Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Nice and Nasty | Aug 10, 2005 10:16

Play the audio for this post MP3, 15.2 MB

Here's something nice. TV3 has kindly agreed to let me post the audio from Monday night's David Lange interview from Campbell Live. The sound's a little ropey - it was that way on the dub I got from TV3 - but it's good enough for rock 'n' roll. The file is a 22-minute, 15MB MP3, encoded at 96Kbit/s and copyright rests, naturally, with TV3. Click the link above to listen or download for later pleasure at your leisure.

And here's something nasty: Noelle McCarthy's bFM interview with Winston Peters yesterday.

It's really worth listening to, as is the interview with Shalen Shandil from Radio Apna, the so-called "Islamic Radio station" (y'know, the kind of Islamic radio station largely run by Hindus) that Peters claimed had been broadcasting seditious incitements to terrorism. It transpires that the broadcast was a call to a talkback show that ran all of six seconds before being cut off by the host. Peters never heard it and made no attempt to contact the station and check his facts before he made his claims.

Lord forbid that mainstream talkback radio stations should be held accountable for the views of their callers. It's appalling that Apna - a real radio success story - has to be roped into Peters' mendacious fear-mongering.

Unfortunately, it looks like it's catching. The speech in which Don Brash launched National's lovely new immigration policy yesterday contains the following passage:

There is resentment that too many immigrants, and especially those who arrive as refugees, go straight onto a benefit, and live for years at the expense of the hard-working New Zealand taxpayer.

There is resentment that, when we let in one refugee, we then let in his extended family group as well. Like the case of the refugee who brought in his father, mother, two dependent brothers, two dependent sisters, a dependent sister-in-law and her four dependent children!

There is resentment that some immigrants come into New Zealand for the primary purpose of gaining access to our free education system for their children, with no intention of settling in, or paying tax in, New Zealand for the long haul.

There is resentment that some immigrants flout the laws protecting our fisheries, and are involved in much more serious crimes of a kind that, to date, New Zealand has been largely free of - kidnapping and extortion for example.

There is resentment, at least among those wanting to buy their first home, at the impact of immigration on house prices.

There is fear of Islamist fundamentalism, exacerbated when a Maori convert to Islam expresses admiration for Osama bin Laden and a Muslim (Labour) Member of Parliament contends that the Koran is right to say that adulterers and homosexuals should be stoned to death.

But of course, Dr Brash himself does not feel this resentment, still less personally subscribe to such base generalisations. Don't you know his wife's from Singapore? Just some people do. In an election campaign increasingly characterised by rank cynicism, this carefully crafted work of dog-whistle politics quite possibly takes the cake. I trust Dr Brash is sleeping well at night.

Among other things, National proposes a four-year "probation" period within which any migrant who committed a criminal offence - and that appears to include even driving offences - would be "swiftly returned to their homeland." Not could be deported - as currently happens in some cases involving permanent residents - but would be.

Meanwhile, No Right Turn points out that the proposed scrapping of the Refugee Family Quota "likely violate[s] a host of international human rights instruments and UN recommendations (as well as common human decency)". He continues:

If implemented, National's policy would undermine our excellent international reputation on human rights and refugee issues, and destroy the mana on which our whole foreign policy is based. But what I find most offensive is the subtext: in Brash's worldview, the basic human experience of having a family is only for the rich. This is inhuman, even for Brash; we should be seeking to enable fundamental human wants and needs, not restrict them only to the elite.

Over on the other side of the divide, National Party cheerleader Tim Barclay (who I thought had actually been fairly sane lately) talked about the kind of country he wants to live in a thread on Just Left:

National had to come up with a policy like this to get support from NZF and hopefully cream off some votes. The National Party has traditionally taken a fairly stern approach to immigration. I remember those wonderful ads in 1975 with pacific islanders bashing up kiwis. The Labour Party hated them but they did the trick. And good old Allan McCready as Minister of Immigration and the dawn raids. I get quite misty eyed for those good old days. Well they are back and a good thing too.

Right. Thanks for that.

Meanwhile, on the heels of the actually-we-won't-do-anything-after-all-those-years-of-bitching defence policy: another flip-flop, this time on the Maori electorates. Not a bottom line any more, apparently. It's called Keeping Winston On Board.

Finally, one of the more curious characteristics of the local right-wing blogosphere is the frequency with which its denizens need to keep assuring everyone they're getting some, oh yes they are. In which spirit, this story from Insolent Prick, which DPF thinks it is "outrageous" (presumably in a good way). I think it's sort of embarrassing, even as humour, as which it is presumably intended. An excerpt:

I have a strongly biblical heritage. That heritage serves me well. I am a moral conservative, in all things except my own behaviour. I will tell gays that they will fry at the end of Satan's fork for an eternity if they continue to invite God's wrath by willfully engaging in sin and decrepitude. I have a religious objection to women who go to work and get fat on big lunches, when they could be doing much more for humanity simply by keeping themselves, and their houses, much tidier. I object to feminism, as a movement, on purely ethical grounds.

Women's liberation, as far as I'm concerned, merely means women are free to stay hot. And beauty pageants are the apex of liberation. If more young girls were put through the rigours of beauty pageantry, then I would receive far fewer complaints from feminazis who view my thoughts as misogynistic and sexist. The hot ones wouldn't even understand that sentence, but sway and swoon at the length of my words, and assume that I must be highly educated, and ergo, earn ridiculous amounts of money, which I could use to buy them flash stuff which they could adorn my bedroom floor with, as long as they continue to please me.

Small. Penis.

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With grace and good humour | Aug 09, 2005 10:21

The final Paul Holmes show on Prime last night led with Nick Smith MP wittering on about dog kennels. An hour later, Campbell Live devoted an entire show to what might be the last televised interview that David Lange will do. Spot the difference.

Campbell's interview with the former Prime Minister was a gem; its conclusion sufficiently moving that the host's eyes were welling with tears as he signed off the show. And amid slightly manic media attempts to declare a fight between Lange and various of his former colleagues on the basis of excerpts from his memoir, Lange offered his verdict on Helen Clark with grace and good humour. She had, he said, stabilised an MMP environment that had been collapsing: "without once falling prey to the idea that she did so through charm." I laughed out loud.

Talk about a 90s flashback: Maurice Williamson says that National would review the mandate for free local calling in Telecom's Kiwi Share Obligation, because "it is still the barrier to that true market". The idea is that if new entrants knew they could charge by the minute for local calls - because the KSO would not set the market conditions by making Telecom local calls free - they would be more likely to invest in new networks.

But for God's sake, it's 2005. It's not about metering voice calls any more. The inexorable trajectory of any telecommunications service as it becomes commoditised is towards flat rates. The idea that a new entrant could compete by charging by the minute for landline calls in New Zealand is just silly; as likely as the idea that an ISP could compete with Xtra by charging by the hour for Internet access. (Readers may recall that it was the Wood brothers' ballsy move to flat-rate Internet that put paid to metered access in the local market in the mid 90s; and Telecom's $10 Text product that helped it get back in the mobile game.)

And answer me this: why is it that the least broadband competition - and the greatest degree of flat-out price gouging - is in the business telecommunications market, which already pays by the minute for calls?

The KSO mandates free local calling, requires any annual increase in charges for that services be limited to the rate of inflation, and obliges Telecom to serve (apparently) uneconomic regions at the same rates as it charges in the rest of the country. The rest of the industry is required to contribute to Telecom's costs in meeting the universal service obligation. It's a funny old instrument - one that warrants regular examination - and the idea of tendering out the service obligations (a la Project Probe) is worth considering, if only to discover what the real costs are.

It's quite likely that if the free-calling requirement were removed, nothing would change: in urban areas, anyway. In the more distant regions, where costs are higher and competition absent, it might be a different story. I don't think National wants its heartland voters thinking too much about that (National whipped out a press release yesterday declaring that free local calling was safe, and David Cunliffe's office responded with one pointing out that that wasn't what Maurice said in June.) The telecommunications environment here is unsatisfactory in a number of ways. But the the idea that ditching the KSO would suddenly make a hundred competitive flowers bloom is just daft.

Salon has an interesting interview with philosopher Michael Ruse "an ardent evolutionist who thinks creationism is claptrap," but accuses atheistic scientists like Richard Dawkins "of being as religious as born-again Bible thumpers." I think he has a point: Dawkins et al sometimes seem keener on trying to disprove God than they are on pursuing science. But proponents of the non-science of "intelligent design" should take no comfort:

He thinks that creationists, both of the old-fashioned "young earth" variety and the newfangled intelligent-design model -- which President Bush said earlier this week should be taught in schools -- are spewing dangerous claptrap and are in league, consciously or not, with a sinister right-wing political agenda.

It's a two-level answer. I think creationism is dangerous because I don't think you should teach young people bad ideas. I'm a post-Enlightenment person. Inasmuch as I see creationism as a litmus test, I don't think creationism as such is dangerous. I think premillennialism is dangerous, because this inclines you to simplistic and dangerous positions. You hear echoes of this when George Bush talks about the "evildoers." I think the decision to go to war in Iraq was bound up with many different issues; Cheney just did it for the oil. But I do see it as allied to premillennial thinking, and that's even before you get to the Israel issue. Why are evangelical Christians so gung-ho in favor of Israel? Well, it's not because they like Jews. It's because of their eschatological reading of the Book of Revelation. I do think these things are very dangerous.

String theory star Michio Kaku, profiled in the new Australian science mag Cosmos (whose editor Wilson da Silva I'm interviewing at 12.30 tomorrow on 95bFM), takes a similar view of fundamentalism, but has a surprisingly spiritual perspective on his work. He had Buddhist parents but was raised a Presbyterian and likes string theory as a marriage of the two:

"In Christianity, there is an instant of creation; while in Buddhism there is Nirvana, which is timeless. I am pleased that modern cosmology provides a beautiful melding of these two otherwise mutually contradictory ideas: that a continual genesis is taking place in a hyper-dimensional timeless Nirvana."

Meanwhile, a physicist-stand-up-comedian-screenwriter-blogger goes engagingly ballistic about President Bush's apparent endorsement of teaching "intelligent design" in American classrooms and the Vatican astronomer fires back at Cardinal Shonborn's attempt to drag the church back into the 18th century. Good.

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Cracking Lion Reds on the back of the seat | Aug 08, 2005 10:12

Helen Clark was leaning forward "smiling and appeared to be enjoying the ride" as she whizzed through South Canterbury last year, according to a police officer's evidence given in an interview aired during the dangerous driving trial on Friday. Crikey. Was she cracking open Lion Reds on the back of the seat as well?

Constable Simon Vincent, a defendant in the case, made his vivid observations of the Prime Minister's backseat driving ("I can't recall her being engrossed in any paperwork") via the rear view mirror of the car he was driving in front of the Prime Minister's car at high speed. I trust he spent at least some of his time watching, y'know, the road.

The interview has inevitably been seized on as evidence that Clark was at least complicit in any dangerous driving, but the problem there is the same one that precludes the public-opinion appeal that might have been seized on by a raffish bloke politician in her place: it just seems so … unlikely. Would the popular and competent one have been knowingly placing herself and the public in mortal danger because she fancied a bit of a late-afternoon blat on the wide, straight roads of South Canterbury? If she did, it would certainly illuminate a whole new side to her character.

Anyway, Graham Reid has all the lowdown on this stuff, as usual.

And … I feel a Tui billboard coming on: Auckland property developer David Henderson, who is facing charges of attempting to procure cocaine as part of the celebrity drug bust, told police that he was taking cocaine to help him lose weight. So not because it made him feel clever and important, enhanced his social life and the chicks liked it? Because it was fun and he could afford it? No, it's a $300 a gram diet pill. Honest. (Actually, come to think of it, I don't think I ever met anyone who really took diet pills to lose weight …)

I finally got around yesterday to watching Outlawing Indecency, a documentary originally made for French TV about the moral backlash in the US. The film's tone of restrained incredulity is one of its charms.

Watching it, I went from being amused - among other things, by the Louisiana state legislators who thought six months' jail was an appropriate penalty for the proposed offence of, um, wearing low-cut jeans (and you might want to slap a chador on that hair of yours while you're at it …) - to actually quite alarmed and angry, as it closed with the story of the state of Michigan, whose prosecutors enthusiastically pursue age of consent violations. Some of the teenagers who get their medicine - a third-degree sexual crime felony and 25-year listing on the state sex offender registry - suffer humiliation, emotional distress and rejection by employers. They're the lucky ones. The film ends with the story of an 18 year-old boy who killed himself.

The prosecutor who brought the case explained that he was just applying the law, and cast aspersions on the boy's character. I wanted to throttle him and all the other dead-eyed conservative Republican activists and officials who parade smugly through the documentary. I think these people are different from the moral thugs who are intimidating girls into covering up if they want to go to university in Basra only as a matter of degree.

The hypocrisy such moral thuggery generates can be seen amply in the fact that Republican House leader Tom De Lay gets a 100% pass on "moral" issues from the smut cops of the Parents Television Council - despite being the most dishonest and corrupt congressman in a generation. And even more so in the story of Jim West, the mayor of Spokane: a staunch Republican conservative; vocally anti-gay, anti-abortion, whatever was expedient. Turns out he's gay. Well, so what.

But it looks a whole lot like he's been dishing out city jobs to his rent boys; or, in the words of the federal warrant, there is evidence that he "knowingly and willingly engaged in a scheme to entice others to engage in sexual activity with him through offers and grants of city of Spokane jobs, internships or appointments." He's also accused of molesting boys as a Boy Scout leader. (Since the Lewinsky business in 1997, more than 20 Republicans have been caught up in high-profile sex scandals; prominent Dems, including Clinton, have totalled three scandals.)

The film screened on SBS in Australia, but I wouldn't fancy its chances here. There are tolerably lively torrents for it here and here, so try your luck if you're interested.

I mentioned Basra: Steven Vincent, the American journalist murdered in Iraq last week - apparently by the local police, who he had accused of corruption - kept a blog, and the Guardian has taken some fascinating excerpts. This one on the descending position of women in the new Iraq:

Adding hypocrisy to chauvinism, the religious parties take the opposite tack in public, policing female behaviour with vigour. Yesterday, a 22-year-old psych grad from Basra University told me how, as they enter the campus each day, female students have to pass religious militiamen "hired" by the administration for "protection". They examine each woman's hijab - no showing of hair, ladies - and the length of their abiyas, staring into their faces for signs of makeup. Anyone failing the Islamic dignity test is sent home. I asked how this made her feel. She grimaced and curled her fingers into two trembling talons. "It burns inside. We are not free to dress or act as we like. The religious parties have banned music, social interaction, relaxation. I am depressed all the time."

This is what Basra has become in the aftermath of the elections. These are the unwritten, unlegislated and unchallengeable "social" and "religious" norms that have an iron grip on the city. Yet back home, you hardly find a public discussion or even acknowledgement of these shackles on human behaviour - the right is too busy congratulating itself on the progress of Iraqi democracy and the left is obsessed with multicultural relativism and discrediting Bush.

And this one:

Not for the first time, I felt I was living in a Graham Greene novel, this about about a US soldier - call it The Naive American - who finds what works so well in Power Point presentations has unpredictable results when applied to realities of Iraq. Or is that the story of our whole attempt to liberate this nation?

On a completely different, and much happier, note, the Food Show was pretty good on Friday; and about 25% bigger than last year. I saw no new products that really blew me away, but Mac's Sassy Red best bitter, the 180 Degrees Florentines and the Pacific Harvest Karengo & Tamarillo chutney (a chutney with seaweed!) were all good. There were lots of show specials - another good thing. I contrived two visits to the Clearview Estate stand because I just wanted to taste their Reserve chardonnay - my favourite chardonnay in the world - twice. I totally coveted the Broady's outdoor wood-fired ovens.

The cookware on offer was pretty average (if any reader could offer me a large Circulon skillet at wholesale, do get in touch) and there were a few notable no-shows, including 42 Below. And the crowd was interesting - from texting teenage girls to pensioner couples, and not nearly as white and middle class as you might expect. I guess a regard for good food and drink transcends demographic boundaries.

And, finally, a clever and nicely-done new lefty website: KeepLeftNZ, presented by (it says here) the Beatles plus Yoko. Their anonymity FAQ is interesting.

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Motivation! | Aug 05, 2005 10:12

One of the more notable features of the All Black season so far has been the maturing of Ali Williams. Graham Henry promised in an interview before the first squad was selected that the big lock would be "fit" and "ready" for the Lions series - and, truly, he was. In a roundabout way, I found out this week why.

Turns out Henry asked former All Black captain and manager Brian Lochore to work with Williams to prepare him for the Lions series. In the course of this successful assignment, Lochore said words to this effect to the Aucklander:

"If I see you running around the place with your head in the air looking for an easy try, I'll hit you over the head with this fscking four-by-two."

Heh. If only all motivational speeches were so effective.

Of course, this weekend is where we get to find out whether the All Blacks are in fact onto something really good, or whether the Lions were just much worse than anyone thought.

Public Address reader Kimchi has tracked down the source for NZVotes.org's general policy summary for the Green Party, whose words ("Human needs can only be met without damage to other species that share the earth") don't appear in the party charter cited as the source. It's actually a 1999 document called Thinking Beyond Tomorrow, which opens: "Thinking Beyond Tomorrow shows how New Zealand could enter the twenty-first century on track for a sustainable future. It is the Green Party's vision of a country where human needs are met without damage to the other species that share the earth with us." Nice to clear that up. Sort of.

Telecom's Nick Brown got in touch to clarify the issue of the new DSL account plans, which apply only to business, rather than residential, customers. The old plans haven't actually been withdrawn, they're just not advertised and you have to know to ask for them. I had a few other questions:

NB: When we launched three new business plans last month we decided to put emphasis on a simplified plan line up. The three new business plans offer businesses great value. They provide speeds up 2 Mbps and have significantly reduced overage charges – they also offer flat rate options that do not incur overage charges. They do have a slower upstream speed than the existing fullspeed plans,but are designed to meet the majority of business customers' needs - which is to download a significant more amount of data than they upload.

RB: Why maintain services that you don't tell people about?

We are trying to simplify the product offering to meet the mass market needs. We have 14 business plans available and to promote these all above the line would be too confusing.

And why the slower upstream speeds? Isn't that a degradation of service?

Most businesses download more than they upload and we reflect this in the plan line-up. These asymmetric specifications allow better network utilisation that enables better prices to customers. It is not a degradation of service, as these are new plans delivering more affordable broadband to business customers who shift more data – ie with monthly data allowances of 3, 10 and 15 Gigabytes priced from $119 to $299.

Do the slower upstream speeds also apply to the consumer plans?

All our consumer plans are up to 128Kbps upstream ... again this reflects customer usage patters.

What's the functional difference between the consumer and business plans? Why the huge disparity in price?

Most products and services are priced different in the business and consumer markets, in telecommunications and in other areas, reflecting usage, demand and other factors. With broadband, business customers also avoid local call charges that they would pay when using dialup, residential customers do not have this incentive.

Can you cite actual evidence that business users don't care about upstream Speeds? I've seen a great many complaints from business this year with respect to upstream speeds.

Some businesses certainly care about upstream speeds, but our traffic profiles show that majority of customers download a lot more than they upload (a ratio of approximately 70/30). We know some customers do require faster upstream speeds and that is why we have kept the full speed plans for those that require them, and have other managed services that provide symmetrical specifications.

Why is there such a vast disparity between what iinet can offer in Australia, especially on price ($70 vs $2400) and what its sister company Ihug can offer in NZ? Is it regulation? A more competitive market?

There is a vast range of pricing worldwide based on network economics, varying geographies, demand-side elasticities.

Xtra's new business broadband plans include the 10 gigabyte plan that offers up to 1Mbps downstream starting at NZ$149.95. I had a quick look at the iinet site and their business plan that offers up to 1.5 Mbps and 10GB of peak time data is Australian $79.95 - ie NZ$89.00

Does Telecom envisage substantial changes to DSL plans - on price, speed or data limits - this year?

We are always reviewing offers, and we continuously monitor how customers' use of broadband is changing.

Hmmm. Here's the iiNet page for business broadband. If you take their phone service, you get 12Mbit/s down and 1Mbit/s up with a 20GB cap for a total monthly cost of $A111. Here's Telecom's page of business DSL plans, offering 2Mbit/s down and a mighty 128Kbit/s up with a cap of 15GB for $299. They're not even on the same planet.

Looks like it's still all on in Wanganui. The mayor's opponents now have a blog: Laws Watch, which is maintained by "an evil cabal of single-issue fruitcakes determined to harass the greatest Leader Wanganui has ever had." They've quoted a Hard News from 1996. Crikey.

Here's the Trevor Mallard press statement that Keith is fuming about today. Setting aside for a moment the minister's blowhard tone (actually, setting aside the minister's blowhard tone permanently would be a good idea) it does illustrate an interesting point about the limits on the extent to which economists can model and predict human behaviour. They're effectively obliged to assume the worst about human nature; it doesn't always happen.

And here's the Wiki on Canada's new Governor General, Michaëlle Jean. Journalist. Immigrant. Black. Intellectual. Total babe.

Juan Cole's Fisking the War on Terror is one to cut out and keep. Bring it out when somebody asks you where terrorists come from.

Some video: The Daily Show on the death of King Fahd and American oil-industry pork, and on the Bolton appointment.

And with that, I'm off to the Food Show …

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The Unenvied Official | Aug 04, 2005 10:19

While volleys fly back and forth over what Lockwood Smith really said to the American senators about the nuclear ships band, I've been surprised that more hasn't been said about the predicament of the MFAT official involved.

The unnamed official, who sat in on the meeting 18 months ago and made notes that went into a diplomatic cable back to Wellington has been described by National's deputy leader Gerry Brownlee, in Parliament, as a "Labour Party lackey" and a "little lackey" and accused of "breaching every protocol we have in place".

Now hold on a minute here: this official's explicit duty was to the government of New Zealand. Is National actually suggesting that he should have taken notes of the discussions, and then personally decided - on some unspecified basis - which parts to share with his employer? I think that would have been a pretty serious breach of protocol.

Of course, that official presumably had no idea that his report would then be taken by his minister and used not once, but twice, as a political weapon. If anything's likely to induce unhealthy thoughts of self-consorship, it's that. I think the phrase here is "unenviable position".

Did Smith say those words, or something very like them? Quite probably. After all, you're setting notes made at the time by a ministry official with, presumably, some experience as a rapporteur, against Don Brash's burgeoning amnesia about the whole meeting. Otherwise, you're proposing that the official didn't just poorly paraphrase the discussion, but actually invented statements by both the New Zealand and American participants.

Smith, who didn't perform very well in an interview with Linda Clark yesterday, admitted to, in the words of today's Dom Post story, "sounding out American senators about the US contributing to a debate on New Zealand's nuclear free stand."

On the other hand, of the senators involved says he can't recall anything inappropriate being broached (the story also contains the notes released yesterday by National).

So why won't the government clear up the matter by releasing the entire transcript? Most likely because it contains some embarrassing and unflattering material with respect to our relations with the US. I'm inclined to think that perhaps meetings like these should be more openly reported in the first place.

TOP NEWS! 95bFM is now podcasting. You just need to go to the bNews page where the MP3s are posted and follow the instructions for subscribing to the podcast feed in iTunes. (It works, of course, with other podcast agreggators too.) At the moment, the content consists exclusively of daily interviews from The Wire, but I'd expect the offerings to expand quite quickly.

Will there be (legitimate) musical podcasts like those available in the US? As I understand it, the situation is this: the Australian record industry body Aria is negotiating with the publicly-funded yoof network Triple J on just that issue. If and when they reach agreement, the way would be open for Rianz to start negotiating agreements here (indeed, Rianz would look a bit daft if it didn't).

A Public Address reader has been sifting through Maxim's nzvotes.org website:

I contest Maxim Institutes claim that it is running a non-partisan website that states "the views of the parties ... in their own words". For example nzvote.org's statement of the Green Party's key principles is substantively different from the Green Charter cited as a source.

The nzvotes.org site, as at 2 August, alleges the Green Party key principles are: "Human needs can only be met without damage to other species that share the earth. Social justice and ecological wisdom."

Yet the Green Charter doesn't include the words: "needs", "damage", "species", "share", "earth", nor "justice". Whose words are Maxim using? If I remove all the words that don't appear in the Green Charter from Maxim's text, it looks like this: "Human ??? ??? ??? be ??? ??? ??? to ??? ??? that ??? the ???. Social ??? and ecological wisdom."

He's right, you know. This seems to go beyond paraphrasing, let alone "in their own words". Here's NZVotes' "key principles" page on Green Party policy - and here's the Green Party Charter it cites as a source. The two are not very alike. What's Maxim playing at here?

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