The Grillo Brand

Friends come and go, enemies accumulate. I've argued friends into enmity over religion, sport and fluoridation, to name a few topics off the top of my head. Seeing how popular the Jeremy Paxton interview of Russell Brand is around the place, I'm preparing to take a hit to the circle in order to triangulate this village idiot in the public square.

Since first encountering the persona of Russell Brand, not a long time ago admittedly, I have considered him a clown. It's as if someone had taken Brit comedian Ross Noble, forced him into a perm and Boy George make-up, and then gave him a wanker transplant.

Maybe it's the born-again addict schtick he waves about the place, giving high functioning dope fiends a bad rap with his disease-ification of joie de vivre. Perhaps it's the humourless earnestness, without the rudimentary acting talent of Brangelina to balance it out a little.

But this most recent bit of theatre goes beyond absurd. Such rants should be taken as seriously as a first year BA student pontificating over Jager shots in the uni pub, with which the appearance bears a striking resemblance.

A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and Brand knows even less. Strangely, this is a point of pride for him. Ignorance may yet be bliss. In this, he follows Italian politician Grillo, the anti-political politician. Or the Weimar Republic with its splintering political factions. All in all, not a good omen.

Sure, he could do all that boring stuff like reading the details; the sum of our histories, perhaps a bit of his namesake Bertrand Russell. He definitely needs to stay away from Jean-Paul Sartre. You only have to look at South-East Asia's recent past to see where following him leads. Camus at a pinch would help. The Trial Fall is short enough for even Brand's attention span.

No, it must be Revolution, sez him. We must burn the village to save it. Well, Russ, nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of thousand all you'll end up with is a burnt village. A homogenised wasteland, like the Australian outback or Colin Craig's wardrobe.

Never fuck with entropy. The second law of thermodynamics will always win. It will be how things end, not with a bang but with a whimper (literary reference there, Russ).

Destruction is easy. Creation is hard. I wouldn't want to live on a planet ruled by Russell Brand or anything like his vacuous populism. I'd rather be ruled by lizards than amoebas.

All's Fair in Love and Mayor

Revenge might be a dish best served cold, but Schadenfreude seduces the palate quite nicely too. Succulent indeed is the pleasure as the private prosecution against John Banks continues to trial.

Not only is Banks the second government coalition leader to lose his ministerial warrant this year, he is also the second 1990's National government cabinet minister to end up on trial, the former Police Minister following former Justice Minister Doug Graham in front of the judges. All in all, it's not a good look.

Unfortunately for the Christian Right, adultery isn't illegal. Fraud and perjury is.

Five STVs and a Shoo-in

One symptom of a political junkie is when a sizeable chunk of one's social network is standing in the local government elections. The ones who aren't MPs, anyway. And good on them. Better the devil you know.

Even so, I am finding it extraordinarily difficult to give a fat rat's crack about filling in those pumpkin-coloured electoral papers. This may be because I live in a three-horse town (they sometimes gait past my gate).

It's not Auckland or Otautahi, where things actually matter. Nor is it Wellington, with a choice between a disappointment of a mayor with her base deserted, or a has-been 70's cricketer who can't stop bodylining his audience. Giant Douche or Turd Sandwich indeed.

Sure, there are issues facing Kapiti. The debt per resident in the previous year was $2642, compared to Wellington City's $1843, but that can largely get resolved by moving the rates base away from an anomalous land only rating (the only council in the province with a rating system that excludes capital improvements), and introducing a business differential (at present, rates in Kapiti are the same for business and residential. No other council in the region has this policy either).

Jenny Rowan gets my tick as mayor of Pram, mainly on the basis of actually having met her once in person (Call it the Peter Dunne Effect). Gru Gurunathan was number two, because of his visibility in the local rag. I have never read his columns (or at least, none were memorable) but at least he's visible.

The rest of the list was ranked based on the meaningless blurbs submitted in the accompanying 68 page electoral instruction and candidate information booklet (WARNING: MAY CAUSE NARCOLEPSY), and the only article I could find on local candidate meetings:

David Scott 3, Ivan Sage 4, Jackie Elliott 5, Ross Church 6, Gavin Welsh 7. Yeah, I know I didn't have to rank Jar Jar Binks, but he's still preferable to Darth Nutter.

I have yet to decide on electing 5 At Large District Councillors. I wouldn't recognise any of the 15 candidates if they were lying in the gutter pissing lager. I don't like this At Large vote, anyway. Stuff what Local Government NZ thinks. I may just leave this blank out of plain, unadulterated apathy.

There is only one candidate for the sole ward seat, so no democracy needed there. Janet Holborow, elected unopposed.

Seven candidates vying for four seats on the community board. Two of them are also running for councillors jobs. David Scott is running for mayor as well, so screw his triple-dipping arse. In fact, none of them matter. Do not care. Will probably ending up ranking them out of drunken spite.

Flipped a coin for the sole Regional Councillor. Nigel Wilson 1, Chris Turver 2.

23 candidates for 7 District Health Board positions. Not even bothering to try to sort that snout trough out. If DHB elections disappeared from the ballot, no-one would notice. I'll probably leave that blank too. Ta for the useless formalities, Labour!

Two Cups, Some Barrels and a John

Now that the America's Cup funneth over, John Key's government is seriously considering how many more barrels of cash to throw overboard into the deep blue. Perhaps that money could be sacrificed to a greater sporting good? Here's another two Cups that NZ could enter to raise its profile.

The Yankers Cup:

A high-octane off-road motorsport, traditional to Hawaii. For over a hundred years, with rules and conditions mutually agreed by the two competitors, this high performance motor race around the active volcano Mauna Kea battles the United States Armed Forces against the native Hawaiians. The Hawaiians have never won a contest.

The Yankers Cup is an endurance race, beginning amidst sandy beaches and hotels. The route then winds its way through the national park and up a forty metre wide track carved into the side of Mauna Kea by army engineers back in 1963 (Prior to then, only a narrow road existed, built by slave AIG executives). The race concludes with the car leaping into the mouth of the volcano. Points are awarded for speed, jump techique, and how long it takes for the driver to stop screaming.

John Key's interest in the Cup began as soon as he heard the word Kea. "That's us," Key said. "Keas have always had a competitive edge in moving really fast away from things. From planes to motorbikes to jet boats to brain drains, Keas are world leaders at running away. We can win this thing, if we throw enough money at it."

Mount Ruapehu has been considered as a likely local site if New Zealand wins the contest. The prime minister conceded that White Island may also be considered, largely due to the new Maritime Act keeping environmental activists away.

Treasury is the department with statutory responsibility for evaluating the economic merits for the Yankers Cup. In a short statement released earlier today, Treasury denied it was pressured by Finance Minister Bill English to amend its position.

A five thousand page alleged draft report had been leaked to the press raising grave doubts as to the cost benefit assumptions, whilst Treasury's official report was a four word statement: "We relaxed with it."

The Rendition Cup:

Teams must take the standard unit of CIA freight (half a ton of cocaine) from Guam to Guantanamo Bay. First to arrive at Guantanamo Bay without getting spotted by the MSM or other teams' listening posts wins.

The contest began not long after 9/11, when various US security agencies competed to see how brazenly they could rendition terror suspects without getting snapped by the mainstream media or international courts.

The most regular winners so far have been the Black Seals, who are rumoured to use a nuclear submarine to deliver the payload by traveling via Antarctica and New Zealand's territorial waters.

John Key denies hearing about the competition from the GCSB, although he is open to New Zealand taking part in the contest. "Our research department has been working on stealth technology for some time," admitted the prime minister.

"Cringe Cloaking is based on the principle that if you do something so lame and embarrassing, people will actively avoid looking at you. Haka Overuse Syndrome is a good example of this."

A recent prototype of the special fabric was tested during the America's Cup regatta:



"Phosphate dredging around the Chatham Islands should help bung up the Black Seal's water coolant intake as well," said the prime minister. We can win this thing, if we throw enough money at it."

Downstage Down

It's a sad to note the demise of Wellington's Downstage Theatre. I've seen some good plots there, Ian Mune's King Lear topping the list.

It is some small consolation that one of Downstage's board treaders (Untold Tales of Maui's Taika Cohen) has managed to monetise his art into a memorable skit adored by dope fiends and Soccer Mums alike:



It's a sort of sequel to Two Cars One Night, which was set outside a pub, the most common childcare centre for Generations X and older.

Presumably there's a third part, involving Mums monged on prescription meds. As the Law Commission pointed out in their drugs review (Part One, pg. 43), between 1958 and 1971, 11.6 percent of married women were on prescribed hypnotics, tranqs (or both). If recent research is anything to go by, little has changed in this area.

True Colours

And so the sun sets on the penultimate day of the New Zealand Labour Party's premiere leadership primary. For most of the past month, the primary has led the politics columns. This has allowed National to get on with business, undisturbed by the turbulence that has rocked in for the rest of the year. For everyone's sakes, I hope this circus was worth it.

For truth be told, Cunliffe had this one in the bag from the start, the caucus ABC's be damned. The Labour cowmatua gave it a gamble with Shearer. That outsider didn't work out, and might have brought to a head the rank and file disgruntlement in the form of the new primary rules.

Cunliffe is a relatively safe bet in comparison to the Shearer gambit and, besides, it's his turn. That's Labour logic through and through.

Grant Robertson has done his next stab at the job no end of good, raising his visibility beyond the loyal Beltway. Jenny Michie did no foul to him, yet this loyal and hard working Labour Party stalwart's treatment at the hands of Cunliffe foreshadows future fickleness.

The Devil in Mr Jones has rehabilitated as much as he is ever going to. It's sad to see that Shane "Te Dude" Jones was the best option that the Pragmatic Labour caucus had to throw into the contest. Such is the debilitating effect Helen Clark had in sowing salt within their ranks.

It would be interesting to see what would happen if Helen Clark's name appeared on the voting ballot. I reckon she'd still be top of the pops with the base, five long years since the voters threw her out.

There's a lesson there, but whether Labour's rank and file grok that is another story. After all, no-one can accuse Chris Trotter of being a neo-Marxist. There's nothing new at all there. Yet he has no qualms about muddying the name of liberalism with a neo prefix.

This is what happens when you sow the Fourth Labour false narrative into the myth:



Here's Dangerous Minds with a balanced retrospective of Split Enz's Mr Philip Judd.

Ouija in Kiwi is Yeah, Nah

Contemporary society scoffs at the Victorian era quacks, who believed such nonsense as phrenology, the art of determining a person's character by the shape of the head. Today's quackery is much more sophisticated. It's called psychometric testing.

Like the original Ouija board, psychometric tests such as the Myers Brigg Type Indicator might be wholesome entertainment, but I wouldn't like to stake my career on one of them. So it's good to see this black box bigotry is getting challenged, because this HRD voodoo has to stop.

It's culturally biased and loaded with false positive discrimination (maybe the subject likes opera because they're gay, maybe the subject likes being alone because their workmates are discussing X Factor).

It loads recipients with expectations of certain self-censoring behaviours, and then wonders why their workforce is scoffing anti-depressants (At least Freud knew repression was bad).

But worst of all, it creates an underclass borne of superstitious orthodoxies which can't be challenged.

Lost in the Damascus Experience

Adam Curtis not only looks at the the hands behind Syria's modern history, but also at the terrible misunderstandings that deaf people can bring to a diplomatic incident:

The Americans had been planning another military coup, code-named Operation Wappen. The CIA man in charge was called Howard "Rocky" Stone, and he terrified the Syrians because he always stared intensely at them. But Stone did this because he was almost completely deaf - and he was trying to read their lips.

This is one of the many reasons I never applied for a job in MFAT.

The Man Who Would be Twerking

Shane Jones. Often beaten, never kippled.

Primary Colours

Rodney Hide cannot resist putting the boot into Labour's leadership primary in his column today in the Herald on Sunday. Which is a bit rich coming from a former party leader who gained his thorny crown from Act's leadership primary in 2004.

Here's me describing Act's season of Dancing with Leaders back when the Greens were looking for Rod Donald's replacement:

Fortunately for the Greens, there is precedent for them to go off. The leadership scrap in Act showed how not to do things. Like the Greens, Act believe (or at least used to believe) in direct democracy. The primary race, while good on paper and ideologically sound, is a dangerous thing for a niche party to do in practise. I re-joined Act when it became clear that Prebs was standing down. Like most Act members, I had made up my mind who to vote for way before the big day. I joined so I could vote for Rodney and keep Stephen Franks and the Rabids from taking over.

I went along to a Meet the Candidates meeting anyway, just to be certain of my decision. Speaking order was very fairly decided by random ballot. One by one, the four contenders stood at the podium and gave absolutely no clue why they would be the best leader for Act. Oh yeah, everyone got the blurbs, the CVs, the former glories. Staying true to Act's core values was mentioned more often than the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi are mentioned in statutes. The meetings didn't change a thing. They only provided media fodder to highlight rifts in Act.

Which is it, Rodney? Amnesia, willful ignorance or just plain old tribal shit-stirring?

In Act's primary, half its then-caucus stood for leader; Rodney Hide, Stephen Franks, Muriel Newman and Ken Shirley. You could say each faction had their hat in the ring. The populist Libz, the conservative Rabids, the nutty Rabids and the moderate Libz (for Libz and Rabids definitions, please see here).

The Labour primary also has all three tribes of the Labour caucus represented; Careerist Labour, Union Labour and Pragmatic Labour. Needless to say, Pragmatic Labour is the underdog by a long shot. For a party three times the size Act ever was, it still has fewer divisions than Act did.

If there's any criticism to be aimed at this Labour primary, it is the Byzantine voting procedure that's as clear as mud. The Greens and Act have a clean vote for their leaders, one vote per person. Whereas Labour has this mess of weighted votes that may well render a victory so opaque, it might have well been decided in a back room deal in the first place.

I suppose that's what happens when Labour tries to retrofit a true democratic system onto a representative one. As the saying goes, a horse designed by committee is called a cow. A horse designed by a Labour committee is called a cow's ass.

Cunlife

Confidence is a preference for the Labour Party Leader
Of what is known as
(Cunlife)
Electoral defeat can be avoided
If you take a route straight through what is known as
(Cunlife)

John's got defensive he gets intimidated
By the pesky journos, they love a bit of him
(Cunlife)
Who's that trader fooling?
You should cut down on your Cunlife mate, go to Hawaii

All the people
So many people
They all go hand in hand
Hand in hand to choose Cunlife
Know what I mean?

I get up when I want except on Tuesdays
When I get rudely awakened by the Chief Whip
(Skippy)
I put my lei on, have a cup of kava
And I think about leading the House
(Cunlife)

I feed the unions I sometimes feed the activists too
It gives me a sense of enormous well-being
(Cunlife)
And then I'm happy for the rest of the day safe in the knowledge
There will always be a bit of my id devoted to it

All the people
So many people
And they all go hand in hand
Hand in hand to choose Cunlife

Cunlife
(Cunlife)
Cunlife
(Cunlife)

It's got nothing to do with
Autobahn technique you know
(Cunlife)
And it's not about you sloggers
Who go round and round and round
(Cunlife)

All the people
So many people
And they all go hand in hand
Hand in hand to choose Cunlife

All the people
So many people
And they all go hand in hand
Hand in hand to choose Cunlife

Adding insult to manslaughter

As if it's not bad enough that the cops have shot an innocent civilian and breached confidentiality agreements, the Plodders have to go and short-change the Naitoko family too.

The cops blurted all and sundry details yesterday with what was supposed to be a face-saving press release. Instead, they ended up looking like a bunch of bullies blundering through the delicate fields of raw emotion.

Nothing unusual there, of course. It's just that this time it's no villain they're tickling, it's a bone fide honest citizen's death and the hole left in their family. There's no Garth McVicar pantomime to plead their case in the media. These victims are too brown for that clown, eh.

If I read between the lines of that Police PR shill correctly, it's not a stretch to presume that the AOS button man shot what was believed to be the right man, due to either garbled communications, loud wops from the Eagle chopper fogging the Comms, or institutionalised racial assumptions. In Copthink, what were the odds that the white guy was bad and the brown guy was good?

Anyways, back to the cheap blue line. Aside from the thousand apologies still owed by the cops to the Naitokos, the NZ Police still owe the Naitoko family another three million, two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars in blood money.

That is the difference between what the cops have coughed up so far, and the $3.5 million statistical value of a human life in NZ (2009 prices). This figure is used to plug everything from Joyce's Roads of Notional Significance through to the Drowning Toll, so I can't see why it isn't used to recompense manslaughter by the state as well.

Maybe Greg O'Connor could be useful for once and have a whip around his union for the shortfall.

Who's Next - Behind Blue Eyes

Ed Milliband had better look out. Labour Parties in the bigger Commonwealth nations have a case of the jitters. Rudd stabbed Gillard in Canberra with a boomerang (a useless stabbing tool, but when life hands you lemons, etc.). David Shearer has just planked himself in Wellington before his useless crew mutinied. If UK Labour can't stop the bleed to UKIP and other protest votes, Ed Millibot's political career might as well jump in a peat bog as well.

It's a sure bet that David Cunliffe will become the third NZ Labour party leader in as many years. Putting aside that iPredict has him out in front by a Pinocchio's nose, there's the party membership and union bloc vote that almost guarantees Cunliffe's coronation. Pity the poor bloody caucus that has to live with it.

It's nothing personal against Cunliffe. My old man was well hated within his Labour party caucus too. Usually, this displeasure is rewarded with placements on the fringes, not the leadership. If Shearer felt undermined by his peers, Cunliffe as leader had best tread lightly.

Frankly, the leadership is not Labour's biggest problem. The party has become infected with Alliance party nomads, and the dead wood of caucus might be the only buffer keeping these nutters away from even worse damage. It seems the party has given up on electorates and destined for the minor party ploy of going only after the party vote.

No-one in Labour has any idea of grand strategy. What Labour really needs right now is some strategic nous, and Cunliffe is almost certain to deliver a large jump to the the Left, where none of the votes are at.

Here's The Who with Behind Blue Eyes, before Limp Bizkit ruined it:

A Willing Sucker, A Willing Shanker

There's plenty of Schadenfreude to go around Parliament right now.

Press Gallery muppets, formerly in thrall to the government spinners and shakers, have revolted over the Vance revelations. The scalp of the head of Parliamentary Services was offered on a platter, apparently for not telling National's Chief of Staff to go fuck himself before he would release Dunne's data. Fresh from voting for the second reading of the GCSB Bill, Peter Dunne is seeking legal advice over the privacy of ministerial communications.

In a forlorn effort to shut the whole thing down in an officialese version of the DDoS attack that took down several National party websites this week, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet dumped a redacted email trail late Friday afternoon.

The dump is repetitive and narrow. For example, it doesn't list the correspondence between DPMC, National Chief of Staff Wayne Eagleson, and the Henry Enquiry, Parliamentary Services and Ministerial Services. Curiously enough though, the DPMC's disclosure signature appears scattered throughout the email trail.

I hope the Parliamentary Privileges Committee gets access to all phone logs, notes from F2F meetings and emails between all these actors, in their inquiry into the inquiry into the leak.

The dump itself reminds me of working for Telecom's *123 mobile helpdesk back in the day. There's elements of The Office at play in there, as well as the usual bureaucratic Chinese Whispers and Pavlov Expectorations. There's occasional flashes of geek curiosity and BOFH (Bastard Operator From Hell) elation:

Annie was surprised. This is the level of novelty that the Henry witch hunt entailed. This is uncharted constitutional territory, and DPMC is drawing the map as it sees fit.

I suppose it is too much to ask for Dunne to reconsider his vote for the third reading of the GCSB Bill. Anything for yet another rigged game in Ohariu, eh.

2+2=5

All hail the birth of Prince George of Orwell, third in line to the throne of Airstrip One, Defender of the faith of the Church of England and Patron Saint of women's magazines, lazy newspaper editors and the vacuous live cross-promotional soapbox theatre sock puppets of TV news.

# We have always been at war with *CLASSIFIED*:

The US refuses to name its clear and present antagonists in the War on Terror on the grounds of national security.

# Truth is Treason

Nicky Hagar reports on Stuff that the NZ Defence Force, GCSB and SIS were among the people tracking and tracing freelance journalist Jon Stephenson in Afghanistan:

An internal Defence document leaked to the Star-Times reveals that defence security staff viewed investigative journalists as "hostile" threats requiring "counteraction". The classified security manual lists security threats, including "certain investigative journalists" who may attempt to obtain "politically sensitive information".

The manual says Chief of Defence Force approval is required before any NZDF participation in "counter intelligence activity" is undertaken.

What lengths would the NZDF go to in order to save face on the basis of national security? Would they nobble a civilian jury, for example? I have met Defence Force PR people in the past. It's a safe bet that what they know about ethics could be written on an SD card in crayon.

# Hard is Soft

Rachel Smalley loses her 2012 Loki Award for the cross-promotional fluff that has infected The Nation. Who gives a rat's fat crack about X Factor on an alleged hard news program?

# Arbeit Macht Frei

The welfare reforms continue to bite. It's early days yet, but cracks are beginning to show. If the UK experience in outsourced welfare is anything to go by, big problems should be evident in time for next year's election.