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Go Access | Aug 31, 2007 09:40

After a couple of days discussing the digital media future, it was useful yesterday to go and see it happening at the grassroots.

Wellington Access Radio has a very cool web-based system, developed in-house with modest funding from the Community Partnerships Fund created under the National Digital Strategy.

The system lets individual programme makers present and manage radio content, share it with other participating stations (Hamilton Community Radio and the excellent Fresh FM in Nelson share the same content management system with Wellington) and deliver it in clever ways: you can generate a "virtual channel" of all programming in a particular language, for example.

The website doesn't really get as much traffic as it deserves. So pop on over and have a look around and a listen.

And with that, I'm throwing clothes into my bag and heading for the airport. If you're going to the Karajoz Great Blend tomorrow night, see you there. But please: don't be late. William Cooper will be on at 6.30pm because he has to fly out tomorrow night. Anyway, it was great fun here last night and I'm sure it'll be just as good tomorrow night.

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The Near Future | Aug 30, 2007 10:09

I was impressed by both the tone and substance of the New Futures digital broadcasting conference, where I've spent much of the last two days. The turnout was very good and William Cooper's keynote yesterday -- a primer on the current state of, digital, interactve and IPTV -- was excellent.

The big announcement came late yesterday, in the form of NZ On Air's unveiling of the New Zealand Screen Trust, which will build a curated, public-good portal for all New Zealand screen work.

Disclosure: I've agreed to be a trustee, something I wouldn't have done if I didn't like the prop.

Things I like about it: it's not part of NZ On Air or any other government agency, but a stand-alone trust with a dedicated purpose; it will partner with anyone who wants to be partnered with; it will happen quickly (no small mercy when agencies in this domain habitually spend years defining policy about policy); and it will welcome public knowledge via wikis for each entry.

You can hear Clare O'Leary, NZ On Air's strategic advisor, talk about nzscreen, and hear from William Cooper and the excellent Mr Brown, at the Karajoz Great Blend events in Wellington tonight and Auckland on Saturday.

With our larger venues, there is still room for a few more, so check the details here and RSVP to come. It's free. And lovely.

Meanwhile, what exactly was Mike Moore on when he wrote yesterday's Herald column? There is, naturally, no reason why a former Prime Minister, however brief and unelected, should not offer criticism of a current government, or set its performance in a historical context. But it's hard not to scan that juddering prose and wonder how it read before the sub-editors finished with it.

He simply seems to be making up some of it:

The attacks on possible, probable enemies of the state has even gone overseas to attacks on Australian Foreign Minister Downer for speaking at a National Party conference, when Labour regularly has overseas politicians speak to the troops. The media breathlessly talked of a "secret" meeting.

Did they? Where? I'm happy to be corrected, but aren't we talking about a National Party conference that was widely reported by the press?

The Clark-Muldoon comparison is hardly new, but Moore performs the remarkable trick of making it seem completely invalid, by slathering on anything that comes into his head:

I'm expecting a cartoon of Helen Clark to appear, morphing into an angry Robert Muldoon. He used SIS files on opponents, perfected the nasty technique of personally destroying opponents, intimidating the media (not that you have to muzzle sheep), and used the levers of Government to create stunts, diversions, and buy votes in marginal seats.

Mike, perhaps you could call us when Clark does actually use SIS files against opponents, or even when she succeeds in intimidating the news media into not tearing into her government on a pretty much daily basis.

The phrase Moore brandishes -- "the politics of personal destruction" -- was popularised by Bill Clinton (and has been more recently abused by Hilary). Anyone who has seen The Hunting of the President may find a comparison between that saga and Labour's recent lame-o attempts to make John Key look shifty just a bit facile.

Moore's right about one thing: his screed is not be taken seriously, however much the Herald seems to think we should. Even the commenters at Kiwiblog haven't exactly taken up DPF's invitation to pay tribute to Moore's work. This comment from Danyl was quite good.

It's worth examining Moore's claims about Clark's impressive record of 'destroying' political foes in slightly more detail.

Labour
Lange. Clark is unlikely to have played more than a superficial role in Lange's resignation.
Palmer. Stood down in the face of electoral annihilation.
Moore. Was indeed, rolled by Clark.
Cullen. Punished his attempt to overthrow her by making him deputy PM and Finance Minister.

National
Shipley - stood down after massive election defeat; rolled by Bill English.
English - stood down after massive election defeat; rolled by Don Brash.
Brash - stood down after narrow election defeat; was about to have a book of his emails published; rolled by John Key.
John Key - has thus far withstood Labours pathetically feeble attacks on him; will possibly win next election in a landslide and be PM by this time next year, thus cannot really be described as 'destroyed', whether by Clark or anyone else.

Meanwhile, economist Eban Goodstein gives a withering review to the new book by Bjorn Lomborg, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming. Kevin Berger also interviews Lomborg.

From a nice little set of links at The Fundy Post, occasioned by the deparature of Alberto Gonzales, this truly amazing list of the fools and knaves who have failed upwards in the Bush administration. Stuff like this:

William G. Myers III
STARTED AS: Solicitor of the Department of the Interior, 2002-2003

HECKUVA JOB: A former lobbyist for mining and cattle companies, Myers signed a pledge not to deal with his old clients when he went to work for the government. In 2004, Interior's inspector general found that he'd met with his former clients at least nine times while in office; accused of unethical conduct, he resigned.

SOFT LANDING: Bush promptly nominated him to the powerful 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. He now has the distinction of being one of the few Bush nominees who has never been confirmed.

Oh right. Bent lobbyist gets a plum public job. Warned not to be bent any more. Stays bent. Resigns. Made an Appeal Court judge.

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Nasty | Aug 27, 2007 08:23

It was always odds-on that Judith Collins MP would top her previous efforts at public nastiness - and already, she's come though for the punters. 3 News ran a story on Friday night claiming controversy over the hiring of "prominent drag queen" Buckwheat, aka Edward Cowley, as a motivational speaker for Pacific Island staff by the Ministry of Social development.

The story had been provided to 3 News by Collins, who smirkingly declared that she had discovered the news about the "inappropriate" contract in Express, which is delivered to Parliament.

Buckwheat/Edward recently finished nine years working as a community educator for the Aids Foundation, and, as it turns out, has previously been contracted as a facilitator for Fono, a series of professional development seminars for Pacific Island staff.

So, you have a Pacific Islander who has spent nearly a decade on the front line, working with Pacific communities for a community heath organisation, who has been brought in as a motivational speaker on a social ministry's staff training programme, having filled a similar role to general acclaim in the past.

This is, allegedly, a "waste of money". But does anybody think for a moment that Collins would have picked it up if that person had not been a drag queen? It's this simple: Collins saw the gay angle as a political opportunity and supplied the story to 3 News.

This perhaps serves as a reminder that the National Party preening itself for power next year is not only the party of that nice Mr Key who everyone likes, but of thugs like Collins, who are willing -- nay, eager -- to use bigotry as a political weapon.

When I criticised a speech she had made on the Civil Unions Bill (in part because it was simply inaccurate) three years ago, Collins sent me an email headed 'Your rantings'. It read: "Thanks for the free publicity. I just love the way the diversity friendly people like yourself are so opposed to any view contrary to your own. Keep it up."

Sure. I've met Buckwheat a couple of times, and she (I think one should call drag queens "she" when they're in uniform) was graceful and kind: two attributes that could hardly be ascribed to Mrs Collins. And I'll leave you to guess who is the better dresser.

Meanwhile, the Herald ran a front-page story on Saturday that was frankly silly:. It opened:

A photo of Helen Clark on the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia has been "protected" to prevent people editing her listing, and Ministry of Justice staff have been detected using Government computers to alter other entries.

Unless you read that intro -- and indeed, the rest of the story -- carefully, you might have gained the impression that the edits conducted from Ministry of Justice computers had something to do with the vandalism on the Clark article. Or, at least, that they were somehow politically controversial.

Check again: of the five edits -- in four years! -- from MoJ, two were on that swarming hive of contentious content, the Echo and the Bunnymen article. I have a mental image of some deskbound fortysomething correcting the catalogue number on Heaven Up Here.

It is hardly news, either, that the Helen Clark article has been vandalised. Angry nutters have been doing that in one way or another since 2003. It's a modern peril of political leadership. Although, apart from some clever-dick briefly introducing a picture of him picking his nose, John Key has suffered little.

It's not even really news that the familiar PR pic of Clark has been locked off because a couple of especially angry nutters could not accept that their views on its integrity were of no account to an encylopedia. It happened in May.

One of the senior New Zealand Wikipedia editors, Gadfium -- a man of apparently infinite patience -- explains on the Talk page to someone demanding to know what the vandalism relating to the photo was: "Since your IP address is similar to one of those making the vandalisms, and since the edit you made immediately before this one was a (very minor) vandalism, you may already know the answer."

If Derek Cheng at the Herald really wanted a story, he'd have tried to track down those addresses. It wouldn't be easy, but it wouldn't be a completely daft story that brings the paper into disrepute.

Update: it has been brought to my attention that the reporter, Derek Cheng, isn't the one to blame for the Herald's Wikipedia story. Sounds like it was the newsdesk deciding there was a story there wasn't and the poor reporter having to write it. So, the paper bringing its reporter into disrepute rather than the reverse.

Having watched Barack Obama's appearance on The Daily Show last week, I think I love him -- and I hardly even know him. Well, perhaps that's going a bit far; but it was certainly a demonstration of his astonishing charisma. Salon has a story about Obama's appeal to Republicans -- he placed third in a poll of Republican voter preferences in Iowa -- noting, of course, that he has to win his own party's primary before he can think about reaching out across the barricades.

PS: Another dispatch from the Yahoo/Xtra Bubble shambles. People on the Public Address mailing list haven't been getting our emails for more than a week. This is becaiuse since the chance, messages from our list -- which has existed in various forms longer than Xtra has for goodness sake -- have been recategorised as "Bulk/Spam". They're not delivered and can only be seen via Xtra webmail interface. Could someone at Xtra please fix this and stop hurting my business? Like, now?

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