NZ MSM death throes.

What has gone wrong with NZ MSM.

Ideally the New Zealand MSM (Main Stream Media) will serve three functions for the maintaining and betterment of democracy

1. Reporting : Make available to the public factual information so the public can make their own decisions as to the politics that are occurring in the country.
2. Investigating : Seeking to find abuses of power within the democratic system
3. Communicate : Providing an area where the general public and elected politicians can meet exchange opinions and perspectives.

Without the MSM providing these three functions, democracy is open to failure. And the ability of the MSM to exist into the future is in doubt.

This is because if the MSM doesn't report, investigate and communicate, the MSM must will become just a mouthpiece of the state, where not even censorship is necessary for the state to leverage the MSM.

We are at the cusp of this  in New Zealand post the 2014 general election, with two of the three functions in disarray.

Investigating

Nicky Hager published his dirty Politics book which provided hundreds of leads for journalists.

Thankfully this was effectively reported, however the next stage investigating, has seen very little development since the books publishing, nor have there been any serious attempt to discredit the book.

Similar the 'Moment of Truth' with Greenwald, Assange and Snowden has seen little published in the MSM, apart from the opinions of the ruling National Party's supporters.

Communicating

Communications by the MSM  are failing as many of the commentators and opinion writers are biased strongly to one pole. Thus they cannot show both sides of any political story and are thus being forced to continue repeating the same mis-truths.

Concluding

If this situation continues the core function of the MSM that of reporting is in danger as it will be come apparent that the MSM can no longer report all the news as many of the stories will be in conflict with others. And at this stage the MSM will become just a mouthpiece of the state.

The beginning of this can be seen in today's political media with the fixation of the media on the non event that is the Labour  leadership contest. Whilst the situation is interesting the MSM can only grasp the issue of politics but has reduced it to personalities. As if it was a reality TV show.

A new position for Labour

Labour leadership debate is irrelevant Labour needs to change its position,

The NZ labour party has failed in three consecutive elections for a number of reasons. The two main reasons are Position and  Leadership. However the Postion of Labour must be corrected before any other changes are made.
Questions remain about Labour's Position. Is it a centrist party? Is it a the lefty leaning party?

Reasons why position is important.

1. If you don't know your own Position how can you communicate it to others. Allowing them to identify with the party.
2. Without a Position there is not a consistent nature to the party policies.
3.  Without Position, a party can not form a vision and a electoral strategy.

My suggestion is that NZ Labour needs to move to the far left, which has now been vacated by Hone and the Mana movement. And then progressively begin pushing towards the center. The only other party in the left is the Green party. Labour needs to stay to the left of the Green party and push the Green Party to the right and to become a middle of the road party along with NZ First and the Maori Party.
If  NZ Labour were to get started with this now it may well be achievable that by 2017 the party will be capable of forming alliances with some of the middle of the road parties to form a Government.

Thus the leadership of the party must be secondary to forming a new position for the party. As once the party's position is established the leader must lead from that new position. Any new leader appointed now should only be considered a transitional leader.

NZ a History of mass surveillance

The NSA won't approve NZ to have ultra-fast broadband until.....

In fact if it can't be monitored we have been unable to develop it.

At one stage to simplify matters a large chunk of our email handling was moved offshore

"Telecom's outsourcing of Xtra's email service to Yahoo started in 2007 and has been plagued by issues since." NZHerald

Even while this service caused NZ users an experience between chaos and hell , NZ'ers only had one alternative and that was to change ISP's or to use a foreign based emailing service such as hotmail or gmail.

Once NZ emails were going to the US. Yahoo was forced with a massive fine over whether it would allow the NSA access via the PRISM project.

Here in New Zealand the situation was more subtle, where the government had to pretend that telecom was not a monopoly and allowed Telecom to extort the worlds most expensive communications charges from their customer base.

As technology changes so has the spying abilities. However the current government has been faced with a massive dilemma in regards to the roll out of ultra-fast broadband. This is the spying facilities would need to be expanded for both the storage and filtering of the data. Strangely enough the governments own RMA act has stopped them from building the installation.

So until the RMA process goes through, the government can't build their data housing building.
Until the data-housing building is up and equipment working we can't all have ultra-fast broadband.

Clues to NSA base in Auckland [location].

"They seek him here, 
They seek him there, 
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere. 
Is he in Heaven or is he in Hell?..." 
 Baldrick in Nob and Nobility


Clue 1.
Using the axiom, "Nobody would think to look for it there because it is too obvious", it thus would be placed it in a very obvious place.

Clue 2. 
In a location with the best view and line of sight, for both optical and radio communications: eg, if you can see it, it can see you.

Clue 3.
The general area would be protected by the government giving unusual concessions to the owners in lieu of rent for the space. These concessions allow the enterprise to be a "self funded operation".

Clue 4.
Large infrastructural requirements would be planned in the area such as tunneling for other reasons such as rail or whatever. leaving further development as necessary.

Everyone forgets the chameleon is the chameleon

Clue 5
It might actually look like a speargun.










Disclaimer: If  you can't find it here you probably haven't searched hard enough

From Colin Craig to Laila Harre

A new up - down political dimension is emerging in New Zealand politics. 

The best evidence of this new dimension is in two minor parties. The Conservative Party and the Internet Party. This is different to the two major parties left - right spectrum held by Labour and National.

This new spectrum is based on simplicity to complexity. The Conservative party embodies simplistic ideals, principles and solutions. This is not to say that Conservative members or voters are less intelligent or educated, it is that they prefer to have a simplified view of the world.

While the Internet Party is extolling grandiose principles such as "Responsive Government" and "Digital Economy and Innovation" the Conservative party is repeating "Tougher Penalties" and "One Law for All"

The difference doesn't end there; the Conservative Party relies on Colin Craig and a few policy makers to decide on a new policy such as "Binding Referendums", where the Internet Party invites the whole membership to participate in developing the policies.

In the past this same phenomenon possibly happened with the NZ Green Party, however they were flattened by the practicalities of everyday politics to be today hard left party with a
n environmental flavor.

If this up/down or complexity/simplicity dimension continues, we can expect to see a two dimensional map of where the parties sit rather than the classical linear approach.