Posts by Russell Brown
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Pat Pilcher, Bronwyn Holloway-Smith of the Creative Freedom Foundation formed a panel to discuss 92A in the Media7 show we recorded this evening.
It screens tomorrow night at 9.10pm on TVNZ7.
Also, according to the Creative Freedom website, Friday at 12:10PM, Saturday 9:10PM and Tuesday at 12:10PM. Dude, I didn't know that.
Anyway, I think it was a good discussion for the time we had, and I thought Bronwyn came across as quite reasonable.
It was also nice to see Bronwyn and Ant talking straight after the show. The gulf between the warring parties actually does worry me sometimes.
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To E Schrodinger: why don't you stop blaming other people for things that happen in your life and stop waiting for the govt to do things for you or give you handouts. Now that Klark is gone its' time for NZers to take PERSONAL RESPONSABILITY. Open the box yourself and see if your cat is alive or dead.
That was Jah Rofflenui.
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Latest numbers:
**Iraq: Key figures since the war began**
By The Associated Press – 22 hours ago
U.S. TROOP LEVELS:
_October 2007: 170,000 at peak of troop buildup.
_January 2009: 144,000
_Confirmed U.S. military deaths as of Jan. 31, 2009: At least 4,236.
_Confirmed U.S. military wounded (hostile) as of Jan. 31, 2009: 31,004.
_Confirmed U.S. military wounded (non-hostile, using medical air transport) as of Jan. 3, 2009: 35,470.
_U.S. military deaths for January 2009: 16
_Deaths of civilian employees of U.S. government contractors as of Sept. 30, 2008: 1,264.
_Iraqi deaths in January 2009 from war-related violence: 242, the lowest number of casualties reported in one full month since the AP began tracking this figure in April of 2005.
_Assassinated Iraqi academics as of Jan. 19, 2009: 413.
_Journalists killed on assignment as of Feb. 2, 2009: 136.COST:
_Over $593 billion so far, according to the National Priorities Project.OIL PRODUCTION:
_Prewar: 2.58 million barrels per day.
_January 2009: 2.11 million barrels per day.ELECTRICITY:
_Prewar nationwide: 3,958 megawatts. Hours per day (estimated): 4-8.
_Jan. 19, 2009 nationwide: 5,970 megawatts. Hours per day: 13.3.
_Prewar Baghdad: 2,500 megawatts. Hours per day (estimated): 16-24.
_Jan. 19, 2009 Baghdad: Megawatts not available. Hours per day: 13.1.
Note: Current Baghdad megawatt figures are no longer reported by the U.S. State Department's Iraq Weekly Status Report.TELEPHONES:
_Prewar land lines: 833,000.
_Jan. 5, 2009: 1,300,000.
_Prewar cell phones: 80,000.
_Jan. 5, 2009: An estimated 14.7 million.WATER:
_Prewar: 12.9 million people had potable water.
_Jan. 15, 2009: 21.2 million people have potable water.SEWERAGE:
_Prewar: 6.2 million people served.
_Dec. 31, 2008: 11.3 million people served.INTERNAL REFUGEES:
_Nov. 27, 2008: At least 2.4 million people are currently displaced inside Iraq.EMIGRANTS:
_Prewar: 500,000 Iraqis living abroad.
_Nov. 25, 2008: Close to 2 million, mainly in Syria and Jordan.All figures are the most recent available.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced in late November that it had reached a milestone: exactly 50,000 Iraqi refugees had submitted for resettlement from host countries in the Middle East. Some refugees will not be able to return to Iraq and cannot, or will not, remain in host countries, according to UNHCR. -
Get Real (Auckland)
So yet again we hear the bleating from the likes of "Sanctimonious" in Wellington. Didn't you hear that the Sisterhood lost? Or are you worried about losing your cushy government job? And don't give me that line about "dyspraxia". It's BAD PARENTING. If we got the political correctness out of schools and started administering a few well-aimed smacks you'd see the end of your "dyspraxia" soon enough -- you mark my words.
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A positive write up in of all places the Guardian. Progress must be truly undeniable!
The solid-gold good news out of these provincial elections took a few days to emerge: the swing towards secular parties that favour a strong central government. That is promising.
But before you go off declaring victory, the 51% turnout (of registered voters) is the lowest of any of the elections run under US control, and it was achieved under a comprehensive security lockdown. The turnout in Baghdad was only 40%. Like I said, normal only in a relative sense.
A positive take on Iraq from an Iraqi (pre election)
Gee. A "positive take in Iraq" from a blog that has been providing "a positive take on Iraq" since 2003, and whose authors have taken huge donations from the US conservative movement. Who'd have thought?
I don't doubt the Fadhil brothers' sincerity, but really ...
Many of the still displaced Iraqis are former Baathists and their families, who gives a shit about them and why on earth would anyone anyway? They had it good at the expense of the rest of their countrymen for a long time, and now they are paying the price. If I was one of them I would stay out of the country also out of fear of the deserved revenge of fellow Iraqis. Plenty of them deserve a stretched neck, not sympathy.
James, you reach for rationalisations like a drunk reaches for the next beer, but that's just disgusting.
The flight of 4.7 million Iraqis from their homes has been a humanitarian calamity -- the worst in the region since the Palestinians fled in 1948. With any luck, this huge cohort of refugees won't be quite such a multi-generational problem as that one, but it's massive.
About 50,000 Iraqis are thought to have returned to their homes last year, but there has been consistent evidence that many of the remaining millions simply will not have homes to return to, as a consequence of the ethnic cleansing that they fled in the first place.
The claim that "they were all Baathist bad guys anyway" is a self-serving lie. Apart from being remarkably callous on your part , it simply isn't true. You just made it up.
Given the above I presume you're outraged that the US taxpayer is paying a weekly wage to Sunni militias. Or is that a little too much irony for you?
By now we would be almost certainly be watching a nuclear arms race between an idiot in Iraq and some nutters in Iran, located in the most strategic region in the world .... Hussein would hand off something nasty to one of the many terrorist organizations with whom he had working associations with ... Try oil at $500 a barrel, if you could get it. The great depression would look like a cake walk.
James, I can't help but think that the fact that your rationalisation relies on quite this level of dystopian crystal-ball gazing suggests you're papering over its cracks.
But as I recall, cordial relations between Iraq and Iran -- and they will become more cordial yet -- wasn't part of the original bill of goods. Quite the reverse.
The thing is that this was supposed to be a repeatable form of armed diplomacy that, as Cheney put it beforehand, would take "weeks, rather than months".
It's now at six years and running, and will eventually cost the American taxpayer $1,000,000,000,000. (I invite you to consider the opportunity cost of spending that much money in the region in any other way.)
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, and the coalition death toll is heading for 5000. The American public fell out of love with it a long time ago. It is not repeatable.
Meanwhile, in places like Basra, the clock has been turned back a thousand years for women. Maybe it will settle out -- but whatever emerges will not look like what the White House promised.
Oh, and I expect you heard that the weapons that provided the public rationale for war didn't actually exist.
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They fall open at those pages, though. Have I said this recently in another thread? I feel like I have.
You're having a librarian moment.
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And is there such a thing as an infrastructure project that would benefit the nation as a whole, rather than just a single region like Auckland or ChCh? In Britain 150 years ago it was the rail network, but it helped that they had the economy of scale for the task.
Well, that nationwide ultra-broadband network should help -- as expressed, it speaks to your request, because it's not driven by local demand but by public policy. (Yes, it was seriously socialist.)
But things have gone very quiet on that front since the election, and since Maurice Williamson's exit from IT.
I don't seriously expect it to emerge in anything like the form it had in National's manifesto. (Although it was amusing seeing Treasury rail against Labour's contestable funding model in its briefing to the new government. Wha'?)
But whatever happened to Internet NZ's major-party policy comparison on broadband? The report that was supposed to come out before the election?
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From the SMH:
Australia are set to use the Brad Haddin-Daniel Vettori spat as motivation when they bid to break a long losing streak on Friday.
Because they're wounded that anyone could think that they could cheat ...
From Israel:
Things couldn't get much worse for the Australian cricket team right now, losing a Test series at home, losing a one-day series at home and now they're on a four-game losing streak.
But after Sunday night's two-wicket loss to New Zealand, Ricky Ponting finds himself once again having to defend his team's integrity.
From India:
A thrashing by the South Africans, defeat to the Kiwis in the opener, allegations of cheating against a player and captain choosing to opt for rest when the chips are down is new Australia that nobody probably wants to see.
From South Africa:
Haddin clearly had his gloves in front of the stumps and appeared to have dislodged the bails himself as the ball entered his hands.
If a wicketkeeper’s gloves are in front of the stumps it should be declared a no-ball.
And, not least, Timaru:
The fact is that a dismissal that was not legitimate was claimed by Haddin, with numerous replays making it clear that the ball from Clarke was passing over the bails, but that Haddin's fingertips were in front of the stumps and he brushed the bails, dislodging them, as he pulled his hands back. Haddin is seen to be looking down at the stumps at the moment the bails come off, before wheeling away to celebrate the dismissal, though the celebration seems somewhat muted from his side, suggesting he may have been aware it was illegitimate.
That last one was the Timaru Herald's actual editorial!
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Everyone knows that mc^2 is way better than E. This is political correctness gone mad.
I've never tried mc^2, but if it's better than E then I'm definitely up for it.
Could you mail me some if I sent you the money? Customs are totally slack here.
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It took only two weeks before Mr Brown premonition resulted in a death. A very tragic set of circumstances.
How awful, and how awfully predictable.
That Green MP sounds like she's on the case though.
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