Posts by Rob Stowell
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I remember Hager and Campbell sneaking into the Waihopai spy-satellite base. So old comrades in arms, maybe?
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Great article! Always wanted to go to China…. and with Damian (and Chris W!) I almost feel like I have :)
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Capture: Two Tales of a City, in reply to Islander,
Mine too :) We have a framed print from it on the wall- there's something remarkably honest about the whole series of photos.
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Legal Beagle: Kim Dotcom: We need an Inquiry!, in reply to Sacha,
BREAKING: PM admits Kim Dotcom was mentioned briefly in a GCSB briefing in Feb; but he wasn't told about surveillance till Sept
There goes that 'fact'.
Heh. Who would've suspected! :-) (btw, finally watched the Campbell clip- good digging there! Damning.)
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There’s a danger with arguments around the ‘dodgy’ data, poor interpretation, and lack of moderation, because they all imply that solid data, well interpreted would be a fine thing- leading to competition between schools, league tables and performance pay.
So it was timely to hear NZEI present the other story on Morning Report today. (7 mins streaming) -
Early on, Key declared he had never heard of Mr Dotcom. Much of the subsequent confustication can be explained as the ‘facts’ being circled to protect this assertion. Pure speculation, but (even?) John Armstrong hints strongly that JK’s being so out of the loop is unlikely.
if Mr Dotcom did not make it on to the agenda, just what was so big in the tiny world of New Zealand intelligence that it could shut out the attempt to extradite Dotcom to the United States?
Therein lies a clue. Helping the Americans may have been deemed politically tricky. The fewer who knew the better.
It still beggars belief that the Prime Minister was not told. It would have been more than somewhat embarrassing if he had learnt what the GCSB was up to from the Americans.
If it is correct he was unaware of what was going on, there was a woeful failure of communication between the various intelligence units in the Prime Minister’s Department and the GCSB.
But that seems most unlikely, given the seniority and experience of the bureaucrats in the department.
The more you look at the shemozzle, the less things stack up.
One small, rash statement- and then the ‘cover-up' that really does the damage?
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Moment of Chch nostalgia. Streetview is amazing! And so strange… drove through here yesterday and it's very different.
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Capture: Two Tales of a City, in reply to Lilith __,
the souvlaki place on Barbadoes St next to the Armagh St dairy, around the corner from the laundromat?
Mm yes. We lived just round the corner for a few years. The owner of the corner dairy, a very sophisticated Iranian man, I think, encouraged his wife to set up the souvlaki shop.
It was a strange bunch of ‘local shops’ that corner: the second-hand bookstore; the diary, targeted by racist idiots for a while; the one-time strange bike shop on the opposite corner that looked like a demented magician had retired there, bringing with him the contents of a medieval midden. There was a second-hand furniture shop round the corner (by the souvlaki shop) and a low-grade fish’n’chip place? And the endless clanking rotations of the laundromat…. -
Capture: Two Tales of a City, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Love it!
(But what is REALLY going on? The over-sized daleks were hoping for a Costa's souvlaki, double chicken, with a chocolate thickshake. Having travelled half a galaxy, they are righteously peeved.
Mmmm. Where are the Costa's of yesteryear?) -
Speaker: Music: The Vinyl Frontier, in reply to Grant Smithies,
This is a very encouraging story. Time to stop gazing thoughtfully at the shelf, and start off-loading. If only
I couldn’t be stuffed with the hassle of putting listing after listing on Trade Me
did not ring so loud and clear!
