance on the life cycle of the garden slug might be interesting.
Personally I don't care about the EFB. I don't think money buys elections very successfully. I'm not just aware that the next time you express a political opinion in the buildup to the elections, someone's going to leap out from behind a pot plant and drag you away for your verbal discontent, which is the image that came to mind from some of the frothy ranting that some of the opposition talking heads.
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No, I'm saying putting your speech in a newspaper or tv advert, on thousands of pamphlets, or yelling at people through a megaphone, doesn't make it free, it just makes it widely distributed.
If I have a thousand dollars for an electoral campaign, and Bob Jones has a million dollars. Does Bob have a thousand times as much free speech as me? No. We have exactly the same rights to free speech, just a lot more people are going to hear Bob.
The government comes along and says "well that's hardly fair, no one can spend more than two thousand dollars in the election of Kyle Matthews vs Bob Jones." I spend my thousand, Bob spends two thousand. Bob still says exactly the same things, the media still reports on both of us, but Bob prints way less pamphlets and does no TV adverts. His free speech hasn't been affected, as he said exactly the same things, just less people heard.
An attack on free speech when you say something, and fascist dictator bully boys round you up and put you in prison for saying it, or shut down the newspaper that was going to report you saying it. That's what unfortunately happens in some places in the world.
As far as I can tell the EFB is an attack on various forms of electoral advertising. I think it's demeaning to what I consider to be real issues of free speech in the world (like, monks who recently died in Burma for protesting) to say that the EFB is a massive attack on free speech.
Free speech to me is a very important principle. I believe that once we start thinking about free speech coming through having and spending money, we can come to the conclusion that people with less money have less free speech, and that's not right. And we also demean the suffering that goes on in places throughout the world for what I consider to be real struggles to have free speech, where it's not an issue of money, it's about not being persecuted for saying what you believe.