Hard News: Will they make O'Reilly sweat?
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http://www.army.mil.nz/army-overseas/operations/iraq/default.htm
We were in Iraq and even came under motar fire, but never let the facts get in the way of an election.
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How does "Pundit" fit in the scheme?
While some pieces on Pundit are definitely fact rich and deserve to be called news journalism, what I have in mind would be focussed on longer-form writing that was not merely an extended op-ed. Pundit has some good stuff, but I don't see a big new story breaking there, do you?
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Contributions should be assessed like student essays, noting the number of facts they contain. Contributors should be encouraged to go out and find news, the old-fashioned way, rather than commenting on other commentaries. Anyone who references Chomsky should be shown the door.
There, that's sorted.
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Yes. There are many high quality (and even more low quality) bloggers who will produce opinion pieces for free. This is not an activity that needs funding.
Journalistic spadework is a skilled job that requires leaving your desk. That does need funding.
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Bosnia was an international intervention in a civil war. We entered it in 1992 by providing 9 UN military observers after a peace agreement had been signed between Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslims.
If we had decided the massacre at Srebrenica and generalised ethnic cleansing were a problem then we would have been involved in fighting a war in Bosnia. We did not, thousands were killed and the ethnic cleansing was made effective.
We entered Afghanistan as part of a full-throated war of invasion in which the established government [Taliban] of Afghanistan - not just the Al Qaeda terrorists were the declared enemy.
Actually we allied with the United Islamic Front that controlled 30% of Afghanistan and attacked the Taliban who were allied with Al Qaeda. "The established government [Taliban] of Afghanistan" was not established, but rather the larger faction in an on-going civil war. The Taliban had by 2001 gained control of approximately 60% of Afghanistan, under its control religious persecution (including mass killings) occured. We could have adopted the Bosnian approach and stood by whilst these persecutions took place, but decided not.
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Re Australia and its treatment of refugees: this Wire interview from a couple of weeks ago about a guy who traced what became of some of the Nauru refugees sent back home, fairly sobering stuff!
http://www.95bfm.com/assets/sm/189471/3/drjohnsweeney.mp3
Re alternatives to newspaper monopolies: this site was mentioned on national radio yesterday
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We could have adopted the Bosnian approach and stood by whilst these persecutions took place, but decided not.
Actually Angus if you read a little history the United Islamic Front had their own wee track record of mass killings and blood letting. We, if we means the west, decided to turn a blind eye to those. It was no better than the Bosnian situation.
It was Massoud's guys who invented the bake'em in a container end for folks they didn't want to share the planet with.
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We, if we means the west, decided to turn a blind eye to those. It was no better than the Bosnian situation.
Yes Simon both were dirty wars that involved massacres of civillians as a norm rather than an exception. In Bosnia the West sent troops to not take sides, but stand by and do nothing. In Afghanistan the West sent troops to intervene and to intervene meant picking somebody's side. The wars were similar, but Western actions were different.
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Yes Simon both were dirty wars that involved massacres of civillians as a norm rather than an exception.
I'm just not sure how telling one side that their bloodletting is better than the other's is better than Bosnia. They may have taken a hell of long time to do anything in Bosnia but the end result was better than greenlighting and back-patting the Northern Alliance's excesses and then claiming they were doing it to liberate Afghanistan.
Right now, Bosnia is the more successful of the two interventions despite a horrible beginning. One of the problems in Afghanistan is that for many the end result is little better than the problem.
Still, at least they were able to train the CIA in container warfare.
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And speaking of history and blind eyes, how about looking closer to home, and into our own peddlers of superstition.
And excuse me for not caring where idiots send their pawns, and numerical comparisons thereof. -
The Chief of the Army, Major General Gardiner, was on Morning Report today, where he noted that the Army had been in East Timor for nine years.
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Speaking of technology, I wonder why papers are printed at all anymore. Would it not be better to buy a formatted for print version of the online publication from a kiosk where you put your cash/EFTPOS/Credit Card in and a tabloid or A4 format is printed while you wait? And you could charge people just for the bit they want, i.e. they want just the classifieds or the sports news or the world news sections... Such a thing would mean a paper could instantly update for fast breaking stories - so for a 9/11 event you might even sell two copies as shocked commuters grab a copy on the way to and from work.
Even better, if the kioks were "open source" then the "Pundit News" or the "Public Address Bugle" could compete with the "NZ Herald" or "Kiwiblog Advertiser" for your dollars that day, and your costs and revenues would be totally tied to how many copies were printed from each kiosk...
Just an idea I had in the bath the other week.
Oh yes and Afghanistan: The reason why it isn't mentioned is because it isn't/wasn't a very controversial decision to get involved. A broad consensus of New Zealanders agreed with our taking part in the invasion post 9/11, agreed with the secret SAS role, and understood that such an attack as 9/11 on our ally the United States demanded a united armed response in Afghanistan. And having become involved, we have a national conspiracy amongst ourselves not to mention the war in the hope Al Qaeda won't find out and will leave us alone.
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Speaking of technology, I wonder why papers are printed at all anymore.
I assume that despite their enormous upfront cost, the big presses have enormously low running costs (both in terms of paper and ink). I'm not sure that you can easily downscale that to a kiosk. It's one thing to pay a buck twenty for a paper, but you might be looking at that much for a section. Also, even a pretty beasty sort of a printer is going to keep you waiting for possibly longer than you'd want, especially on the way to work.
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The trouble with the specialised model too, Tom, is that people will end up reading about only those things they think they want to read about. If I go to the Guardian website, I'll read stories under the heading "culture" or "media", but if I had the physical newspaper in front of me -- or the Herald or Press or ODT or DomPost -- I'll read about all sorts of stuff I didn't know I was interested in. And if we lose that sense of going beyond our narrow interests -- not to say yours are narrow, but you know what I mean -- or beyond opinions we agree with -- and if we read daily papers we see plenty of opinions we don't agree with -- then you have to worry a bit about the shape of community and democracy. And, yes, I work for a daily paper.
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They print papers because the advertisers are prepared to pay for advertisements.
That may sound glib but that is all there is to it. Newspapers offer advertisers exposure, because enough people are still buying papers. So advertisers spend money, which keeps the newspapers in business.
The print on demand idea is more rational than buying an entire newspaper, but how would you make money from it?
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Right now, Bosnia is the more successful of the two interventions despite a horrible beginning. One of the problems in Afghanistan is that for many the end result is little better than the problem.
Indeed ethnic cleansing with a hint of genocide as practiced in the Balkans was good methodology for pacifying territory. After the enemy civilians have fled everyone can live in peace. I suspect it is the prefered methodology of the West to stand aside and let this sort of thing happen - Sudan, Congo, Burma. The issue is that emnity may build for a later generation of bloodletting.
Winning in Afghanistan is an attempt to find a way to break the cycle, but maybe no solution exists.
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And having become involved, we have a national conspiracy amongst ourselves not to mention the war in the hope Al Qaeda won't find out and will leave us alone.
Oh, I think AQ are quite happy with the current state of play in Afghanistan. Tying down the US in a long, almost endless, war of attrition was an oft stated aim.
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Speaking of technology, I wonder why papers are printed at all anymore.
Your solution sounds a lot like RSS feeds.
I only buy a paper if I want to look at the adverts - very rarely.
Otherwise I pick up the stuff sports feed, national news, public address etc.
Printing it out is _so_ 2007.
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I suspect it is the prefered methodology of the West to stand aside and let this sort of thing happen
It worked in the building of America so I guess it's tried and true.
Winning in Afghanistan is an attempt to find a way to break the cycle, but maybe no solution exists.
Well as much as I hate saying it, maybe bringing the Taliban into the discussion is a part of a way forward. Certainly many Afghans seem to think so. A military victory is almost an impossibility.
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I only buy a paper if I want to look at the adverts - very rarely.
I only read a physical newspaper on a plane now and that's because it's free.
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I buy far more paper newspapers now than I think I ever have in the past. However that is probably more due to moving to a media market with loads of alternatives and having exchanged a brisk walk to work with a medium length train commute.
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Stephen, be happy.
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Robert Baer talks a lot of sense when it comes to the Middle East.
And he has a new book out.http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95285396
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