Posts by TracyMac
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to Tom Semmens,
You might have a point, if the Rangitikei seat were in the slightest bit marginal. But it never has been- farmers, as you say.
And the general ethos is to throw junior candidates into safe opposition electorates so that they can prove their work ethnic while leaving the more prominent candidates to fight the more marginal electorates.
Show us a "close" electorate where there was such a candidate mismatch, and we might then see the point of your fulminations against "liberal identity politics".
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You know, all this rehearsing the rights and wrongs of Assange - and I'm afraid I'm with Craig here in that he should stop his weaselly bullshit and deal properly with the legal matters (and FFS, leave the emotive "rape" word out of it, and whether or not it's "rape-rape" - it is a kind of sexual assault he's up for and he should do his goddamn day in court).
...Getting back to the point, can anyone tell me what he actually brought to the presentation last night other than "governments are naughty, m'kay?". We're spending a significant amount of energy in this thread talking about Assange's personality and legal woes, which just demonstrates to me how much of a distraction he is from the real issues at this juncture. If we need to discuss him, fine, discuss what he actually had to say about these allegations (sweet F-A, frankly).
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Hard News: Vision and dumbassery, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I have to agree that wheeling Assange out was incredibly disappointing. Whether or not you choose to believe his pronouncements at the likelihood of extraordinary rendition from the sovereign nation of Sweden (hardly known for their blind endorsement of US policies) as an excuse to dodge his legal troubles, he's a spent force. What did he have to offer - in terms of relevant facts - to this matter?
Lefties have their own version of the All Black endorsement - but this one was particularly tone-deaf
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Southerly: Sign this Petition, in reply to Vonnie,
I agree that there should be positive messages out there, and frankly, the major opposition party doesn't do a fantastic job of that,
But saying to move on when the crap is actively flying, and there is no indication that the culture and ethos of the perpetrators as changed one iota seems a little ... soon. Ok, so Collins has been booted from Cabinet. Whoopee. She hasn't been booted out of Parliament, or out of the party, and has undoubtedly been promised a wet bus ticket slap with the purported investigation.
And I think the indications are that the buck doesn't stop with her. Are we trying to pretend that she is not in the slightest bit emblematic of a certain variety of right-leaning types with a healthy dose of entitlement, arrogance and a desire for self-aggrandisement? Not to mention the toxic culture of that "me first" group in Parliament in terms of ethics and a serious lack of accountability (except to one's own mates and one's wallet).
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Regarding Hager's timing, I have to say that it's patently obvious he's trying to affect the election result. Good, whether his motivation is to get rid of these corrupt clowns, or something deeper.
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I went to one primary school - out of five - that had bible class - on Auckland's North Shore in the 70s. My mother rarely attended PTA meetings, but this made her go absolute apeshit when she found out. Most of her demeanour in those days was "stoic", but that one really riled her up.
Outcome was the school made bible class optional for everyone, with no pressure, although still during school hours.
As far as karakia is concerned in parliament, one that acknowledges the land and the people, preferably alternating the official languages, is fine by me. Sadly, I've heard way too much Atua, Atua, Atua in non-religious contexts more recently.
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Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to Dominic Muir,
I vote "yes".
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Speaker: Confidential information: the…, in reply to SteveH,
I agree. The lawyers may not be au fait with the ins and outs of server security controls, but the analogies of leaving doors unlocked are pretty apposite.
We can handwave as much as we like about deep linking and image scraping, but it is patently obvious when those parts of a site are linked through from the publicly-published part of the site.
Opportunistically looking for \docs or \mbx folders is not the same. There is a pretty well-known issue with using phpadmin to manage MySql databases without adequate security. When I ran the applicable Google query and found a significant number of sites at the ANU in Australia affected (not just website content in some of the databases, but personal details from registered users), I didn't delete, interfere with, or copy the data. Or actually look very far. I emailed the various university departments to alert them of the issue. (And received not a single reply, but at least I tried.)
I do agree with the main thrust of the piece about the ethical differences between Hager and the Labour Party web hack. Also, as has been pointed out elsewhere, the Whaleoil hack could have been as simple as guessing a password to a multi-role server. I have web hosting, and I keep documents, a website, and all kinds of crap on it.
However, I still think I'd rather know how Hager'sdata was obtained. It could have been leaked by a participant in the conversations (admittedly unlikely). It could have been an Anonymous-type person or group of people trying to get at Slater. It could have been someone hired to maintain the website, web-hosting, or someone otherwise involved with him professionally (if the latter, even hinting at it could lead into trouble).
While I am pleased this wanker is getting his comeuppance of sorts, as an IT professional, the possibility of someone compromising their professional integrity, or, some vandal trying to compromise systems, does bug me. Their actions are no different to what we are bitching about in relation to the Labour Party hack. Maybe I'd feel happier if I knew it was an anonymous whistle-blower from the inside.
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The trouble with wankers like these is that they believe us leftie liberals are just the same behind closed doors (well, some of us are), and the inclusive "PC" language and blather is exactly that. Blather, and but a deeply-held political stance.
People like that believe we'd be just as opportunist as them, given the chance, but with an extra helping of hypocrisy. Given some members of the leftie parliamentary parties, they might be excused a small degree of confusion, but they think we're all that way.
And on the other side, I know there are National voters who genuinely believe in small-c conservative principles. But the current culture for the main players can only be described as toxic.
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I'm just becroggled at the number of people who apparently never chanted abuse at the current PM of the day, or who never attended a political or protest event where it occurred.
I mean, really, the only thing that's "new" about this is the event organisers taking advantage of the current social media norms by uploading it for public view. A lot of social media is about being seen to be involved in X cool activity ("cool" as defined by your peer group), and it could be argued that they would have been seen as terminally un-savvy if they'd failed to upload such an obviously crowd-rallying moment. It would have been recorded by many participants anyway.
I do agree it was in somewhat bad taste to have been apparently endorsed by a serious party seeking election, but the event aims were a bit of a muddle - performers weren't just there to endorse I-M or KDC.