Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: 2014: The Meth Election, in reply to Jake Starrow,
On brief reflection, please keep that information to yourself. Got a feeling we don’t wanna know Kevin.
Look, it’s fairly clear you’re a commenter I’ve previously banned, but I’ve been inclined to give you yet another shot.
You need to get better at arguing, and the basis of that is showing some respect to the other people here. If you can’t, I’ll just ban you for a third time.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Mo' Nina, in reply to Kebabette,
Just ugraded your post, Donna. If you just paste in the bare YouTube URL, it automagically embeds.
And, yes, what a song.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Mo' Nina, in reply to Tim Welch,
Now I’d just like Leftside Wobble to work his magic on that Nina Simone collection… or do you already have some links for that?
Nope. But this is my favourite amongst the many remixes of Nina’s ‘Feeling Good’. I pester the guy occasionally to re-open downloads, but to no avail …
Mind you, Nicholas Jaar’s effort ain’t too bad …
There's a good-quality download of that here
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Hard News: Friday Music: Mo' Nina, in reply to Francis Cooke,
I’m not sure whether to be happy about the benefit for my wallet or sad that the value of such music has been driven so low.
Yeah, that's what I was getting at. It's a mixed-feelings thing.
Meanwhile, one particular recommendation from Nina’s RCA period: the alternate take of her recording of Suzanne. One of her greatest interpretaions, to my mind….
Shit, that's great.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Mo' Nina, in reply to Peter Johnston,
Found a stream of the song here: http://www.ricko.co.nz/russia.htm
Good work!
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Hard News: Friday Music: Mo' Nina, in reply to Peter Johnston,
Is Russia the band that did that song ‘Lisa’ back in the day? Still have that on 7” – a great under-stated (and under-rated) Kiwi pop song.
Yes, that's what he said! I confess, I don't recall it.
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Southerly: Sign this Petition, in reply to Lilith __,
the honey trap for Richard Worth
I’m sorry, the WHAT?
Dude was accused of sexual harassmentJohn Key said “had Worth not resigned he would have been sacked”.
A couple of the protagonists discuss the incident that was the subject of a criminal complaint in one of the Whaledumps. It sounds pretty vile. And no way was it a "honeytrap". What an offensive idea.
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Wow. In response to queries of NBR, Stephen Franks has posted an astonishing work of sophistrythat seems to add up to “Yeah, we pay Whaleoil to do stuff for our clients – what of it?”
Apparently, his “free” version is missing some parts of what NBR published, but I’m not sure what they might be because theirs is paywalled.
EDIT: I gather that the arrangement may have been a contra for legal services, rather than cash transaction.
Some extracts:
Negative information – MSM hypocrisy
You ask about a ‘blog practice of smearing individuals and organisations for commercial consideration’. I set aside for the moment the irony of that characterisation from an employee of a business which (in my opinion quite properly) survives commercially by beating its competitors to publicise for private profit, accounts of scandal, failure, embarrassment, and other dismaying circumstances for individual and organisations. If you are doing your job properly you will frequently be exposing information that the subjects would dearly prefer to remain secret. Your ethics and morality will constantly be attacked (wrongly) by embarrassed or angry targets. Your stories will be incomplete, and sometimes one-sided, however hard you might try to avoid that. We share a common public interest in your prompt publication despite the risks of unfairness even though from the target’s perspective you have no interest other than to sell your services, and your publication. Many targets do not see that as morally legitimate.
Translation: us paying Slater to run unattributed smears is just the same as your silly “journalism”.
Negative information vital to the public interest, and the main purpose of freedom of speech
Fostering engagement in public debate over matters that may affect the reputation (positively or negatively) of people in public life is among the most vital purposes of freedom of expression. Reputation mechanisms are critical to healthy operation of civil society. Without effective and continual testing of reputation including by sincere challenges that may prove to be baseless after full exploration, society would be left to rely for good behaviour sanctions and incentives on constipated official processes. That in turn subordinates society to lawyers and officials (and their political masters).
The proper boundaries to public discourse are set by defamation law. The fact that modern courts have allowed many of our civil remedies to become hideously expensive and slow, and beyond the reach of most people, does not invalidate the traditional standards set by the courts in more efficient days. Procedural reform of defamation law was a cause I advanced while in Parliament, and since.
Unless someone sues us, why should we care?
Our practice
That said, I cannot recall any occasion when we have been involved in public advocacy designed only to discredit an individual, and we would be loathe to do it, whatever the instructions. I cannot recall us paying for any form of media exposure (including blog) that even someone who might have been on the other side would have properly characterised as vilification of an individual.
I cannot recall many things.
Slater’s effectiveness
As to Mr Slater, we’ve seen his blog as a very effective medium for breaking public interest stories that MSM were not prepared to investigate or run.
Slater runs anything we pay him to.
We do not like the bombast or the offensive language that has been disclosed in his private communication, but there are many effective people in all walks of life whose private communication would shock us all were it to be public. The black humour that research shows to be a common coping mechanism for people in stressful occupations like policing, and emergency medicine, and probably journalism, is never meant to see the light of day. That does not mean we favour responding in kind to boastful and vainglorious expression, but we focus on our clients’ reasons for communicating through the medium that reaches the target recipients, not our reaction to the backroom culture.
We’re very much ignoring all the vile shit that Slater has aired in public and pretending its only about his private correspondence.
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Southerly: Sign this Petition, in reply to TracyMac,
Regarding Hager’s timing, I have to say that it’s patently obvious he’s trying to affect the election result. Good, whether his motivation is to get rid of these corrupt clowns, or something deeper.
The key to the timing is that he was already working on a book, but got the crucial information in April, so it was a matter of whether he'd choose to leave it till after the election or not. Actively deciding to leave it would have been quite a decision.
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Southerly: Sign this Petition, in reply to David Haywood,
Action Station also says that Salole is not a member of any political party. I don’t think anyone is hiding anything, and—given her and Marianne Elliot’s credentials—I hardly think this is some sort of a “troll”.
It's a been a standard tactic against the book itself: delegitimise it by by alleging it's partisan.
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