Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: The Wellington Cables, in reply to Idiot Savant,
I think public perceptions of the United States in this part of the world have changed a bit since then – and not just because of their national insanity over the war on terror.
You know, I believe the Vietnam War was a bit controversial back in the day.
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Hard News: The Wellington Cables, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
Which is something that I have sympathy for, though I think actually going and looking I’m sure we could find a bunch of good things that we didn’t know about.
Yes, we could. For instance, the US is by freakin' miles the biggest donor to the World Food Program -- $1.5 billion of a $3.5 billion budget this year. It's put more than half a billion into Haiti in the past two years. And a billion this year into the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and malaria. Again, no other states approach this level of commitment.
This is not to say there aren't still swathes of US foreign and aid policy that are self-interested and objectionable. But the idea that the US does no good -- or only evil -- in the world is palpably untrue.
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Hard News: We are all twatcocks now…, in reply to Tom Beard,
“a talkback of twatcocks”
A book should be called that.
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Oh, and also a word for The Guardian. Its handling of the cables and the wider story has been tremendous.
Although I'd rather they hadn't run that half-assed Jemima Khan column ...
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Off to see The Fall soon. Thanks for the argument, all. I did feel one was warranted.
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Hard News: The Wellington Cables, in reply to Simon Grigg,
The stumbling block is that he needs to get to Sweden to benefit from Swedish law. We already know that this extradition to Sweden, regardless of what happens on Tuesday, could take years even without an appeal to the European Court.
I'd actually hope his lawyers are at least investigating the possibility of an agreement for him to go back to Sweden without further jeopardy.
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Hard News: The Wellington Cables, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Why are we even bother with a trial then? Can't we just move to sentencing?
Could you manage even a little "ugh" over the way these women have been violated by people who think they're freedom fighters?
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Hard News: The Wellington Cables, in reply to giovanni tiso,
There are more or less the same ethical issues that there are in exploiting your position as the leader of a band that rocks as much as The Rolling Stones to get sex on tap. Seriously.
It's a damn shame all that stuff about various other people's sexual exploits turned up in the first 0.01% of the Cablegate documents to be released, then.
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Hard News: The Wellington Cables, in reply to Simon Grigg,
I'm not sure if any of us could endure the 7 years he claims this may take to resolve.
Except, as the Guardian reported, the same Swedish law that allows suspects to be placed in custody allows obliges the system to deal with the matter with great dispatch -- like, two weeks.
Again, best not treat everything Assange's lawyers say as the whole truth.
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Hard News: The Wellington Cables, in reply to Idiot Savant,
And the same applies if the source is the US. If people feel their reputation has been tarnished by the public reminder of their involvement in the program, then perhaps they should have thought about that before taking money from a pack of torturing warmongers.
Yes, Bill Rowling, Alan Mac Diarmid, Dame Anne Salmond, Gareth Farr
Sir Jon Trimmer, Dame Marie Clay, Dame Jean Herbison, Anne Meade, Ron Paterson, Jamie Belich, Sir Kenneth Keith, David Baragwanath, Wiremu Kaa, David Cunliffe, Iosefa Enari, Simon O'Neill, Roger Hall, Bill Manhire, Joan Druett and Michael King should all be very ashamed of their Fulbright scholarships.What a ridiculous argument. It's proper to scrutinise journalists in this context (ideally by doing some work, finding what what the scheme is, what they did, what they wrote, etc) but the idea that any recipient of an exchange grant or scholarship has the blood of an entire host nation's foreign policy on their hands is insane.