Posts by Stephen Judd
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Maybe.
we fund aid agencies which tend to use more circuitous and more expensive processes....
... Funding churches and families in New Zealand can be the most direct and fastest means of getting assistance to those affected in the islands. Making that flow transparent and accountable should not be difficult.
Isn't accountability and transparency a big part of the reason that aid agencies are circuitous and expensive? I certainly would like to know HOW we are to have one without the other, in a bit more detail than "should not be difficult."
-
"The Lebanese organisation, Hizbollah."
Ooh, let me suggest some others:
"The Irish organisation, the IRA."
"The Tamil organisation, the Tigers."
"The Basque organisation, ETA."
Dunno how I missed that on first reading.
Furthermore, from here:
"Hezbollah is not the first revolutionary movement to be corrupted by money, and it won't be the last," wrote columnist Sateh Noureddine in the pro-Hezbollah newspaper As-Safir.
Much of the change in behavior can be traced to the aftermath of Hezbollah's 2006 war with Israel, when government compensation money flooded impoverished Shiite neighborhoods devastated by Israeli attacks.
Some of the money went toward reconstruction, but much of what was left ended up with Ezzedine [a Ponzi scheme fraudster]. Some Hezbollah backers sold their land and their homes so they would have extra money to invest with the businessman, who promised eye-popping returns. He even appealed to his customers' piety by insisting that his investment strategies were compatible with Islamic banking principles, which generally prohibit interest-bearing accounts.
Church, family and many other non-specialist groups don't have the same kind of monitoring and accountability as organised charities.
-
Thirding the reluctance to funnel anything through the famously avaricious clergy. And note, I feel that way about our palagi religious charities too -- I always prefer secular organisations.
-
Kyle: check the costs and the necessary distance from the house for a worthwhile sized windmill. For most people it's not going to work out -- payback period is over decades, assuming zero maintenance.
-
Well in that case, you might like this. I know I did.
-
buzzy: the Electricity Commission claims, and I have no reason to doubt them, that we don't do nuclear here because we don't have big enough demand, it's too expensive, and even one station would be too big a proportion of the national generation capacity for it to be safe to take offline.
Most of the conservation-minded people I know have changed their minds about nuclear power because they think the danger of climate change outweighs the risk. See, they can be rational too.
-
If only Latta's skepticism went beyond his calling as a child-rearing specialist. He's not really going to earn my respect until I hear that he's come out and admitted he was gulled by the Ninox crew.
The comments to that page are also well worth reading.
-
Is that similar to the use of swastikas by members of largely Polynesian gangs?
Depends on what parallel you're trying to draw. All kinds of gangs, not just Polynesian ones, have used Nazi symbols because they communicate being anti-social. You don't shout sieg fucken heil because you're a Nazi, but because it's really offensive to mainstream society's values. Which I think is pretty different from admiring black performers so much that you take on their language.
so polys arent allowed to be anti semitic ?...thats racialist:)
LOL.
-
I'm interested that there's been so little discussion of what I fancied were the main points of the post.
Those being, the Herald's writer's ignorance of how statutory Broadcasting Standards work, and related panic attack about "banned" words that aren't actually banned.Dog bites man, I'm afraid.
-
I imagine that it would be expensive to break Henry's contract, and so TVNZ are stuck with defending him.
TVNZ put a lot of effort into creating celebrities -- now they have to wear the consequences. Maybe if they invested less in personality cults and more in, you know, journalism and research and writing and shit, we would all be better off.