New blog

And it's mine! Check out Kakariki Films /shameless self promotion

Next Thing

Time for an explanation as to what the hell is going on in the life behind this blog. I'll give you a bit of context and answer DPF's post about blog fathers and I will not comment on the gendered language behind the family tree concept, lest I get attacked by the anti-PC brigade.. I started this blog a couple of years ago when I was finding myself getting very frustrated with the world around me but couldn't really jump up and down about it publicly due to my role as a public slave. I was also on a mission to improve my writing so I figured if I got into the habit of writing more often it might improve that way. So I thought I'd set up a blog as a place to publicly vent my spleen. I never expected anyone to read what I wrote and I didn't promote my blog at all but then after a while I noticed that people had started to read it, and then come back again for more. Quite odd. Then I felt the pressure of an audience and kept going. I also noticed that I was a lonely Green voice in the blogosphere so thought it was important that someone was representing there (until I was usurped by that damn frog). And it's been fun! There's still been a lot of stuff I've wanted to write about but haven't due to lack of time or little technical issues like breaching parliamentary privelege ;) But I'm thankful that I've been able to engage in the world around me in the form of dialogue. I don't think there is any particular blog that inspired me to get going but I'd be interested to know if there's anyone out there who got inspired to start their own after reading this one. I know I certainly built a couple of blogs for other people. So now I've left my job and I'm on my way to the next thing. I fly out on Friday to Sydney. Just in time for the protest against terror laws and the Rock Against Racism and to visit friends and family and then I'm off to Melbourne to find a job and somewhere to live and to take part in the National Day of Community Protest for workers rights. My grand plan for the next thing is the get involved with film. I've been a hobby film maker for a while now, mostly covering protest action, Green Party events and whenever my friends have babies. But I'm planning on making this my full time focus from now on. One of the things I loved about my job is hearing the wonderful stories of things going on in our communities. From the youth radio set up in Porirua to get kids off the street to the 12 year olds running political campaigns in their communities to protect things dear to their hearts, to the old ladies running community breakfasts for those too poor to afford the most important meal of the day. There is stuff like that happening all over the place and we never hear about them. These stories deserve to be told, not just because it's important for us all to hear about them but because most of those people out there feel like they're doing these things alone and get really isolated. It's hearing stories about what other pieces of fantastic community action are going on that keep people going on their own work or inspire them to start their own. And of course there's a bigger picture interest for me here. We are at a fascinating point in world history, some say that the decisions we are making now will determine the survival of humanity. I believe that it's really important that the resistance to capitalist globalisation is recorded, in our own words. I know that for me, as an (r)evolutionary activist it's reading stories of activists from days gone by that inspire me and keep me involved in activism and help me with my critiques of the world around me. I find it entertaining when I think that my generation is far more radical and visionary than any previous, and then I read writings by Emma Goldman from a century ago to realise that it's quite possible that the opposite is the case. So I want to tell stories of resistance. I hope to focus my work on antiracist stuff, particulalry decolonisation and immigration issues. But want to do work about prison reform and prisoners rights as well as getting into some more core environmental issues like the rainforest protection work going on in Tasmania at the moment. So that's what the next thing is. I will be reporting on what I get up to and I will be continuing to blog on my thoughts on the world, although my parliamentary focus will probably fade away as I gradually reclaim my soul from the evil toxicity of the parliamentary environment. So thanks to all my readers, especially those of you with nice comments to make. Watch out world, here I come.

Yep that's me

Check out Dean's cool thingies! Hattip Tony

Cool blog

One of the nice things about Blogger profiles is that when people log in to make comments you can go to their blog and see what they have to say. And sometimes you find a gem! Like the art of the possible. What a nice blog! And I love finding bloggers with a similar sense of humour to mine and run by people who post more than me! Nice one smooth, you're on my links list now.

PC my ass

So the National Party wants to eradicate Political Correctness. I'm sorry I'm struggling to take this one seriously but I will try. Now I believe that PC actually stands for Politeness and Courtesy, y'know being respectful to the people around you? Obviously the Nats have a major problem with this. So I suggest that they start by going through their entire policy book and replacing the words relating to people and replace them with men/him and his. Gender-neutralising language was one of the first steps in the 'PC' revolution, and it's about the easiest thing to reverse.

Frog 1 NBR 0

For those of you who missed it, Francis Till from the NBR wrote an extensive article critiquing the Green position on OSS, and it was, to put it nicely completely full of shit. Frog had a good go trashing the arguments and a number of the comments on that post are very interesting as well. Also this post from Russell Brown makes some good rebuttal points. But I want to add a couple of points. Firstly, the stuff in Till's article about the Green response to the Digital Strategy. A good friend of mine was involved with discussions with the government about the DS between the time the discussion document and the final document came out. While in a long and detailed meeting about a number of IT related issues, the topic of OSS was raised. My friend inquired as to why it wasn't mentioned at all in the discussion document. What followed was a 15 minute discussion into the merits or otherwise of using OSS, the potential benefits to the country of a healthy OSS development community and the ethical questions about educating our chjildren within a MS only environment. Folllowing this discussion my friend said "so that was an interesting discussion, can you please answer my question, how come open source isn't mentioned at all in the discussion document?" Needless to say, the officials were slightly embarrassed. No wonder Nandor was slightly miffed that it still wasn't mentioned in the final document. And so he should have been. I have had discussions with a number of other self-proclaimed geeks about what the future is for Aotearoa in regards to IT and software in particular. As Frog mentioned in the response to Till's article, there are a number of countries around the world embracing OSS, for many reasons. Yet our Government has decided for us that we're not even going to talk about it? I doubt that if we had a major nationwide discussion about these issues that the people of this country would decide to banish Microsoft from our shores but we should be allowed to have some discussion about it. So why aren't we? Well, I don't know exactly what goes on behind closed doors in Ministerial offices and policy setting meetings in government departments but I do know that Microsoft has spent a shit load of money convincing our government that they are their friends and they have nothing to fear. The International Head of Government Relations for MS has been here at least once in the last couple of years, they employ one of the best (evilest) PR companies in the country to manage their image here. I would HATE to think how much the GSSP is costing them. Apparently, the people here working on that project (giving our SIS access to the source code of MS products including the Windows operating system, to allay any fears about security flaws) get free unlimited access to Redmond engineers. Yip, they can get on a plane and fly over and wander in and ask any question they want! So what do the Ministers think? I've been following the questions in the House over the last term and I can say there is two Ministers who appear to be knowledgable on these issues; David Cunliffe and Trevor Mallard. Cunliffe is very receptive to OSS and certainly displays a bit of imagination when it comes to trying innovative approaches to conventional problems. Mallard on the other hand seems to be well and truly in the pockets of Microsoft. Any question asked of Mallard about these issues when he was Minister of Education was met with a snarky answer and a few pom poms thrown around for Microsft, which makes me wonder what went on in during the negotiations for the Microsoft schools agreement... But back to Till's article, what I don't get is how people who appear to be right-wing capitalists are often so supportive of the way Microsoft operates? I thought that all of the people who are in favour of Free Trade and against barriers would be appalled at the way MS does their business. I guess I just don't get capitalism... But I would like to thank Till for having the courage to engage with what the Greens say about IT. We are constantly accussed of being luddites but checking the technologoical knowledge and ability of those within the Green movement and compared to those in other parties, I fail to see how those arguments hold any water. I think the Green visions on technology futures are far more exciting and visionary than anything that you see coming out of any other parties, most of whom fail to see how these issues are political and seem to leave it to the big corporates to dictate our futures for us. Finally, there are a couple of comments on the frogblog about the software used by the Greens. Can I just say that I was privvy to an internal discussion about allowing the Greens in the Parliamentary Office to use Firefox. It took three months and a whole lot of hoohah to get permission to use a far superior product than Explorer. They eventually won and have been enjoying Firefox ever since! But as for using other OSS products like Open Office, I think the battle will be a lot harder. In the meantime, MPs can use whatever they want on their laptops. I know Nandor was running Mandrake and I think Metiria is currently using Ubuntu. As for me, I'm using a Mac (OSX), use Firefox browser, Thunderbird email and VLC media player. I use my computer mostly for video editing so I'm using Final Cut and iMovie mostly (until I can afford an upgrade) and I also use iTunes and a few game programs. The only MS branded product I use is MSN Messenger but that's because my friends won't stop using it grrr.

Winstonland

I'm in Tauranga at the moment soaking up the fantastic sun. People round here think it's cold, but compared to Wellington it's tropical! I haven't seen Winston, or Bob Clarkson, but did manage to squeeze in a visit to the hotel where that guy threatened to blow himself up if he didn't get to see Helen. It wasn't that exciting... But across the road is Bella Mia the Italian restaurant which I HIGHLY recommend if you're visiting Tauranga. Especially their pizza bread, it's to die for! I'm missing Wellington, especially since there's been some great protest activity going on recently. I already mentioned the Weapons Conference, but for those of you who missed it, the National Front were out demoing again in the weekend. I hear it was entertaining. Although from the photos on Indymedia, doesn't look like any of the NF crew were having much fun. Or maybe they're just not allowed to enjoy themselves. I was sad not to be there, especially after the amount of fun I had last year. I even had a CD ready to go. I was planning on playing 'All you fascists bound to lose' by Woody Guthrie, over and over and over really loud. Anyhoo, email to catch up on. If you're bored, play Monomatch it's great!!!

Update

I'm in the middle of nowhere, neah neh neh neh neh!!!! But one of the downsides is that you miss out on some SERIOUSLY COOL protest action outside Te Papa. For those of you who missed it, the weapons conference was on at "Our Place" aka Te Papa and the Clown Army was out in force (Check Indy for details and photos). I am gutted I wasn't there, but so proud of the Welly crew! Well, I'm not allowed online for long so I better skidadle but in the meantime, check out my gorgeous new cousin!!! Her name is Georgia and she is 3 months old, bless her.

Ha ha, got a name for it

Lets call this the "Labour/Progressive/NZ First/United Future Pedantic Semantics Government" or LPNZFUFPSG. Quite a lot more complicated than LPG but I'm sure you could still make a fuel out of it, if you ground them all up properly.

The deal

One thing I can feel comfrotable about is the fact that we don't have a National-led Government. The thought of Don Brash cruising around the world representing this country did give me nightmares! But it isn't that wonderful. We now have two Ministers outside of Cabinet and outside of the Labour Party, Winston and Dunne. The full allocation of posts is as follows; Winston Peters picks up Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister for Racing, and Associate Minister for Senior Citizens. Peter Dunne will be Minister of Revenue and Associate Minister of Health. So if I read this right, has Peter Dunne got the portfolio for drugs? What?! What?! What?! I really hope Winston doesn't get Trade as well as Foreign Affairs. And I really hope he has some kind of accountability for his speeches overseas. As for the Greens, I think a lot of people will tthink we've got a bad deal out of this but from what I've read so far, it appears we've got the best of a bad result. It appears that we're getting a whole lot of extra Budget to play with and more access to information and consultation, yet no obligation to support the Government, nice one. I'm particularly pleased that we've increased access to student allowances, and have a commitment to raising the minimum wage. I will post further when I can. And for those interested, I'm in Shannon, hanging out with my family, and it's lovely! Went to Levin today which was quite exciting. Although I don't think I'll go back for a while... Later

Yay for me and yay for you lot

Yesterday some lucky punter (who happens to be from Corinda, Queensland, Australia, is using Win XP, Firefox and has a 1024x768 resolution monitor, but only stayed for 2 seconds!) was the 10,000th visitor to this website! How exciting! So big thank you to all of you out there who come and read what I have to say. It must be boring but I hope to entertain or inform you occaisionally. And at least my blog is slightly more interesting than high school girls sharing their bitchy stories online. So just to add to your excitement, frog managed to incite some interesting debate about the size of Don's carrot (not for the faint hearted). But deep within the comments someone linked to the Ex-Exclusive Bretheran website (can you be an ex-ex-exclusive I wonder or is that just a bad stutter...). And they have their very own forum which is pretty amusing. For those that know me you'll know I just dig forums, might have to go join this one! In other news, Russell Brown shares a wee email from the Press in regards to the end of Alexis Stuart's columns due to her inability to have an original idea. I for one am more than pleased to see her go. I have been reading the Maxim magazine for a while now (for entertainment ok?) and I always get so irate after reading her articles. I always want to write a great big long rebuttal but can never finish them I get too mad. For those that don't know her work, she's one of those 'it's all feminisms fault that the family has destructed' types. Cause, like, relationship laws, anti-domestic violence and rape campaigns, health protection, equal pay, voting rights, citizenship rights etc etc etc are all really bad and families were just so happy before all that happened, yeah right! Good riddance. Last but not least, I'm leaving Wellington today, off on some new journeys. Will keep you all updated and will fill you in on the whole story when I get to my final destination!!!! Arohanui

Youth Podcasting

Got this one in the email and may be of interest to some of the young lefties out there:

GREETINGS! I'm starting a group of Youth Podcasters. This would be the very first in Youth World. I am looking for partners for this endeavor. I hope everyone will have a chance and be interested in doing youth podcast. Basically, the main purpose of this is to hear the voice of the youth around the world, literally. As in, in audio form. So this would like be a radioprogram in podcasting form. Anyone who are inclined with audio production,we are open for your help and suggestion. Thank you very much. Please email youthcast (at) gmail.com JOIN THE PROJECT BY CLICKING THIS

New blog

My friend Tony Milne has just started his own blog. Yay Tony! Here it is. Wish I was the devils spawn...

Why even try?

Some of you will know that I'm involved in anti-fascist activism stuff. Now most of the people involved in SF, NF WS type stuff are particularly stupid and we take great pleasure in taking the piss out of them. But sometimes I wonder why we bother when they do SUCH A GREAT JOB OF IT THEMSELVES!!! Check this video out. I'm going to be chuckling about this one for days.

BOATS

My biggest biggest biggest ups to Fat Freddy's Drop for their success at the NZ Music Awards. That's the coolest news I've heard all week, and they totally deserve those awards. When I do my next thing (which shall be revealed soon...) I will certainly be taking that album with me and playing it to as many people as I can. Awesome mahi boys!

Deep breath post

Thanks to those of you who noticed my absence. I have had some personal stuff to deal with (aak! who let real life get in the way of my blogging habit!) and I was waiting for the specials to be counted before sharing my thoughts. Those of you who read this blog will probably guess how I am feeling now about the loss of Nandor from Parliament. I'm absolutely gutted. Not because the Greens have lost their 'poster boy' but because we've just lost one of the most knowledgable, committed experts on Justice that this parliament has ever seen. Many people have discussed Nandor's demotion on the list as a reaction to his campaigning on drug law reform but I reject that notion. I think the main reason he dropped was due to a) the others getting pushed up and b) it's the result of a term spent working incredibly hard on low profile, yet exceptionally important issues. For example, the Corrections Act, the Supreme Court Act, the Constitutional Inquiry, just to name a few. Now it's a sad reality that the way we understand our world is in large part influenced by the way the media constructs 'reality' and they write on what sells newspapers, not necessarily what's important. Oh well, what's done is done. But I want to publicly thank Nandor. Dude, you got me involved in politics, you made me realise that just because politics is full of grumpy old white guys doesn't mean I'm excluded. In fact that gives me even more reason to get involved. I have never worked with anyone who has had to deal with so much bullshit and get so much done. If I had a dollar for everytime someone said to me "oh that Nandor he's just a stoner ropehead" I'd be a fuckin millionaire. The thing that always cracked me up is how quickly the story changes when people actually meet you. They always sound so suprised at this intelligent, gentle spoken, generally on to it as fuck man. But most people had no idea. Personally I will never forget the people I met who had life changing stories to say about you. The people who I meet who are some of the most disenfrachised people you could possibly meet, who hadn't even heard of parliament before you got here. Those people I have met who shed tears of joy when they tell me stories about how you helped them when no one else would. Those people who are at the bottom of this shit heap called capitalism who finally had someone to advocate on their behalf for their vision of how this world could be. Those people who are too young to legally have an opinion on how parliament runs but could at least come to you and share their opinion and it would be listened to. Those people who got involved in Green activism because through you they could see that this mission we're on is one for change, one for difference and diversity and one for the future of this world. Bro, thanks for being my hero. Thanks for all the inspiration and thanks for being human. Your mahi will live on and I hope that some of that mahi lives on through me. Kind of hard singing a waiata on a blog, but here goes. E hara i te mea No naianei te aroha No nga tupuna Tuku iho tuku iho Te whenua te whenua Te oranga mo te iwi No nga tupuna Tuku iho tuku iho Whakapono tumanako Te aroha ki te iwi No nga tupuna Tuku iho tuku iho EDIT Translation as requested: It is not a new thing Now that is love Comes from the ancestors Handed down through the passages of time The land, the land Is the life for the people Comes from the ancestors Handed down through the passages of time Faith and hope Love to the people Comes from the ancestors Handed down through the passages of time