Posts by Paul Williams
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Just following the tweets, there's a significant group of people who are strongly of the view that the Swedish charges are entirely confected and that any extradition/trial in Sweden will simply be a prelude to him being somehow extracted to the US to face charges of terrorism etc. Perhaps, I don't know. I'm not sure how anyone could know definitively?
What troubles me though is the implicit assumption that Assange can't possibly have committed any of the alleged criminal acts in Sweden because, I infer, his political activities are those of a just man fighting the illegitimate actions of corrupt governments/corporations.
Is it not possible that he has a case to answer over the alleged sexual assaults and he's also a revolutionary?
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Hard News: Popular Paranoiac Politics, in reply to Danyl Mclauchlan,
The real enmity between National and Labour, and the thing that makes a grand coalition impossible is the personal ambition of the politicians in each party. All of them want to be in government and run the country but you can't have two PMs, two Finance Ministers, two Justice Ministers etc
I don't agree. Yes they hype up the differences and certainly there's consensus on a number of issues however, there remain real differences in social policy and there's increasing divergence in economic policy too. To simply declare that all of politics is self-aggrandisement is a bit superficial.
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Hard News: Popular Paranoiac Politics, in reply to BenWilson,
Yes, Coddington seems to have lifted her game dramatically this year.
I agree. Her column was reasonable, that's a significant improvement on previous ones.
On a slightly different tangent; what is it with all these has-beens and retreads in the media? Newman, Peters, Brash? I say they should fuck off and let new people get on with it. There's plenty of new, comparatively young political talent to be bothered giving print space to these idiots.
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Hard News: The Public Address Word of…, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
Cheers to that Geoff, oh wait, but I live in Sydney. Actually, I typically barrack for Australia when they're not playing NZ but I can't help but enjoy their failiings in the Ashes.
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Hard News: The Public Address Word of…, in reply to James Butler,
I'm seeing a nice Dr. Seussian dichotomy between the hat-twat twatcockers and hot-twat twatcockers. I imagine we'll discover in the end that our twatcocks are all the same underneath.
Genius!
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to chris,
I listened to that song today, Dave Dobbyn's Welcome Home too; trying to find an emotional state that approximated how I felt... both are beautiful but I'm not sure they quite reflect, for me, how I feel.
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Marion Ogier,
For those interested, the interview Marion mentioned is here.
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Russell Brown,
Fuck, those questions are apalling. Seven breakfast TV is as you'd imagine; vapid crap. The Australian, on the other hand is a well regarded paper. It has a bias I don't share but it's credible and serious. They should pull this reporter. But Brownlee's right; Australians care deeply about what's happening in NZ and not just because they have their citizens down the mine.
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Roger,
I guess that it was around the time of rumours of him being carpeted and threatened with cancellation if he did not lift the ratings… bringing on the immediate production of an item about bare breasts on Takapuna Beach. Thank God for 7:00-7:30 re-runs of the Simpsons!
On of the very real benefits of having a genuine public broadcaster in Australia, ABC, is that the TV news and even the magazine style shows are substantive. 7.30 Report on ABC is hosted by one of the leading and respected journalist, Kerry O'Brien, and is formatted for longer interviews etc.
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Michael Hills,
Michael, FWIW I think everyone here, regardless of the few cross words, shares the same hope your friends are well and rescued. That mightn't help directly, and perhaps the inability to do something more meaningful is part of the fractiousness, but it's sincere. Arohanui.