Posts by Simon Grigg
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On of the things about being in this part of the world is never seeing a mention of the Americas Cup...nowhere, not in the domestic media, not in the regional media, not in the international media. I was completely unaware of the current competition until I had emails from family members rather worked up...
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You can tell a lot by the TV.
Indonesian Idol's final in a massive stadium in JaBoTek somewhere, with god knows how many hundreds of thousands of people. The losing contestants all break down, come down off the stage and go their villages, there en-mass, get on their knees and pray forgiveness for the humiliation and wrong they have done, and receive it. They return to the stage to celebrate with the winner.
Singapore..an ad on TV with a self proclaimed "important businessman" talking about getting a second second line for his office so his family are not able to interrupt his important business calls. Later the same day the Prime Minister was on a chat show with a bunch of kids talking careers. Two kids said they wanted to be a) an artist, and b) a writer. The PM told them to get proper jobs and look at such things in their spare time.
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So not much has changed then Joe?
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Adrian,
the charts have always been, from a sales perspective (ie excluding the radio element on the singles) supposedly about counter sales. The only thing that the wholesale sell in defined was it's certification (ie Gold or platinum) which was based on ship (and the "platinum" thing thus bore no relationship to the real sales).That said, having a huge overstock on a turkey record has long been a way to guarantee a retailer will ensure it charts well. It used to be said that only the top 5 albums bore any relationship to what was selling, the balance was based on retail whims and record company pressure. It has improved somewhat these days, but with current sales I think somebody mentioning the record in the pub is enough to get it into the 40s.
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It's alright Simon - I didn't mean one shouldn't get enthused with the hot new single from somewhere;
thank god for that..I was feeling a bit like the sad old guy sitting alone at the end of the bar................
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Dunno what happened then....
but Graham I understand and concur.....and would like to dispute RB's statement a week or two back about people over thirty getting overly enthusiastic over singles too, something I meant to do at the time but thought I'd posted enough that day and told myself to get a life...I tend to obsess over singles, and tracks, in my own mind of course rather than on paper, but I tell people too, rather enthusiastically about songs and singles (which is where my head has always been rather than albums).
56?..you have years ahead...the first question the great Tim Murdoch has always asked me when we meet (even after his stroke) is "what are you listening to?" He then proceeds to roll off his current ten which as often as not includes some spotty garage band from Delaware or Perth.
And one of the pleasures of getting older is the ease that you can go backwards and forwards in the discovery mode rather than just needing to find the new. So right now I'm going through a rather big late sixties Kiwi psychedelia phase (moving on from my Zodiac Records thing of the last year), coupled with the new, Tom Yorke sampling, Kayne West and the Carl Craig mixes of Siobhan Donaghy, which all seems to sit together rather well in some odd way
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Were those massacres when Wolfowitz was ambassaor to Indonesia?
No, they were in the post coup period 1965-66. Exact numbers are hard to come by but the figure ranges between 500,000 to 1,000,000. The best evidence is that is was a faux coup orchestrated by those that then crushed said coup, and their offshore backers, who then went on a rampage across the country hacking and shooting anyone who was perceived to be dissident to the incoming new order. It remains largely undocumented in the west, despite the well documented complicity, although Geoffrey Robinson's Dark Side of Paradise, out of Cornell in the late nineties is very good on this.
Wolfowitz was Ambassador in the eighties
His statement to Congress in 1997, supporting the dictator includes the statement that Suharto, who had just stripped between $15 and 30 Billion from one of the world's poorer nations, provided "strong and remarkable leadership"
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Just a point, unless it's been changed, which it may have under the new rules, gold is 5000 for a single and 7500 for any album
The shipping certification thing....there was a story (I think it was in Frederic Dannen's Hitmen) about the Bee Gee's Sgt Pepper shipping Platinum sale-or-return, and being certified thus, in the US and returning double platinum, as there were so many pirated copies in the marketplace
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James,
As I said, the French put a whole team onto these Castro / Coke ties for several years and came up with nothing. That National Review story you posted is pretty damn nutty in places, no? Did you actually read that PBS story? Convicted drug smugglers and anonymous gangsters? Please? Once again, you post a wild claim, with actual figures (I think you said a fairly precise $6-700 million). as fact, but are unable to back it when askedNoriega sits in a US prison.
But I guess asking the question why clouds the issue somewhat.....
Some of it was in the "zero sum game" environment of the cold war
Less than a kilometre from where I sit now, in 1966, a whole village was marched out and executed one by one, men, women and children, as the the US Embassy sent messages of support to the perpetrators, and released food credits and weaponry. Papers available since the mid nineties show that not only was the Embassy aware of what was going on across the nation (perhaps the biggest massacre in history) but actively encouraged it. The perpetrator was bolstered and supported until the populace managed to oust him in 1998, whilst the US Embassy worked to keep him in office. Since the 65-66 bloodshed the same man had invaded East Timor, with the express approval of Gerald Ford, an invasion that cost the lives of one third of Timor's populace. All of this you brush away as the "zero sum game" environment of the cold war.
There are similar tinpot fascists operating in Central Asia right now under the US wing. And you have the balls to accuse Chavez of "dismantling democracy".
As I said, I'm not a fan of the man but you could almost hear the universal roar of approval as the man made his famous sulphur statement in the UN...couple that with the fact that he's caused a damn sight less pain, bloodshed and destablisation, and is no more tainted by glaring corruption than the administration you happily wave a flag for........