Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Media3: The Maori Media Man, in reply to mark taslov,
Nonsense or not Russell, I’ll stand by it. While the film is the catalyst of this year’s protests, it’s peripheral to the deeper motivations for the killings .
Which are? Yes, it’s looking like in Benghazi the film was a pretext for an al Qaeda-linked group working with former Gaddafi loyalists. I don’t think their motivations are all that good.
In Afghanistan, 14 people were killed after an insurgent group persuaded an 18 year-old girl to strap on a bomb “in response to the film insulting the Prophet Muhammad and Islam.” (At least that’s not as bad as last week’s heart-breaking child-suicide-bombing of a kids’ skateboarding club in Kabul. If you can find a geopolitical justification for that, you’re doing better than me.)
And, of course, there have also been people killed in the act of protesting.
Likewise the issue of free speech itself is peripheral to a film which hasn’t contravened free speech laws in its country of origin.
But people in many countries have taken the film’s continued availability as evidence that the US government wants it to be available. They’re from countries where their governments – new or old – wouldn’t tolerate such publication, and have, in some cases, been blocking it – along with Gmail and Google. It’s quite central to the whole thing.
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Hard News: Media3: The Maori Media Man, in reply to mark taslov,
The only film getting anyone killed this year is ‘The Dark Knight Rises’.
For goodness sake, at least 28 people have died in violence attributed to this film, including people protesting about it. An imam in Egypt has declared a fatwa on everyone involved in the film, however unwittingly, and Salman Rushdie has seen his bounty raised by the mullahs.
And meanwhile, YouTube is holding the line on the basis that the film doesn't violate its hate speech guidelines. And perhaps they're right to say so, but to say that the issue of free speech is "a peripheral" here is just nonsense.
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Hard News: Tired and emotional, for reals, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
However, the facts in your articles describe things that happened. You don’t own those facts. I can summarize them in my own words and you don’t have recourse, beyond loud grumpling.
Summarise away. Felix was complaining about people copy-pasting whole stories, or most thereof. I thought that was really clear.
But he's not talking about invoking the law, just saying that it's frustrating, given that he's worked on those stories.
And flipping the bird and saying "you have no recourse!" when you've summarised without bothering to source would be pretty crappy too, really. Why would you do that?
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Hard News: Tired and emotional, for reals, in reply to Felix Marwick,
Forgive me if I get a little pissed off at people who help themselves to my work and that of my colleagues, slap it up on their site without so much as a “please” or a “do you mind”. Journalism costs. You want to take our work? How about asking first? How about making a contribution even?
I don’t mind quotes and links. Fair use is fine. But lifting whole articles is taking the piss.
I completely agree. It's also lazy.
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Okay -- it looks like we have the third and final answer on the minister's statistics, thanks to Lindsay Mitchell:
For the record, the Ministerial Q & A sheet says,
"More than 161,000 people have received a benefit for at least half of the last 10 years and 139,000 have spent more than a decade on benefit since 1993."
Happily the Herald has amended its story.
I would also note that this statistic does not demonstrate benefit capture.
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Hard News: "Because we can", in reply to Sacha,
Expect wholesale reclassification as in the UK. That does have some upsides, to be fair. Many people currently receiving the Invalid Benefit would welcome access to support to get some part-time work (see Greens income support spokesperson Jan Logie discussing her conversations with People First).
But what the government is doing seems likely to encourage people to fight to stay on the invalid benefit – making the work-test harsher really raises the stakes on a move to any other benefit, even in pursuit of support for getting into work. I wonder if it’s going to be self-defeating in that respect. It worries me.
But I presume the minister and Ms Rebstock haven't thought it through like that. It would require more empathy than they typically display.
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Up Front: Submission Pun Goes Here, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
And does anyone want revert to the bad old good old days where a landlord could perfectly legally refuse to rent their property to a couple without a wedding certificate
Let alone the days when a bank made you get married before it would grant a mortgage.
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David Shearer’s researcher Lamia Imam has directed me to Who uses the benefit system and for how long? , which was prepared by VUW researchers for the Welfare Working Group.
And in particular, p17, which says that as of June 2009 among recipients aged 28-64, 171,100 (or two thirds of that group) had spent “50% or more of the last 10 years on benefit”.
And 121,100 of that group had spent eight or more of the last 10 years on benefit.
So, to revisit Bennett’s actual quote:
I think it does become that safety net and I think over time what it instead has become is a bit of a trap for quite a few people when we’ve seen 161,000 people have been on for at least five of the last 10 years (and) 139,000 for at least 10 years.
Presumably she’s either recalled the 2009 numbers incorrectly or is quoting newer figures. And her “at least 10 years” is completely wrong.
Also, the cohort isn’t all NZers or even all beneficiaries, but beneficiaries aged 28-64.
These are odd measures, because the first one especially could just as well show labour mobility as benefit capture. People moving in and out of employment at the edges is what your benefit system is supposed to support.
Also, as I noted earlier, half or more of the people in question are on invalids benefits and aren’t subject to the measures Bennett says will fix the problem.
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Hard News: "Because we can", in reply to DexterX,
The Romney strategy is to focus on is the 5 to 10 % of swinging voters. He, in the Mother Jones link, lumps the 47% ( of those who want social policy in the form of health care, housing and welfare) as votes for Obama and as a goup people who don’t pay taxes.
The irony being, of course, that the states where fewest people pay federal income tax are in the Republican South. 2008 Obama votes were concentrated in higher-income states.
And, of course, the principal reason these people pay no income tax -- or even have the government pay them -- is a flagship Reagan policy .
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Hard News: "Because we can", in reply to Sacha,
Doing the numbers this way supports the ideological decision to frame the core issue as ‘dependence’. Watch those nutbar WWG terms of reference produce their natural outcomes..
Sadly, I think you’re right. They’re presenting the numbers so as emphasise dependence over mobility.