Posts by Russell Brown
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As I understood it, the sailors were following rules of engagement (or in this case, non-engagement) and surely should only have been court-martialed if they'd ignored those and opened fire.
Their "cowardice" apparently consists of (a) not shooting when they wre hopelessly outgunned, and (b) going along with the banal Iranian PR (which no one but the Iranians takes seriously anyway) rather than risk their chance of release. They're probably acting under rules in both cases.
But now that the NRO chickenhawks have declared the British to be surrender monkeys too, who can they claim is actually on their side?
This bit's hilarious:
I nurse a quiet hope that if put to the test, I would stand up as well as any Marine. Whether or not I would, however, is irrelevant. Whether or not I could stand up well to torture, I expect Marines to.
There's something deeply pathetic about that.
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But isn't the first stage of making a complaint to the BSA notifying the broadcaster that you have a problem with a specific incident, and then if you have no luck you then complain to the BSA?
True. But if you're the Minister of Broadcasting, you do so in a very careful, by-the-book way. You don't pick up the phone and get angry.
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Could some tech-savvy at-risk youth explain to me how I get Public Address radio onto my iPod . . ?
Coming your way. Radio Live initially wanted to host the full-show podcast, but didn't get around to it, so we'll do it this week.
And then there were problems getting the individual show components as MP3s, and then I munted the new attachments system for the RA Radio blog, and ... hey! It's a whole new week already!
Things will improve ...
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For those who are wondering where the piece on election funding is, it's here
Duh. Sorry ...
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But I'll blame the pylons.
They're imposing and eerie to an adult's eyes, but to a child's they're just impossibly vast and other-worldly.
Martin Phillipps from the Chills once drew a lovely illustration called 'Machines Crossing' (I think it was published in the first Jesus on a Stick comic) which depicted a kid peering out the back of a car travelling through Central Otago, with pylons spanning into the distance.
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Bigger than big, taller than tall... Gigantor!
If I had the capacity to retain something useful instead of years & years of obscure TV themes to shows that I mostly didn't like anyway, I might have made something of myself.
Which totally shows your age. I found some Gigantor on the torrents and then at the video shop and pitched it to the kids as proto-anime. Jimmy was reasonably impressed.
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Rob, the two views aren't mutually exclusive. There was a hard left element that set out to orchestrate confrontations with the police because of their own domestic political agenda that had nothing to do with apartheid.
I think there were various sorts of people who took the chance to have a crack at the police, and I'm not even sure the "hard left" was foremost amongst them (and I'd debate that their political agenda "had nothing to do with apartheid).
I knew a young woman who suddenly discovered anti-racist politics after it started to get violent, because, basically, she fancied a crack at the cops.
I don't think that diminishes the overall intent and spirit of the protests though.
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And on the 'difficult to do well non-fiction' front, some of the best sports books I've read ....
Noel Holmes' Trek Out of Trouble, about the 1960 All Black tour to South Africa is the best sports book I've ever read.
When I interviewed Warwick Roger and Ron Palenski about sports writing for Mediawatch once, Warwick declared it the best NZ sports book ever.
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So the whole premise for banning liquids is somewhat unfounded. Apart from the need to maintain a constantly increasing level of fear in the absence of much, if any, actual terrorism.
When I flew to the US last year liquids had already been banned - the supposed liquid-explosive plot having been in the news.
It was dumb and arbitrary and no one knew what was going on. Nat T almost got relieved of a bottle of contact lens solution he'd bought after going through passport control, and I couldn't buy any duty-free whisky. It wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't based on such a bunch of bullshit.
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I don't know about that Simon, the most unpleasant experiences I've had have been in the US. Not so much unfriendly per se as just very officially hostile.
Yep, I had a particularly pointless and confusing episode of official hostility entering the US last year - got accused of lying to a federal officer, etc, and eventually had to tell the guy I just didn't know what to say next.
He eventually stamped me through, with ill grace (I did, after all, have the correct visa for evil foreign journalists). He was pretty much the only American I met on the trip who wasn't upbeat and friendly.
American airports are a serious bore these days. I naturally maintain a cheerful demeanour at all times, but there's something wearying about having your stuff searched three times on one journey.
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