Author Archive
S92A: Campbell Smith is finally removing his head from his…
Written By: - Date published: 2:59 pm, March 9th, 2009 - 5 comments
Sometimes the myopia of RIANZ is breath taking. Campbell Smith, its chief executive, has written an dialogue piece in the NZ Herald. “Anti-piracy law a reasonable way to protect artist rights“. He obviously has been listening over the last month – just not enough yet – and obviously not enough to put money to the […]
Gordon Campbell states the obvious
Written By: - Date published: 2:21 pm, March 8th, 2009 - 26 comments
Gordon Campbell has been having fun pointing the finger at Treasury in “How Treasury put us on the hook to finance companies“. Essentially the treasury and therefore Bill English appear to have been somewhat idiotic. If a firm stopped taking deposits last September, and was heavily exposed in the current economic climate to a major […]
Democracy and the BOFH, Jonkey, and S92A preparations
Written By: - Date published: 5:59 pm, March 4th, 2009 - 53 comments
Reply is a feature that accidentally got turned on last week when I had a adware/malware outbreak through a security hole (those buggers are smart and fast). I did complete reinstall with updated software. Somewhere during the upgrade, the reply feature was turned on. Now I’ve been occupied by moving house for the first time […]
‘Iconic’ bailouts
Written By: - Date published: 11:34 am, February 26th, 2009 - 9 comments
Bailing out a company like Air New Zealand is one thing. It has a multiplier effect on the local economy in tourism marketing, air freight, and just having a airline that is interested in having routes in and out of NZ. Giving money to your mates because they are your mates… Well this is the […]
S92A deferred
Written By: - Date published: 5:25 pm, February 23rd, 2009 - 15 comments
Looks like the introduction of s92a has been deferred… It is still a bit of a rumour (at least until I find the press release). Good! Hopefully this will concentrate the minds of the parties involved in the code of conduct. Update: From 3 News UPDATED: 5:10pm The government has called for a delay in […]
Judith Collins – nascent Minister of Embarrassment?
Written By: - Date published: 4:15 pm, February 23rd, 2009 - 6 comments
Should have seen it coming Judith Collins has been vying politically with Rodney Hide to become the NACT’s Minister of Embarrassment (and Comedy). This is creatively portrayed in today’s Mike Moreu cartoon, as he ties her last weirdo play for the kneejerk vote to her current one. For a background on this current Judith Collins […]
Protest mode on Section 92A
Written By: - Date published: 9:36 am, February 23rd, 2009 - 4 comments
This Saturday, February 28th, Section 92A of the Copyright Act is due to come into force. It is currently unworkable. This website has voluntarily been taken down in protest against this clause. In its current form the clause will allow for arbitrary disconnection from the net on an accusation. That will result (at best) with […]
The Standard and s92a.
Written By: - Date published: 6:20 pm, February 19th, 2009 - 40 comments
I’m not going to go over the whys and wherefores of this clause of the new copyright act. No Right Turn, Just Left, Public Address and David Farrar already have. I have a lot of sympathy for the intent of this clause. Many of the people I come into contact with do creative work, including […]
Bill English – Ashamed of being a hypocrite?
Written By: - Date published: 11:29 am, February 18th, 2009 - 12 comments
David Cunliffe has been doing something that Bill English really hates – asking questions about actual accounting and fiscal practices. The reason that Bill hates this is because he keeps getting caught in his mythologies of opposition. These were designed more for the dogwhistle brigade who prefer a good incorrect story to what is required […]
Maintenance and upgrades
Written By: - Date published: 4:06 pm, February 17th, 2009 - 25 comments
The latest load of bill-paying work has finished (and the site is paid up until June). I’m at a relatively loose end for a few weeks. There are a number of postponed tasks that I’ll catch up on, but there should be a lot of time for the site. Tonight there will be some work […]
Interesting speculations
Written By: - Date published: 11:58 pm, February 7th, 2009 - 24 comments
The Sunday Star Times will probably have an article out tomorrow about the possible nomination of Helen Clark to the position of head of the UN Development Programme. David P Farrar over at Kiwiblog leaked the story this afternoon. The position came up at short notice. As Helen put it in a txt (I asked) […]
Sanctimonious tall poppy cutter.
Written By: - Date published: 3:38 pm, February 7th, 2009 - 32 comments
There is no doubt that the Granny crew were hurt when their own ‘poll’ showed that people considered Helen Clark was the greatest living kiwi. It says a lot about the mean-spirited attitudes at the Herald that they didn’t consider that politicians were possibilities for the greatest living Kiwi. You get the impression that they’d […]
Clown incites lawbreaking.
Written By: - Date published: 8:25 am, February 5th, 2009 - 56 comments
Clown Rodney Hide is the Minister of Local Government. He is also the lead clown of the long-time opposition circus that is the ACT party. It appears that he has the two roles confused. He is advocating that people ignore the law on gaining building permissions. Local governments enforce those building regulations. Those regulations are […]
A key birdshit shortage
Written By: - Date published: 12:39 pm, January 30th, 2009 - 9 comments
Our economy depends on other key resources apart from oil. For instance our farming sector still depends heavily on using phosphates to increase soil fertility. Since our farming sector provides at more than half of the export income, it got a little disturbing to read about the limited security of supply. For most of last […]
John Key keeps disappearing into satire
Written By: - Date published: 7:47 am, January 29th, 2009 - 3 comments
Danyl at The Dim-Post has been indulging in his favored pastime again – satire. In this case Cabinet expresses concern over missing PM is about John Key going missing all of the time. Danyl compares him to a pooch avoiding something… Finance Minister Bill English has accepted responsibility for his leader’s absence. ‘I usually let […]
Brownlee blowing smoke – or is it Coalfinger in disguise?
Written By: - Date published: 11:26 pm, January 21st, 2009 - 16 comments
Gerry Brownlee was puffing smoke this Wednesday morning about his daft (in terms of the Kyoto agreement) decision last month to remove the ban on thermal generation of power. It reminded me of something I’d seen recently, so I dug back through the mental archives. Eventually I re-discovered the mysterious coincidences between the decisions of […]
A topic for the NACT talk-fest. Needs a slogan for success.
Written By: - Date published: 7:43 am, January 15th, 2009 - 13 comments
My favourite indicator for a deep recession is showing up. The applications and enrollments for colleges and graduate programs appears to be significantly up in the east, west, and south of the US and Canada. Probably something similar is happening here but we are unlikely to know until later this month. The reason that this […]
Israel – a failed democracy
Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, January 9th, 2009 - 86 comments
The following quoted text is a e-mail response by Mike Treen from Global Peace and Justice Auckland to someone who was complaining about the campaign to boycott an Israeli tennis player. Hopefully Mike won’t get too upset with me for giving this a wider airing. It appeared in the GPJA NEWSLETTER #269, January 8, 2009 […]
Police nurture a unwise form of direct democracy
Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, January 7th, 2009 - 27 comments
The Economist has an fascinating article “Rioters of the world unite“. It is partially about the demonstrations, protests, and outright riots in Athens and other parts of Greece at the end of last year. It is also partially concerned with a rising trend in new ways to not organize, and still be politically effective. The […]
KiwiPolitico started
Written By: - Date published: 8:07 am, January 6th, 2009 - 16 comments
Pablo, Anita, and Jafapete have (finally) started their new KiwiPolitico blog site. I don’t know Pablo* (at least under that psuedonym), but the post on Key and McCully at APEC was amusing. Anita has already annoyed David over at Kiwiblog. She tends to do with her myth-busting ways. Who can forget her persistent requests of […]
Climate change deniers – accidental comedians
Written By: - Date published: 10:39 am, January 4th, 2009 - 26 comments
I’m always amazed about the level of sheer scientific ignorance of most of the climate change deniers. Characteristically ridiculous statements (and scientifically humorous) usually emit from them like CO2 emissions from a coal fired power station. For instance, Garth George in the NZ Herald on his new years eve article said In Britain, the Meteorological […]
Shooting blanks
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, December 30th, 2008 - 16 comments
Italian males, despite the appearance of virility in their persistent attentions to female tourists, have caught the European disease – male infertility. A study this year shows some dramatic falls in male fertility in Italy since the 1970’s. Finding Dulcinea summarized the Italian results as:- During the 1970s, Italian men averaged 71 million spermatoza per […]
Madoff, transparency, and electoral regulation
Written By: - Date published: 1:13 pm, December 28th, 2008 - 17 comments
Reading about Madorf and the filching of USD 33 billion in a pyramid scheme from his select group of customers makes for interesting reading. It draws the attention (yet again) to the dangers of having a lack of transparency in financial markets. As the Economist says, it was “Dumb money and dull diligence“. What marks […]
Evolution and Crime
Written By: - Date published: 12:19 am, December 28th, 2008 - 76 comments
The Economist is one of the few main stream media that seem to be flourishing in the days of decline for most media outlets. This is probably because it offers truly interesting comment and opinion. For instance in the current science section, they have “Darwinism:Why we are, as we are, a view on the current […]
Animal right activists, farming and the police
Written By: - Date published: 4:06 pm, December 21st, 2008 - 44 comments
On ABC last night there was a excellent video “Animal rights campaigner spreads message“. It is worth watching for people who (unlike me) haven’t been seen some of the material before. It concerns a animal rights activist in aussie, wealthy backers, and a certain amount of bloody silly self-righteousness from groups that don’t enforce their […]
Have the police been inciting?
Written By: - Date published: 12:04 pm, December 21st, 2008 - 52 comments
There is a slowly emerging twist in police spy scandal. The question of incitement and provocation from an agent of the police. Bearing in mind that it is an obvious escalation of paying people embedded deep in any activist organisation, it is something that an agent’s handlers should have been aware of and taken steps […]
Bill Ralston on police spying
Written By: - Date published: 2:09 pm, December 18th, 2008 - 8 comments
Bill Ralston usually gets stirred by posters at The Standard for what he says. I’ve generally liked him after seeing him give some politicians a degree of ribbing at the annual foreign policy conference in Dunedin in the mid-80’s. I really liked his most recent blog “Wimpy response to out-of-line cops”. The latest Hager/Hubbard story […]
The limits to tolerance of the police
Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, December 16th, 2008 - 66 comments
On discovering that her boyfriend had been spying on her and her friends for the police, and the consequent violations of her expectation of privacy, my niece Rochelle had quite enough tolerance of the police. That is sufficient cause to get seriously annoyed, and it is generally unwise to seriously annoy geeks. So she has […]
Howard – some advice on what questions to ask
Written By: - Date published: 11:49 am, December 16th, 2008 - 23 comments
Yesterday, Howard Broad made statements about the targets of the SIG (Special Investigation Group) to National Radio. Interview with Howard Broad on his actions. I’ve seen some of the e-mails when Rochelle Rees discovered them. From them and his statements, I get the impression that the police commissioner is and has been kept out of […]
No Right Turn: Police State
Written By: - Date published: 1:17 pm, December 14th, 2008 - 35 comments
No Right Turn has written in his cogent style on the police spy issue. With the kind permission of No Right Turn, I’ve quoted it in full below. Because the police operate independently of the government at the operational level (as they should), the “mission” creep is always going to be a issue. Unfortunately the […]
Judith Collins – thoughtless idiot
Written By: - Date published: 11:34 am, December 14th, 2008 - 28 comments
Nothing is quite as important to a democracy as activist groups that engage in peaceful protest for change. In the past these are the groups that have worked for extending the franchise (including to woman), establishing the rights of workers in employer/employee relationships, the abolition of slavery, campaigned for sewerage systems and clean water reticulation, […]
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