Fighting Talk digest for this week.

Lyndon Hood - differently waged, Lower Hutt Tuesday, April 27, 2004

So I though I'd have a look on the web, and sure enough: any number of people were discussing the actions of the Coalition of the Mislead and Coerced in Iraq with reference to the opinions of Niccolò di Bernado Machiavelli. Opinions, unsurprisingly, varied and many people were clearly working from cliché rather than from the source, but it does all raise a few questions. Not least: why do we care what some 534-year-old Italian thinks anyway? http://fightingtalk.blogspot.com/2004_04_25_fightingtalk_archive.html#1083 03975659780271

Tom Goulter - Disaffected Youth, Christchurch Sunday, April 25, 2004

In what has to be the most daring piece of journalistic burrowing since Woodward and Bernstein, TV3 on Saturday delivered a hard-hitting, objective piece on American and British reactions to the 48 Hours item featuring new pictures of Princess Diana taken moments after the car crash. 48 Hours, of course, being the current-events arm of CBS News, who - that's right, it's time for a punchline! - produced the report 3 News aired. http://fightingtalk.blogspot.com/2004_04_25_fightingtalk_archive.html#1082 89404889169120

Max Johns - South Island flour market researcher, No fixed abode Saturday, April 24, 2004

I hate admitting it, but we owe Winston one. Now that “public domain” has been dropped from our shiny new foreshore and seabed legislation, he can take a bow. For those who’ve had their heads buried in the (somewhat contentious) sand over recent months, “public domain” was due to replace the Crown ownership that Labour wanted to ensure at our nation’s edges.

It was designed to grant all New Zealanders access to beaches, but the difference between this and Crown ownership is minimal. The benefit of “public domain” was that this less colonial-sounding phrase would hopefully placate opposition to the policy.

But it was either (a) a pseudonym for Crown ownership, or (b) entirely meaningless. And legislation, believe it or not, is never meaningless. This was a political dodge developed to put Turiana and co. off the scent – Look! It’s something so fantastic it’s got a new name! Remember when they replaced Mt. Cook with Aoraki, but it was the same mountain all along? http://fightingtalk.blogspot.com/2004_04_18_fightingtalk_archive.html#1082

ENDS

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>