GPJA Forum Tonight 7.30pm Politics of Mining in the Third World

Tonight I am speaking at the Global Peace and Justice Aotearoa Forum, along with Maire Leadbeater. The topic is the politics of Mining in the Third World - we will look at the situation in West Papua and the Philippines. In short - its local communities verses the mining multinationals.

Where: Trades Hall, 147 Great North Road, Grey Lynn
When: Monday 1 December 2008, 7.30

From GJPA newsletter.

GPJA FORUM – THE POLITICS OF THIRD WORLD MINING. Speakers include: Maire Leadbeater, human rights activist, will talk about the struggle for self-determination in West Papua and the impact of the Freeport mine operations, December 1st is the day the local people raise the West Papuan flag in defiance of their Indonesian occupiers who have banned the flag raising ceremonies in West Papua. Joe Hendren, New Zealand trade union activist recently returned from the Philippines and will talk will talk about the recent landslide at Itogon as an example of what damage mining can do and why people are concerned about the issue. He will then share some photos of the protest outside the Asia Pacific Mining Conference in Manila, where many speakers warned about the dangers of the Oceania Gold project. This will lead into an introduction of the campaign in the Philippines, the upcoming solidarity mission to the area and a discussion about what we might do in New Zealand in support. Oceania Gold Mining is an Australian NZ Gold Mining Company, with mines in NZ in Macrae and Reefton. It has members of the board of Directors in Auckland and is financed by the ANZ and the HSBC banks. There is currently a campaign lead by local indigenous communities to close the Mine and they are seeking assistance in doing so from activists here. We plan to discuss this at the meeting. Information and an online petition can be found here:

Switch blogger

I was putting off upgrading to the new blogger software in case of problems, but tonight the new blogger claims to be out of Beta and insisted I make the switch. If you spot any obvious issues please leave a comment and tell me.

Apologies for the lack of posting of late. I have been juggling being busy with work and getting myself settled in a new city. A lot of the busy around work is self inflicted, but I am really enjoying my job (well 95% of the time) and feel I am doing stuff that is worthwhile. I hope things settle down when I get myself into my new flat - next step is to find a flatmate who wants to live in Onehunga.

And thanks to all the new blogs that have linked here in the last month or so. Linkage is on its way soon.

BBC World Service only leads to Ping Pong

I found something I like about being in Auckland. As I was driving to work today I channel surfed in the hope of finding a decent National Radio FM signal.

To my surprise I came across the BBC World Service on 801 AM - great - I now have a choice between two commercial free newsgeek stations. I stopped listening to commercial radio a long time ago as I find saturation level advertising intrusive and annoying.

Tonight I camped at a pub in Onehunga to watch the cricket. On my way home, just after 11pm I put my radio back on the Beeb and found an interesting technology programme, Digital Planet. Today they looked at the growth of open source software, including discussion of a European Union Commission report that found that in 'almost all' cases long-term (business) costs could e reduced if businesses dropped proprietary software (such as Microslop) in favour of open source solutions. I am sure there is probably some right wing fruit loop somewhere in the world who thinks open source is a front for communism.

They also had a bit of discussion on how bloggers are holding big business to account, which certainly caught my attention :) Sadly I missed some of this item as I was unable to tune my home radio to the same frequency. But on going out to the car I ended up meeting one of my new neighbours who invited me to meet the flat and have a game of ping pong. Great to find the neighbours so friendly

Stella the cat is also very friendly, in fact I met her almost as soon as I arrived here :)

So if my car stereo had not randomly stumbled across BBC World Service this morning, I would not have met the neighbours, making it highly unlikely I would have finished the day with a midnight game of ping pong. Funny how things work out sometimes.

Unusual hand luggage

What is the oddest thing you have taken onto a plane as hand luggage? Was your luggage inspected as a result?

Passing through airport security on my way home late on Tuesday night the man operating the x-ray machine suddenly looked very puzzled. He put my black laptop bag through the x-ray machine once again, and once again looked puzzled. I was puzzled too, as my laptop bag had virtually nothing in it apart from a book and a few printed pieces of A4 paper. He took me aside and we opened my bag, only to find....my small stapler. I had forgotten all about it.

I had been preparing for a job interview the night before, and had printed out around 20 pages of preparation to take with me to re-read on the plane. At the last minute I grabbed my stapler and put it in my bag, as I thought it might be a useful way of putting these bits of paper in to some resemblance of order. As I only traveled up to Auckland for the day, I did not have any check in baggage.

Apparently my stapler, made of partly translucent plastic and metal looked very strange on the airport scanner.

I wondered what it looked like so I stuck the stapler on the scanner when I got home. It seems rather appropriate that my stapler is called a "Rapid X-Ray"!

The only other time my carry on baggage was inspected in any way was leaving Seoul airport on my way home to Christchurch. The Korean airport security took a very close look at the small alarm clock I had in my pocket, taking the battery out and shaking it to see if there was anything inside. I admit I was a little amused by this - I guess my little alarm clock was a timing device - by only for me, not a bomb. Like the stapler situation I felt I had a good reason for taking something a little bit odd on as hand luggage. I had just handed in my UK cellphone, and not owning a watch at that point, my little alarm clock was my only means of telling the time.

Big snow in Christchurch, spare a thought for Geraldine

Had a rather exciting day as I had to ensure Mum got to Christchurch airport in order to get her connecting flight to London. Today, of all days! Spent most of the day glued to the radio, sussing out the goss on which roads were likely to be blocked as our little Renault is no snowplow. Mum had almost resigned herself to flying out tomorrow when we heard that Christchurch airport had reopened for incoming flights around 3pm. Yay!

Mum's friend Helen had even more trouble making the flight, as she had to make her way from snowed in Geraldine. For most of the day we were worried that Rusty and Helen had no show of making it to Christchurch. But as the southern snow subsided around noon, they decided to give it a go. Even with a 4 wheel drive and a set of chains, they still got stuck twice coming down the hill from Geraldine, and had to be pulled out by tractor type things (city kid language ok!), with the snow reaching the 'belly' of the car. Once they got onto the main road they had no major problems, but by then the day had already seemed too much of an adventure. Suffice to say we were very happy to see Rusty and Helen at the airport.

And spare a thought for the South Canterbury folks tonight - today Geraldine had no power, no water and over 2 feet of snow. Apparently there are four large 4WD's stuck in the snow on the main street, so it appears even SUVs can't get very far.

Wellington and interviews

In Wellington today for a job interview, will be in the capital for a couple of days. I would rather not say at this stage exactly what the job is, just in case I don't get it :)

As part of the interview process I had to do a 10 minute presentation. I found myself quite stressed out about the presentation late late last night as I did not feel the ideas were jelling together at all well.

Well I surprised myself today. I felt the presentation and the interview went very well. I honestly don't know if I will get the job or not, as I expect I am up against some good people, but it served as a good personal lesson not to let my perfectionism gene run rampant in the early hours of the morning. Feeling a lot happier about things now, but in need of sleep!

It was obvious a great deal of thought had gone into designing the interview process and I thought the quality of questions was very high. I was surprised as part of the interview to be asked for my reaction to a series of pictures. For example one picture was a painting of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. As an interview technique I thought this worked far better than I would have expected, but perhaps my tendency to think outside the square did help somewhat :)

Letterbox awards for Campaign '05

Driving home in the car today I planned to make a post about letterboxes, only to find Span already musing on the same subject.

Election time for most politicos usually involves strolling around the local streets delivering leaflets of information in the hope of better informing voters.

Today I strolled down memory lane, delivering Alliance tabloids to the very first street I lived, Haslet Place in Riccarton. I snuck a peek down the driveway to see the old house, the red-brick box I had not lived in since 1983 or thereabouts. As I folded each tabloid and placed it in each letterbox in Haslet Place, I came across a lovely childhood memory I had long forgotten.

The Lighthouse Letterbox. As a tot I remember enjoying walking past the letterbox shaped like a model lighthouse, with little windows and a tiny railing around the top. I liked the novelty of the letters going in vertically through a narrow slot and the decorative rocks attached to the base of the lighthouse. Sadly, like many real lighthouses, the passing of twenty years has left the lighthouse letterbox in a rather tatty state of repair. Once it looked so proud and novel.

But my vote for the best letterbox I saw this election campaign goes to some ingenious folks in Hokitika. What was perched out at the gate, where a letterbox should be?

An Old Microwave, with a the number of the house painted in white on the dark microwave door. Delivering a leaflet involved opening the door, which as I thought later was a great way to protect the mail from the elements - no more soggy envelopes!

Any other nominations for best letterbox of Election '05?

Southern Billboard Wars

Sorry for the lack of transmission - went on a road trip to Dunedin in the weekend with my friend Q. For two seasoned politicos the election hoardings provided some added interest as the road sped by. In case anyone is wondering, we stuck to the speed limit on the Canterbury Plains, as I doubt we would have seen much if we had motored like a certain motocade.

I can't remember going on a long road trip during an election campaign before - it was quite interesting to travel through the different electorates and see the state of the local billboard wars. We passed through Aoraki and Otago, two electorates likely to produce close local contests.

Will post some of my observations in the next couple of days.