Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Dropping the Bomber, in reply to DCBCauchi,
I don’t think that’s correct Craig, I can’t recall Clark dodging interviews on any significant issue but it was a while ago (perhaps you mean speeding tickets or paintings rather than substantive matters).
How about Clark’s response to Hager’s GM book?
The interesting thing there is that Clark convinced herself she was both correct, and the injured party – which is something she tended to do in a fix.
And she did have a little thread to hang on to there, in the form of Russell Poulter, who did advise the government that contamination was unlikely based on the test results. On the other hand, the source of the book’s scientific analysis to the contrary remains a mystery. It’s the key weakness of a book that otherwise exposes some shabby behaviour.
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Hard News: Dropping the Bomber, in reply to Lilith __,
My impression of Clark’s time as PM is like Paul WIlliams’ – she seemed very ready to talk to journalists most of the time. In fact seemed to seek them out. I’ve heard that on some occasions if journos didn’t ring her she rang them.
She did that quite a lot, and was never shy about working a room to get her message across to individuals. That message was of course, sometimes naught but naked spin ...
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Hard News: About Occupy Wall Street, in reply to Mandy S,
Hmmm.... I would have serious doubts as to the validity of the number of youtube hits as a measure.
Yeah, it's a measure of, well, YouTube hits. But it's some sort of proxy for visibility and that guy has tons of it.
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Hard News: About Occupy Wall Street, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
"Hang the bankers" isn't a useful response, but it's still absolutely true that the banking and financial systems screwed up bigtime, that most of it was predictable, and that some people actively profited off it. Conspirators they may not have been, but they're not exactly scapegoats, either.
Nicely put.
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Hard News: Where are the foreigners?!, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Quite – and as I’ve said elsewhere, Soul on the Viaduct might be a tad chi-chi for my taste, but the times I’ve been there it is obvious Judith Tabron puts a lot of effort into getting the front of house staff right.
+1
I had a pretty average meal there early on once, but in a couple of subsequent visits got what I thought might be the best wait-service I've ever experienced.
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Hard News: About Occupy Wall Street, in reply to Mandy S,
I dunno, I find it a bit weird and confused to go looking for the outsiders and extremists in a mass grouping and try to extrapolate some meaning from what they say. Of course extremists like any number of Randians are going to be attracted to the chaos.
But just one instance (and there are many) of that guy's video is the most-viewed OWS clip on YouTube that's not about police brutality. By that measure, he's becoming the face of it.
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Alan Grayson does an wonderful job of putting PJ O'Rourke in his place on the Bill maher show:
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Hard News: About Occupy Wall Street, in reply to BenWilson,
I feel more compelled right now to dive into the chaos and engage than I have in years. It's a moment of openness and potential and possibility - in stark contrast to the rigid hopelessness of the last 20-30 years. And that's exciting and fills me with hope - for all the confusion and fear it also provokes.
Totally, utterly. It seems to me like the world has hit a teachable moment.
I really hope so. I just get twitchy about things that look even a little like John Birch-style banking conspiracies.
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Hard News: Dropping the Bomber, in reply to DCBCauchi,
They were really good guys. Treat them like human beings and they'd treat you like one. All anyone wants to do is live their life. What's so hard to understand about that?
You may want to ask the women who've been put on the block and gang-raped in gang houses.
But seriously David, you're way off-topic, even by our standards. I've tried not to argue with you because that generally results in an even bigger derail, but, c'mon.
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Hard News: About Occupy Wall Street, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
There are some local attempts to get this happening here - Occupy Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin and, er, New Plymouth. It seems to have a fairly broad set of goals, encompassing pretty much all the issues that people of a leftist persuasion currently care about.
I really like Gio's Occupy Wellington post.