Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Free Press | Aug 04, 2006 09:37

If there has been one good thing to come out of the whole sorry debacle in Lebanon, it is the performance of Israel's liberal newspaper, Ha'aretz, which has reported bravely and accurately in circumstances where probably many of its readers, and certainly its government and army, would prefer that it didn't.

Of course, we read its English-language web version and not the print paper, but I don't think it's going too far to say that Ha'aretz has demonstrated the best of Israel. No other nation in the region would bear a free press at such a time. Well, perhaps one: Lebanon. Ironically.

Billmon takes from a Ha'aretz story the inference that the war may not last much longer than Monday, when the UN Security Council delivers a resolution And that, if so, Israel has calamitously failed to achieve its objectives.

Far from being eradicated, Hezbollah has explicitly been extended the power of veto on any ceasefire proposal - along with Syria for God's sake - by a furious Lebanese Prime Minister. If such a precipitous shift of power were to have to happened in isolation, it would have been greeted as a crisis. It appears now to be the new reality.

Nehemia Shtrasler laments that Israel missed its chance very early on, when it held the upper hand, to "stop the war, declare victory and move on to the diplomatic track." And an Israeli columnist's urging to press on regardless of the cost meets a fairly furious response from people in Haifa and elsewhere.

If we are looking at something like a result now, it doesn't seem good value for the price that has been paid in hate. And really, tell me you wouldn't hate the people who - by whatever moral calculation they devised for themselves - did this to your children? (NB: The link does not lead to grisly photos, I'm not really into that, but a heart-rending report from Qana and elsewhere.) And yes, I realise the hate Israelis must harbour over the death of their own children down the years. That's sort of my point ...

Meanwhile, the bizarre winger conspiracy theory holding that Israel was the victim of a hoax at Qana gets repeated airings on Fox News and the full welly from an Israeli "news" site. LGF Watch surveys the conspiracy in other quarters and notes that one of the chief promoters of the theories based his accusation that a "Hezbollah official" was directing operations at Qana on, um, "gut instinct".

In case anyone missed it, this is the Ha'aretz report from three days ago:

As the Israel Air Force continues to investigate the air strike, questions have been raised over military accounts of the incident.

It now appears that the military had no information on rockets launched from the site of the building, or the presence of Hezbollah men at the time.


The Israel Defense Forces had said after the deadly air-strike that many rockets had been launched from Qana. However, it changed its version on Monday.

The site was included in an IAF plan to strike at several buildings in proximity to a previous launching site. Similar strikes were carried out in the past. However, there were no rocket launches from Qana on the day of the strike.

On the same day, a story by Dahr Jamail included this passage:

Qana had been a shelter because no rockets were being fired from there, survivors said. "When Hezbollah fires their rockets, everyone runs away because they know an Israeli bombardment will come soon," Abdel said. "That is why everyone stayed in the shelter and nearby homes, because we all thought we'd be all right since there were no Hezbollah fighters in Qana."

Lebanese Red Cross workers in the nearby coastal city of Tyre told IPS that there was no basis for Israeli claims that Hezbollah had launched rockets from Qana.

"We found no evidence of Hezbollah fighters in Qana," Kassem Shaulan, a 28-year-old medic and training manager for the Red Cross in Tyre told IPS at their headquarters. "When we rescue people or recover bodies from villages, we usually see rocket launchers or Hezbollah fighters if they are there, but in Qana I can say that the village was 100 percent clear of either of those."

Another Red Cross worker, 32-year-old Mohammad Zatar, told IPS that "we can tell when Hezbollah has been firing rockets from certain areas, because all of the people run away, on foot if they have to."

The official story has now been revised after an investigation. It was a tragic mistake. Indeed. The mercy being that Human Rights Watch has revised down the death toll.

You may have seen Salon's The "hiding amongst civilians" myth which contends that Hezbollah avoids (for practical rather than humanitarian reasons) population centres. I suspect it's not the whole truth, but it is based on direct reporting and it is certainly worth reading. And it's not as if the IDF hasn't used human shields in the past.

Finally, the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has offered a fairly clear proposition. If Israel carries through a threat to bomb Beruit again, Hezbollah will - by some hitherto unknown means - attack Tel Aviv. But:

"Anytime you decide to stop your campaign against our cities, villages, civilians and infrastructure, we will not fire rockets on any Israeli settlement or city," he said in a taped television speech.

I hold no brief for Hezbollah. They're religious conservatives of a scary stripe. I wouldn't want them as my neighbours either. But surely there is a time to cut the losses and give peace a chance.

There's a potential good result in all this, and that's if it somehow spins - as Ehud Olmert suggested this week, enraging Israeli right-wingers - into a revival of the "convergence" plan which would see illegal settlements in the occupied territories closed down. But even then I think we'd be justified in wondering if there might have been another way.

Meanwhile, Media Matters lines up some more conservative defences of the rotten bastard Jew-hating bigot Mel Gibson.

Onto happier things: Jimi Kumara's Vietnam travelogue contains his usual blend of keen observation, dry humour and useless spelling.

You can vote for Kiwi gal Aly Cook - winning her a bunch of radio airtime - in the New Country Star Polls at this freakin' ugly website.

The Techsploder has Gangsta Ron Keepin' it Real in da House (just remember to push play).

Glen Barnes recommended this web mash-up, which plots real "Overheard in New York" street conversations on Google Maps. It could eat up hours of your life.

And from Jolisa Gracewood comes the tip (is it a jelly tip!?) for this awesome montage of 1960s New Zealand iceblock wrappers. When I watch it, my mind empties of everything else …

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The anomalies are astonishing | Aug 03, 2006 09:55

The publication of a "controversial" expert report on drug classification - prepared for, and ignored by, the British Home Office - is creating some chatter in the UK press this week. And so it should. It includes an attempt to logically rank the popular drugs of recreation and abuse in terms of their potential for harm.

The results are fascinating. Heroin and cocaine top the list, but alcohol slots in at number five, ahead of ketamine, and tobacco makes number nine.

The position of amphetamines at number eight probably reflects the fact that inhaled methamphetamine (which in my experience ranks alongside alcohol in making people dreadful) hasn't caught on in Britain. The ranking of cannabis above solvents seems pretty kooky. Ecstasy is at #18 and "magic mushrooms" fail to make the Top 20.

Bear in mind, then, that fresh psilocybin mushrooms were rocketed from nowhere into Class A status in Britain last year, which means their possession could potentially attract a 14-year jail term. The same thing happened here in the 1980s, and a good deal of police time has since been wasted chasing scruffy young men around public forests. In the Netherlands, on the other hand, dried mushrooms are for sale in shops and some cafes will make you a cup of mushroom tea from little mushroom teabags.

Meanwhile, a report from Canada says thirty per cent of young offenders have brain damage caused by their mothers' drinking while pregnant.

Does it make sense? No. Present drug classifications bear little relationship to actual risks. This isn't surprising: this is a sphere where the rules are often made in an atmosphere of short-term moral panic. The flat-out scramble to reclassify Ecstasy into the A schedule of our own Misuse of Drugs Act being a good example of that.

As a Guardian leader put it, "the anomalies are staggering." We could do with an evidence-based rethink just as much as the British. What's standing in the way? Oh, the usual: politicians and the media.

More prison bloggage from Selwyn. The long comments thread accompanying blog 2 is fascinating.

Three funny fake news stories from Lyndon Hood, as seen on Scoop.

Rather good take on The Don from a Young Labour mailing list. Not nasty, just jolly.

And amid the inevitable feast of rogering of Mel Gibson on YouTube, the Australian-produced Mel's Big Spray stands out by explaining why it's a good thing. Very funny.

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Crossing Live | Aug 02, 2006 11:52

BBC World cut live this morning from pictures of ruined Lebanese villages and their - if the word has any meaning at all - terrorised occupants, to coverage of Tony Blair's "arc of extremism" speech in Los Angeles, in which he called for a countervailing "alliance of moderation" in the Middle East. It was a rather jolting edit.

The speech itself is an odd effort; its espousal of values no sensible person would disagree with undercut by Blair's usual unwillingness to offend his sponsors, even where he ventures into trade and climate change policy, where Blair-style coded messages have surely run their course.

He laments the fact that "moderate" elements of Hamas could not prevail after the Palestinian elections, but has nothing to say about whether certain powers should have done more to seek out those elements (say, by talking to them) rather than cutting them off at the knees; demands that Syria "come in to the international community" but has nothing to say about the US refusal to even talk to Syria over the crisis in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Neal Gabler's contention on Salon that " Hollywood may shun Mel Gibson for his anti-Semitic ravings, but the right wing in George Bush's increasingly hate-filled America won't," might seem odd too. But it appears to be fairly close to the mark. Some of the people who scream bloody murder at any criticism of Israeli policy seem rather restrained in their criticism of Gibson. They seem keener on Israel than they are on actual Jews.

A writer on the leading conservative site NewsMax complains that "Mel's enemies will never cut him a break. Their real goal is to discredit 'The Passion of the Christ,' and that is why their propaganda machine is in full gear." The Conservative Voice finds far more scorn for an Anti-Defamation League spokesman, who "sober, seems much more hateful than Mr. Gibson. drunk." And a conservative church school director urges forgiveness for "a guy who's been very prominent the past couple of years in religion, in Christian circles." And who happens to be a bigoted thug. And of course, there's the Jews-killed-Jesus crowd.

Christopher Hitchens is having none of it, though. Gibson is, he says, "sick to his empty core with Jew-hatred."

These just in from our Creepy Denial Correspondent: Powerline eagerly buys the evidence-free assertion that the building in Qana, didn't collapse (resulting in the "accidental killing of civilian human shields, along with terrorists") until hours after the Israeli airstrike. One of the fun-loving guys at our own Sir Humptys explains the victims therefore "shouldn't have been in the building." And LGFWatch notes the response of one of the LGF lizards to the depressing news that 15 of the Qana victims were physically or mentally handicapped children.

LGFWatch finds a similarly swiveled-eyed conspiracy alleging that the "shock value" of the Qana aftermath was contrived by evil MSM photographers, presumably working with the terrorists. And various people see all kinds of crazy shit in a grainy aerial video released by the Israeli government.

And a really astonishing smear, using deceptively-edited video, from the loons at Powerline. Again. Presumably it's all the MSM's fault or something.

Lebanon.Profile expresses fear that it has all made Hezbollah much, much stronger than it was before:

Israel is asking Lebanese to turn against Hezbollah. You know, we were already against Hezbollah. Anybody who's read a Lebanese newspaper in the last two years would know that. We were even more vocal in our opposition to Hezbollah during the first two days of the conflict. Many Hezbollah supporters considered turning against their party then.

No one is talking like that any more.

Is it time to stop pretending Don Brash is the leader of the National Party? After the extraordinary behaviour of his deputy towards him in Parliament yesterday, maybe it is. The Herald story reports on the Parliamentary aftermath of an apparently rather chaotic day or two of dealings on the matter of a Green Party motion of censure and demand for an apology from Taito Philip Field, which National blocked:

Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen created uproar among National MPs when he claimed Dr Brash had agreed with Green co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons for the motion to be introduced.

This led Dr Brash and Mr Brownlee to simultaneously leap to their feet to object.

However, Mr Brownlee half-pushed, half-waved Dr Brash back to his chair.

He what?

No Right Turn has more in a post headed Shooting themselves in the foot and John Armstrong also decrees National the big loser from this strange sequence of events.

I wonder if Labour's extended season of pratfalls and potholes is on the wane and National's is beginning. If that's the case, I think National only has itself to blame. How long it will continue with its promise to keep raising pointless motions of no confidence against the Speaker is anyone's guess, but it might be best advised to cut its losses.

Tumeke has more on Simon Power's misguided attempt to have it shut down, including correspondence between Power and a disappointed National supporter.

And, finally, a Daily Show clip in which Jon Stewart explains the Bush position on Lebanon: ""He doesn't want the killing to stop until he's sure it will stop. So there will be more killing until the president is convinced there will be no more killing. Or … everyone runs out of people."

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Fireworks | Aug 01, 2006 10:09

My first thought when I came out the front of our house and saw the chimney on fire was how cool it looked. The kettle on top glowing and whizzing around, showering bright tracers across the roof like an expensive firework. It wasn't cool, of course. Your house being on fire is so not cool.

We had been alerted to the issue a minute before by a firm knock on the door from an off-duty cop, who had been visiting a friend in the street. A minute before that we had been puzzled by a whooshing noise in the fireplace and a sudden excitement in the embers. I'm not sure how long it might have taken us to deduce the problem on our own, but Constable Gibson, top work.

By the time we'd doused the fire and shut the flue, the spectacle was over, but the prompt arrival of the fire brigade was still very reassuring. A couple of the crew got up on the roof with our garden hose to inspect the chimney (after thoughtfully laying a tarp on the hearth inside) and the senior officer had a chat to us about different sorts of smoke alarm (we had one sort; we'd be well advised to get the other sort too).

It was our own damn fault, of course. We spent a bit of money having the chimney fixed and putting in a Jetmaster, but this year we couldn't get hold of our usual sweep and just let it slide. Big clumps of soot at the top of the chimney built up and, on a lazy Sunday evening, caught fire. Won't do that again, eh?

It had been some few days. On Thursday and Friday I was chairing laureate sessions for the Arts Foundation of New Zealand; getting up at 6am to knock out some early work, then chairing panels at 10.30am, 1.30pm and 7pm, with drinks and nibbles with the great and good afterwards. I didn't get home till 11pm both nights, which made for long, tiring days.

But it was good fun: I like artists for the same reason I like scientists - they're clever people with something going on. The first day I was with Bill Manhire, John Psathas and the scampish Peter Peryer; the next Gaylene Preston, Humphrey Ikin and Jack Body, plus Jack's wonderful pianist Gao Ping. It was a good experience to hear Jack's 'Sarajevo' piece played three times in a day, and start to get inside the work.

I had a good chat to Gaylene about many things, including her time in Britain, which was a decade and a half before mine. She lived in Cambridge, in a house where Syd Barrett used to come around and stare at the wall. One night, Carl Sagan visited to run through a slide show talk about Mars that he was giving the next day at the university. He was a bit miffed that the occupants were too stoned to treat the event with the gravity it warranted.

On Saturday, I finally got out to Nosh, the new food market launched by Richie Barnett the league player, to run a critical eye over proceedings and spend the $50 "Nosh dosh" with which journalists were being wooed. It's pretty good, but doesn't quite have the Moore Wilson magic. Wellingtonians would recognise Meat on Tory (nice, apart from some tired-looking chicken thighs - and I should note that the mini pork roast I got there tolerated the unexpected additional oven time prompted by the chimney fire surprisingly well) and Shoc chocolate from a few doors down. The patisserie was impressive, the vege section underwhelming, and I couldn't get near the deli counter, such was the crowd. The Mediterranean goods section was large, but could have done with something that felt a bit more like a bargain. The checkout system was excellent.

I daresay I'd be in at Nosh all the time if it wasn't on the end of the godawful drive to Glenn Innes (I start to hyperventilate if I drive too far east). But it's only one of a flock of new foodie hangouts coming to Auckland. None of which, unfortunately, I will be able to reach from Pt Chev without joining the traffic battle …

There was no need to scrub up for the evening's entertainment - it would be wrong to scrub up for a skateboarding movie, wouldn't it? Yes, it was the long-awaited world premiere of No More Heroes, Andrew Moore's five-years-in-the-making documentary about the golden era of New Zealand skating.

I was really, really happy for Andy. I've known him for more than 20 years, I was best man at his wedding, and it was wonderful to behold the full house that turned up to see his work at SkyCity: old skaters and their sons, old friends, all sorts. Afterwards, the reminiscing was uncontrolled. The film is funny and illuminating and tells stories you probably haven't heard before. Go see it at your local film festival.

Andy's interview on Saturday with Kim Hill ("nice fillum") is here and a One News report here.

After a quick feed at Joy Bong, my darling and I watched the rugby; and what an intense and absorbing test match it was, and what a colossal figure Richie McCaw is. The lineouts were, to put it mildly, a worry, though. The Haka crew have commentary and analysis, including another YouTube gem featuring Jerry Collins' amateur hairdressing moment, and an eagle-eyed accounting of every AB lineout by Tracey Nelson.

Having stayed manfully sober, I popped in to Andy's after-party, and left an hour or two later with a big ol' hug; the only words passing between us being the observation that no words needed saying. I didn't have the heart to tell him that he'd misspelled my name in the credits.

On Sunday, I chilled and wrote the Listener column I'd been too busy to write during the week. And my darling ventured into the Smith & Caughey sale and spent $119 on a big-ass 14" Circulon skillet. It was $119 we don't strictly have at the moment, but it was such a bargain, I've been after one of those suckers for ages and you never see them cheap like that. If I hadn't been seized by that-tummy-bug-that's-going-around in the small hours of Monday morning I'd already have sauteed up a storm with it.

So anyway, I'm catching up. Do read Tze Ming's verdict on the Brash immigration speech, which says pretty much what I thought. You can also hear him coming to bits under fairly restrained questioning by Mary Wilson. No Right Turn also has discussion and links about the rather odd launch of National's would-be homosexual cabal, the BlueLibs. Stephen Gray's right: inviting along a bunch of prominent poofs and then refusing to say the word "gay" all night is really a rather strange way to behave. And Tumeke! has Tim Selwyn's interesting prison blogging and some well-deserved scorn for National's Simon Power, who wants the site shut down.

New on the Interweb today: Radio New Zealand's New Zealand music features. With actual music!

And … There's a knock at the door. That'll be the chimney sweep.

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