Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to Danielle,
I think those people outside the White House are mostly university students, who aren’t known for their calmly reasonable responses to world events.
And the young Muslim woman in the TPM video, a pro-tolerance activist, who is pretty bloody stoked. I'm inclined to cut the mostly young crowd some slack. However you apportion blame, all they've known since early childhood is a country under heavy manners. I can understand the human nature part of the celebration.
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Hard News: Still sounds good, in reply to R A Hurley,
Well, that's laying down the challenge to Wellingtonians ...
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to Rex Widerstrom,
If the west is serious about minimising the capacity of his followers to wreak further tragedy, isn’t it about time we called Pakistan on it’s tacit support for terrorism and started imposing some consequences?
OTOH, Pakistan granted the US airspace and provided cover on the ground for the raid. Clearly, it's complex.
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to Samuel Scott,
Excellent find. Abbottabad seems like a luxury resort town. Lots of retired Pakistani military officers, apparently.
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Off you go, then ...
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Hard News: Still sounds good, in reply to philipmatthews,
Why no clips?
How remiss of me.
I'm pretty 'Randolph' is a Knoxy special too.
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I'm gonna have to go for 'Randolph's Going Home'. Thinking of Wayne always makes me think about that brilliant little summer -- man, we had some fun.
Just before the band left Auckland, I did a little interview for Rip It Up. They were as bratty as you'd expect, but Wayne also talked movingly about why anyone gets up on a stage and plays music: "It's not a pose, it's not fucking anything -- it's just a really wonderful feeling."
When the record came out, it was this weird, mournful, lonely song that didn't sound like anything I'd ever heard before. Apart from the purpose it served for Shayne in the context of farewelling a lost friend, I think it showed new places he could go musically. Still one of my favourite records from anywhere.
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Just kicking off the thread ...
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Hard News: Any excuse for a party, in reply to Simon Grigg,
Power may not be exercised often but it still has not been completely extinguished.
Billy Bragg had a different take:
The wedding was a just a display of harmless pageantry compared to the pernicious flummery of the Queen's Speech. Wills and Kate offer no real threat to our democracy, but the royal prerogative does, allowing the prime minister to exercise executive power without first consulting parliament.
That's where reformers should focus their anger, not on two young people getting married. I wish them well.
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Hard News: Any excuse for a party, in reply to Lea Barker,
Far better to have a parliamentary democracy in which ministers, including the prime minister, have to answer for their actions to the people's representatives on a daily basis.
We'd be a Parliamentary republic with a mostly ceremonial head of state, like Ireland is.