Bill And Jenny Off To Golf Today While Apec Crumbles & Timor Burns

With APEC crumbling around them, and East Timor in crisis, the formal APEC meetings continue to insulate themselves from the real world. Ignoring all social, environmental and political concerns which do not fit into APEC’s narrow economic agenda, Bill Clinton and Jenny Shipley are off to play a round of golf this afternoon.

Flanked by Secret Service agents, the esteemed Leaders of the US and New Zealand “economies” will proceed on foot past the Town Hall and the APEC TaskForce Office at Cigna House, Queen St, where they will pause for a photo-opportunity at 3.30 pm on their downtown walkabout en route for the Domain.

“The best thing to come out of APEC is that I will get to play golf at New Zealand taxpayers’ expense. I get such a power rush knowing that I will cause Auckland to grind to a halt whenever I want to swing my clubs,” says President Clinton.

“APEC Means Business. Big business. But it also means golf. Lots of golf,” added Mrs Shipley.

“Whenever pesky political and economic commentators question whether APEC is anything more than a free trade gabfest going nowhere fast, our spindoctors set up photo-ops down on the golf course,” she says.

“We hope that by waving at the cameras we will reassure the broader Asia-Pacific community that APEC Leaders really don’t give a damn about the lives of people throughout the region. We’re too busy playing footsie with big business”.

She would not comment on speculation that she was in fact a male anti-APEC activist dressed as a woman.

But, she did confide: “APEC is the real DRAG”.

Secret Service Officers “A” “J” and “D” will accompany President Clinton and Prime Minister Shipley on their walkby. They are neither able to confirm nor deny their actual identities nor their golf handicaps.

© 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>>