Posts by Russell Brown
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And it keeps coming!
Audioculture has a great interview with Eugene and Eric from Desperate Measures:
Eric: “I grew up with Radio With Pictures on Tuesday nights and that was the highlight of the week. Doctor Rock playing The Clash and Sex Pistols. The Scavengers and Suburban Reptiles. I’d tape it onto my tape deck with a microphone. I said that’s what I want to be. I used to see these guys. They used to put on New Wave Raves in halls and charge fifty cents or a dollar. They put on The Androidss and a great Christchurch band called Nameless. So there were System X and The Products. The first time I saw this guy, right? The band’s onstage waiting to play. Where’s Eugene gone? He’s out on the road bloody banging some guy’s head on the concrete.”
Eugene: “I remember the first one we put on, me and my mate, we made about $300. At the England Street Hall. And the next one we put on the Mongrel Mob came, stole the cash register and someone got shot at with a slug gun.”
Eric: “That was me. I got shot at.”
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Hard News: To defame and deflect, in reply to Idiot Savant,
I read it – and John Hayes view – as being more an argument that this is entirely the wrong sort of intelligence gathering. Its not focused, its not targeted, it lacks context.
Yes, I could have been clearer there. He explained further along those lines on RNZ this morning.
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Current lead on the Herald website, by David Fisher – Snowden revelations: John Key failing leadership test with terrorists-under-the-bed response.
John Key worked to undermine the spying revelations before he knew what they were.
Even before the New Zealand Herald approached his office for comment, he offered a "guarantee" the revelations today would be wrong.
Then, exactly like those in the United States, he pulled out the terrorism bogeyman, presumably as some sort of cure-all for allegations of over-reach by our intelligence agencies.
It's a hackneyed line that was trotted out early overseas and - two years after the initial revelations from Snowden - there has not been a single, sustainable example to justify the extent of the surveillance carried out.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Christchurch,…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Here’s Wade in his own words about it all on Public Address a while back…
Ah yes. Good on him for standing up for himself there. Rob tried to pull the "you weren't even there at the Gladstone" thing on me too, after I wrote the Audioculture article about the place.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Christchurch,…, in reply to Tony Mitchell,
Since Mike has mentioned it, I’ll try to upload my book chapter on Christchurch music, which was written before the earthquake.
Thanks Tony, much appreciated.
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From Bloomberg:
Shiite militias are backing up police and army soldiers, according to state-run al-Iraqiyah television. Qassem Suleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, arrived two days ago to “review and advise” Iraqi field commanders, the Fars news agency reported on Monday.
And:
There’s been no air cover because “the Iraqis haven’t requested any,” Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters Monday. Major General Emad al-Zahiri, commander of Samarra military operations for the Iraqi army, said by phone that the defense ministry or army command were responsible for deciding whether to ask for air support.
Naim al-Aboudi, a spokesman for the Iranian-backed Asaib Ahl al-Haq militia, one of the main forces fighting around Tikrit, said that “the U.S.-led coalition has never decisively ended any battle.”
“We don’t trust the coalition and we don’t need their help,” he said by phone.
There's no way all this could bow up in anyone's face, is there?
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Hard News: Haphazardly to war, in reply to Alex Coleman,
It’s just surreal right?
It's crazy. And remember, there is no Status of Forces Agreement for our troops. There's so much wrong here, and that's just what we can see from the other side of the world.
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Hard News: Haphazardly to war, in reply to BenWilson,
I wouldn’t call anything with even 5% support “immensely popular”
To put it in context, it's considerably less popular than Al Qaeda has generally been in those countries.
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Uh, this isn't a really good environment to be entering, is it?
The Iraqi military launched a major campaign to take back a key city from the self-proclaimed Islamic State over the weekend—a move that caught the U.S. “by surprise,” in the words of one American government official.
The U.S.-led coalition forces that have conducted seven months of airstrikes on Iraq’s behalf did not participate in the attack, defense officials told The Daily Beast, and the American military has no plans to chip in.
Instead, embedded Iranian advisors and Iranian-backed Shiite militias are taking part in the offensive on the largely Sunni town, raising the prospect that the fight to beat back ISIS could become a sectarian war.
The news is the latest indication that not all is well with the American effort against the terror group. On Friday, U.S. defense officials told The Daily Beast that a planned offensive against the ISIS stronghold of Mosul had been indefinitely postponed. Over the weekend, an American-backed rebel group in Syria announced that it was dissolving, and joining an Islamist faction.
Then there was the unexpected battle for Tikrit. Over the weekend, a reported 30,000 troops and militiamen—mostly Shiites —stormed the Sunni dominated city of Tikrit, former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s hometown and the symbolic birthplace of his three decades of repressive practices against the majority Shiite population.
U.S. officials were largely left in the dark of the planning and timing of the operation, defense officials said. The Pentagon said Monday it was not conducting airstrikes in support of the Tikrit offensive because the Iraqi government did not ask for such help.
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