Posts by Ross Mason
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Thank you Sally, Even with four females in the house I have never had the opportunity to discuss this ...... However, a quick search reveals that it is a fruitful topic.
Here we are discussing trimming the lawn and lo, I have found that one can get a wig. The Merkin mentioned above by Dalziel is such a decoration. Heh. I wonder what it is supposed to do? Hide or accentuate?
Aviation Blonde was a good one. With connection to ..umm...flight recorders. That is, the top of the head is blonde but the nether regions ain't.
Of course looking after your one and only beaver made advertising hay.
Curlies. As in short and....
That will do for tonight.
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Oh look, a re-live-ation
So it seems that some retired ex "govt officals" snuffling their free gin while being entertained by the US that all we wanted was to save a few dollars here and there when we pulled the Nookularfree rabbit out of the hat. Bizarre.
And we wanted to talk to the French???? One year after (or so) Labour got elected they bombed our harbour? The NZ History suggests that:
This incident did much to promote what was described as New Zealand's 'silent war of independence' and was central to an upsurge in New Zealand nationalism. There was a sense of having to 'go it alone' as traditional allies such as the United States and Britain sat on their hands while France worked to block New Zealand exports. The failure of Britain and the United States to condemn this act of terrorism hardened support for a more independent foreign policy line.
It sounds like it was a lot of "Old Times" talk at an Embassy function.
And China?????? The filthy French?? The Pacific????? My instincts tell me that practically every opinion piece I have seen on the Pacific Influence suggests that China and France were two countries we were suggesting might pull their head in a bit.
I have to concur with the end bit though:
"Finally, after great pressure from the Australians, the [government] relented and agreed to send troops. After all that, according to the Australian High Commissioner, due to an equipment breakdown, the troops had to be flown to the Solomons on Australian aircraft."
The cable acknowledges the Clark government's eventual commitment of $3 billion to upgrade the military but questions both the validity of the figure and the practicality of many of the equipment upgrades.
Anyone want to buy a Skyhawk? LAV? We have a few sitting around. Idle. Rusting.
A review of the Oxford Debate may be in order.
"I hold that the character of nuclear weapons is such that their very existence corrupts the best of intentions. That the means in fact perverts the end. And I hold that their character is such that they have brought us to the greatest of all perversions. The belief that this evil is necessary.....When in fact is is not.
...It is self defeating logic, just as the weapons themselves are self defeating. To compell an ally to accept nuclear weapons against the wishes of that ally, is to take the moral position of totatalitarianism which allows for no self determination and which is exactly the evil that we are supposed to be fighting against.
....But the result has been that we have been told by some officials in the US adminstration that our decision is not as they put it, to be cost free. That we are in fact to be made to pay for our action. Not by our enemies, but by our friends. We are in fact to be made an example of, we are to be ostracised, we are to be convicted of some form of heresy and put on probation. We are going to be kept there until we are compelled to resume our seat in the dresscircle of the nuclear theatre.
...and for me, the position of my country is a genuine long term affirmation of this proposition: that nuclear weapons are morally indefensible and I support that proposition."
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The Devil made me do it
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Hard News: The Wellington Cables, in reply to Don Christie,
An encouraging report about the quality of New Zealand aid spending
Ah yes. I remember the starving people's of SE Asia Magic Bullet we were going to supply and save the planet with. The Milk Biscuit. A tasty treat undigestible to lactose intolerable guts.
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Hard News: The Wellington Cables, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Have you missed the scale of the security presence at, like, every global-scale sporting event since at least the Atlanta Olympics in 1996?
No I haven't. I was involved in Athens and again in India this year. I was well aware of what is invloved in searches, transport etc. eg. If I was a bomber in India, I would have planted my roadside IED in the dark, waited for the bus with siren blaring and Police and Army escorts coming from miles away and watched until it got there and ...Voom. If the bus had just cruised past without a sound nor Police escort, I wouldn't have had a show of figuring out which bus was which. And frankly, it would not have taken much to get around it really. It was presence that is the essential bit. Anything like this can only ever be a response to an incident rather than an interception before the event. This would probably be picked up (given the intelligence available these days, ironically told to us by the leaks) "in time".
It was said more in the tone of "someone else can buy the ticket" thanks.
Just remember the last terrorist act was from a "friend". And even in that event there was suspicion of US/Brit ie "Five Eyes" being invloved in the releasing of the Uvea crew. Who the F*&k needs enemies when you have friends like that?
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And it's the message(s) damn it. How the hell they got out is beside the point really.
I have absolutely no issue with a country having an intelligence service. I just wish that there was more of the "I" used. What I find difficult to accept is the way these cables feed back and forth into our policies and actions. Noone can deny that they have influenced our politicians actions. This, in turn affects us - directly sometimes - makes the collection legitimate and the subsequent actions based on and from them not so.
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Ask Ali Ikram how he’s feeling about the Star Times story. Stitched up is the answer.
I can't see how else a direct quote from such a doc could be written any other way. Stiched up? Surely just quoted. After all, the whole point is that it is an American View of who they selected isn't it? I would have thought that a perception such as that is worth knowing. I suspect you may think, Russell, that Ali didn't think he might be tagged in such a manner. From a receiver of such an "award" that may be so. But from the giver it IS obvious they were trying to find "friendly" journalists. Surely.
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Hmmmm...I would swear that when i woke up an hour ago that a lot of these posts were not here.....And now....they are???? Russell???
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Damn. There is a problem with the Preview that comes up with an ERROR! box and I can;t see what I have writ. So there are a few bits out of order from the PDF.
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From a leak:
When the U.S. Administration decided in March of
2009 to seek a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, New
Zealand, which was also on the ballot, withdrew its name so
the United States could run uncontested.How timely...just af ew months later it was August 29th 2009.
And
located just six miles from McMurdo Station in the Ross
Sea region)The US mile seems to be only about 1/3 of a NZ Mile.....Hmmm...
Admiral Keating visited in
September 2009,Timely visit that one.
The SAS is slated
to return to support internal security requirements during
New Zealand's hosting of the World Rugby Cup in 2011I ain't going anywhere near a stadium now. Eh? What ARE they expecting??
Her (Helen's) desire to improve relations with the
Administration may be due in part to the influence of
Foreign Minister Winston Peters,Holy shit. Which way was the influence?
For example, NZSIS had for
months resisted housing equipment needed to implement a
possible HSPD-6 agreement with the United States. Soon
after his arrival, Tucker ordered NZSIS to be the host,
paving the way for negotiations.So this is the bit that looking for the potentials in NZ huh? Thanks!
New National leader John Key is charming and
confident, but has been in Parliament for only five years
and his practical agenda remains fuzzy.Got something right!
The ""Matrix"" process has also been helpful in
enabling both sides to stay joined up in response to other
events, such as ensuring that the recent fire on board a
Japanese whaling vessel in Antarctic waters would not lead
to an environmental disaster.How do you do that in the deep southern OCean from the USA??? Satellites of course. They are quite good at reading number plates these days. So an oil slick is eezy peezy.
Clark will likely announce during her visit that
New Zealand will extend its deployments to Afghanistan
through September 2009, the longest extension since the
Afghan war began.There's that date again.
GNZ officials praised USG efforts to improve
intelligence sharing, particularly with respect to imagery.I hope you all smiled. :-)
Ha!
A/S Fort's message focused on the
increasing sophistication of commercial search engines and
the growing number of open source analyses available to
policymakers. In the future, the intelligence community must
find ways to differentiate their products and provide value
added to policy makers, argued A/S Fort.Great name for a spy eh what?
And it looks like they are worried about their keeping an analysis role because Googel and Yahoo are pretty good at allowing policy anaylysts to find information.
The metamphetamine problem
in the region can be traced to China,Nothing like an FTA to "Free" things up.
....Israel is likely to strike
if the government of Israel believes Iran has met their red
lines; an Israeli strike against Iran would be more complex
than those launched against Iraq and Syria.Ouch!
Clark is no shrinking violet. Even before
hard-edged, grizzled union men put her through the fire in
her early days in the Labour Party, she was a forthright and
resolute student activist. Clark was at the forefront of a
group of iron-willed feminist MPs who stormed the Labour
party in the early eighties despite their male counterpart's
skepticism. Many of these MPs remain in politics and sit at
the right hand of Clark.So there!!!!
and
Simpson, often referred to
as the second most powerful person is New Zealand, would
walk across hot coals for Clark and is so close to her that
she can often speak on the behalf of Clark, privately of
course).Two heads are better than one???
There are some great descriptions of BRash in there
Downer and his Senior
Adviser Haynes mentioned that IAEA DG ElBaradei had
said Pyongyang could have as many as six, based on the
number of fuel rods the North Koreans possessed. LaPorte
thought the DPRK had the capacity to make more than two
or three warheads, given the amount of plutonium
""harvested"" before the 1994 agreement and based on the
DPRK's own claim of having reprocessed the 8,000 spent
fuel rods after the agreement had ended.And one at least has gone bang
In closing, Downer
remarked, ""let the whole place go to s--t, that's the best
thing that could happen."" Speaking off the top of his head,
he added that aid should not be given that would prop up
the infrastructure. If U.S. officials wanted to hear the
""bleeding hearts"" view of ""peace and love"" with respect
to North Korea, Downer joked, they only had to visit his
colleagues in New Zealand.Maaaate!
XXXXXXX likened his
Department to the National Security Council in terms of
breadth of coverage and responsibilities. He noted that
EAB's operations are highly compartmentalized and EAB
reports are tightly held within Cabinet, with few Ministers
seeing them.Awww gee. Love the trust. Isn't absolutely fascinating that bureaucrats can see this shit and our elected govt can't.
Often there are significant differences with
Australia, he added, as New Zealand is a more Pacific
country than Australia and the latter is not always attuned to
Pacific developments.Analysis: we are watching the Islands.