General Debate 5 April 2009

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Thrash Cardiom

Deborah Coddington has an interesting view in her latest herald column:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10565234&pnum=0

It ends:

“Someone else does the brush strokes, chooses the colours, the MP signs the painting, all hell breaks loose. Someone else writes the sentences, chooses the adjectives and verbs, the MP signs the article.

What’s the difference?”
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April 5, 2009 9:25am
Patrick Starr

Lydia Jordan, all I can say is you must be a huge disappointment to your parents

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10565250
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April 5, 2009 10:11am
reid

Anyone been following the North Korea missile launch?

Could be appalling, as in, war. NK has said that if Japan shoots it down, NK will attack Japan.

“If Japan recklessly ‘intercepts’ the DPRK’s (North’s) satellite for peaceful purposes, the KPA will mercilessly deal deadly blows not only at the already deployed intercepting means but at major targets,” said a statement from the Korean People’s Army (KPA).

Normally you could dismiss this as hot air as many experts have. However, NK has nukes and they are small enough to fit onto missiles. They could also have stealth technology that makes them impossible to intercept. Moreover it’s clearly to China’s advantage if NK attacks Japan since it takes out its largest regional competitor. North Korea has long said it has a limited life as a sovereign nation and Kim Jong-il could be looking for any excuse to provoke it.

In other news, Cheney came out and defended the use of torture, against protocol, since it’s traditional not to comment while the new President is bedding himself in, and both Bush and Rice adopted a ‘no comment’ position on this issue. However Cheney’s clearly desparate.

But the big impending release may well be three memos from May 2005, detailing specific torture techniques authorised by Bush and Cheney for use against terror suspects. Newsweek described the yet to be released memos thus: “One senior Obama official . . . said the memos were ‘ugly’ and could embarrass the CIA. Other officials predicted they would fuel demands for a ‘truth commission’ on torture.”

The narrative that has taken shape since Cheney left office and lost the chance to stonewall inquiries is damning to the former vice-president. It was not an accident, it seems to me, that Cheney went on CNN the morning The New York Times published leaked testimony from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The documents detailed horrifying CIA practices that the Red Cross unequivocally called torture – shoving prisoners in tiny, air-tight coffins, waterboarding, beatings, sleep deprivation, stress positions: all the techniques we have now come to know almost by heart. And torture is a war crime. War crimes have no statute of limitations and are among the most serious crimes of which one can be accused.

This is what Cheney is desperate to avoid. It is unclear whether he will actually ever be prosecuted, but the facts of his record will wend their way inexorably into the sunlight. That means he could become a pariah. Even though the CIA actively destroyed the videotapes of torture sessions, it could not destroy the legal and administrative record now available to the new administration.

So Cheney is reduced to asserting that what he did saved countless lives and averted many plots. He is reduced to asserting the same Manichean view of the world that gave us Guantanamo, Bagram and the Iraq war: fighting terrorism is “a tough mean, dirty, nasty business”, he told Polit-ico, an American political website. “These are evil people. And we’re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.”

But no one is urging that we turn the other cheek: they are simply saying the West has to obey the laws of war and the rule of law in its battle against jihadist terrorism. By coming out so forcefully and so publicly so soon after he left office, Cheney is intent on asserting that the torture programme he set up was legal, moral and defensible. Like many of Obama’s former foes, he may come to regret making that move in his own defence.

What goes around, comes around.
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April 5, 2009 10:03am
greenfly

Bill English on the fantastical cycleway: “We won’t be spending 50 million on it this year, next year, or the year after.”
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April 5, 2009 10:56am
goodgod

Lydia Jordan – what has her parents wealth got to do with it? She’s a girl with an opinion on a teen social site, not an MP in parliament.
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April 5, 2009 11:00am
greenfly

Espiner: Is the Prime Minister wrong here?

English Let’s see (let us wait and see). I certainly wouldn’t want to say he’s wrong

(My bold.)
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April 5, 2009 11:11am
billyborker

Yes reid, I am shitting bricks about North Korea, their power and ability to project that power is horrendous.

Of course, whould they invade NZ, we could stop them dead in their tracks by offering them a feed.
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April 5, 2009 11:26am
billyborker

On the good news front, let’s hope this carries through to NZ. Employers must realise employees have a private life, and that is no concern of the employer.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/home/technology/facebook-discipline-may-be-illegal-expert/2009/04/03/1238261779328.html
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April 5, 2009 11:27am
reid

“I am shitting bricks about North Korea, their power and ability to project that power is horrendous.”

When you have nukes and a delivery system you don’t need much else, billy.
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April 5, 2009 11:31am
baxter

The judge must read Bebo and have been influenced by Lydia seeing as he only dealt out 10 years for this cold blooded murder. No doubt Lydia will remain faithful to her true love for the next 10 years.
REID….No doubt you believe everything Robert Fisk writes too.
BILLY:…Are you suggesting the US should do it to them before they do it to us…No show mate with their current Commander in Cheif.
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April 5, 2009 11:54am
billyborker

no Baxter, I wasn’t. It was a pisstake of reid’s paranoia.

I always preferred Sgt Esterhaus to Sgt Jablonski.
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April 5, 2009 11:58am
reid

“No doubt you believe everything Robert Fisk writes too.”

How would you know what I believe, baxter?

Anyway, we’ll know in a few days, won’t we.

I’m simply saying it’s a possibility, based on what’s been said.

What’s the matter, don’t you read international newspapers?
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April 5, 2009 12:04pm
Patrick Starr

gg. Her parent’s wealth has nothing to do with it, – “She’s a girl with an opinion on a teen social site” – yep, and obviously one used to getting her own way and one with absolutely no sense of values or judgment – FFS telling Augustine’s grieving family: “ Everyone’s victims in this situation.”

what a piece of shit
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April 5, 2009 12:07pm
wreck1080

Haiden Davis family should be outright apologizing for what their piece of s***t son has done.

Instead, they are saying it was just an accident and attacking the victims family.

The world would be a much better place if people such as the Davis family never existed.

Just goes to show the evil in the world out there.
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April 5, 2009 12:40pm
adamsmith1922

http://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2009/04/05/richard-worth-probed-by-sfo/

HoS has a story on how Worth’s connections are being probed by SFO. Guy is probably guilty of nothing, but Key needs to lance the boil.
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April 5, 2009 1:21pm
Tauhei Notts

Off topic, but when I saw that picture of the Obamas with Q.E. II I thought of that saying;
“All the tall women die young, that is why we are left with little old ladies”
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April 5, 2009 1:27pm
goodgod

Oh Patrick, take it easy. No one has any knowledge of what her yet-to-fully-develop brain is going to turn out next or what it really thinks. Average Hormonal Teenager – world will not end. It’s as if the Herald has never seen the internet witht he writing of that story. They run a “your views” section and that is often full of equally idiotic statements, but they don’t make the front e-page. Hell, more silly ideas have been posted here. It’s a wee bit amusing to find so many educated old men growling about one young girl’s opinion. 😆 Just wait till greenfly logs on tomorrow and everything wil be back to normal.
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April 5, 2009 2:41pm
Portia

Jeez, it’s quiet in blogland today. Where is everybody? Hardly any comments. No one even terribly interested in the Bill English interview on Q&A this morning.

It also seems quiet in town. I went to the gym and the normally chocker class was one-third full.

The end of Daylight savings means an extra HOUR of sleep, guys, not a whole day.
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April 5, 2009 3:32pm
fredinthegrass

Hey, Portia, give us a break. During that “extra” hour managed to figure out
maybe we could use it to drive further for the AM fix.
Staying in Queenstown that suggested Kingston, Wanaka, or Glenorchy.
Glenorchy it was with stunning views all the way, and great coffee once there.
Could become a regular part of the day!?
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April 5, 2009 3:57pm
dad4justice

Was the communist North Korea just celebrating Miss Klark’s position on the UN by sending a few nukes up into the atmosphere?
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April 5, 2009 5:46pm
Brian Smaller

The end of Daylight savings means an extra HOUR of sleep, guys, not a whole day.

Hey Portia – I worked all night and only got to bed at 11:00 this morning. I was allowed to sleep all day.
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April 5, 2009 6:04pm
paradigm

Since Helen Clark has had a standing ovation from the Nats on her valedictory, it is worth remembering the level of respect she gave the last national leader Dr Don Brash upon his retirement: making it a point not to even attend his valedictory speech. I suspect that virtually all the sentiment given to Clark results from either a desire not to prejudice her new UN position or as an attempt or to avoid perturbing the electorate ahead of a by-election.

It would be interesting to ask the current National and Labour leadership their honest oppinion of her in 5-10 years, when they no longer have to worry about maintaining a degree of decorum in public. I suspect it would be somewhat different to what has been recently expressed.
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April 5, 2009 7:12pm
adam2314

What worries me is.

How much did the plaster job on Huluns face cost TV 1, for the Paul Holmes interview shown this morning ?.

She is into our pocket to the very end. ( and probably beyond ).
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April 5, 2009 8:07pm
greenfly

Perhaps tomorrow there will be someone on deck to ask what Bill English meant by

“We won’t be spending 50 million on it this year, next year, or the year after.”

and what the hell happened to the BIG IDEA?

I’m up for asking again in the morning. Someone must know.
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April 5, 2009 9:53pm
hayek

“it is worth remembering the level of respect she gave the last national leader Dr Don Brash upon his retirement: making it a point not to even attend his valedictory speech. ”

I can only commend National for their magnanimousness on Helen Clark’s departure. You’d have to say that Don Brash left under quite different circumstances though. Anyway, I’ll wager that Don Brash was just as unlikely to bury the hatchet as HC: both JK and HC changed tack on election night with their speeches – she could have been ungracious like Don Brash in ’05, he could have lauded it over her after the personal nature of the campaign, and more kudos to him in that regard. But ultimately they both seek each other’s approval, and will continue to do so.
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April 5, 2009 10:23pm

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