Posts by Russell Brown
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Weirdly, over at The Hive, which normally doesn't get many comments there are lively discussions by people who seem to have a stake in all this. Even comments in what I assume to be Russian?
Freaky!
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Ha! Brooke Fraser in the background!
That really is very good.
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Stoopid? Stupid like a Fox! I think the Iraq debacle has shown us that the Neo-cons aren't afraid of breaking a lot of eggs to make a little omelette. How better to wake the sleeping bear than by convincing Georgia to kick Russia in the nuts and see what happens? The NeoCons will acheive their goal: Georgia will be fast-tracked into Nato and US/Nato troops will be on Russia's border to protect another oil pipeline.
But isn't it precisely that prospect that has determined the severity of the Russian response?
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Mark James of The Exile(d) has a very interesting backgrounder on this story.
He notes , among other things, that McCain called for an emergency Security Council resolution -- after Russia had unsuccessfully called for exactly the same thing. The Russian bid was blocked by the US and Britain over wording that called for both sides to "renounce violence".
Also, this is the way Russian people are seeing things:
On Thursday, following intense Georgian shelling and katyusha rocketing into Tskhinvali, refugees streamed out of South Ossetia telling reporters that the Georgians had completely leveled entire villages and most of Tskhinvali, leaving “piles of corpses” in the streets, over 1,000 by some counts. Among the dead are at least ten Russian peacekeepers, who fell after their base was attacked by Georgian forces. Reports also say that Georgian forces destroyed a hotel where Russian journalists were staying.
James also notes a degree of planning indicated by Georgia's finance minister pre-arranging a conference call to international investors. Over-reaching is hardly the word.
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I have had some sympathy for Georgia because they view the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as a domestic issue.
For sure. And as we have seen in China, keeping separatist regions in the fold is a messy business. But South Ossetia has been effectively self-governing for about 15 years, and it was only last year that Saakashvili set up a provisional administration of former separatists for his own government to negotiate with. And then, last Friday, he invades and starts shelling residential areas on the flimsy prtext that Russian planes had breached Georgia's airspace.
Something seems to have gone horribly wrong here. Did Saakashvili think contributing 2000 troops to the Iraq project meant he'd get military backing if he made a move?
The whole thing has necon teh stoopid written all over it.
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End welfare and looking after the 1% would be relatively simple.
Yes, Grant. Because things are so great in societies where women and children just fend for themselves.
I am struck by the way you replace faith for logic in every argument.
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Phew! did anyone else think the Australian uniform sucked at the opening ceremony? it seems to be universally unpopular among the Aussie public too.
Australia sports teams seem to have completely lost it on the uniform front. That man-bra thing the Wallabies wear has to be the ugliest international jersey ever.
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Also, there are already checks on sickness benefits. You have to provide regular doctor's certificates. See here.
I actually don't mind the idea of occasionally referring sickness beneficiaries to designated doctors, as a check on the system. Although I suspect the incidence of tame doctors signing off on benefits for people who don't truly qualify isn't really very high.
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How 3rd world. Especially, considering that most of us over in Europe would be watching it during the "downtime" of the website, i.e., the middle of the night in NZ. Bandwidth excuses, presumably the reason (?), would thus be irrelevant.
It's not TVNZ's fault -- it's a broadcast rights issue. NBC is exactly the same in the US.
Intriguingly, there are 77 countries that don't have comprehensive rights deals (ie: TV and internet), and in those countries you can see Olympic coverage on YouTube. But not here. At the same time, copyright cops are busy having freelance captures of Olympic TV coverage removed from YouTube and other services.
It's all perfectly rational. And also an example of the way that the introduction of such copyright agreements breaks the functionality of the network.
Still, at least there are still torrents ...
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__Thanks John for demonstrating this issue......Whatever happens, this is an unmissable story. And its going to be an unmissable couple of weeks.__
I couldn't agree with you more Charles.
Me too, as I indicated last week. And I'm not pretending it's all good.
Mark Taslov gave me a serve last week, suggesting I was a western media ghoul waiting for the shit to hit the fan -- but separatist terrorists have killed 24 people in the past week, and they're making threats against Beijing itself. Meanwhile, the games opened with a creative spectacle that amazed the (television-viewing) world. The tension between threat and promise is striking. How could you look anywhere else?
Except, perhaps, at Georgia. I was looking for stuff for the TV show yesterday and I found the following video from what seems to be Georgian TV. Nothing fancy, no voiceover for most of it, and really, really depressing to watch:
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