Posts by Thomas Johnson
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Alway used to be some entertaining reading at jwz.org (including one of the niftiest front pages I've seen in a long time).
Inside can be found tales of early times at Netscape - see Cries For Help.
You might like to check out his blog too, but be aware that it can be, uh, well, interesting is a good description I suppose.
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Daleaway - presumably Key will be eating babies too?
Do you really think the Nats will campaign on such a platform? Presumably not.
Do you really think they will, immediately after being elected, implement the sort of policies that you invent, and expect to get re-elected in 3 years time?
Anyone would think that Labour wasn't offering tax cuts, never closed a school, and had a good environmental record.
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Is everyone here so desperate for change that this now an acceptable way to read/interpret National Party quotes?
In this case it seems that the reported statements don't represent a logical statement from Key. There is also the apparently informal occasion, and that it isn't a reflection of National's policy.
I don't see why all politicians can't be given a bit of the benefit of the doubt when some reported statement seems to be in marked contrast to their policy and/or practice.
Remember Key's slip of substituting Labour for National at last year's conference. There may have been a few jokes made, but there wasn't a flood of press releases and blog posts taking it seriously.
For an example of this applied to Labour, I haven't seen any serious suggestion that Helen Clark formally or seriously offered Owen Glenn a ministerial position. To do so would be contrary to what we expect of Clark.
Similarly for Key, the line Labour is pedaling that once in Government he is going to be personally out there slashing wages just doesn't seem credible to me.
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the time may well be past when advantage can be gained from attacking Key's credibility like this.
But its never too late to try, right?
Really, it has the feel of desperation whereby every word that Key utters is analysed, and where the slightest sniff of any possible error is immediately subject to a deluge of government-linked press releases
[NZ Government 19 Feb
CTU 20 Feb
EPMU 20 Feb
Michael Cullen 21 Feb
Darien Fenton 21 Feb
AUSA 21 Feb
VUWSA 21 Feb
Shane Jones 24 Feb]and hysterical blog entries [11 posts to date on the usual Labour mouthpiece].
Is this really all that Labour has in it's cupboard?
There was an interesting discussion on RNZ today with Laila Harre who seem to basically write-off Labour's chance of re-election, and agreed that this sort of carping attacks from Labour won't help.
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It's no accident that both Howard and Keating
Surely you mean to say Hawke and Keating?
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And trying to buy a grenade launcher (this seems pretty firm, given that the evidence has been presented in the police documents provided to the Dom Post by a defence lawyer, who does not seem to have denied it) might not make Tame Iti a terrorist so much as an idiot, but it won't look good.
Well, some of those boars up in the hills can be pretty tough you know, or maybe a woman's honour needs defending?
I can't help thinking that the refusal by the courts to grant bail to many of those arrested indicates that the Police have at least a stronger case than has been made public to date.
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This was obvious in another article I got forwarded this morning from Bomber's blog. He was sniffing around last night at Unite and had cornered some less experienced activists and was asking them what was going on...
As someone quite rightly put it last night....'if not one talks, everyone walks'.
It is not gossip it is fucken serious and some of our comrades are facing a long time behind bars, it would be good if people could remember that.
From Indymedia site - Sure sounds peaceful (cue Tui)
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That's not what freedom is about. It is about the freedom of society not to be subject to powerful and self interested forces in an undue manner.
Where would 11 months of unrestricted government 'information campaigns' with no effective right of reply sit in relation to this definition? I don't think that the ruling party and their political strategists could be considered not self-interested
My major problem with the EFB is the wholly assymetric approach - if it is 'speech' by the government (or in effect the governing party) then it is all good and basically unrestricted. Anyone else (excet from political parties) who wants to spend more than a trivial amount gets the full bureaucratic workover and extremely low $ limits.