Monsanto
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Face TV listings Sunday 24th March
AM
7.00 Aljazeera News
8.00 In Focus
8.30 Listening Post
9.00 World Stories
9.30 Baha’i View in Farsi
10.30 I Believe
11.00 Young Icons
11.30 Bible Ministry
PM
12.00pm Bollywood Movie: Mard (1985) [PG]
3.00 Underground Sounds
3.45 Europe in Concert
4.30 Arts.21
5.00 Euromaxx
5.30 DW Journal
6.00 Aljazeera News
7.00 Baha’i on Air
7.30 Talanoa
8.00 T News
8.30 International film: Confucius (2010) [PG]
10.30 Route 66 [PGR]
11.30 Comedy classic: His Girl Friday (1940)
Face TV broadcasts on Sky 89 & Auckland UHF
Face TV Twitter
Face TV Facebook
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Proverbs you won’t read on Whaleoil
“Pornography is designed to wire human sexuality around mindless consumption of corporate imagery.”
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Lies, Damned Lies and Imagined Conversations
IF I WERE writing the script for a movie very loosely based on the career of David Shearer, it might include the following scenes …..
….. Charles Chauvel, is cornered in a lift by his caucus colleagues Trevor Mallard and Chris Hipkins. They’re telling him to abandon all hope of being rehabilitated in the Leader’s pending re-shuffle.
“You’re out, Chauvel!” Hipkins hisses.
“And there’s no way back.” Mallard adds, for good measure. “Not for you – or you’re mate Silent-T.”
….. Later that same day. Chauvel is on the phone to Helen Clark in New York.
“I just can’t see the point of hanging around while these guys are in charge.” He tells his former leader. “David has asked me to tough it out; assures me that things will improve; but honestly, I can’t see it.”
“Do you play chess, Charles?” Asks Helen.
“Of course.”
“Then you’ll be familiar with the move known as “castling”?
“Yes.”
“Good, because I think that’s what you should do now. Step away from Parliament for a bit. Come up to New York. There’s a job that’s tailor-made for you right here in the UN. You’ll enjoy the time out. After all, Charles, Rome wasn’t burnt in a day” …..
….. The scene shifts to a swanky New York restaurant. Charles Chauvel is having dinner with Helen Clark and Heather Simpson. The two women are facing the big picture window that looks out over Fifth Avenue. Charles, his back to the window, can’t help but see the man who enters the restaurant and is shown to a nearby table. Being new to the UN, he fails to recognise David Shearer’s former colleague from the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Assistance. With their backs to the other diners, Clark and Simpson also fail to register his presence – or the fact that he is seated within earshot.
“Everything turned to shit after I left for New York”, Helen is saying between sips of her Chardonnay. “Goff was only supposed to last a year. What the hell went wrong, Charles?”
“The numbers just weren’t there, Helen. We tried and tried, but, after the third attempt all we’d managed to do is piss off the rest of the caucus.”
“It’s all the fault of those ungrateful little bastards, Robertson, Ardern and Hipkins”, mutters Heather, “I told you they were useless, Helen. The wheels of your jet had hardly left the ground and they were already asking: ‘Why not me?’.”
“Yes, well, that was the problem, Helen. Too many of your people refused to stay bought.”
“I know, I know. And that’s what led poor old Chris Carter to try and bring down Goff all on his own. Dear, silly, boy.”
“So, now the Labour caucus is divided into three, roughly equal groups”, explains Charles. “Goff’s and King’s rear-guard of has-beens and Beagle Boys – with Mr Mumbles as their figurehead. David’s loyal ten, and Robertson’s cast of the young and the restless. You must have at least one of the other factions, plus your own, to mount a successful coup.
“And Goff persuaded Robertson to throw in his lot with Shearer?”
“Yeah, that’s right, Heather, he did.”
“But I just don’t get it!” Helen responds. “Surely the more sensible combination was Cunliffe-Robertson – not Shearer-Robertson. I mean, even a Robertson/Ardern leadership combination, with Cunliffe in Finance, makes more sense than this present mess?”
“Why do you think I’m here in New York, Helen? None of it makes any sense!”
Heather puts down her knife and fork and beckons her companions closer.
“What would happen if Shearer was to be forced out of the leadership by something other than a leadership vote?”
“Such as?”
“What if I were to tell you that a friend of a friend of a friend of mine in the UN pay office discovered that Shearer still has an active bank account at Merrill-Lynch?”
“I would say that because it isn’t mentioned on the Members’ Registrar of Pecuniary Interests,” Charles replies, “it can’t have very much in it.”
“What if I were to tell you that there’s at least $US100,000 deposited in that account?”
“One hundred thousand dollars! In a foreign account! Jesus Christ! We’ve got him!”
“Shhh! Shhh! Charles. Keep your voice down!”
The three companions put their heads closer together and begin talking in low whispers.
The man at the nearby table rises unobtrusively to his feet and makes his way to the restaurant foyer. He takes out his I-Phone and activates the number of his old friend David. …..
….. The scene shifts to the Leader of the Opposition’s office in New Zealand Parliament Buildings. David Shearer is softly singing The Hotel California – accompanying himself on his own guitar. His cell-phone starts ringing. Shearer sighs, puts down his guitar, retrieves his phone and checks the caller display. He frowns.
“Mike! Mate! It’s been ages!”
“Yeah, yeah, David, it has. But listen-up. You’re in trouble. I’m in a new York restaurant, and I’ve just overheard Helen Clark, Heather Simpson and that new lawyer guy who’s just arrived in town talking about you at the next table. David, they know about your Merrill-Lynch account – and how much is in it.”
“Oh, shit!”
“Yeah, very much ‘Oh, shit!’, buddy. And from what the lawyer guy was saying, you haven’t declared it.”
“Oh, fuck!”
“David, are you crazy! That’s the account with all the donations from your friends in the private military and security companies. How could you be so stupid?”
“Jesus, Mike, what should I do?”
“Declare it, you idiot – before your enemies do!”
“But, how will I explain not declaring it for four straight years?”
“Buddy, I don’t know. But if I were you I’d think of something pretty quick.”
“Okay, okay. Hell! Thanks, mate. I really owe you one.”
“No problem, Dave. Take care. And Dave …”
“Yeah?”
“Smarten up!”
Shearer pockets his phone, opens his office door and shouts.
“Trevor!”
Author’s Note: Any similarity to any actual plots and oversights in which the above victims of this political satire were, or are, actively involved is purely coincidental – and the dumbest luck!
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GCSB incompetence or deception? What the Court affivadits show in the Dotcom spying saga
Did the Government Communications Security Bureau knowingly engage in illegal spying on Mr Dotcom, a New Zealand resident, or were they just incompetent? Were the Police, who requested the GCSB surveillance, co-conspirators in this unlawful behaviour, or were they also incompetent?
With the release of Police and GCSB Court affidavits to the Labour Party we are getting closer to the truth, but there are still pieces missing in this jigsaw puzzle.
A simple “incompetence” explanation is getting harder to sustain when you consider the following timeline:
9 December 2011: Detective Inspector Grant Wormald asks Immigration New Zealand for file information on Kim Dotcom and Mr van der Kolk.
14 December 2011: Wormald tells the two GCSB representatives at a meeting “that both Mr Dotcom and Mr van der Kolk were residing in New Zealand and were able to come and go, so they must have a form of residency” and, related to that, he “did not think it was possible for the GCSB to intercept either Mr Dotcom or Mr van der Kolk.”
16 December 2011: Police receive from NZ Immigration documents re the travel of Mr Dotcom and Mr van der Kolk. They show Mr Dotcom is listed as “resident” in his last two arrivals in New Zealand.
That same day the GCSB begins its illegal surveillance on Mr Dotcom, after a request from the Police.
11 January 2012: Police receive NZ Immigration files on Mr Dotcom confirming he had been granted residence on 18 November 2010.
20 January 2012: Surveillance of Mr Dotcom is ended.
21 January 2012: Mr Dotcom is arrested.
16 February 2012: Detective Inspector Wormald is in a debrief with GCSB in which he observes that “It appeared to GCSB that the interception may not have been lawful because of their (Dotcom and van der Kolk’s) residency status.”
20 February 2012: GCSB admits that both the Police and media reports confirm Mr Dotcom’s residency status.
Despite all this the GCSB sends out an email on 27 February claiming the surveillance was legal. They claim that Mr Dotcom could be spied upon because he was a “Resident” not a “Permanent Resident” – when in the Immigration Act all residents are treated as permanent, with the same rights, and according to the GCSB Act they can’t be spied upon.
The GCSB also says in another email to the Police that “People here have been very relaxed about it all” and “Absolutely no further action [is] required.”
So take your pick. The Police and GCSB are guilty of gross incompetence, or they consciously misinterpreted the law to make everything right. Or they were guilty on both counts.
Looming over both agencies was the FBI, keen to get Mr Dotcom into custody.
For its part, the GCSB would have been a willing agent. It was created in the 1970s as a subordinate of the American National Security Agency, to extend the global reach of this giant electronic spying agency. NSA officers work within the GCSB and the NSA gives the GCSB the riding instructions for the operation of its main asset, the Waihopai satellite communications interception station.
There seems to be more oversight of our GCSB from American government than the New Zealand government. Our Prime Minister said it was ok that the GCSB didn’t tell him about its spying on Dotcom, because it was only an “operational matter”.
Under pressure, Mr Key now says he expects there will be a shakeup at the GCSB. But we need much more than that. We need a comprehensive independent inquiry, with public input, to critically examine not only the GCSB’s competence but also its worth to New Zealand.
[For more on the lack of accountability of the GCSB see my Op-Ed: “Dotcom case shows the cost of spying is spooky” published in the New Zealand Herald on 18 December 2012.]
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US military gives credence to Pacific climate change concerns
The worst drought in 70 years of records has renewed the focus in the media over whether these conditions might be related to climate change. At an estimated cost of $2 billion to the economy, the implications of the drought are huge for an industry which forms one of the primary sectors of our exports. While Joyce and English have light-footed around the issue, the Greens have argued that the National Party are not taking climate change seriously enough at detriment to our farmers. English fueled the Greens’ argument through his statement in the House last week that similar arguments on climate change had been made in Australia, and it had not stopped raining for the last five years. Unfortunately for English, he had overlooked the fact that Australia has been in drought for the last four years. Grilled by Corin Dann on Q+A on this gaffe, English produced some deft political sound bite maneuvering to shift his answer from focusing on climate change to focusing on the $500 million dedicated towards cleaning up waterways. While cleaning up waterways is great news, the Ministry for the Environment has predicted in their modelling that droughts are going to be more frequent, signalling that it is in New Zealand’s interest to think about the ongoing impact of climate change. Yet listening to the National Party leadership, climate change is often positioned as something that only environmentalists worry about.
While this article in the National Business Review somehow interpreted English not answering on climate change as leading on climate change, the issue of climate change is far less contentious than how it is often presented in the media. With 97% of publishing, peer-reviewed scientists agreeing that climate change is due to human activity (source: NASA), the arguments against it are often based on myth. It is not unusual to hear such myths bandied around as the temperature has not risen for the last 17 years, and the notion that because some parts of the world are cooling global warming is dismissed as an overall trend. Such myths propagate from the way that science is always interpreted through the lens of the social, an area that has received much more attention in literature since Bruno Latour and Thomas Kuhn paved the way for frameworks that examine how the reception of science is often based less on fact and more around the way that it taps or butts against notions of social consensus. Climate change and how we deal with it has also been influenced by the demands of industry, which has been based on the previous paradigm of exploiting resources, making it a touchy issue where legislation (such as carbon taxes) impact on the bottom line. This, together with confusion over the journalistic values of balance (which sees the skeptic side elevated despite broader scientific consensus) has clouded the issue. Moreover, climate change as an issue that requires nation state cooperation often butts against the internal interests of the nation state in requiring a much more global cooperation that transcends geopolitical factions.
Yet if it is not taken seriously in New Zealand, and often paraded as myth in the US media, there are indications that the defense industries are taking the IPCC’s predictions with much more weight. James Clapper is the current Director of National Intelligence and most senior security advisor to President Obama, overseeing 16 intelligence agencies. In the 2013 World Threat Assessment Report, Clapper trots out the usual geopolitical threats to US interests while highlighting the impact that climate change will have on migration and conflict. Clapper’s views reiterate that of the US Commander of the Pacific Navy, Navy Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, who states that climate change is the biggest threat facing the Pacific. This threat, he argues, has led the US Navy to look at scenarios where they may have to work with China and India to manage the effects of climate change on populations. This news will not come as any surprise to anyone who follows US military policy. Since 2010, the Pentagon has had much more emphasis on the role of climate change and the pressure it places on resources to exacerbate conflicts. The Pentagon estimated in 2010 that more than 30 US military bases are at risk from sea levels rising and the instability caused by climate change led weather effects. In 2008, the Center for a New American Security conducted climate war games set in the year 2015 with 45 scientists and national security analysts from Asia, South Asia, Europe and America in an attempt to see how nations might collaborate to deal with escalating conflicts from climate change effects.
The focus from the US military should signal to the New Zealand government that while climate change threats are often taken as marginal by the media and the public, the science is entering the mainstream. This should not be taken as the need to secure ourselves against our Pacific neighbours – as this article from the AUT Pacific Media Centre shows, the Pacific Islands that surround us want to hold onto their sovereign nations and waters rather than migrating. However, in the context of looking at the ongoing impact of a greater frequency of drought, the notion of climate change needs to move to the centre of our discussions rather than remaining at the periphery.
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Brain fades and balls ups
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On 20 March, Key made this curious remark, regarding Shearer’s stuff-up over his undeclared New York bank account,
“You don’t get cut any slack from the Labour Party when you say (you’ve made) a mistake but when they make one they don’t want anyone to have a look at it.”
Acknowledgement: Radio NZ – IRD knew of Shearer account, but not Parliament
There are two points of interest regarding that remark,
1. “…but when they make one they don’t want anyone to have a look at it.”
Not true.
As Vernon Small wrote in the Dominion Post on 21 March,
He was right to front-foot it by doing the rounds of the press gallery to disclose his blunder and face the music. It would have played must worse if he had left it until the next register of pecuniary interests was published.
Acknowledgement: Fairfax media – Shearer’s bank blunder threatens chances
Yet again this is another prime example of Key willfully mis-representing facts to suit his own purpose. His ability to “bend the truth” is unparalled by any other Prime Minister, whether Labour or National.
Shearer actually fronted to journalists and made a candid admission of his stuff-up.
When is the last time Key or Banks did the same?
2. ” You don’t get cut any slack from the Labour Partywhen you say (you’ve made) a mistake…”
Why should Labour (or any other Party) “cut any slack” for the National-led government?
Did National “cut any slack” for Labour when Helen Clark was Prime Minister? No, the Nats were relentless in their disparagement of Labour. In fact, they were often quite brutal,
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Acknowledgement: Scoop – Showers latest target of Labour’s nanny state
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Acknowledgement: Scoop – National launches its Food in Schools programme
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(Note: National never proceeded with it’s “Food in Schools” programme, and the policy was quietly dropped soon after they were elected into power in November 2008. see: Govt guarded on free school meals)
And this little ‘beauty’ in abusing Labour, in this January 2008 speech by John Key,
” Under Helen Clark and Labour, our country has become a story of lost opportunities.
Despite inheriting the tail wind of a strong global economy, Helen Clark has failed to use that momentum to make significant improvement in areas of real importance to New Zealanders. She has squandered your economic inheritance by failing to build stronger foundations for the future.
Tomorrow, Helen Clark will tell us what she thinks about the state of our nation. In all likelihood, she’ll remind us how good she thinks we’ve got it, how grateful she thinks we should be to Labour, and why we need her for another three years.
Well, I’ve got a challenge for the Prime Minister. Before she asks for another three years, why doesn’t she answer the questions Kiwis are really asking, like:
- Why, after eight years of Labour, are we paying the second-highest interest rates in the developed world?
- Why, under Labour, is the gap between our wages, and wages in Australia and other parts of the world, getting bigger and bigger?
- Why, under Labour, do we only get a tax cut in election year, when we really needed it years ago?
- Why are grocery and petrol prices going through the roof?
- Why can’t our hardworking kids afford to buy their own house?
- Why is one in five Kiwi kids leaving school with grossly inadequate literacy and numeracy skills?
- Why, when Labour claim they aspire to be carbon-neutral, do our greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at an alarming rate?
- Why hasn’t the health system improved when billions of extra dollars have been poured into it?
- Why is violent crime against innocent New Zealanders continuing to soar and why is Labour unable to do anything about it?
Those are the questions on which this election will be fought.
Helen Clark thinks she can hoodwink Kiwi voters into giving her another three years to answer these questions. Well, I say she’s had nine years, she’s had her chance and she’s wasted it. The truth is that as time has gone on, Labour has concentrated more and more on its own survival and less and less on the issues that matter to the people who put them there.”
Acknowledgement: National Party – 2008: A Fresh Start for New Zealand
So when Key whinges about the Labour Party not cutting him “any slack”, Key might consider that he gave as well as he got when he was in Opposition.
That is the role of Opposition – to criticise, challenge, and question. The alternative would be a quick trip down the road to join the club of authoritarian regimes.
By the way… how is John Key’s list of criticisms that he levelled against the Labour Government on 29 January 2008,
- Why, after eight years of Labour, are we paying the second-highest interest rates in the developed world?
- Why, under Labour, is the gap between our wages, and wages in Australia and other parts of the world, getting bigger and bigger?
- Why, under Labour, do we only get a tax cut in election year, when we really needed it years ago?
- Why are grocery and petrol prices going through the roof?
- Why can’t our hardworking kids afford to buy their own house?
- Why is one in five Kiwi kids leaving school with grossly inadequate literacy and numeracy skills?
- Why, when Labour claim they aspire to be carbon-neutral, do our greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at an alarming rate?
- Why hasn’t the health system improved when billions of extra dollars have been poured into it?
- Why is violent crime against innocent New Zealanders continuing to soar and why is Labour unable to do anything about it?
Except for interest rates (which is not controlled by governments – which Dear Leader should have known), none of John Key’s list above has improved in any measurable manner.
He’s probably forgotten it by now.
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Disclosure
This blogger is not a member of the Labour Party, nor has any preference in who leads that Party.
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= fs =
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TV Review: #whytwitterisbetterthanTV
No.1 Faster. Quicker news. Twitter is a medium of the moment. Now v. later on TV after editorial treatment.
No.2 More channels. Diversity, democracy. Everyone is on twitter, but TV freq’s limited by govt to big networks.
No.3 Community. Social media allows individual to make own intimate network. TV always speaking to mass audience.
No.4 Interaction. Links. User can directly discuss, support, create content. TV inert, dictatorial, scheduled.
No.5 Proximity. Authentic first hand official info v. TV’s edited soundbites. Can follow presidents, PMs, popes.
No.6 Better platform. Twitter is standard everywhere, and internet in any form beats a clunky TV dish or aerial.
No.7 Brevity. 140 characters brings clarity to a point. TV shows 140+ mins clearly have no point, esp. incl ads.
No.8 Less Ads. No ‘Go Harvey! Go!’ every 12 mins on Twitter. TV eating itself with gross consumptionist nagging.
No.9 Stats are clean. We can all see follow rate inTwitter for audience amount but TV’s ratings opaque, selective.
No.10 Because what would piss you off more: the TV signal stuck on ‘rainfade’, or twitter refusing to refresh?
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Crazy bullshit justifications for rape
Crazy bullshit justifications for rape
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A message to John Key from teachers
A message to John Key from teachers
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Face TV listings Saturday 23rd March
AM
7.00 Aljazeera News
8.00 Agenda
8.45 Treasures of the World
9.00 European Journal
9.30 Iglesia ni Cristo
10.00 Zindagi Forever
10.30 Made In Germany
11.00 Korean & Kiwi TV
11.30 Voice of Islam TV
PM
12.30pm Discover Germany
1.00 In Good Shape
1.30 Kick Off soccer
2.30 In Focus
3.15 Shift
3.30 Tech Tools
4.00 Game On
4.30 New Games Plus
5.00 Euromaxx
5.30 DW Journal
6.00 Aljazeera News
7.00 Roopa
7.30 Aap Aur Humm
8.00 Bollywood Movie: Fatso! (2009) [PG]
10.30 PBS News Hour
11.30 The History of World War II
Face TV broadcasts on Sky 89 & Auckland UHF
Face TV Twitter
Face TV Facebook
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