New Zealand Conservative

From The Guardian: Russia threatens to ban Google, Twitter and Facebook over extremist content : Russia’s communications watchdog has threatened to fine Facebook, Google and Twitter and block their services under a controversial law on blogging. In a letter to executives on on Monday, the director of the communications oversight agency warned that the three US companies could face sanctions if they continued alleged illegal activities in Russia, Izvestia newspaper reported on Wednesday. Any action could affect a number of social media sites: besides its eponymous social network, Facebook also owns the photo-sharing service Instagram, while Google owns YouTube, BlogSpot and Google+. Facebook and Twitter, in particular, have been instrumental to organisers of opposition protests in Russia, where the major television news channels are controlled by the state. A spokesman told the state news agency RIA Novosti that the watchdog’s complaints related mainly to deleting pages with ext...

I need an alternative way of contacting you. Please check your Gmail to start with.

I'm changing the commenting system over to a 3rd party and have run into some trouble with it, in that what should have been a simple import and change over has not been. It did pop up briefly for me on one post and then disappear again, which is weird. I'll look at it again tonight, but in the meantime, our commenting is not quite available. Or maybe it will just start working by itself. Hopefully! UPDATE : I've been in contact with Disqus support and they've sent me a screenshot of this post with a comment loaded in Disqus. That's the comment I made from the mobile. Apparently it's all working. I haven't had a chance to go through all their suggestions to make it work for me on my desktop, but in the meantime, if anyone out there can actually see the comments, please make a comment and let me know. UPDATE 2 : Interesting. Clearing all my cookies (after just trying the Disqus cookie) allowed me to see the comments. Logging into Google made them...

A couple of weeks ago I was wanting to read something worthwhile, and even thought to myself that it would be good if I could find something on Kindle.  I was thinking of fiction rather than non-fiction, as I seem to read quite a few non-fiction books and very little fiction, so I was really wanting a story. All of this thinking occurred just before bedtime, and as I normally do at night, in the process of closing down my computer, I just had a last look around.   A post on our sidebar caught my eye by Te Deum laudamus! , Book Review | The Price to Pay: A Muslim Risks All to Follow Christ : The Price to Pay grabs you by the seat of your pants right on the first page and doesn't let go until you are done. It begins in Iraq in the late 1980's with a Muslim man from a tribe with considerable esteem who encounters an Iraqi Catholic while in mandatory military service. Without spoiling it, suffice it to say, that after initially having a serious aversion to the guy, h...

I will no longer read or respond to private messages or emails that seek to convince me that I'm on the wrong side in this whole issue, or that I am aiding in the harassment, or that I being disrespectful, or the implication being made that I am a bit simple and didn't know what I was doing. Say what you will in public where everyone can see, or don't say it at all. I am really pissed now, and I'm certainly seeing how this whole thing spiraled out of control in the first place.

Peter Aranyi has written a though t provoking post on a recent court case between two bloggers. Is this what we want? Internet ‘take down’ and indefinite gagging orders? Well worth reading , to think about the principles of the issue, not the specifics . UPDATE: Added the "t" to thought above, and the second part of the last sentence, ie the bolded content.

Satire site "The Civilian" has announced plans to follow in the footsteps of Twitter and limit satire to 140 characters , just for a laugh.

Ben Uffindell, writer of the "The Civilian" is reportedly thinking of quitting blogging, following the hint of legal action over a recent post lampooning Colin Craig. Whilst he has kept a brave face, insiders say the stress caused by the emails has actually hit Ben pretty hard. "He talks tough, but he is really quite sensitive.  This has hurt him more than you will know, but don't quote me on that." His faith in satire as a comedic medium has been sorely tested as a growing percentage of the population has argued that everything he is written is substantially true.  A recent post about Bob Parker returning to [outer] space was meant to be a joke, but Bob confirmed today that he was indeed from the planet Tharx.  However, his Tharxian code of honour prevented him from suing The Civilian.  Although Bob did have the option of sucking Ben's brains out through his nostrils, if he so chooses.  Satirical analysts have noted that the follow up posts were ...

It's a very stupid argument to pretend that your opposing party thinks the sun will not rise if x or y happens. I have NEVER heard anyone use this argument, although I hear the reverse plenty from people who are avoiding making serious points by dancing around with comments like this. So let's get this clear: The Aztecs occasionally missed a sacrifice, and the sun did rise. The Roman Empire withered and died, and the sun did rise. Hitler killed 11 million or so in concentration camps, and the sun did rise. Stalin worked another 30 million to death, and the sun did rise. 17,000+ abortions in NZ last year, and the sun did rise. Children killed in mass shootings, and the sun did rise. Friends and family diagnosed with cancer, and the sun did rise. A piece of legislation passed, and the sun did rise. No-one really expected otherwise. Seriously. The actual argument being made is "I don't foresee any negative consequences in action x", or perhaps "...

Lucia wrote a post countering Willie Jackson's call to make the Maori language compulsory in schools. In essence, she said: "I grew up bilingual. I also did very well at school, much to the surprise of many of my teachers....However, I would never call for learning any language to be made compulsory...When it comes down to it, the choice of a language ought to be decided by the parents, not by the State." In response, this comment threat was left on our blog today: "Fuck you ur such a racist bitch I'll stomp your face in u ugly dirt mouth rat I will shove a knife in ur sons throat and cut his lungs out so he can't speak like you." Firstly, it should be very clear that Lucia's words are not racist. Secondly, these are the words of a sick person. What kind of character acts like this? Who knows what other sorts of things he thinks he is permitted to do? Who knows what he will go on to do with his life? The newspapers are filled with stor...

I have a theory that Whaleoil needs to make anyone who disagrees with him evil, so he can justify to himself his own bad behaviour and the vitriol he heaps on others, like Lucia and Andrei. It would be a refreshing change of character to see Whaleoil act with a little more common decency, instead of this incessant character assassination. It was like this on the smacking debate, where any parent that would consider physical discipline one option out of many as part of parenting had to be cast as a child abuser, and on this particular debate it is equally important to cast any one who thinks the word marriage has a specific definition, has to be cast as homophobic to justify their own intolerance for different view points. Personally, seeing genuine debate of different perspectives reduced to calling people "haters" is of major concern to me when looking for signs that liberal/progressive intolerance for anyone against their views is increasingly fundamentalist and in very ...

I started blogging in early 2005 on the now defunct blog, Sir Humphrey's. A couple of years later I moved to this blog and soon after, Sir Humphrey's died, with some of the remaining bloggers moving over to No Minister. Generally bloggers are quite a helpful bunch. Most will link to other blogger that post regularly on their sites, unless that particular person trolls or they have a major aversion to them. If you look at my sidebar, you'll see quite a few sites that I do not agree with, but that I have some sort of history with, so I link. Bloggers normally link to other sites, as we all benefit when this is done. Over the last few years, live updates showing the latest post of linked blogs has greatly enhanced the blogging experience. I've noticed quite a few readers use this blog to keep an eye out for new posts of interest in our sidebar. It's unusual for blogs not to have a sidebar of blogs. When I was at Sir Humphrey's, which was a very popular ...

Our keyword analysis stats always yield interesting terms. Interesting in the weird ways some people come across our blog. One assumes that many of those would leave just as quickly - sometimes there is an obvious gap between the intent and the result. Some of the most common terms at the moment (aide from the obvious ones like 'nzconservative') are: lolicon, brendan nolan, greece memes, knights templar, melissa johnson, jack russell. Some of the more unexpected ones are: can you have an open casket if you die face down, de lattre de tassigny de gaulle, whipping wife discipline, effects of the berlin wall on New Zealand, how can people villify bush but idolize che guevara, new zealand smells funny.

Death of the mainstream media and rise of the blog? Fairfax announced on Monday that it will cut 1,900 jobs, reduce its flagship broadsheet newspapers in size to tabloid, and close its two major printing presses in Sydney and Melbourne in a bid to cut hundreds of millions from its ballooning costs. The 170-year-old publisher will also introduce paid subscription paywalls to access online content from 2013, and promote a digital first strategy aimed at capturing the online market where three-quarters of its readers are now found. Fairfax chief executive Greg Hywood launched the restructure, to the shock of his staff, on Monday under the banner of Fairfax of the Future. Unrelated? From Jack Webb to Dan Aykroyd: Joe Friday

It's quite often the quick posts that cause the reaction. Little did I know on Sunday morning when I typed out a hurried post while I ate my breakfast before I left home for the day, that condemning IVF as totally immoral would have the usual suspects calling me sick , and new commenters telling me I'm being judgemental and real Christians don't do that, and then those that leapt on the "against nature" comment , trying to make it more that it was. Right, real Christians stay silent when couples mistakenly think that it's perfectly fine to buy a woman's eggs, possibly causing her to become infertile herself, and use those eggs to artificially create children, most of whom never get the chance to be born because most women just want to bear one child, not twenty. So, the excess become expendable. And it's the right thing to not condemn this, to not point out the immorality of treating children like production line goods.  That sounds like an inve...

It's amazing how many hits we get on this post every, single day. Every day. The number of perverts out there is just astounding and more than a little scary. I can only hope that the concept that pornography destroys marriage enters their consciousness in some way. Related link: Marriage Destroyers - Pornography (Lolicon Edition)

I've just noticed a new blog, The Contrarian , through a comment in Kiwiblog from a very new commenter. Looks like the blog is not really ideologically aligned with this one, but his first post: That first taste of fermented gibberish , got my attention as he mentions that he's not been writing for a few years. It’s been a long time since I did any writing, several years in fact, and over that period I have been studying politics, intensely scanning all avenues of the media, trawling the seedy back alleys of the internet and getting into arguments with religious conservatives, far left hippies, right-wing neo Nazi’s, communists, rationalists and, quite bizarrely, people who believe that the world is secretly run by shape changing reptiles from another dimension. These online antics have taught me a few things about constructing logical arguments, how to find and present evidence for or against a position and that people are incredibly reluctant to give up a notion once held...

Quid Deinde? What Next? This is a new venture of mine, a new style of blog and of blogging perhaps. The kick-off is now and a new game has started. This was born out of frustrations with Blogger and Wordpress along with a freedom of spirit - the need not to be tied down by others conceptions of what I might want. And to loosen some of the shackles that technology is building around us - with ever more intrusive demands for information from us we might not particularly want to hand over. What this will lead to I do not know for sure but it is going to be fun - so come on over. Quid Deinde indeed.

This morning, without any obvious warning, Google decided to implement new region based domain names for all NZ and Australian Blogger accounts. Our post: Has Blogger Changed Our Domain Name? So our assigned URL went from nzconservative.blogspot.com to nzconservative.co.nz for people accessing the .com address in NZ. However, if you live in Australia, you'd instead see nzconservative.com.au. If you happened to be in the USA and accessed our blog directly, it would presumably resolve to the .com address, but one commenter from Texas has noted that by going via a link on an Australian blog, they also get the .com.au address. This change has also affected other NZ blogs such as Contra Celsum, No Minister, Liberty Scott, Oswald Bastable's Ranting and so on. In general terms, this should have no direct impact to our blog. Sure, it makes it easier for the government to apply filters to shut down our blog in NZ, but to complain about that here might get our blog shut down...

I am alarmed to see our assigned NZ conservative domain name changed from a dot com (xxx.blogspot.com) address to a dot co dot nz xxx.blogspot.co.nz) address. At this stage, it seems to me that Google have arbitrarily changed our assigned domain name without any form of notification or warning. Even though there is a redirect on, I'm not sure if it is also the cause of several issues I've experienced with some browser utilities and have yet to see the impact on our Stat Counter tools. A quick look and it seems Alexa has picked up the change, with our page rank going from 322,000 or so to 16 million, supposedly as it is detecting a new blog. Has anyone else noticed their NZ blogger domains changing? Update: A "planned" event to make it easier to allow different countries to prevent blog sites from publishing content in their country. Read the details here: Why does my blog redirect to a country specific URL? If you want to preserve your blog address you nee...