Recently in Politics Category
We have an incredibly dumb $9 million referendum happening here in the next few months with an appallingly written question, "Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?".
I'm sure you will have had to re-read that again.
The irony of the question is that you have to vote Yes if you don't want to see increased child-abuse in the country.
Someone very smart realised that of all the things we could be asking the citizenry right now, this isn't really the top of the list given that the current government and the opposition overwhelmingly voted in favour of the current legislation, and the Prime Minister has said that no matter what the outcome of the referendum is, it won't change his mind.
A website has gone up where users can add whatever they like as subjects for referenda. I'm loving it.
The current Prime Minister has just been on a junket to Samoa and has taken a couple of high-profile New Zealand rugby celebrities with him, both of whom did election campaigning for him last year. These celebrities were last seen together in a factory in Auckland telling factory workers that they shouldn't work in the factory, they should own the factory. Apparently you get to own the factory if you vote for a right-wing party. With currently 1100 people a week being made unemployed, i'm hoping those factory workers still have their jobs.
For my own personal sanity i'm going to start collecting some of the more aberrant reporting i'm seeing on this saga. Chris McGreal from The Guardian writes (from Jerusalem):
"But military and political analysts say that Hamas can block the Israeli strategy simply by refusing to agree to a ceasefire, no matter how bad things get. The military would then be stuck inside a potentially anarchic Gaza Strip, attempting to stop Hamas rockets, every one of which fired into Israel would amount to a victory for the Islamist group."
Chris needs to do a little more research and a little less conjecture. The Israeli government has broken a 6-month ceasefire that began on June 19, 2008, as reported by the New York Times on June 18, 2008. The Israeli invasion that began November 4, covered by The Guardian, obviously breaches that agreement. Given that this date was election day in the US, and an upcoming election in Israel, is it cynical to think this was seen as an opportunity?
The implication of the above paragraph, from the article, is of Hamas holding the key to a successful ceasefire, even though it is Israel who has breached the previous agreement. There is also a somewhat strange logic that the reader should be pitying Israeli forces (I can't in all consciousness call them a defence force) if they have to continue fighting in Gaza. These are not two equally trained and armed combatants who have decided to war with one another, it is an invasionary force with a great deal more firepower than anything within Gaza, and it is an invasionary force targeting civilian areas.
Until the last 2 weeks, 20 Israelis were killed by Hamas rockets in the last 8 years. As i write this, the current estimated death toll is 820 Palestinians, and Israel is discussing an increase of force. I won't even discuss the idea that rockets being fired by Hamas "would amount to a victory", it's too ridiculous.
I've just been reading a great article in the Guardian Unlimited Film section from Shane Meadows about his new film This is England (which i'm hoping will include the song of the same name by The Clash).
There are a couple of choice quotes from the piece, but the interesting thing for me were his thoughts and ideas of what it was like growing up in a small town in the 1980's when you're part of a subculture, and in part, the attendant iconography of the objects that become meaningful.
Late in 1985, when I was 15, I got my first pair of Dr Marten's boots. For a while they had to be hidden at a friend's place, because at the time my Father wouldn't allow them to be 'under his roof'. What they meant to him and what they meant to me were completely different things - for him they were the accoutrements of fascism, while for me they were the symbol of anti everything - benign, insipid, popular, 'normal' and fascist. All of this meaning I had to walk around to my friend's place for the first 6 months of owning them to be able to wear them when we went out anywhere.
When we did go out, if we saw someone else wearing them, we (or them) would stop and have a chat about whatever, there was a good chance that we might have just met a brand new friend. The fact is, ideologically, or at least musically, there was a 99% chance we would be into exactly the same things. If you're my age, you might even remember that you could tell a lot about who you were meeting depending on the colour of their laces. Black and Red could mean Marxist and Anarchist, White could mean fascist or a 'hippy punk' preference.
When I was teaching, I used to tell my film or media students about this and for the most part they would laugh out loud unanimously. Maybe it was oversensitivity on my part, but whatever it was, it used to annoy me that they thought it was so funny. It wasn't funny. It was heart on your sleeve, life and death serious. Why? Because we all felt alone and sincere.
Shane Meadows talks about the multiple subcultures in his small town of Uttoxeter, and although my small town didn't have anywhere near the same diversity, I know exactly what he means when he describes his small town - pull the word Uttoxeter and insert Tauranga - during the weekends.
"In a town as small as Uttoxeter, though, there weren't enough people for each sub culture to fill their own parties or clubs, so most weekends everyone would turn up at the same village hall disco and end up fighting."
It's 20 years later, and a lot of the ideas, values and things I most value hold true to the things I learnt back then. Unlike then, I often wear a suit now, the footwear of choice are still the same.
"The big difference between now and the period in which my film is set is our level of isolation. In 1983, people still cared about society as a whole but now they'll keep their mouth shut as long as they've got the house, the job and the car they want. If you were a kid in 1983, you wouldn't have a PlayStation to sit indoors alone with. You got your entertainment from mixing with a variety of different people. While making the film, I realised that all of my fondest childhood memories surrounded human contact: mucking about with mates or going camping. In 2007, people put less emphasis on that sort of thing and more on planning their careers and their TV viewing. As far as I'm concerned, if you're working from nine to five then coming home to watch shows that your Sky box has recorded for you while you were out, you might as well be on a fucking drip."
Amen.
I just saw this exchange between the 'Journalist' Simon Dallow and Gerry Brownlee, the deputy leader of the National party on Agenda. One kind of agenda was certainly on display. If this is objective media reportage i'd hate to see what happens next. I always thought Dallow was a conservative little prig, but this was just stunning.
GERRY [....] no one can argue that and we are very pleased to be leading in those agenda issues, next week will be a great week for us, we will culminate that week by being able to form the government after the votes are counted on Saturday night.
SIMON We're all certainly looking forward to it. Gerry Brownlee and Pete Hodgson thank you so much for joining us on Agenda today.
Charles Platt has written an excellent article on Sam Cohen, author of Shame: Confessions of the Father of the Neutron Bomb. The article is interesting from a number of viewpoints: Cohen's belief in the morality of his creation, his background with RAND during The Cold War; but also Platt's talent for providing a very good teleological view of how much US foreign policy has remained the same since the close of WW II.
I think the only thing that isn't perhaps given enough depth are the Reagen years. Growing up in the 1980's was a fearful time for many of us. Anyone remember the deluge of nuclear armageddon films like The Day After, a film that my entire highschool was taken to.
Nuclear war did seem like a very present danger and was a time that was filled with a lot of angst for many on the left. I remember long term anti-nuclear demonstrations in the UK that became permanent campsites outside military bases and nuclear facilities. Here in New Zealand we went through our own anti-nuclear transformation. The banning of nuclear warships, which ultimately broke up the ANZUS alliance and created antipathy from both Australia and the US. Then of course French Intelligence decided to come here and bomb the Greenpeace ship, The Rainbow Warrior.
Platt's article also has an insight into the militaristic machinations of history after WW II and succinctly explains Bush, Jr's need to create an omnipresent enemy. This is classic bogeyman stuff. Fear construction to help domestic and foreign policy fall in line with a vision created by right-wing think tanks and gung-ho militarists. Even if those militarists work behind desks and never see the consequences. Profits of Fear
Revenge of the Sith has been out for less than a week and already I know someone who has it on DVD, however it's been publicly hammered by the media as being available via BitTorrent in the last few days with all the attendant arguments for and against p2p file sharing: Capitalism, Lucas' seemingly voluminous wealth and greed, Theft vs. Infringement etc. Interestingly these are the first notices people are receiving due to their perception (or self-perception) of being small-time infringers.
What's interesting about the below paragraph is the initial reading of it gives me the impression that 'Twentieth Century Fox (collectively, 'FOX')' are in fact the sole copyright owners of ALL of the world's cinema. Gauging what their parent company News Corporation has acquired recently, for a second I thought it actually might be. And then it occurred to me that it's the 21st Century and they're probably going to have to play technological catch-up really soon. Or at least start preventing their employees from leaving work with time-coded preview versions.
FOX issuing takedown notices to Sith downloader
"Re:Unauthorized Use of Twentieth Century FOX Film Corporation Property
Notice ID:xxxNotice IDxxx
Notice Date:21 May 2005 xx:xx:xx GMTDear Sir or Madam:
TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM CORPORATION and its affiliated companies
;(collectively, 'FOX') are the exclusive owners of copyrights in motion
pictures."
(Via BoingBoing)
There's quite an interesting piece from the editor of the BBC News website about the practice and style guide of captioning images. I've seen some awful work over the years that ideologically loads many of the images they show, such as this one.
There's mention of revisions being made to the style guide, but I thought i'd include the guide extract here to hopefully encourage some debate, if not with them then with yourself about the practices involved.
BBC News Website style guide extract CAPTIONS (FOR PICTURES*) (REVISED 4/03) LENGTH OF CAPTION: Picture captions can be one or two lines long, ideally one. Never three, except rarely in picture galleries.WORDING OF CAPTION: The wording should follow the geography of a picture, from left to right (eg if Blair is on the left, and Mandelson on the right, the caption should NOT say " Mandelson and Blair"). But captions should not be literal descriptions of the picture's contents - so "Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson", though an improvement, is still poor. Better to say, eg Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson: Longtime friends
NAMES IN CAPTIONS: In News, you should ideally use both first and second names of anyone pictured - though there will often not be enough room for this, especially if two or more people have to be identified. Sport can follow the sporting convention of surnames only (eg Giggs is confident of another title ) - though take care that first names are given where necessary (eg Neville wants the England captaincy leaves us wondering, "Gary or Phil?").
PUNCTUATION OF CAPTIONS: If you are including a direct quote, use a colon and double quotation marks (eg Homer Simpson: "D'oh!"). Any colon in a caption - whether or not introducing a quote - must be followed by a capital letter (eg Lisa Simpson: Genius at work ).
If you need to focus in a caption on one individual among several, use brackets and NOT commas eg a picture of a group of children might be captioned Bart Simpson (centre) was never his teacher's pet rather than "Bart Simpson, centre, was never...". If space is very short, you can abbreviate such labels to their initial letter only. But since (left) looks strange if rendered as (l) - because it looks like a number one - then we should capitalise all three, for consistency's sake ie (C) (L) (R).
There is NO full stop at the end of a caption, other than in picture galleries.NB: a caption is often not necessary with a map or a generic graphic.
There's been some interesting media stats released in the last few days, a Boing Boing reader discovered that MGM had a gap in their website security (since closed) that revealed a whole mess of data and sales stats they would probably prefer didn't leak. The above image merely confirms what we already know: Digital media is far cheaper to replicate and distribute than the analog (and i'm obviously including VHS here) counterparts of the past. Sony knows this too. Sony has just completed acquiring MGM and now has a full catalog of 4200 of MGM's past glories, which i fully expect to see utilised in the next 6-12 months if Sony can repackage and distribute quickly enough for consumers. Time Warner had been interested in capitalising on the catalogue too, but somehow decided that the $3 billion Sony finally moneyed up with was too much. To me 3 billion sounds a bit cheap. If they hold the rights in perpetuity the only real cost is distribution.
In its day MGM was a phenomenal studio that was as well known for its lavish productions and stars, almost as well known as Michael Bay is known for directing awful films.
MGM was responsible for a number of american classics in its time, for most, as the owner of The Wizard of Oz; but one thing that hasn't been mentioned at all is that Sony is part of a consortium of owners who have purchased MGM, the notable investor in all of this is Comcast and it's pretty easy to see why.
Ted Turner took the United Artists or UA out of MGM/UA in 1986 so he could broadcast the catalogue via his cable channel, and colourise films that should never be colourised (No Ted, The Maltese Falcon is supposed to be that dark). Although, fortunately, that phase seems to have passed from history, it's pretty easy to see why Comcast would want access to the catalogue $ 3 billion is pretty cheap when you can devote an entire channel to MGM catalogue greats, not to mention the obvious next step: Video-on-demand and the potential of digitally cleaning up the catalogue for cinema re-release and the consequent DVD re-releases that will inevitably follow.
There are some excellent U.S. political cartoonists on the web. Some of my favourites are Ted Rall, Pat Oliphant, Ben Sargent, Tom Toles, Clay Bennett (beautiful, amazing work), Tony Auth, Bill Deore etc.
Today I discovered David Rees to throw into that mix. It makes me think of what things like Dilbert should be, if only Dilbert wasn't so lame. But the humour has something of Herbert Kornfeld about it before The Onion decided it was in their best interests to shut off access to their archives. If you're a fan of Herbert's, there even appears to be a Letter-Opener-Of-Death in some of the panels.