Hard News: Dirty Politics
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Sacha, in reply to
Based on that judgement, neither had any of the jury.
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I was beginning to wonder if there were two Jordon Williams, something like Jekyll and Hyde.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Separated at birth department...
Jekyll and Hyde
Just wondering if Colin Craig was the model for this Mervyn Peake illustration for Gormenghast?
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Mervyn Peake was raised by missionary parents in China. I can't remember where I read this, but supposedly his grotesque illustrations of people were grounded in his experience of returning to England and seeing all the knobbly, bony, puffy, wibbly faces of English people en masse for the first time.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
...supposedly his grotesque illustrations of people were grounded in his experience of returning to England and seeing all the knobbly, bony, puffy, wibbly faces of English people en masse for the first time.
Sometimes it seems that he might have simply painted what he saw. His 1931 self portrait is pretty nice.
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Glenn Greenwald's The Intercept features a local story today entitled The Little-Known Company That Enables Worldwide Mass Surveillance, wherein Ryan Gallagher and Nicky Hager in cooperation with TVNZ delve into the murky world of Endace Ltd -- an Auckland company which provides serious surveillance solutions to the Five Eyes partners. And others.
With worldwide surveillance growing exponentially, the company's products are in demand in the US, Israel, Denmark, Australia, Canada, Spain, India and in the UK where the GCHQ is a major customer. But Endace isn't fussy. They even serve a Moroccan security agency which has been implicated in torture. Spooks and morality rarely mix.
While Endace is a private company, they've developed their products with $11.1m of government funding courtesy of Callaghan Innovation. Bugger homelessness and NZ's increasing levels of poverty. I'm sure Steven Joyce and John Key must be proud of the huge amounts of taxpayer money they've quietly diverted into this socially-bankrupt enterprise.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
I’m sure Steven Joyce and John Key must be proud of the huge amounts of taxpayer money they’ve quietly diverted into this socially-bankrupt enterprise.
Heck they even did a poster!
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
I am the egg man...
While Endace is a private company, they’ve developed their products with $11.1m of government funding courtesy of Callaghan Innovation.
I note that Endace itself is owned by the two principals through another company the creepily named Echidna (not Echnida as the TVNZ story has it) - an Australian egg-laying mammal that sucks up ants!
...a creature from Greek mythology who was half-woman, half-snake, as the animal was perceived to have qualities of both mammals and reptiles.
In fact they are shortchanging themselves if they were trying to cash in the bio-mimicry aspect - they shoulda called themselves Platypus
Like the platypus, they (echidna) are equipped with electrosensors, but while the platypus has 40,000 electroreceptors on its bill, the long-billed echidna has only 2,000 electroreceptors
The NBR has a piece on the ownership saga of Endace here:
https://www.nbr.co.nz/opinion/funding-issues-spotlight-endaces-new-owner-cuts-100-jobs-ck-p
and a later one here:
https://www.nbr.co.nz/article/endace-shed-jobs-under-new-owner-avago-risks-having-government-grants-clawed-back-b-179094
It seems when Avago was buying out / merging with Broadcom in 2015 there was an Endace management buyout bringing the company back into NZ ownership.Ironic that Fabian backer and 'serial entrepreneur' Selwyn Pellett was founding CEO of Endace, and also lead the chase for the $11+million R&D funds repayment when it was sold offshore - he and Joyce had a twitter-spat over it, I believe.
It's a funny old world...
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PS:
Endace even get to the Black Hat Briefings - according to their Linked in page -
The insecurity business...
I note that the new kid on the block has hit the wall
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/85688007/tech-company-wynyard-calls-in-adminstrators
that'll put a hole in Chchch's 'innovative' new high tech Innovation Precinct... -
This doesn't fit here, or at least the dirty part doesn't apply. But I can't find anywhere better.
Gareth Morgan has just launched a new political party - The Opportunities Party. There's nothing in the way of policy so far but you'd imagine a more equitable approach to the way government treats its citizens and a big focus on clean waterways and sustainability.
Sort of like the Green Party but with Gareth in charge. And hopefully without cat killing on the agenda.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
Sort of like the Green Party but with
Sort of like the Green Party but without all that tedious business of having a membership and letting them decide on list/leaders/policy.
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Also, maybe they could compromise with ACT and encourage farming cats (and kiwis)* for their meat.
* That parsed. I wasn't expecting it to. Respect to Cactuslab for parsing the unparseable.
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izogi, in reply to
Also, maybe they could compromise with ACT and encourage farming cats (and kiwis)* for their meat.
I'm struggling to find any discussion of this party anywhere today which hasn't resulted in a conversation that's mostly about Gareth Morgan and cats. People love to scream about how much they hate him because of something about cats.
It's a shame because I think he mostly gets misrepresented on that and it's a total distraction from the actual party and everything else Gareth Morgan and his Foundation does and talks about, but I guess that's politics. TOP's going to have to get past it in the same way (for example) the Green Party has to get past everyone who dismisses it simply because it has the word 'green' in its name.
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Sacha, in reply to
don't forget the morris dancing. :)
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Rosemary McDonald, in reply to
Gareth Morgan and cats.
Kinda like the problem Old McGreggor had?
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andin, in reply to
distraction from the actual party
The snippet on RNZ I heard, he says he has done the numbers on a UBI and how it would work if introduced by him? I guess. But then I read he compares himself to D Trump ( in the sense of anti-establishment) in the NZ Harold ... Okay...
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izogi, in reply to
But then I read he compares himself to D Trump
That was unexpected. I caught the live stream from outside parliament, via rnz. At first I thought various journos were trying to goad him into a Trump comparison (just another distraction to make it more about him than about what he was doing). When I heard bits again later it sounded as if he proposed it himself.
Morgan's far more sophisticated than Donald Trump and I don't understand why he'd want to associate himself at all. His manner obviously irritates, though.
Morgan said he would like to see cats managed in a similar way to the way we manage dogs. I don’t think he ever said he hates cats.
Neither. Not that what he's actually said really makes a difference.
I also joined the Crofton Downs Halo project, which he's been subsidising, and have recently started walking trap lines around here. I don't agree with the guy about everything, but I've developed some respect for how he likes to do stuff. It's not traditional by many people's standards, however.
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Rich Lock, in reply to
encourage farming kiwis for their meat.
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For the record, Nicky Hager has been awarded interim legal costs of $232,672.78 against the Police, relating to their obtaining a warrant illegally to search his home as part of the Dirty Politics witchhunt.
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Reverberations of Dirty Politics continues now that Judith Collins is standing as leader of the National Party. Interview with Nicky Hager on Morning Report today.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201826737/collins-a-risky-choice-as-pm-nicky-hagerIncidentally, in public talks following the publication of his book in 2014, he predicted that John Key would walk away from NZ politics before too long (and be soon forgotten).
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Alfie, in reply to
And if you really want to throw up in your cornflakes, have a listen to Collins squirming out of her murky past. She maintains she’s as pure as the driven snow and that Nicky Hager lied about her. Uh huh.
I found myself wishing that Kim Hill was conducting that interview.
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The National Party and friends assumed that the revelations from Dirty Politics would quietly go away after the 2014 election. Some of us knew they wouldn't. As Nicky Hagar says, the verified information is still out there for anyone who cares to track down the book. Look at this thread. Almost 500,000 views and still going.
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Might have contributed to Collins not finding favour with the National caucus.
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Felix Geiringer has confirmed that Nicky Hager’s daughter has received a confidential settlement from the Police over the now disgraced Dirty Politics raid.
Police also seized and cloned her phone and laptop just two weeks before her end-of-year university papers were due. They kept the laptop for more than four months, Geiringer said.
What nice people. However there’s no mention of any heads rolling at Police HQ.
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