Posts by Russell Brown
-
Hard News: Jonesing, in reply to George Darroch,
This is a new thing in New Zealand politics, isn’t it? I can’t recall any previous in which the contenders for leadership of a political party engaged in a process which was so public.
Indeed. And I did anticipate that it would generate unprecedented visibility. It's the "something to hide" implication that gets my goat.
-
Oddest thing about this leadership contest: TV3′s endorsement of one of the candidates. In some ways it makes sense: Jones is friends with the journalists who are promoting him and running negative campaigns against his opponents (it would all be an outrageous breach of ethics if their mate had any chance of winning). But portraying Jones as a street-fighting man of the common people when he’s a Harvard educated former corporate chairman who talks like he’s swallowed a thesaurus and ends every sentence with ‘etcetera’ elevates it all into absurdity, and its hard to get wound up about it.
-
And in US chart news, Katy Perry finally dethrones Robin Thicke.
But more importantly: Lorde's 'Royals' has now moved into the US Top 10.
-
Hard News: This time it's Syria, in reply to Stephen R,
Which provides more information than I’ve seen before. The summary could be “It’s complicated, the evidence is mixed, and there are no good options”.
The part about the disastrous drought and crop failures was interesting, and news to me.
But what’s he saying here?
Why did the investigators not do a more thorough job? The doctor at the site told the Guardian reporter that the Assad regime warned the investigators that they should leave because it could not guarantee their safety but the newspaper’s headline says that the Syrian government authorities ordered them out. Which is true? Is there another explanation? And why did the inspection team not have the means to retrieve parts of the delivery equipment, presumably rockets? Were they told by the UN or other authorities not to retrieve them or were they refused permission by the Syrian government? We simply do not know.
Is there really that much conflict between the regime ordering them out after 90 minutes and the regime saying it couldn’t guarantee their safety? Is he implying the UN – contrary to all appearances – had an agenda to frame the regime for the attacks?
And here, why does he suddenly drop in a report from April as if it’s related to the recent attack? Is it really strong enough to help his conclusions?
Much was made of the belief that the gas had been delivered by rocket. However, as The New York Times correspondent Ben Hubbard reported (April 27, 2013) “”Near the attack sites, activists found spent rockets that appeared to have been homemade and suspected that they delivered the gas.” Would the regular army’s chemical warfare command have used “homemade” rockets? That report seemed to point to some faction within the opposition rather than to the government.
But we have much stronger reports indicating earlier use of smaller-scale chemical weapons by the regime – or, at least, against rebel forces – that he ignores. I couldn’t find the text he quotes by Googling or searching the New York Times site, but another Hubbard story notes that forces fighting on the government’s behalf have been using homemade rockets:
At least one photograph posted on Facebook by an activist showed what looked like a makeshift rocket. But loyalist militias and Hezbollah have both fired makeshift rockets at rebel positions in this war, and could presumably be suspects for any attacks with improvised rockets on rebel-controlled neighborhoods.
If the chemical attack was mounted by loyalist forces, rather than the Syrian military itself, that might explain a few things. But Polk doesn’t even try and go there.
But yet another Hubbard report, full of on-the-ground reporting, says this:
Shortly after Wednesday’s rocket barrage began, rebel fighters spread the news of the assault by shouting, “Chemical attack!” into their walkie-talkies while loudspeakers affixed to minarets on the top of mosques blared warnings to residents to flee or to seek fresh air on their rooftops.
As in many rebel areas, residents had grown used to dealing with government attacks, instincts that this time only increased the death toll.
According to local doctors, some people took cover in basements, where the gas settled and suffocated them. Medics and photographers who had become accustomed to rushing to the site of attacks arrived too quickly, succumbing to the gases themselves.
The attacks appeared to fit into a pattern of continued escalation by government forces throughout the war, with large strikes on residential areas that appear to serve no immediate tactical purpose.
Hubbard notes that both sides seem to have been making tactical use of chemical weapons, but emphasises the difference in scale of this attack.
The evidence put forward by France, the UK and the US (summarised here by The Guardian) is not conclusive. But the evidence that the other side inflicted this on their own towns as a provocation currently seems thin to non-existent.
-
Hard News: And one war ends?, in reply to Craig Young,
I sometimes despair of NORML and ALCP ever being able to arrange it on our end. At times, the pot decriminalisation lobby in NZ has been its own worst enemy.
True dat. I have a lot of time for Chris Fowlie, but some of the other people who've been associated with NORML really do not help their cause.
-
Hard News: And one war ends?, in reply to Craig Young,
Why can’t we just get rid of Class C MOD drugs and concentrate our attention on Class As?
It would be nice if we could revisit those classifications altogether and re-align them according to risk. It doesn’t make any sense for hash/hash oil to be in the same schedule as methamphetamine, or for psilocybin to be classed alongside heroin.
And then we’d want to have a good, hard think about whether the way we criminalise their use is appropriate.
-
Hard News: Friday Music: Partners in Vacancy, in reply to Danielle,
This is belated. But I feel like I must, in the interests of honesty and not-just-saying-stuff-on-Twitter-ism, note that I pretty much totally enjoy the song and may call Russell a fogey about it next time I see him. :) “Hey-hey-hey.”
You’re going to call me a fogey for thinking that a 36 year-old rapey douchebag is a douchebag? Well then, madam, I guess I am guilty as charged.
-
I'm struggling to believe that the French have entirely fabricated their dossier on the attacks. They were happy enough to call out the bogus intelligence presented in support of the Iraq invasion. The Iraq case was directly contradicted by the inspectors who'd been combing the country for years. In this case, the on-the-ground evidence, at the least, confirms the fact of chemical weapons being used. The evidence that the weapons were used by rebel forces rather than the regime seems very, very thin.
This doesn't mean a military attack on Syria is wise or moral, but I think it's prudent to acknowledge the evidence that an attack has taken place. The Guardian's latest story suggests that the preferred option may be to put pressure on Putin to accept that Al Assad must go. And maybe he might: Russia has now stopped shipping weapons to Syria. Which raises the question of who might replace Assad.
-
Hard News: And one war ends?, in reply to BenWilson,
It does have the major disadvantage of being easy to grow, and thus hard to tax.
Under Colorado's med-pot regime -- which is much tighter than California's, they've been tracking marijuana from seed to finished product for a while now. Individual seedlings have bar codes. I think they'll work out the tax part there.
-
Hard News: And one war ends?, in reply to BenWilson,
It’s hard to believe that the USA has stolen a march on us in the area of sensible drug laws. Somehow their crazy mixed up system actually got something right.
But only because they left it up to a popular vote :-)
I'm aware of a couple of NZers in the field who have gone to Colorado and encountered an incredulous response to the news that we're keeping the well-understood drug illegal and preparing to approve new ones.