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Today’s Daily Blog Watch Round-Up of matters that have attracted the attention, assessments, and articulations of this country’s leading bloggers…
NZ Left Blogosphere
Let’s start with The Civilian. Not so much as to “set the tone” but as to set the agenda…
Peter Dunne suddenly wakes up in pool of blood at press conference, writes Civilian, and from there it’s all down-hill for the hapless MP from Ohariu.
Even President Obama listened in to Peter Dunne’s phone conversations with amusement. I guess things are slow in the White House, what with the US not currently bombing the crap out of some “Axis of Evil” bad guy(s).
On the Auckland Transport Blog, Matt L wants AT to Trial Secure Cycle Cages at Train Stations, to prevent thefts of bikes. Which makes sense, if you think about it, from several different viewpoints.
No Right Turn’s Idiot Savant maintains that Labour is committing An abuse of privilege by laying a breach of privilege complaint with Parliament’s Privileges Committee.
And Andrew Geddis asks Peter Dunne – what happens next? on Pundit. Andrew has voiced his concerns and comments on Radio NZ, so it’s a grand idea to read his thoughts laid down in print, for easier consideration and digesting.
In Waitakere News, mickey savage comments on The decline of Dunne and the rise of Peters and makes the astute observation that,
His demise as a minister had its genesis, as do many current political scandals, in the Dotcom affair.
Imperator Fish Nation has a guest blogpost by James Rowland on Dunne stepping down from Revenue Minister role. James suggests that the Minister’s role will be taken up by in a manner that is familiar to many fans of a particular time traveller… No more spoilers.
Qot on Ideological Impure poses the old question; can men be feminists? Read Infantilizing complex issues for pageviews – Rebecca Kamm feat. the Good Men Project to get your head around where’s she’s coming from.
Frankly Speaking has a weekly roundup on issues that’ve caught Frank Macskasy’s attention. “Wrapround Support” in schools; coded racism in the Dominion Post; reference to The Jackal’s blogpost on yellowcake uranium on the stranded m.v. Rena; tractors and Peter Dunne; Simon Bridges soft on crime – it’s all on his Week Watch – 7 June.
Brian Edwards on Media blogs When Hekia met Rachel – a sometime interviewer’s perspective, and discusses the two controversial questions put to Education Minister by TV3 interviewer, Rachel Smalley. Brian points out that Smalley doesn’t deserve criticism, and Parata doesn’t require defending – both are capable in their respective roles. As Brian sez,
In a supreme irony, the real offence to Hekia Parata has been given by Tau Henare, other culturally precious MPs and the macho blogosphere of the Right, who clearly feel that this poor little girl, so “easy on the eye”, as Maori role-model Shane Jones put it, needs some great big men to defend her. She doesn’t.
Lots of good stuff on the Green Party’s Frogblog;
- It’s time to submit against spying, writes Steffan Browning, in a brilliant piece against the growth of the Surveillance state. He says,
The Green Party is determined to stop our intelligence agencies spying on legitimate, peaceful, political dissenters.
We support an inquiry as to whether the SIS should be abolished and whether responsibility for detecting politically motivated crime be returned to the Police.
New Zealand should close the Waihopai spy base, which operates in the interests of other countries rather than our own.
To enable better oversight, a regular parliamentary select committee should replace the government-dominated Intelligence and Security Committee, and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security should become an Officer of Parliament.
Spot on. Only the most hardened right wing masochist could disagree with this. (Hang on… I think right wingers were opposed to the growth of The State in our lives…? What gives?)
- Metiria Turei gives her Response to Brian Edwards concerning Hekia Parata, and repostes,
It makes no difference to the appropriateness of the question whether she answered well or not, whether she complained or not. As to whether it was relevant to Parata’s childhood, that issue was canvassed earlier in the interview and could have been discussed more without forcing Hekia to justify her identity. Thats what I have a problem with: Hekia was required by the question to justify her identity.
Metiria asks a question which Brian edwards answers on her blog. In all, it’s a solid debate by grown-ups. (Which contrasts nicely with RWNJs on Kiwiblog or Whalesoil, who couldn’t raise an intellectual debate on whether they liked pie or not. Question: “Who likes pie?” Followed by one-liner responses; abuse, personal denigration, calls to ban the Green Party, obscenties, etc. And we still don’t know if any of those nutters like pie or not.)
Anyway, I digress. Check out Metiria’s blogpost and the subsequent debate. It’s a well thought through discourse.
- Russel Norman goes further into his speech on Muldoon and Key, and points out why we should be worried when he points out ” I think that the actions of this Government of late wouldn’t feel out of place in Muldoonism“. He backs up his assertions with solid evidence.
One thing I’ll say about the Right – they consistently under-estimate the intellectual fire power of Russell Norman. They under-estimate him at their peril, as the next election looms closer.
The Jackal reposts Citizen A with Colin Craig & Wayne Hope, and this is well worth looking at.
Also on The Jackal, read who will be Swallowing dead rats after the next election. The only question that I think The Jackal left unanswered is, “Do you want fries with that?”. Read and smile.
Unlike right wing bloggers, at least Danyl on The Dim Post has the courage to admit Wow, did I get that wrong! I’m referring to his guesswork on the Dunne Affair, which he candidly admits to getting it wrong.
Whence will we see another like him on the Right Wing of the blogosphere? Nay, never…
As to the $64,000 + GST question, What does Peters have?, Danyl enjoys playing Holmes and trying to deduce where Peters got the emails from. I agree, we can rule out Andrea Vance – her career would be shot to blazes had she done something that shockingly stupid. (Plus, what would be the benefit to her and her employer, Fairfax? None whatsoever.)
The truth is, those emails were written on his Parliamentary computer. So the question really is; who didn’t have access to his email account???
And speaking of spying and reading other peoples’ emails, Clare Curren on Red Alert asked, is this Too close for comfort: is the GCSB spying on us?
Stunning revelations that the US equivalent of the GCSB has been routinely monitoring US citizens phone calls, texts and activity on social media impacts on directly on Kiwis with two new laws being hurriedly pushed through out parliament.
Reports say the US National Security Agency (NSA) is collecting metadata on tens of millions of US citizens on phone calls. And it has now been confirmed that NSA also uses a program called PRISM to access extensive user content held by Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple: although targeted at non-US citizens, it includes content for US citizens too.
The post-1984 world we feared would happen, is now a post-9/11 nightmare reality.
Clare also writes compelling of the problem faced by low-income earers when it comes to high electricity prices. We have the power, she writes to address the problems which poor families familes – but not with National’s current fixation on state asset sales.
It’s a shame, though, that it took the advent of a right-wing, nasty National government to shock Labour into action. “Better late than never” is a phrase best appreciated in a warm, dry home – and not slowly freezing to death.
Phillip Ure in Whoar blogs “..Neoliberalism has spawned a financial elite who hold governments to ransom..”.
He also makes a point of helping us with “..PRISM explained..”
On Tumeke, Tim Selwyn counters the Police ‘spin’ machine that It’s not murder – and points out how eagerly the media swallows the official police line. Soviet-era Pravda, eat yer heart out.
While on The Standard,
And remember that this is what real journalism used to be.
- The hairdo takes a haircut from the smiling assassin? – a timeline of events surrounding Peter Dunne, to put it all into some contextual framing.
- It’s all about Positioning and reality writes
What’s going on? In substantive terms, not a hell of a lot. No one’s moving their policies left or right. This is about shaping the public’s notion of the options for the next government.
Bang on. Read the while lot, and be more informed than everyone else on your street. Or Kiwiblog.
- The Greens: Party democracy and parliamentary politics – karol presents a critique of right wing journo/lackey John Armstrong, after the NZ Herald columnist wrote a Simon Lusk-inspired piece of bull-shittery about The Greens.
Funny how media and politicians question the impartiality of any journo who might even have a hint of left-wing views – but Right Winger and National Party apologist, John Armstrong sails between the critics without even a questioning look by others.
When will the NZ Herald hire an actually unbiased, impartial Chief Political Commentator? A year? A decade? When talking apes rule the planet in the 40th century? When the sun balloons into a Red Giant star, swallowing the inner solar system (circa 5 billionAD. Tuesday. Around 11.30am. BYO lunch.)?
Probably never. That works for the NZ Herald, talking apes or no.
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On The Daily Blog
The only offence for which Peter Dunne is being punished is getting caught – Chris Trotter writes,
Mr Dunne’s refusal to reveal the contents of more than 60 e-mails exchanged between himself and Ms Vance on the grounds that all such communications between a citizen and his or her political representatives ought to be considered privileged, has been dismissed out of hand as self-serving. Indeed, Mr Dunne’s sensitivity in regard to these e-mails is being construed by many people as prima facie evidence that he was involved in an unprofessional and illicit relationship with Ms Vance.
Well, that plus Dunne’s support for the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill which increases the power of the State to spy on us all. Perhaps Dunne can now understand why so many New Zealanders are heartily disgusted by the intrusion of the GCSB into our lives.
Fool.
Degrees of Separation – Wayne Hope writes,
The lowest decile received 2 per cent of national income in 1983-84 and 1.7 per cent in 1995-96. The bottom eight deciles all suffered some loss of income. Chatterjee and Podder concluded that `New Zealand`s economic reform programme over the period 1984-96 saw the very rich becoming ever richer while the bulk of the rest of the population became poorer in relative terms, with the poorest faring worst`. As this occurred, the rich secluded themselves and ostracised the poor.
And all because certain acolytes of the Free Market decided, in the late 1980s, that neo-liberalism would make this a better country to live in. So how’s that working out for all you middle class National voters?
Dicks.
Beware of unstable government! – Frank Macskasy writes,
In case anyone has missed it, Dear Leader and his Ministers have been consistantly spreading the message, warning us about the potential perils of a Labour-Green-Mana(-NZ First?) coalition government.
cough-cough…. Sorry, what was that ablout “unstable” government Mr Prime Minister? So how are your coalition partners doing? Last man/woman standing?
Twat.
Political Correctness vs. Humanism – Latifa Daud writes,
These days it seems as if anyone who calls someone out on being rude, they are criticised for being too PC or unable to take a joke. Well, I’m here to inform everyone that I actually can take a joke. I even make a few jokes of my own from time to time. But there is a difference between making a joke and being disrespectful, offensive and derogatory.
Well said. Somewhere along the road, we confused “PC” with politeness, and forgot that with freedom of speech comes courtesy. Because really, if we’re all busy screaming abuse at each other – who’s listening?
Tragic.
Matthew ‘we don’t know how lucky we are’ Hooton’s spin lines – Martyn Bradbury writes,
What Mr Hooton really means of course is that things are doing swimmingly well for Mr Key and his wealthy mates. At some point this stops becoming cheerleading for the economy and starts looking like gloating.
Having heard Hooton on Radio NZ, I can vouch for that. Hooton constantly repeates the “improved economy” mantra. Right wingers; liars gonna lie.
Pathetic.
Impractical and Undesirable: How New Zealanders were taught to despise public housing – Chris Trotter writes,
In theory, at least, the state is the institutional expression of the whole national community: answerable to and shaped by its citizens. But, show me a private landlord who feels answerable to his tenants, and I will show you a fictional hero.
Nothing better illustrates the utter failure of the free market than our housing crisis. And the Business Roundtable/”New Zealand Initiative” are blaming it all on local Councils. Or double glazed windows. Or kids with “high expectations”.
The Right Wing – never under-estimate their ability to blame others for their ideological failures.
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Blogpost of the Day#1
The Jackal takes a great, big, steel-capped boot and plants it firmly up the well-padded backsides of right-wing propagandists, David Farrar, Cameron Slater, and NBR’s Jock Anderson and dismisses all three as Irrelevant propagandists.
It’s a brilliant demolition of the three little porcine propagandists, and I hope it gets the widespread publicity it deserves.
The msm may think twice before using paid-propagandists Farrar and Slater as commentators. These two clowns are clueless.
Well done, Jackal!
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Blogpost of the Day#2
On The Hand Mirror, The learning goes on about discourses surrounding rape myths, victim blaming and rape culture. It’s a no-nonsense look at a subject that most of us shy away from.
I shan’t describe her blogpost any further – I fear I may not do justice to the power of her words.
Do you have the courage to read what she’s shared with us?
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Action of the Week
Homelessness – The Big Sleepout 2013 Appeal – Martyn Bradbury writes,
On the 4th July I will be going homeless. For one cold night in the dead of winter I will be stripped of my creature comforts, exposed to the elements and given insight into what it means to sleep rough.I live in the central city and I have for almost two decades. The homeless problem in central Auckland, has to my eyes steadily increased.If we don’t bring attention to the poverty that is driving this homelessness, we won’t ever generate the solutions necessary to solve homelessness.EVERY dollar I fundraise will be directly applied to Lifewise’s unique “no band aids” approach to homelessness. The Lifewise response continues to be Auckland’s most successful answer to the issue of homelessness. So before I bed down on a slab of concrete I’d love to ask if you might sponsor me. Please back me and please back this worthy cause by digging deep today.Thank you.
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Thought for the Day
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~ Joe Blogger
“The Daily Blog Watch” Editor, Imbiber of Fine Sugary Drinks, & Cat Herder
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~oo~
