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The above image is a wide angle shot – source unknown – of the scene around the famous fall of the bronze statue in Baghdad, a scene hailed by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as the equivalent of the fall of the Berlin Wall and purveyed on the front cover of 90% of the world's newspapers today.

Several striking differences to the fall of the Berlin Wall immediately come to mind from the above image.

1. The people who pulled down the Berlin Wall were not assisted by a US Army Bradley fighting vehicle.

2. The people who pulled down the Berlin Wall were not a small crowd being protected by three US Abrams tanks.

3. The people who pulled down the Berlin Wall outnumbered the journalists present at the event by the thousands, not by around 30, with a couple of hundred more watching tentatively from the edges of the square.

The following annotated version of the photograph – from Indymedia - makes the points above in a graphical manner.

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Scoop Audio: Charges Possible Over CTV Collapse

In a press conference today, the New Zealand Police announced that they would be following up information passed on to them by the New Zealand Department of Building and Housing, regarding the construction of the Canterbury Television building. More>>

ALSO:

• Department of Building and Housing - Experts identify critical factors in CTV collapse
• Executive Summary: Structural performance of Christchurch CBD buildings in the 22 February 2011 earthquake (PDF)
• NZ Police - Police assess report into collapse of Canterbury TV Building
• NZ Govt - Report into CTV building collapse released
• Labour - Report on CTV building collapse devastating

Werewolf Is Back! And So Is State Capitalism ...

Welcome to the first Werewolf issue of 2012, and our return to regular publication after concentrating late last year on election campaign coverage. Fittingly, our cover story this month focuses on the role of government in the modern economy, and suggests that newer, smarter versions of state-led capitalism may be outperforming free market capitalism around the world.

Is it perhaps time for New Zealand - where the state continues to play the dominant role in economic performance but likes to pretend it doesn’t – to come clean, admit the state is the only real engine of innovation and economic growth, and get on with it? If only because free market rhetoric and practice has chronically under-delivered over the past 25 years, for most of us... More >>