Posts by Sacha
-
Cracker: Johnny Foreigner & the Auckland…, in reply to David Hood,
the Centre for Housing Research (CHRANZ) was closed down in 2011
Didn't realise that. What a loss.
-
Cracker: Johnny Foreigner & the Auckland…, in reply to andin,
.. Bridgeman ..
-
Cracker: Johnny Foreigner & the Auckland…, in reply to Louise,
So does someone only have an ethnicity now if they're not white?
Our government appears to believe so, and has for a while. Pakeha culture is not well expressed.
-
Defence Force denies spying on Stephenson. Minister believes them.
-
Hard News: The Real Threat, in reply to Aidan,
sufficient evidence to convince a Judge that it is appropriate
a safeguard not available with warrantless mass surveillance
-
Were the new purchasers from overseas? In one case, no, another – hard to say. Because as a number of commentators have pointed out already, in a city where just under a third of residents are ‘Asian’, it’s very easy to get the impression that foreign ownership is a bigger issue than it actually is.
The 'looks like us' blindness of Pakeha journalists and editors in stories on this topic is a worry. Seems the UK is a prime source of foreign residential 'investors' as well as Australia. Not that most NZers have been told that.
-
Hard News: The Real Threat, in reply to Russell Brown,
Idiot/Savant draws that link with the new spying law's deliberate silence on metadata.
But NZDF weren't spying on Stephenson's communications, they were spying on his metadata. While there's no statutory authorisation for that, there's also no statutory prohibition either - something the Police at least seem to have regard as carte blanche, and which the GCSB's stooge Inspector-General regards as "arguably" legal.
...All of which highlights the crucial role of metadata, and the problems which leaving it out of the law create. Parliament desperately needs to fix this. Failing to do so leaves the door open for domestic military spying - an anathema in a democracy.
-
Gordon Campbell offers some broader cultural context in his post on the topic.
The hostility to investigative journalism is an outcome of the ongoing politicisation of the public service. When parliamentary and departmental staff are driven by the imperative to Protect The Minister From Embarrassment – to the point where their jobs depend on it – it is hardly surprising that good journalists get treated as the enemy, and the Official Information Act gets treated as an offensive weapon from which the Minister must be shielded at all costs. Thwarting journalistic inquiry is seen as business as usual.
-
Hard News: Friday Music: Outwards and Upwards, in reply to "chris",
repeatedly pleading poverty in interviews
Feel free to link to more examples than the single one given in this post, and copied by the Herald.
-
Capture: Upside Down, Inside Out, in reply to Hilary Stace,
bloody teenagers :)