Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Updatin' | Nov 14, 2005 09:35

Just a quick post today to say thanks to everyone who came along last night to the Karajoz Great Blend in Auckland, and who stayed and listened and enjoyed themselves. Our guest, Ashley Highfield of the BBC, was most impressed. He addresses conference audiences all the time and told me afterwards he'd never come across a crowd that was so thoroughly engaged.

Robyn Gallagher and Mark Derricutt blogged the event before bed last night.

We fly to Wellington in a couple of hours to do it all over again, with a different panel, at the Film Archive. Please don't turn up unless you've successfully RSVPd for tonight - venue capacity is strictly limited and it's very full indeed. If you are coming, 6pm please.

Following up from last week's discussion of the French riots, Public Address reader James Dickson reported from France:

One of the things that is not mentioned in media reports about these riots is just how profoundly *unaffected* the majority of the french population has been by these riots. Apart from the actually quite limited rioting in Lyon and in central Paris itself, most French would be unable to point to evidence of any disturbance in their own neighbourhoods. This fact alone should provide sufficient evidence of the exclusion of these communities from the rest of France.

As to the implication that this unrest is the result of a clash of civilisations, that certainly isn't the take of the French media, or commentators here (I live in Strasbourg). Though a large proportion of the population of these communities is Muslim, the problem is seen as being one of economics rather than religion. I would also like to know who first reported that French media are talking about the 'hidden hand' of Islamic extremism as somehow coordinating the riots. Thus far the only references to this I have seen, have been in foreign (and, often American) news reports. In fact, even Le Pen and the French right-wing have been restrained in trying to seriously link the two.

Don't expect that to stop the wingers trying.

Okay, now it's personal. I'm used to standing by and watching while various indecencies are committed on in Windows users - but now comes the News that music CDs bearing the Sony BMG DRM will take bleeding liberties with my Mac. A Macintouch reader has discovered a MacOS X application on a partition in the CDs - if you accept the EULA (which requires you to enter an administrator password) it will install two .kext files. That's right: it will add extensions to your system kernel.

There's a Slashdot thread about it here, and a discussion on the website of Imogen Heap, on whose CD the unannounced code was discovered.

This isn't anywhere near as unpleasant as what happens on Windows systems - MacOS X simply won't run something like this without your okay in the form of a password, and it's hard to see exactly how the start.app binary on the CD would launch unless you actually sought it out and launched it. Furthermore, it's not a back door for hackers like the Windows version is (there now appear to be three viruses that take advantage of the hiding features of the Sony malware).

But it's not good either. MacOS X is very stable, but one thing that can really mess with it is badly-written .kext files. Do you trust them to do this competently given the debacle over the Windows DRM? Have a poke around the website of the company that provides Sony's Mac DRM and see what you think. They appear to be geared towards acquiring copy-protection technologies and turning them around for a quick licensing dollar. Until 2002 they were an oil and gas exploration company. Reassuring? Hell no.

Anyway, already facing several lawsuits (whose prospects were radically enhanced late last week by the appearance of the viruses that exploit the DRM software), Sony BMG has backed down and announced it will "temporarily suspend" manufacture of the CDs. The Boycott Sony blog is staying abreast of events.

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EULA lunacy | Nov 11, 2005 10:57

Thanks to Stephen Judd for directing me to the EFF translation of the Sony BMG End User License Agreement for its malware music CDs. Who knew that if you're declared bankrupt you have to erase all the music you've bought from your computer? Seriously. Click the link for more surreal copyright lunacy.

I've had a number of emails about the Sony CDs. IANAL, but Anthony Trenwith is, and he says:

Sony BMG installing malware on consumers' computers is not new behaviour for the recording industry. A similar story last year involved the Beastie Boys album "To the Five Boroughs" installing an executable file (a virus by any other name) when inserted. As The Register rightly pointed out at the time this is in fact highly illegal!

In New Zealand, I can think of several of our e-crime laws which this falls foul of. Firstly, Sony BMG are accessing computer systems without authorisation and gaining a benefit of one kind or another.

Even without any gain on the part of Sony BMG it's still illegal because they're gaining access to computer systems without authorisation - pure hacking in other words.

Sony could also be done for damaging users' computer systems or for simply modifying the data in them (that is, by installing a file without permission).

One other thing - most countries have e-crime laws of one sort or another, and Sony BMG no doubt sell these CDs in most countries. All this adds up to the potential for a lot of potential for prosecution and lot of stress for the folks at Sony!

Oddly enough, Inspector Knacker of the Yard - or rather, Colonel Umberto Rapetto of the Guardia di Finanza - is already on the case in Italy, where a cyber-rights group has made a complaint.

In other news, the patch Sony BMG issued to un-hide its hidden code on your computer is so badly written that it might cause your PC to crash. The Register has more on this, plus news that the DRM code is playing havoc with corporate anti-virus systems and the rather blithe response of President of Sony BMG's global digital business division Thomas Hesse. I interviewed Hesse for The Listener in July, before the storm blew up.

Corante's Copyfight page has links to useful information, including how to tell whether you've been infected with the Sony BMG DRM.

Terrible news! An MIT study (yep, really) has determined that the time-honoured tinfoil hat will not stop the government beaming secret radio signals into your head and may in fact amplify the radio waves.

Or is that just what they want you to believe?

You know by now, of course, that all the New Zealand Herald's "premium content" pieces are being automagically sucked out and re-posted in the Herald Premium Content blog. Illegal of course, but very handy. It means that I can actually direct you to today's Herald editorial potting Gerry Brownlee for his embarrassing behaviour this week:

Gerry Brownlee, Deputy Leader of the Opposition, no doubt fancies himself in the leader's shoes one day. But if he wants to be taken seriously by anybody else he should abandon the kind of outburst he made against the Governor-General this week.

Quite.

Anyway … I'd best be off preparing for Karajoz Great Blend weekend. You'll know if you've RSVPd, and both the Auckland and Wellington events with Ashley Highfield, Ladi Six and Pitch Black are full - especially Wellington.

There will be a sausage sizzle and a few nibbles at the Hopetoun Alpha in Auckland, and the British Council is laying on some snack platters in Wellington. In Auckland, it'll be a cash-only bar.

You may also want to bring a little cash to buy the new Activity Press title, Trade Me Success Secrets by Michael Carney, which the author will be selling in Auckland. I'll also have signed copies of Great New Zealand Argument for sale, and hopefully David Slack will be selling Civil War and Other Optimistic Predictions and Graham Reid will be selling Postcards from Elsewhere, although you might have to catch them between drinks.

Please do try and be there around 6pm, because we have a very full programme in both cities. The running order in Auckland is: opening speech, Ladi Six, Ashley Highfield onstage interview, Great Blend TV, panel discussion, Pitch Black. For Wellington: opening speech, Ashley interview, panel discussion, Ladi Six. I've added Mikee Tucker from Loop to the Wellington panel.

Tell the babysitter not to expect you home till about 10.

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Mo French | Nov 10, 2005 11:23

There were varied responses to yesterday's post about the French riots. A couple of readers mentioned the 1995 French film La Haine ("Hate"), which explores themes of racism and violence in suburban Paris.

Reader Nick Melchior says of my line that the rioters were not mullahs but gangstas:

This seems to me to miss the point slightly. Regardless of whether or not the rioters are taking their influence from radical Islam or American hip hop, the real point is surely that there are genuine grievances here. A lack of respect from the police and authorities in general is key here. A focus of the style in which the rioters dress their protest in takes attention away from the very legitimate grievances at work here.

WH said:

Appreciate all your "socio economic" psycho-cultural blah de blah, but can't you say something more ... convincing? Like: "small proportion of anti-social fuckwits" or "there's no excusing wanton violence" or "fuck rioters". Hell I'd take a "Booker T Washington" at this point.

Jerry Sullivan made this observation:

For what it's worth, Pat Buchanan has been making that speech about Hispanics since the 1980 Republican convention. For a more serious blogger whose reaction to the French riots and "Islamofascism" is very disturbing, see andrewsullivan.com--he's gay, republican, libertarian, seriously anti-torture and cites approvingly to columns about the French and Danish riots which draw decidly Klanish responses (which Sullivan neither acknowledges nor apparently finds troubling).

Hmmm. He's right. I'm disappointed. Although Sullivan seems to have started to countenance less alarmist points of view, some of the stuff he cites is bilge. He links to this little job titled Evidence the "Paris Riots" Are Actually the "French Intifada" on the IRIS blog (home page slogan: "Because Israel is the frontline of the global intifada").

Sullivan enthusiastically declares "The guy's got links". Well, he has some links, but mostly, he's got a whole lot of selective and out-of-context quoting, including to this Boston Globe story:

Mahmoud Khabou, 20, the jobless son of Algerian immigrants, knows little of the world beyond the concrete housing projects that rise in bleak rows barely an hour's subway ride from the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, and other grand monuments of Paris.

But he knows who his heroes are. ''Osama bin Laden and Rodney King," he said, referring to the Al Qaeda leader and the African-American whose videotaped beating by Los Angeles police in 1991 spawned massive racial riots.

''One because he gives pride back to the Muslims," the young man asserted as he and a trio of friends stood near the charred ruins of a carpet shop. ''The other because he was just a poor man, a 'nobody man' of color, but he caused a great city to burn."

A commenter made this observation on citing that story as "evidence":

So I guess they should add a new blog "Evidence the Paris Riots are Really The South Central LA Riots". Hey by all reports, the rioters are more into hip hop gangsta style clothes and rap music than wearing khaffiyehs and listening to traditional arab music.

I checked a few others they were similarly incomplete or out of context. Keep up the good work, and make it easy for me continue to post the links to your "evidence" …

It gets worse. If you bother to read through to the last page of the Boston Globe story, it concludes thus:

The violence exploded in this suburb Oct. 27 after two teenagers -- Ziad Benna, 17, and his friend Bouna Traore, 15 -- were electrocuted in a power substation into which they clambered to evade police. Matters were made worse when police battling rioters fired tear gas into a local mosque where more than 700 people were gathered for prayers.

French newspapers have carried speculative reports that ''hidden hands" -- meaning Islamic radical groups such as Al Qaeda -- are orchestrating the violence. Inhabitants of Clichy-sous-Bois scoffed at the suggestion.

''There's no hidden hand -- very ridiculous! -- just the fully visible discrimination that Muslims face everyday," said Zoubidia, 29, as she nervously led her two small boys past cordons of riot police guarding a fire station. She declined to give her last name.

''Just allow us the dignity of good jobs and a chance to make better lives," she said. ''Then the French will have nothing to fear from 'dangerous Muslims.' "

This doesn't really seem like a slamdunk for the clash-of-civilisations theory …

Most disappointingly, Sullivan also links to this post by the British Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips like it meant something. She concludes:

The warning for us from the disturbing events in France could not be clearer. We must end the ruinous doctrine of multiculturalism and reassert British identity and British values — and insist that although Muslims are a valued minority, they must abide by majority rules.

But if France fails to hold the line, the fall-out will be incalculable for us and for all of Europe.

Phillips (whose work was among that plagiarised by Bruce Logan of the Maxim Institute) is a lunatic of long standing - she makes Mark Steyn look measured and consistent.

Happily, in a sense, Phillips' new columns still insisting on a link between the MMR vaccine and autism give us a handy yardstick for the quality of her argument.

Here are a withering takedown of Phillips' paranoid columns, her frankly misleading response in The Guardian, and subsequent unimpressed letters to the same newspaper.

And for a final amusement, here's a backgrounder on one of the "journals" she claimed had backed her argument, the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. It's not so much a medical journal as an in-house newsletter for a bunch of paranoid American conservatives. It promotes links between abortion and breast cancer, and mercury in vaccines and autism - and, unsurprisingly, features on Quackwatch's list of non-recommended journals. Oh, why do they hate science so?

So this is the kind of mindset we're dealing with. These are people who are quite prepared to create their own reality and live inside it. Meanwhile, of course, there are already jihadists looking to harness the anger in Paris - united with their right-wing foes in a common belief in some impending and epochal war between faiths. I guess I'm not the only one who feels caught in the crossfire between crazy people.

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The French | Nov 09, 2005 09:24

One of the things I recall most strongly about the occasions I visited Paris is that they had three kinds of police - and all of them were pricks. You could be arrested if you were caught without ID, and my more romantic illusions about Paris parks were dispelled when I was told by a gendarme to pack up and move on with my book, bread, cheese and bottle of vin ordinaire.

On one occasion, I was in a car with a couple of Senegalese guys and we got bailed up and required to show ID. It was creepy, in part because I had a New Zealand passport and things weren't going too well between us and France at the time, but the black guys were quite clearly the greater subject of attention.

I should note that we had in fact recently scored some pot (I shoved it down the back seat), but we had not presented any obvious threat to security that I can think of. Everyone's papers were in order, so to speak, and we were eventually allowed to go on our way. It had been a textbook case of driving while black, and I got the impression it wasn't so unusual.

I've been thinking about that this week as I scanned the news of rioting in parts of French cities. Would the coverage have had a different tone and intensity had the riots been happening in America? I think there's no doubt about that. The winger tendency has been complaining along those lines since the troubles began - but they have also been trying very hard to depict this as a clash of civilisations.

Close to home, Sir Humphreys pointed to a link from the racist Little Green Footballs blog to a video in which a couple of rioters yell "Allah Akbar". Someone in the comments links to this column from the reliably fact-free Mark Steyn in which Steyn, on the basis of no apparent evidence, declares:

Some of us believe this is an early skirmish in the Eurabian civil war. If the insurgents emerge emboldened, what next? In five years' time, there will be even more of them, and even less resolve on the part of the French state. That, in turn, is likely to accelerate the demographic decline. Europe could face a continent-wide version of the "white flight" phenomenon seen in crime-ridden American cities during the 1970s, as Danes and Dutch scram to America, Australia or anywhere else that will have them.

Another piece being passed from hand to sweaty hand by the wingers is Paris Burning: How Empires End, by Pat Buchanan, in which he declares that "The soaring Muslim population is a Fifth Column inside Europe," and goes on to warn: "Nor should Americans take comfort in France's distress. By 2050, there will be 100 million Hispanics in the United States, half of them of Mexican ancestry, heavily concentrated in a Southwest most Mexicans still believe by right belongs to them."

So now it's the Mexicans too? Aren't they, like, Catholics?

Then there's this fatuous Tapscott post about the "Muslim youth riots" in France:

But thanks to the media's politically correct blinders, it's almost impossible to find a news story explaining the rioters' theological motivations. Why isn't the Bush White House demanding the media report all the facts about the Paris riots, including the evidence that they are anything but spontaneous, and pointing out the links to the War on Terror?

Similarly, democracy is moving strongly forward in Iraq and so is that nation's economy. In fact, the latter is booming. And the number of insurgent attacks in Bagdhad and elsewhere are declining drastically as the Iraqi security forces become more proficient and confident through U.S. training.

Er, hello? October was the worst month for violent deaths in Iraq since January. Since the accidental electrocution of the two French youths that sparked the rioting, there has been one death in the French disturbances. I did a rough count from news reports and worked out that in Iraq there were about 30 conflict deaths on Monday. It would seem a little rash to be making comparisons, let alone comparisons favourable to Iraq.

However politically correct it might be, it simply seems incorrect to characterise what's happening in France as "Muslim" rioting. Gwynne Dwyer observes:

The low-income housing estates that ring Paris and other big French cities are the dumping ground for everybody that hasn't made it in the cool 21st-century France of the urban centres, and they include the old white working class as well as immigrants from France's former colonies in Arabic-speaking North Africa and sub-Saharan black Africa and from all the poorer countries of Europe. Unemployment there is often twice the national average of 10 per cent. But they are not Muslim majority communities, or even non-white majority.

This story makes the point more clearly:

"It is nothing to do with radical Islam or even Muslims," says Olivier Roy, research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and one of the world's leading authorities on political Islam.
He says that although many rioters are from Muslim backgrounds, "these guys are building a new idea of themselves based on American street culture. It's a youth riot — they are protesting against the fact that they are supposed to be full French citizens and they are not."
While black Americans in the 1960s objected to police use of the word "boy", today's young French rioters have a similar demand: they want police to stop insulting them with use of the familiar form for you: "tu".

They're not mullahs: they're gangstas.

This is not to suggest that the unrest won't be exploited by extremists, still less to let the French off the hook. But the real problem may be not the French embrace of multiculturalism, as the wingers allege, but the old French state's determination to insulate itself from ethnic and cultural reality, just as it has tried to insulate itself from economic reality. This Guardian editorial puts it thus:

Finally, France will need to look again at its uncompromising policy on assimilation. It has never had any time for Britain's multi-cultural approach. Indeed, as our French correspondent reports today, it is illegal in France to gather or hold any statistics on ethnicity or religion. Yet without these, little progress can be made on affirmative programmes. British policy on community cohesion - preserving and celebrating our diverse cultural backgrounds - has been taking a battering in the wake of recent inter-ethnic riots in Birmingham. But what has been happening in France, reinforces the correctness of our current goals. Meanwhile the best political message has been from banners held by residents of Clichy-sous-Bois: "No to violence" and "Yes to dialogue".

This might be a good time to revisit Jonathan Freedland's thoughtful column for the same paper earlier this year, in which he suggested that Europe could learn from America's approach to identity:

It seems there are two ways to fill the identity vacuum. The French model of citizenship, which asks people to shed their differences to become French. Or the American, which allows people to keep their differences - and become American. Hooper points out that while the French government banned the wearing of Muslim headscarves in school, the US justice department recently backed an Oklahoma girl's fight for the right to wear one in class.
Britons' instincts would probably lean towards the American approach. Britain, like the US, is built on difference. Our crypto-federal structure, welding Scots, English and Welsh, allows for that; successive waves of immigrants have added to the mix.
But here's the difference. America works because it emphasises not only diversity but the ties that bind, too. It encourages a hyphenated identity - think Italian-American - but insists on both sides of the hyphen.

Elsewhere, Lindsay Perigo has a good piece on Rod Donald.

Simon Grigg looks at the Festival Mushroom Records sale and conjures some history. Well worth reading.

It emerged recently that should you be foolish enough to put one of many Sony BMG CDs in your Windows PC and try and play it, the CD will - without telling you - install a rootkit. That is, a back door to your computer. Every time you play the CD, the software will attempt to phone home to a Sony server. Worse, it can be used by malicious hackers to hide code. PA reader Kent Dustin points out that there is one hack already taking advantage of the rootkit. Kent points out that such CDs are on sale in New Zealand, and says:

There has been nothing in the media warning people that installing Sony's software from the CD will put a hacker-friendly concealed rootkit on their PC ... and despite the negative publicity making the rounds, Sony Music's local website is completely silent on the issue. This is a worry, given that it appears there is no way to uninstall the malicious software without explicit permission and tools from Sony. Neither the information nor the tools seem to be available locally.

If a black-hat hacker community were to target New Zealand and succeed in installing hidden rootkits on a large number of PCs, there would be a media uproar. But if Sony do so, through CDs legitimately purchased by unsuspecting users, there's complete silence. Astounding.

Furthermore, Kent points out that under proposed changes to the Copyright Act, it would be a breach to remove the Sony malware from your computer. That in itself would not trigger the proposed new criminal (rather than civil) remedies, but it's still extremely undesirable.

And finally, there's another episode of Off the Wire being recorded tonight in Auckland, at The Classic comedy club at 6.30pm. I'm not in this one, but some funny people are. To claim a place in the crowd, call Linda at Radio NZ on 367 9320 or e-mail tickets@thedownlowconcept.com.

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The Contribution | Nov 07, 2005 09:55

In the fractious and sometimes silly environment of online argument, people seem genuinely shocked and saddened by the news of Rod Donald's death. There are many heartfelt tributes on frogblog, and DPF has a thread about the sad news and a roundup of news stories. A number of other blogs, left and right, responded yesterday by simply posting a photograph of the man.

Perhaps what happens is that when something like this occurs, people put aside ideological differences and the adversarial character of politics and focus on what the man's hopes and aspirations were for his country. And Rod Donald's were lifelong, sincere and inspiring.

I never actually met Rod, but I remember him from years ago in Christchurch. I was a kid and he was the lippy ginge, a few years older than me. We both once took part in one of Gordon Dryden's discussion roadshows - I said something dumb and Rod responded. He totally slamdunked me. I have disagreed with him since, but I was always more careful to think about what I said since that evening.

Rod's early identification with the Values Party had a significance that might be lost on some younger Green voters. Values appeared from thin air a few months before the 1972 general election, spawned from a meeting of about six people at Victoria University. It was afforded some room by Norm Kirk's pulling Labour further towards the centre, but its motivation was fresh and independent. Something new.

By the time polling day rolled around, Values had attracted 1700 people to a public meeting in Auckland Town Hall. It polled 2% of the vote nationwide, and 9% in Karori. Its profile was even higher than those numbers might suggest: it was brought to the nation's attention in a famous Gallery programme, and - amazingly - the November 13 editorial of the National Business Review endorsed the Values Party.

In Brian Edwards' book on the 1972 election, Right Out, party founder Tony Brunt wrote that "the country was going to the left, not in the socialist sense of that term but in the sense that it was becoming more activist, more aware of the national rejuvenation that was needed, and more willing than ever to make it a reality.

"New Zealand underwent what I can only falteringly call a change in national consciousness. It was this critical ingredient that enabled the rise of the Values Party. The politics of inaction was not enough on its own to spark the emergence of Values, for, on reflection, the bankrupt nature of New Zealand politics had been almost as much in evidence in 1969 as it was in 1972. It was just that New Zealanders on masse, suddenly decided in 1972 that they had had enough.

"This mood of utter disillusionment coincided with an instinctive - and frustrating - apprehension by many that a new and important political synthesis was forming outside the vision of the two major parties."

Rod didn't join Values until the following year, but that was the mood and the momentum that drew him into politics. It was to his great credit - and it is his legacy - that he went on to campaign for the electoral reform that finally shucked off the old system and gave voice to a new diversity in our politics. He helped create a new New Zealand.

I can understand that Nandor Tanczos will be feeling shocked and distressed now, but I personally hope he takes up the challenge of returning the Parliament. No one would ever wish to be called in such a way, but an opportunity to contribute has arisen.

And in a way, that's the thing. I don't know about you, but I'm old enough now to sometimes think about whether, were I gone tomorrow, I'd be happy with my contribution. I hope Rod Donald had cause to reflect in that way before he died. Because more than most of us, he had reason to feel proud of his contribution.

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