Public Address - Hard News (Home)

There's Always One | Feb 08, 2008 10:50

One of the small joys of taking regional Link flights (and there are few enough) is that no one seems to think it worthwhile to run a security screen: so, no queueing, no fetching your laptop out of your bag and no worrying about your scissors. But there's always someone who spoils it, isn't there?

Graham has already posted in appreciation of Richard Simpson's outside-the-square (but highly practical) harbour bridge proposal, after sitting in on the interview with Richard that will air on Public Address Radio, 5pm tomorrow on Radio Live. The same show features an interview with Amsterdam-based Kiwi Adam Hyde of FLOSS Manuals, and the first of three parts of a reading of the moving refugee story of Shazad Ghahreman, which drew a huge response when David Haywood published the text last year.

Meanwhile, here's the Public Address Radio Big Day Out report.

In raving objectivist news, would Lindsay Perigo stand a chance of being taken more seriously if he didn't sign off his press releases with paragraphs like this?

Things have come to a pretty pass when the Fourth Estate and opposition parties not only do not probe and expose evil, but also lick its every last orifice.

"February 6, 2008, was truly a day of shame and a day for vomit," Perigo concludes.

Eeew.

The Middle East cable failures: imperialist plot against Iran? No, not yet anyway.

But an anonymous hacker group called, well, Anonymous, has been staging DDOS attacks on Church of Scientology web assets. Trouble is, they're not too bright. Monday (our time) is lined up as the big day.

It's been all over the YouTubes, starting with this video message from Anonymous to Scientology. Then this one.

Scientology responded: "our spiritual leader Tom Cruise is coming after you. He is on his way to your headquarters right now. And we chartered some UFOs to come after you and eat your souls and put them in a volcano."

And then they responded again.

Meanwhile, the niece of Scientology's grand wizard has been saying mean things about the "church".

Leo says: "Scientology closed due to thetans." Good boy.

The Fundy Post wonders why John Key led the prayer at Waitangi when he doesn't really believe in that stuff, and links to some fundies who wonder whether Key is Catholic "like the rest of the National Party". (I actually had to stare at Christian News NZ for a little while to make sure it wasn't a very clever parody.)

Chris Bourke farewells the Maharishi, and has a related 1962 page from Truth with a truly diabolical juxtaposition. Chris digs further into the Truth archives for a thoughtful perspective on Waitangi Day and race relations.

Would Mitt Romney have done better if his advertising had been more like this?

Japanese McDonalds ad. WTF?

And, finally, something that Leo found for me: the Lego Mindstorms robot that solves the Rubik's cube. Cool.

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Must Try Harder | Feb 07, 2008 09:51

Can I confess to being a Waitangi Day slacker? I'm glad the ceremonies up north went off without major incident, but I felt nothing much about the day. I feel tired of it. It's fortunate that others have more energy. Poneke has a nice post on the meaning of Waitangi Day, linking to several others.

DPF, inevitably, declared that Helen Clark blundered by not attending the events at Te Tii marae (the usual haters piled into agree in somewhat stronger terms). Colin Espiner also wondered at the wisdom of the Prime Ministerial no-show.

I'm inclined to agree, but less so after reading Audrey Young's blog about Clark's visit to Karetu, the home marae of Labour's new northern candidate, Kelvin Davis. It reads as if it became something special, and something worth a bit more respect than the snide dismissal it got from John Key.

Young's follow-up story emphasises the contrast with ceremonies past at Waitangi.

It's a casual day out and not what most PMs would do to mark their national day but then most PMs have not had the trouble she has had.

In 2002, the last time Helen Clark attended the dawn service at Waitangi, she endured a 20-minute tirade in which she was accused of treason by the "Deputy Prime Minister and Attorney General" in the "Maori Government of Aotearoa".

She was told that according to Maori custom, her crime was punishable by death.

When Clark was eventually invited to speak she was shouted down by a housing activist from Auckland and her contribution lasted a mere 30 seconds. That was as brief as the prayer that National leader John Key rattled through yesterday …

Clark returned to Te Tii Marae in 2004 but she and her ministers were jostled and physically threatened.

They were huddled in a tight group and surrounded by police officers trying to get them out safely.

What looked like water bottles were squirted over some of them but when the liquid dripped down the face of one in the group and on to his lips it turned out to be urine.

Was Clark right to suppose that her absence allowed for a calmer day, or have Ngapuhi just finally got a handle on their own responsibilities?

Whatever, Key's visit to Waitangi appears to have been a political triumph. I can't claim to understand the politics of it: Key was a member of the party of Don Brash; the party that apparently still wishes to repeal the foreshore and seabed legislation in order to extinguish any prospect of customary rights, and to abolish the Maori seats.

No Right Turn has a short post on the agreement with Ngati Porou to recognise their territorial customary rights under the Foreshore and Seabed Act. He regards it as "good news", but laments:

Reading this, the overwhelming feeling is that this is exactly the sort of settlement crown and iwi would have been discussing if the law had not been passed and iwi had been free to contest ownership through the courts. So instead of having a few court cases short-circuited by negotiation and mutual settlement, we've had them short-circuited by law and a denial of fundamental human rights - with consequent feelings of betrayal and mistrust - to achieve pretty much the same result. In what universe could that possibly be considered a good outcome?

By legislating in panic, the government has made its job harder. Not only does it have to reach the same settlements it would have reached anyway; it also has to deal with the legacy of mistrust it has created. We're all going to be paying for that mistake for some time to come.

That hongi with Tame Iti, and his highlighting of Iti's family in a speech, might turn out to be problematic for Key. I am willing to lay odds that Iti's public reputation will be rather poorer than it is now by year's end.

Problematic right now: Close Up's funding of petrol vouchers and accommodation as the price of access to Iti and his famly at Waitangi. It runs dangerously close to paying for the story, however modestly. Moreover, it's the news media not just conveying a particular Waitangi narrative, but actively creating it. Bad move.

PS: In other news, Tim Shadbolt is still a dick. And a bully, to judge by both his tirade against his council management and his performance on Morning Report today.

(I'd have ventured some comment on Super Tuesday, but we have four threads running on the US presidential primaries and I'm not sure we need another one. Pop on over to System and pick your discussion.)

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Another Big Day | Feb 05, 2008 10:06

Is it wrong for me to be looking forward to Super Tuesday a lot more than Waitangi Day? At Waitangi, Tame Iti will present himself as a hero while he still can, John Key will get good, soft press and Helen Clark, having cut herself off from any real achievement in favour of managing risk, won't do much of anything.

I guess it will be interesting to see how this plays:

Mr Horomia is also hoping for a boost today with the announcement of an agreement in principle on a customary rights deal on the foreshore and seabed with Ngati Porou. It seeks to recognise that, but for the 2004 foreshore legislation, Ngati Porou subtribes would have won claims for customary rights in their territories.

The agreement in principle will be announced by Treaty Negotiations Minister Michael Cullen as political leaders gather at Waitangi for celebrations today and tomorrow.

Stateside, however, it's a thriller. On the Democratic side, the polls have been converging thrillingly over the past few days. Hilary probably has an advantage yet, but I'm all about Obama. I normally err on the side of political managers and policy detail, but I'm won over by his charisma, even at this distance. I sense that he might what what America needs.

Or is it just because Obama's a Mac and Hilary's a PC?

If Hilary wins the nomination and takes on McCain (the Republican candidate who is -- by miles -- least offensive to me) there is decent polling evidence that she will be undone by her negatives; that she can't win. Even if she does, and as capable as she is, it will be hard to feel unalloyed joy: important democracies aren't supposed to be dynastic.

That most reliable trigger of cultural cringe, net migration to Australia, has come around again, with a figure in the year to December of 28,000; the highest raw number since the net loss of 33,400 in 1988. The two hardly bear comparison, however, when you take into account population growth. The per capita net migration to Australia was 50% greater in 1988 than it was in 2007 -- one in every hundred versus one in every 152.

The Statistics New Zealand bulletin is here. It includes data on net migration with respect to various other countries. The Population Clock indicates we experience a net migration gain of one New Zealand resident every 29 minutes and 26 seconds.

I was at the trade show in Singapore last year where Kordia had a stand and where it might even have inked the joint venture with a Thai company that are got it in the headlines for doing business in Myanmar. I wrote a column for Unlimited about telecommunications, Myanmar and democracy last year too:

The remarkable political potency of modern communications technology — even in a country where home internet penetration stands at 1%, and where content is tightly filtered — was demonstrated by the flood of text reports and pictures that reached news media as close as Malaysia and as far as Britain, where the BBC website ran a riveting page of citizen reports.

Mobile phone networks were cut off, internet cafes shut down, and the state-sponsored ISP ordered to throttle traffic to make it harder to send pictures. Eventually, it all got too much: the junta pulled the plug on Myanmar's internet altogether. Indeed, Myanmar disappeared from the internet altogether: its .mm country code became unknown to the system after two of its three root servers, which hold the authoritative information about the domain, became unreachable, and a third, located in Amsterdam, started returning error messages.

This blackout couldn't go on. Not because the generals were intimidated by the head of the International Telecommunication Union issuing a statement declaring internet access to be a human right, but because even dictators want to do business, and you can't do that in Asia without electronic communications.

Meanwhile, Public Address reader Anjum Rahman has joined the blogosphere, and Geoff Lealand finally got that Big day Out review up on Kiwiboomers.

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Post Foo | Feb 04, 2008 11:28

If I got asked this once, I got asked it a dozen times: How do you think Kiwi Foo Camp 08 differed from last year's? Answer: more plots hatched, more plans made. The ability to cut through hierarchies and talk off the record lends itself to this.

It only works, of course, if you cap the numbers. There were a lot of people it would have been nice to have had there, but the answer isn't to pack 'em in, but to export the model. It's nice that the Bar Camp model has been established here without rancour. Anyone can do it. The trick is to put away the hierarchies -- the new kid is as important as the head of department -- and to invite people like you're planning a big dinner party, and let them set the agenda.

We'll probably mix it up even more next year, and try and introduce a wider range of arts and sciences to the mix. Which, of course, means that a corresponding number of 08 campers won't be invited next year. Trust me, it's nothing personal.

Anyway, I'm soooo tired …. When you're running sessions until 10pm and people come out of them with their geeky brains whirring, they aren't going straight to bed, so the days are very long indeed. The Werewolf crew were at it until 4am on Saturday night. (In wholly unsurprising news, Keith Ng is good at Werewolf.)

I also met people I feel I should have met a while ago: including Lucy from Felt and Jeff from Mukuna. I expect to have more contact with both of them as the year progresses.

The surprise hit for me was the session run by Erica Lloyd and Juha Saarinen about pitching stories and relating to journalists, where I chipped in quite a bit from the floor. The three of us were worried that we were dispensing the bleeding obvious, but we got feedback about it for the rest of the event.

Session I wish I'd made (but couldn't, because my one clashed): Ian Wright on his groundbreaking electric vehicles. He talked to Kim Hill during the broadcast from the venue on Saturday morning, along with various other campers. The podcast is here.

There are some nice pics from the weekend by Matt Buchanan here and I expect more will turn up here over the next few days.

And I'd love to tell you about how [REDACTED] is only a couple of weeks away from a big (and possibly controversial) deal with [REDACTED]. But I can't …

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