Posts by Alfie
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Envirologue: 1080, "eco-terrorism" and agendas, in reply to Michael Hood,
Wow that blog is straight out of Protecting Parasites, the non-scientific book!
Pardon Michael? Which blog? Do you have any particular point to make?
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This doesn't fit here, or at least the dirty part doesn't apply. But I can't find anywhere better.
Gareth Morgan has just launched a new political party - The Opportunities Party. There's nothing in the way of policy so far but you'd imagine a more equitable approach to the way government treats its citizens and a big focus on clean waterways and sustainability.
Sort of like the Green Party but with Gareth in charge. And hopefully without cat killing on the agenda.
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Hard News: Meth houses and stigma, in reply to Sacha,
I expect some resignations next week. Not the right ones, but some.
Or maybe not. The other option is to double down, act indignant and claim you did nothing wrong. Stuff has an opinion piece by Paul Commons, COO of Housing New Zealand.
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The Auditor-General has released her report into McCully's dodgy Saudi sheep bribe.
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Glenn Greenwald's The Intercept features a local story today entitled The Little-Known Company That Enables Worldwide Mass Surveillance, wherein Ryan Gallagher and Nicky Hager in cooperation with TVNZ delve into the murky world of Endace Ltd -- an Auckland company which provides serious surveillance solutions to the Five Eyes partners. And others.
With worldwide surveillance growing exponentially, the company's products are in demand in the US, Israel, Denmark, Australia, Canada, Spain, India and in the UK where the GCHQ is a major customer. But Endace isn't fussy. They even serve a Moroccan security agency which has been implicated in torture. Spooks and morality rarely mix.
While Endace is a private company, they've developed their products with $11.1m of government funding courtesy of Callaghan Innovation. Bugger homelessness and NZ's increasing levels of poverty. I'm sure Steven Joyce and John Key must be proud of the huge amounts of taxpayer money they've quietly diverted into this socially-bankrupt enterprise.
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Trump's campaign manager Kellyanne Conway really outdid herself yesterday when she told MSNBC that the orange slug has "a 5-point plan to defeat Islam".
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For this debate the Trump sideshow will feature Malik Obama, The current President's estranged half-brother. The Washington Post has a profile of Malik which begins...
Malik Obama is exactly the kind of man that Donald Trump says he'd like to keep out of the United States. He's a Muslim. He comes from Kenya, a country that has been racked by unrest in recent years and has been the target of terrorists from Somalia, who have fashioned themselves as Islamists. He currently has between three and 12 wives — he won't say exactly how many — and, clearly, doesn't adhere to traditional American family values, however you might define them.
Journalist David Maraniss provides some interesting background on Malik. For a start, his real name is Roy.
Trump has also invited the mother of one of the Benghazi victims who accuses Hillary of "murdering" her son.
That Trump. He's all class, eh!
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Remember Trump speaking about cyber-security during the first Presidential debate? His earlier comments about "the cyber" made it clear that Trump's knowledge of cyber-crime was as well-informed as his knowledge of... well, just about anything. Luckily for the free world, Trump has an expert on hand... his son Barron.
So we have to get very, very tough on cyber and cyber warfare. It is — it is a huge problem. I have a son. He's 10 years old. He has computers. He is so good with these computers, it's unbelievable. The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe it's hardly doable.
Now here's a thing. Some geeks have discovered that the entire Trump Organisation is running seriously outdated software on their email servers in the form of Windows 2003. Yep... you read that right. Thirteen year old MS software, unpatched and internet-facing.
The researchers say they haven't hacked Trump's servers, but with the story hitting headlines around the world, it won't be long before somebody breaks in and reveals some more damning facts about America's favourite orange turd.
And it's worth noting that Win2003 server software pre-dates the birth of Trump's son by a good three years.
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Hard News: Trump's Dummkopfs, in reply to Tom Semmens,
Anyone else followed the gruesome descent into Trumpism of the once normal Colonial Viper over at the The Standard?
I don't spend much time at The Standard Tom, mainly because they have so many active trolls on the site. So I wouldn't say I've followed the descent. I'd always assumed that CV always bent pretty far to the right, but I'd agree that some of his recent posts seem more unhinged than usual.
It is a little sad to come across kiwis who have bought into the Trump rhetoric to that degree. But I guess deplorables come in all shapes and sizes.