Posts by Sacha
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Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys, in reply to Don Christie,
The NYT seems to be cheer leading an attack on Iran (despite the actual content of the cable in question contradicting their basis for this).
As you'd expect, Noam Chomsky has an opinion - interview transcript:
AMY GOODMAN: The documents’ revelations about Iran come just as the Iranian government has agreed to a new round of nuclear talks beginning next month. On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the cables vindicate the Israeli position that Iran poses a nuclear threat. Netanyahu said, "Our region has been hostage to a narrative that is the result of sixty years of propaganda, which paints Israel as the greatest threat. In reality, leaders understand that that view is bankrupt. For the first time in history, there is agreement that Iran is the threat. If leaders start saying openly what they have long been saying behind closed doors, with can make a real breakthrough on the road to peace," Netanyahu said.
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NOAM CHOMSKY: That essentially reinforces what I said before, that the main significance of the cables that are being released so far is what they tell us about Western leadership. So Hillary Clinton and Benjamin Netanyahu surely know of the careful polls of Arab public opinion. The Brookings Institute just a few months ago released extensive polls of what Arabs think about Iran. The results are rather striking. They show the Arab opinion holds that the major threat in the region is Israel- that’s 80. The second major threat is the United States- that’s 77. Iran is listed as a threat by 10%.
With regard to nuclear weapons, rather remarkably, a majority- in fact, 57- say that the region [sic] would have a positive effect in the region if Iran had nuclear weapons. Now, these are not small numbers. 80, 77, say the U.S. and Israel are the major threat. 10 say Iran is the major threat. This may not be reported in the newspapers here- it is in England- but it’s certainly familiar to the Israeli and U.S. governments, and to the ambassadors. But there is not a word about it anywhere. What that reveals is the profound hatred for democracy on the part of our political leadership and the Israeli political leadership. These things aren’t even to be mentioned. This seeps its way all through the diplomatic service.
When they talk about Arabs, they mean the Arab dictators, not the population, which is overwhelmingly opposed to the conclusions that the analysts here- Clinton and the media- have drawn.
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Hard News: Do you like what we've done…, in reply to matthewbuchanan,
Sacha, your lucky day
Ta. Now that's what I call service.
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Hard News: Do you like what we've done…, in reply to nzlemming,
That would be cool.
When there's time, I also suggested a manual change ages ago - reduce the quote tag to <q>
Given that it is not a standard used anywhere else (unlike html's <blockquote> that some sites use), why make us type extra letters that are never seen except by the person typing them?
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Random Play: Alt.Republic: The rolling mall, in reply to BenWilson,
His objections to the mall are objections to all malls.
True, but compared with other big ones like Sylvia Park and Albany the traffic issues will be exceptional and completely predictable. Albany also lacks established residential neighbourhoods right alongside, though I wonder what noise Sylvia Park's neighbours made during hearings?
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Chair of the Auckland Council's Transport committee Mike Lee is not happy with either the process or the content of the consent decision.
What is clear about this is that the people of St Lukes – Mt Albert are the victim of a cynical political manoeuvre by the former Auckland City Council. Knowing the depth of public feeling against this development – in what was a marginal electorate – the politicians held this decision over until after the election – and even then the matter was so odious they passed on to the new Council.
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If the Commissioners recommendations are accepted – this will be New Zealand’s biggest shopping mall. A shopping mall which most planners would agree is in entirely located in the wrong place. St Lukes is where it is because of short-sighted decisions in the past – so why would we want to go and compound those mistakes.
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Hard News: Going Social, in reply to Nathaniel Wilson,
the major weakenss of the "new" media, in that there is a lot less critical evaluation of the information coming through
But Nathaniel, you've just critically evaluated the information so I guess the 'publish then filter' new media way is working. Though Jason Kottke is hardly a person of low credibility.
And here's NASA's media advisory (now that Jason's tweet alerted me there was something to look for):
NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.
Adding more information like that and your contribution above helps people bring their own analytical skills to bear on deciding how informed Kottke's speculation might be and whether to trust future information from him (and from me).
Naturally some wags are already suggesting it's all just an orchestrated US government distraction from Wikileaks..
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Hard News: Going Social, in reply to BenWilson,
most people are nicer in the flesh than they are online.
Twitter and Facebook may have differing effects..
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Hard News: Going Social, in reply to mrjamesmurray,
Thanks for commenting, James.
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Hard News: Going Social, in reply to BenWilson,
I'm yet to get the killer tweet that would give me any reason to run Twitter as a background service, rather than something that I only ever check if there's actual live news going on.
It's the best eclectic intelligence engine I've ever seen - but so much of that comes down to who you follow.
Just taking astronomic science as an example, this little number blew my mind a few days ago - cosmic background radiation patterns suggest we're in a cyclic universe with successive Big Bangs, not just one as we've been told for so long. Copernicus, much?
And today, informed speculation that NASA may have found arsenic-based life on Saturn's largest moon.
What's not to love?
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Onya. I'm experiencing timeouts on posting and page refreshing in the last week after much better performance until then (including after the shift back to NZ). Has the hosting setup changed recently?