Posts by Steve Barnes
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Looking at it from a dispassionate pov and without, admittedly, knowing all the facts.
The US doesn’t need an exit strategy because this action is a UN action. It is akin to someone asking you to lend a hand, lend the tools and few labourers to a project, you do your bit and move on with little responsibility for the project as a whole.
Yes it is true that the US and the rest of the world for that matter, have tolerated Gadaffi since he promised to be good, he is not a stupid man, he saw which side the bread was buttered and capitulated to the whims of the West, they needed the oil, he needed the cash.
The rolling demands for freedom and democracy throughout the Arab world have ignited the rebels and gave them an almost ecstatic belief in the possibility of victory which was fanned by the West. After that, the West had a moral obligation, as well as a desire, to aid the rebels in their cause.
War, however, is its own enemy, it never ends well.
Let us hope that the outcome is not so horrendous that it fails to justify the means. -
OnPoint: Everything has changed until 2014, in reply to BenWilson,
He's "The Great New Zealand One Kg of Cheese" (tm).
That would be the $16 per Kilo block of cheese then, you remember? back in 2008 when John Chee was ambitious to be the big cheese.
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Interesting read...
Aftershock: The Blast That Shook Psycho PlatoonMINOT, ND -- At 8:20 p.m. on Sept. 21, 2010, Iraq veteran Brock Savelkoul decided it was time to die. He lurched from his black Tacoma pickup truck, gripping a 9-mm pistol. In front of him, a half dozen law enforcement officers crouched behind patrol cars with their weapons drawn.
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Hard News: It Began ... in Chicago, in reply to Sacha,
Cool tale, sir
Cool at last, cool at last. :-)
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Just re-read the original post and I get it now. It was all in the timing.
Back in 1985 I was going through a strange time, just got back from Nepal after a tragic love trist that cost me my marriage of 8 years, moved back to Greenwich into a flat overlooking the Thames. I hooked up with some old mates, one of them being Jools Holland and another, a mate from further back, Chris Difford, they had just formed Squeeze, UK Squeeze as they were known here.
Anyhoo. We had differing opinions of where the music was going. Having a background in the recording industry I played a lot with tape and electronic gizmos and having dropped guitar playing after a hopeless jam with Mark Knopfler, back in the late 70's, and feeling talentless, I took to tearing stuff apart.
I reworked Bonnie Rait's "Who But A Fool (Thief Into Paradise), cutting and splicing in the old school way, extending the middle break and bouncing the lyric around with repetitive hooks, I thought it was great, everyone else thought it was crap. They thought it crap for several reasons, mostly because Bonnie Raitt was just not cool but also "It wasn't Music" I still think it was good. In my low-fi home studio I knocked out all kinds of weird and wonderful stuff and became known as "That Idiot Barnes"
After a while I was just not cool enough around the local wannabes and decided to come to New Zealand. I arrived in early 1986 when all was Grey and Pink and they were making money out of money here, about the same time as all you lot left and experienced my legacy back in the UK, apparently it caught on just after I left, bummer eh?
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Hard News: It Began ... in Chicago, in reply to Simon Grigg,
I'm very concerned that Toto have edged their way into this thread.
Aha! Musical snobbery.
I, for one, thought when I saw the title of this thread "Now, is this going to be about Sociology or Economics" Alas no, more like "Last night a DJ stole my life"
Handbags at Dawn Simon...
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Jackie's turned into a Hippy. ;-)
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Hard News: It Began ... in Chicago, in reply to Jackie Clark,
But there was another band who were sort of African,
It began in Africa ca ca ca (which I think was Russell’s initial reference)
Sooo, it could be any Band really. ;-)
Gimmee another clue.
Unless you were thinking of Toto,
Come to think of it, doesn't that guy look like a younger Russell Brown. ;-) -
Hard News: It Began ... in Chicago, in reply to Jackie Clark,
And who was that South African guy, Johnny something or other?
'twas Johnny Clegg I reckon. ;-)
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You put it under the grill and ran? Frightening cheese eh?.