Posts by Andre Alessi
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Also via Balloon Juice, Glenn Beck goes insane. Again:
“I believe that I can make a case in the end that there are three powers that you will see really emerge. One, a Muslim caliphate that controls the Mideast and parts of Europe. Two, China, that will control Asia, the southern half of Africa, part of the Middle East, Australia, maybe New Zealand, and God only knows what else. And Russia, which will control all of the old former Soviet Union bloc, plus maybe the Netherlands. I’m not really sure. But their strong arm is coming. That leaves us and South America. What happens to us?”
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As John Cole over at Balloon Juice points out:
It’s kind of funny watching how the media operates- if anything the protests in Egypt are increasing and reaching a critical mass, yet CNN, which had breathless round the clock coverage for the past week, has dropped the story like a prom dress in favor of the imminent MASSIVE ONCE IN A CENTURY SO BAD THEY ARE FREAKING OUT IN CHICAGO snow storm.
My advice to pretty white girls- stay inside. If you get abducted today, you don’t have a chance.
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Hard News: "Orderly transition" in #Egypt, in reply to Danyl Mclauchlan,
It’s a little like someone from Auckland ‘braving the wilderness’ by fleeing to Hamilton.
Well to be fair, Drury is a hellhole.
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Hard News: "Orderly transition" in #Egypt, in reply to Kumara Republic,
And if anyone’s been reading the comments on the Stuff.co.nz Kiwis in Egypt article, you’d be forgiven for thinking we’re devolving into Social Darwinist rat-racism. Especially if Henrygate and Fullergate were anything to go by.
And you really don't want to read the comments on the Harawira mediation meeting story. It's like any story on Stuff with the word "Maori" in the headline is a siren call to every blinkered, I'm-not-racist-that's-just-how-it-is idiot in the southern hemisphere.
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Hard News: "Orderly transition" in #Egypt, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
No-one’s ever done this before; sure, cutting off communication is standard, but there’s never been this much to cut off, so quickly.
I suspect because it hasn't had quite the urgency in other, similar situations, where either the infrastructure hasn't been up to much, or where the medium hasn't had the overt connotations of viral information spread (at least in the minds of the Powers That Be.)
I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes the standard from now on for most countries with anything more than a rudimentary telecommunications network.
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Naw, it'll be "Egyptians refused to be cowed by the do-gooders of the West who advised patience/calm/submission to tyranny and had an old-fashioned revolution all on their own that no doubt was inspired by Marxist ideology."
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Hard News: "Orderly transition" in #Egypt, in reply to Christiaan,
Watching some of the video the scariest thing wasn't the big clashes with riot police but the plain clothes police going in and grabbing people from the crowd. Fucking scumbags. Courageous kids going up against that kind of of shit.
I agree. It's much harder to fight against the state when the state could be any old stranger walking beside you. The core reason these plainclothes are doing what they do is to encourage suspicion between ordinary citizens-if you can't trust the person standing next to you, are you really still going to go ahead with your planned civil disobedience?
This sort of thing (that really came in to fashion around the time of the Prague Spring) has been simply one of the worst things for peaceful protest around the world, it's so very hard to fight against.
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Hard News: "Orderly transition" in #Egypt, in reply to Russell Brown,
I disagree. The US and European leaders have effectively cut Mubarak loose; Key is still praising him. That said, I don’t think what John Key says on Breakfast is really the big story here.
I didn’t read Key’s comments as “praise” in the slightest. Compare his statement:
The New Zealand Government wants a peaceful outcome to this. In the end, whoever governs your country is a matter for the citizens.
Versus the approach of Harry Reid (and by extension, Obama):
Like Obama, Reid stopped short of calling for embattled Egyptian president and longtime U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak to step down from power – as the protesters want – though he urged the Egyptian regime to respect the “universal rights” of its citizens to speech and protest.
And also the Joint UK-France-Germany statement on Egypt:
We urge President Mubarak to embark on a process of transformation which should be reflected in a broad-based government and in free and fair elections.
None of these statements have ever explicitly stated “Mubarak must go” (although the implication is present in each, including Key’s answers, that free and fair elections will lead to Mubarak being removed from power) so I don’t really understand why there’s an expectation that Key would attempt a different approach when asked the question directly. I’m more than happy to admit that the subtleties of diplo-speak (and the consequent hyperanalysis in the media) generally go over my head though.
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I didn't read Key's comments as being a full throated endorsement of Mubarak. but perhaps I'm just being too generous. After all, calling for the removal of a head of another country's government is not something to be done lightly (as a certain Iraqi dictator might attest to, were he still alive) and quite frankly I'd prefer if my government continued to play the ball rather than the man-focus on fostering democracy rather than individuals in power, which is what Key did. His acknowledgement of the possible negative effects on peace in the region following a change in goverment were hardly out of line either.
I feel dirty for even agreeing with a Tory, but in this case I think he had the right approach, and I'm struggling to understand what Clark would have done differently when faced with those questions while she was PM.
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Muse: The High Aesthetic Line, in reply to Sam F,
What is this I don't even
This is one of the main reasons I'm not completely anti the "Americanization" of many aspects of world entertainment. It gives producers in other countries with completely different storytelling traditions an opportunity to reinterpret the cliches of our genres and turn them into something wonderful (or awful, but the two aren't mutually exclusive as the above trailer proves.)
I feel the same way about the Night Watch films based on Sergey Lukyanenko's novels. They're recognisably Russian fantasy films, but they share just enough touch points with the film traditions I'm familiar with for me to enjoy them without feeling like I'm an outsider with no idea what's going on.