Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Mighty wind | Mar 11, 2005 09:35

I lived on the West Coast for several years as a kid, and came away with a great regard for the power of nature there. From our house, you could see muscular, miles-high cumulonimbus clouds marching in from the Tasman. That mighty sight was a herald of big weather, and I loved the big weather.

The Coast also happens to be the only place in New Zealand prone to tornadoes, most of which occur away from its few towns. But yesterday, one came to visit Greymouth and wreaked the kind of concentrated destruction we usually only watch on foreign news. That no one was killed seems extraordinary. TVNZ has a little am-cam video online, along with a photo gallery. The tornado was, amazingly, a story as far afield as Israel, where the Jerusalem Post covered it.

David Slack noted an interesting entry from Hard News passim: 1996 to be precise:

"By deliberately building and titillating widespread public interest in a non-existent incident, I think Mr Peters cynically manipulated both the media and the public," the judge said.

No! Really?

GayNZ has a follow-up on yesterday's second round of slurs under privilege. Scoop's comprehensive coverage of the story is still up in case you missed it.

Mr D Cohen of the parish of Wellington kindly directed me this week to Gerard Baker's column What have the Americans ever done for us? Liberated 50 million people... , which draws an amusing parallel between the "what have the Romans ever done for us?" conversation in Monty Python's Life of Brian and the imagined mutterings of "the anti-American hordes in Britain, Europe and even in the US itself" over what Baker regards as a new dawn in the Middle East.

Indeed, the so-called Cedar Revolution in Lebanon has been hailed with what might be seen as unseemly haste (and while various forms of unseemly slaughter continue in Iraq) by leading necocon pundits, but it's an interesting question: if democracy breaks out, does that amount to an endorsement of the Bush doctrine?

I actually got many paragraphs into a dutiful consideration of the issues, and then decided I might as well hand over to The Daily Show's report on LebaLebanon. Very funny. Again.

And in something that you really wish was comedy, a Fox News "journalist" has declared that if Lebanon was silly enough to vote democratically to retain Syrian troops, "we could bomb it back to the Stone Age with a clean conscience."

You want gravity? Oh. Try Juan Cole then:

I'm all for democratization in the Middle East, as a good in its own right. But I don't believe that authoritarian governance produced most episodes of terrorism in the last 60 years in the region. Terrorism was a weapon of the weak wielded against what these radical Muslims saw as a menacing foreign occupation. To erase that fact is to commit a basic error in historical understanding. It is why the US military occupation of Iraq is actually a negative for any "war on terror." Nor do I believe that democratization, even if it is possible, is going to end terrorism in and of itself.

You want to end terrorism? End unjust military occupations. By all means have Syria conduct an orderly withdrawal from Lebanon if that is what the Lebanese public wants. But Israel needs to withdraw from the Golan Heights, which belong to Syria, as well. The Israeli military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank must be ended. The Russian scorched earth policy in Chechnya needs to stop. Some just disposition of the Kashmir issue must be attained, and Indian enormities against Kashmiri Muslims must stop. The US needs to conduct an orderly and complete withdrawal from Iraq. And when all these military occupations end, there is some hope for a vast decrease in terrorism. People need a sense of autonomy and dignity, and occupation produces helplessness and humiliation. Humiliation is what causes terrorism.

Um, what he said.

PS: I'm off to Christchurch for the day to advise Sound Archive (but no time for the cricket, sadly) but preparations continue apace for Sunday's Great Blend 2 event. Peter McLennan of Dub Dot Dash blog has come on board as our DJ, West Lynn Organic Meats (or, as the Mad Butcher put it, "the orgasmic butcher") is providing some sausages, Foodtown/Woolworth Online have flicked us some platters - and of course there will be lashings of Karajoz coffee.

If you've RSVP'd please be prompt at 4pm, because the show will open with a special international guest. Groovy.

Digg this Scoopit!

Peters again | Mar 10, 2005 11:40

Winston Peters' attack on Jim Peron yesterday appears to be just one more in a string of incidents in which Peters has made extraordinary allegations against members of the public, under the protection of Parliamentary privilege, with the intention of raising his own profile.

Update: Scoop has comprehensive coverage of this story, including an interview with Jim Peron and some speculation about its origins. It would seem that like many other people, Peron has fallen out with Lindsay Perigo (who enthusiastically welcomed him in 2002) over some factional dispute, but Scoop doesn't favour Peron's allegation that Perigo is behind Peters' claims.

Peron, a gay man born in the US, is the executive director of the Institute for Liberal Values, a classical-liberal group which is, for example, in favour of adult sexual choice (and, last year, the Civil Union Bill), but against state welfare and any but the most minimal tax burden. Like much argument of its kind, the ILV's platform can veer towards the shrill and ideological, but Peron makes a vigorous and intelligent contribution to debate in New Zealand.

Act leader Rodney Hide is a friend of Peron's and a member of the ILV board. This was enough of a link for Peters to make a series of allegations during Parliamentary questions yesterday, which he rounded off with a claim I will not repeat here, but which you may read in Hansard (scroll down to Question 6).

In the course of farcical interviews on Close Up last night and Morning Report today, Peters refused to repeat his allegations outside Parliament, but hinted that he had other, unspecified, information to come. He'd want to, because the allegations he did make are tenuous indeed.

The reference to Aristotle's, the Auckland bookshop Peron owns, as a pornography store is simply ludicrous (As David Farrar points out, "using that as a precedent, Peters has just turned every dairy owner in NZ into 'pornography traders'.") Personally, I think the novels of Ayn Rand are embarrassing garbage, but hey ...

It does appear that Peron's work visa in South Africa (where he lived before coming here in 2002) was not renewed - but that is far more likely to have been on account of Peron's trenchant (and yes, sometimes shrill) criticism of the ANC than, as Peters had it, "because of the dubious nature of his business activities."

Yes, Peron did write an essay called The Claptrap Over Child Porn. You can read it and decide whether you think it in any way justifies Peters' innuendo: Part 1: The Political Exploitation of Statistics and Part 2: The US Government Enters the Child Porn Business.

In what appears to have been a monumental error of judgement nearly 20 years ago, Peron allowed the North American Man Boy Love Association to meet at Libertarian Books and Periodicals, the San Francisco bookshop he bought from Eric Garris (who later went on to found Antiwar.com) in 1985. Peron has told the Herald he asked the group to find other premises and wished he had done so sooner. Garris has subsequently indicated an intense dislike for Peron, but it would hardly be the first time a vendor and purchaser have fallen out. (And, as we have seen, the ideologically inclined seem more inclined to tiffs than most of us ...)

Peters would not vouch for his own allegations outside the house and I frankly do not expect him to come up with anything more than the innuendo he has already dispensed.

There are further comments on David's blog here.

Anyway, speaking of moral panics, Ross Bell of the New Zealand Drug Foundation concurred with my comments yesterday about the vile stupidity of the official White House view on harm reduction and needle exchange programmes - which it is seeking to prevent not just within its own borders but anywhere else in the world. Said Ross:

Thankfully, NZ survived the silly debate about needle exchange programmes promoting drug use, and now have a leading NE programme - further improved last year with the free 1-for-1 exchange (users previously had to pay for needles and related equipment).

At a recent health select committee meeting, it was clear that ALL parties (even United Future) endorse the programme.

The 1-for-1 was championed by Jim Anderton, our drug czar.

NZ has one of the lowest HIV infection rates among injecting drug users. Without the programme it's estimated NZ would have had an extra 1,454 people living with hepatitis C, another 1,031 people living with HIV/AIDS, and an extra 20 people would have died following an HIV infection.

We're trying to crack the last barrier of our programme, which is the offence to possess a needle (unless from NE) - hoping to have that offence wholly removed, rather than simply changing the burden of proof from IDUs to police.

Joan Walsh's piece in Salon is the best down-to-earth assessment of the bloggers-vs-mainstream media argument - from a journalist's point of view - I've yet read. Recommended.

An finally - because I really need to do some other work - One Good Move (via The Daily Show) has a hilarious news clip featuring Bush and his new intelligence tsar Porter Goss, in which "Bush bullshits and Porter Goss just doesn't know how to handle it." Dammit man, you're being paid to keep a straight face. Priceless.

Digg this Scoopit!

Sky jinks | Mar 09, 2005 10:06

With the rest of the TV industry abuzz - and possibly alarmed - at the news that Sky Television is gearing up to launch a free-to-air channel, recent information from Nelson reader Brian Wakely would seem extremely relevant.

Last Wednesday night, Brian received a visit from a salesman for an outfit called Integrate, which, he thought at the time, "seemed to have some agreement with Sky to provide facilities for 'public' digital TV when it eventually arrives". Brian continues:

It seemed to centre around Sky dishes and a limited Sky service until public digital would allow one to give up Sky if desired.

The costs were interesting: $49 for a full Sky installation, a month's free service, followed by 12 months at $28. This seemed to include only the present 3 public TV channels plus Radio NZ. He was a bit vague about negotiating with Sky for single additional services of theirs, eg History, Discovery etc. I'm also a bit uncertain about what would happen after 12 months apart from the fact that we could keep the dish if we gave up the service.

His main thrust was that the $49 was a cheap entry into digital … We had always rejected Sky on the grounds that their minimum package was far too large for our viewing tastes, plus the ease with which they sometimes shift the goal posts, but that the chance now for some limited specialised material was somewhat attractive.

We ended up declining the offer and deciding to cross the digital bridge when we come to it.

Thus, the revelation from TVNZ's Richard Griffin in yesterday's Dom Post story that Sky has been "informally" discussing "long-term prospects for potentially leasable satellite space" with TVNZ - without actually revealing its plans - makes sense. Rather than seek to acquire terrestrial licences for the entire country, it will encourage viewers to take up satellite installations and deliver programming that way. The monthly $28 charge is a way of paying off the installation itself rather than a fee for television service.

In this light, it would seem that, if it really is in the market to buy C4 or Prime (unlikely, given the option held over Prime by Murdoch rival Kerry Packer), Sky is interested as much in acquiring a working TV brand as any frequency licenses. It will be interesting to see how Sky plans to slice and dice its pay offerings for viewers, like Brian, who might want additional channels, rather than the full Sky bouquet, to their free service.

Thanks for the feedback on the banking security story. The consensus appears to be that Citibank's "virtual keyboard" system is not an effective way of fending off possible keylogging attacks. Greg Wood reports that he uses Citibank Online in Singapore:

Yep, it all starts off fine at login with the new "virtual keyboard" (which even goes as far as changing the position of the keys each time, probably to bung up any Van Eck Phreaking being perpetrated by one's younger sister in the next room ...). But when you actually go to make a payment online, you have to confirm it's you by re-entering your pin via keystroke - twice! I guess system-wide changes are very difficult to apprehend when you're as huge as the Citi.

Indeed. Greg also notes that Citi's "brand pillars" in Asia include "a very strong focus on mitigating identity theft; and a strangely un-bank-like focus on exhorting and helping people to manage credit cards properly.":

The first is a positioning thing that might even help reduce the costs associated with ID theft. But that second approach is starting to feel like pre-emptive Socially Aware Company activity triggered by the risk analysts at Citi. I wouldn't be surprised to see a flood of "The Bank made me do it" class action suits against reckless credit card issuing in the near future, with this new marketing approach used as a defence. It's an attitudinal change along the lines of what the fast food people are doing with menus and dietary advice. I know we all hear the stories about the Winnebago guy and his Cruise Control, but could some positive societal changes actually be coming out of the US's obsession with blame?

Sol Kahn emailed from New York City to note that Citibank there offers a once-only password system like that recently introduced here by ASB/Bank Direct - with the difference that it's free. In other respects, however - notably transferring to accounts at other banks - Citi appears "so primitive you couldn't steal a decent amount if you wanted". For external transfers the bank has to write a cheque and post it to the payee. Even internal account transfers are limited to $700 daily. Yikes.

Adam Johnson noted that the BNZ actually used to operate a system like ASB/Bank Direct Netcode, back "when they had their horrible only-works-in-IE website". He also points out that while a virtual keyboard might "raise the bar" for event loggers, there's nothing to stop mouse clicks being captured, so "it doesn't really increase the security by any measurable amount."

Ben Gracewood points out that virtual keyboards really suck for disabled users - and for users of some web broswers too, it would seem.

Jody Fanning got in touch to describe online banking practices in Finland:

I'm glad that the two-part passwords were mentioned, but why on earth a text message each time!?

All the banks here issue a list (usually credit card-sized) of one-time passwords.

Each time I connect to the bank site I give my main ID and password and it asks for the one-time password using an index to the list. When the list of passwords is nearly finished (it will last at least a year) they send me a new one in the mail.

So much simpler and safer. Even is someone gets my account and main password, they have to physically steal my list of one-time passwords.

I couldn't believe it when my parents told me that their service at BNZ was still using a single password. Someone should really beat the banks there with a clue stick.

I'll look at the present wave of possibly premature neocon triumphalism tomorrow, but for now, the Guardian has been covering a startling example of White House moral blight involving (surprise!) a studied rejection of evidence. The paper reported last week that the US State Department seemed to be gearing up to use financial leverage to force UN agencies to turn away from harm-reduction policies such as needle exchange schemes:

Disturbingly, this tactic of applying pressure to national governments and international agencies to pursue policies preferred by US conservatives does not seem to be limited to drug policy. Similar moves are apparent in reproductive health and prostitution. The common denominator is the strong advocacy of a morality-driven policy in the face of evidence of what works best in protecting public health.

The international community meets next week in Vienna to review progress in reducing global drug problems. The issue of how to tackle drug-related HIV infection is scheduled to be a major theme. The exchanges will take place with almost no media or parliamentary scrutiny, but the positions agreed will affect the lives of millions of people, and the scale and course of the HIV pandemic in years to come. If the outcome is a retrenchment from the progress made in recent years by UN agencies, this would represent a victory of moralism and financial muscle over evidence and tolerance. Given the huge financial and human cost of increased HIV infection, we all have much to lose next week.

A follow-up comment on Monday continued the theme:

The US used crude muscle as UNODC's single largest paymaster to bully it back into line, suggesting that harm reduction strategies break the three global conventions on drugs and so are unacceptable for any state to adopt, even to fight an HIV/AIDS explosion.

American pressure extracted a humiliating letter from the UNODC executive director, Antonio Maria Costa, in which he agreed to "neither endorse needle exchange as a solution for drug abuse nor support public statements advocating such practices".

Yet, last July, Costa declared: "The HIV/AIDS epidemic among injecting drug users can be stopped - and even reversed - if drug users are provided, at an early stage and on a large scale, with comprehensive services such as outreach, provision of clean injecting equipment and a variety of treatment modalities, including substitution treatment.

Idiots. Blind, blind idiots.

Finally, I went along to the opening night preview of AK05's Def Poetry Jam last night, and really enjoyed it. It's nice to hear poetry in a contemporary format. I daresay it's not for everyone, but if you've been thinking about going, you really should. I'm also interview Stan Lathan, the show's co-director and Russell Simmons' business partner, at about 12.15 on my 95bFM Wire show today. (UPDATE: Stan won't be able to join me, on account of being in hospital with a raging fever. I hope he's alright.)

PS: Wellington readers might be interested to know that The Film Archive is screening the 1985 Oxford Union Debate tonight as part of its 'This is Television' series. The screening begins at 6.30pm and entry is by koha. Non-Wellingtonians are invited to enjoy our transcript of David Lange's debate speech.

Digg this Scoopit!