Posts by Kyle Matthews

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  • Island Life: Re Joyce!,

    Good point, but the timing is somewhat irrelevant. The fact is Labour denied the right to due course of the legal system to a group of people based on their ethnic identity. The NZ Herald and Brash were certainly culpable in the furore that eupted, but Labour betrayed Maori, yet again, and for many Maori it is the betrayl of trust that is the salient point.

    Hear hear! If only a million more people saw it this way...

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Word of the Year 2006,

    last week i was introduced to 'gam'.

    it is alternately the shapeliness of a woman's leg, or, a bunch of whalers talking at sea.

    i've had trouble trying to establish any connection between the two definitions.

    When you're at sea, you really miss the shapeliness of a woman's leg?

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Maxim-ising the vote,

    I look forward to any such "speculation" being critically tested and examined by the very media outlets who I think it's fair comment to say haven't done so this far. Being a muckraker with an agenda is one thing - and not a class without precedent or honour in the history of journalism - but let's see if the 'mainstream media' is going to treat Hager's work with the same critical acuity they'd apply to a politician.

    Woah! I want some of the drugs that Craig is on. He put 'critical acuity' and 'mainstream media' in the same sentence!

    Personally I think the 'smoking gun' email is sufficiently backed up by the email to the deputy chair of the BRT to indicate to me that Brash was/is lying. I'm sure that some parts of the book will be torn down over time, but I don't think anyone in the 'mainstream media' is buying the "my resignation now has nothing to do with this book which is full of lies". They're just trying to catch him admitting it, and see if they can tag Key with it.

    It's a silly game, but it keeps us all occupied on this blog when we should be doing more useful things, so it's not surprising the media is playing it as well.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Island Life: All stadium, all the time,

    Now we just need to go ahead and get it done. Maybe we should offer the members of the residents' association some places in a nice quiet retirement home somewhere?

    Nah. Take over one of the wharves and build apartments there, throw all the residents in that. Build some bars, restaurants etc around Eden Park where their houses were.

    And give the ARC the big finger ;)

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Speaker: The Hollow Men: Initial Impressions,

    the current evidence we have that the emails were "stolen" is that (presumably) Hager's legal advisors have told him he was caught by the injunction.

    They're probably in a better position to know than just about anyone else - if they think they're covered it means they think they're stolen - who am I to disagree?

    I'm no lawyer, but any employee of parliamentary services, or the national party, who printed out and took away, or possibly even forwarded onto elsewhere, the emails and other materials, is probably looking at 'theft as an employee' or something.

    So yes, the emails were stolen from the national party or parliament, and given (eventually) to Nicky Hager. So if they were leaked in this way, by employees, then the injunction did apply to the book.

    I would presume some of the materials were leaked by their owners - probably MPs - but if any were leaked by employees to whom the emails were not sent, then that's enough to have prevented the book being published.

    Another thought - if he did send it, and if it's not forged, which is pretty ridiculous theory, then receipt would have been almost instantaneous: a few minutes at worst. So it would have been received on the server at National Party Head Office (it was sent to national.org.nz, not parliament.govt.nz) at about 3:17pm on Tuesday 24 May. Surely it is no too difficult to establish who was at National HO at that time/date and who could have had access to the server. Unless, that is, the email was 'intercepted'.

    This stuff would have been leaked at someone's leisure. They'd have printed it out after work, forwarded it on and then deleted the log, copied the email files to a CD or memory stick. This isn't some spectacular hack or hurried theft like the movies. Nicky Hager has no reason to lie - six different people have provided him with this information, they'll have taken information they have legal access to and passed it onto him. This is people who got pretty pissed at what was going on in the national party and saw, for whatever reason, and opportunity to make that public. They'll have met Nicky over a coffee and given him a folder or a CD. Completely untraceable from the computer.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Speaker: The Hollow Men: Initial Impressions,

    Yes, but I'm pretty sure Nicky Hager isn't on their xmas card list.

    No, I think he makes some of their other lists though!

    Technically, most emails are terribly insecure, and probably several people unrelated to either sender or receiver could have 'hacked' Don's email and gotten this information. None of those people are Nicky Hager however.

    With any information technology system, the weakest security point is the person/people using it. You know, the password on the postit note on the screen. The web browser that automatically logs you into your email. The computer that isn't tied down and the office door is left open.

    I have yet to see any reason to disbelieve Nicky's claim that the emails were given to him by people who had the right to have them. They were either sent to them originally, or perhaps they worked for people that they were sent to.

    This absolutely wouldn't be the first time that people have sought out Nicky Hager and given him information for their own purposes. To write 'Secret Power' he was given what amounted to international state secrets by someone on the inside. And you better believe Nicky won't reveal who his sources were - his entire writing career is built on people trusting him that they can leak stuff to him, and their identity will never be revealed by him.

    As for the rest of it, he's a very capable researcher and is able to find and pull apart publicly available information very well. He was able to identify all the staff who (secretly) worked for the GCSB at one stage through the use of a phonebook and the electoral roll. I bet if you asked him about his work he'll give you an answer along the lines of 'All the information is out there and available. People normally just don't look for it. I looked, and there it was.'

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Awesome,

    Now, it wasn't just me who thought that ref was not up to it, was it? Or the linesmen, either. There was one point where a Welsh player running up the sideline clearly put his foot into touch, and the linesman (who was right there) was watching the oncoming tackle and missed it. I don't suppose we can expect them to be perfect but, chirst! even Paul Honiss would have picked that!

    Seriously, having watched the league test on Saturday evening, very little that happened in the rugby test could have left me disappointed with the quality of refereeing.

    I think a couple of times the guy refereeing the league game penalised players for 'making good tackles'. He wasn't biased, but to quote Tana Umaga... "it's not tiddly-winks!". For the biggest international of the year too.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Of course it's about the book,

    Thanks for the information, Yamis, it's nice to know I'm considered "weird" because I don't possess a TV. Why on earth should I bother with the ads and crap when I can bittorrent everything I want to watch sooner than it's shown here in Oz? The only thing that might be considered time-critical is sport and news - news I get on the web; sport I don't bother with.

    I also find not owning a TV a little unusual, though I wouldn't say that all the people that I've known that have no TV are weird (just most of them!).

    I suspect though that technology has outdated the statement. If you download TV shows and watch them on a computer, then I'd say you have a "TV by other means".

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Island Life: Citizen Key,

    I must say that with every interview I have seen Key do I am reminded of that movie starring Tim Robbins - I think it was called Bob Roberts. ( I stand to be corrected on that).

    Bob Roberts was the one with the Christian Fundy on the campaign trail. He was also a Christian musician and he'd mix up his campaign stops with singing songs about family and whatnot. There was one with a wonderful chorus which basically consisted of repeating "Don't do drugs..." from memory. And the quote "Don't smoke crack. It's a ghetto drug." Behind the scenes in the campaign bus he was terribly corrupt and a complete arsehole. Tim Robbins acted it wonderfully.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Let's be hearing it,

    There's some interesting research which I read a while ago, but which couldn't find now, about how people's actual voting patterns are very unlikely to correspond to what 'political type people', which a fair number of people posting above certainly are, consider logical left-centrist-right patterns. I think it related to American elections, but it was still very interesting.

    It was about the nature of people who when asked a series of policy questions clearly identified themselves as predominantly left-wing, or right-wing, through their answers. Then ask them how they voted and the patterns weren't even particularly clear. People mostly didn't understand left/right/centrist, and didn't necessarily sufficient information on the parties/candidates standing in the election to be able to figure out who aligned with their beliefs, which they could clearly state. There was an astounding number who used other factors to decide who to vote for - personal contact with a candidate, gender or race of a candidate, thinking they were a good speaker, had certain skills, came from a certain background etc.

    It pushed you to all sorts of interesting conclusions about whether the left-right spectrum was still a very useful analysis tool for politicians, as not only did people not identify with it, their voting pattern didn't necessarily relate to what a politician would interpret their beliefs as being on the spectrum.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

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