Oh Oceania, where art thou?

Australian Prime Minister John Howard was defeated by Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd in last Saturday’s election after 11 years in power. This election story was covered by the New York Times and is posted on the Asia Pacific section of the World on their web page. I note this only because Australian and New Zealand news is not always reported by the Times. And it is not because of a dearth of news stories of substance in Oceania. In June of this year John Howard announced that the federal Australian government would take the unprecedented step of intervening in aboriginal affairs after a report was issued that there was widespread child abuse and alcoholism occurring in aboriginal settlements in the Northern Territory. The story was reported by the BBC.com but not at the Times. On October 15th New Zealand police raided a number of alleged Maori terrorist training camps in the North Island, seized weapons and invoked the Terrorism Suppression Act of 2002 for the first time since it was enacted. Earlier this month the New Zealand solicitor general threw out the Terrorist act charges (illegal weapons charges are still pending) faulting the law for its “complexity and incoherence”. Neither the original arrests nor the dismissal of the terrorist charges was reported by the Times.

Bill Bryson in his wonderfully entertaining book on Australia, “In a Sunburned Country” noted that he researched the 1997 index of Times news stories and found 20 articles about Australia while Peru was reported on 120 times and Albania had 150 new stories. I would venture a guess that New Zealand faired worse for being under reported. If the Times can make room for Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan can’t it do a little better in it’s coverage of this region?

Thanksgiving in New Zealand

This past Thursday we celebrated that most unique American holiday, Thanksgiving with our friends George and Suzy and about 60 or so other American Ex-pats at the Pines, an events venue in Houghton Bay that has an absolutely smashing view overlooking the Cook Strait. The American Women’s Association of New Zealand did a terrific job of hosting the event and of course the food and good company were the highlights. The association provided the turkey while each of us was expected to bring a dish that would feed at least 6 people. These were all of the de rigueur Thanksgiving foods: turkey dressing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cooked vegetables and an assortment of sumptuous deserts. It was a diverse crowd of Americans from across the geographical spectrum but it did seem that mid westerners from Iowa and Wisconsin tended to predominate. I guessed correctly that there was a dairy connection after I met Dr. Leo Timms, who was leading a delegation of some twenty students from Iowa State University. They were in New Zealand on a fact finding trip on New Zealand’s dairy industry. Overall I was surprised at how much fun we had as I had expected I would be down in the dumps on being separated from so many of my family and friends back in the U.S. This was one of my most enjoyable Thanksgiving dinners. Will the 4th of July down under celebration be as much fun?

The only certainty - The Republican Vice Presidential nominee

The primary season for the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election is almost here and this will be the year when both party’s nominees will be decided before the end of February. New York and New Jersey are among 20 states that have advanced their primary dates to February 5th. We are getting closer to having a national Primary Day and with that the increasing irrelevance of each party’s summer conventions, other then them being a week long tedious commercial for the already decided in winter presidential nominee. This frontloaded calendar scheduling of the primaries will also favor strategy over tactics (and the well funded leader over the cash strapped dark horse) as events are going to happen very quickly. It will be very difficult for candidates who stumble in the early rounds of the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire’s January primary to recover in time for Super Tuesday on February 5. When Russell Baker used to have a regular column on the NY Times Op-Ed page he once wryly noted that a popular political sport in this country was seeing the front runner knocked off in the early primaries. That was usually a regular occurrence for the Democrats; witness the history from Muskie to Dean. Still it’s hard to see how Clinton, barring some unfortunate gaffe or the discovery of some previously undisclosed dirt from the always digging Republican attack machine, will lose to Obama or Edwards. The Republican contest will be the more interesting horse race as Rudy Giulani has a very tenuous lead over Romney, Thompson and Huckabee. As we get closer to the Iowa caucus the social conservative block will get more anxious over Giulani’s lead in the polls and will try to get behind one of the other three. At this point that increasingly looks like it will be Romney. Hopes are falling that Thompson would fill the shoes of that other actor Ronald Reagan and excite the faithful. They forgot that Reagan learned to speak off script in his waning days as an actor when he learned to do so successfully on the lecture tour circuit.
Regardless of who gets the Republican nomination it is almost certain that Kay Bailey Hutchison, the senior U.S. Senator from Texas will surely get the spot for the Vice Presidency. Although slightly liberal on abortion Hutchison, unlike Romney, has solid conservative credentials since she was elected to the Senate in 1994 with an ACU life time rating of 90.4. And as a woman she will help blunt the almost certain criticism that would result from an all male, all white Republican ticket. Expect her to decline when first offered but will relent after accepting the pleadings that she will be critical in preventing a Clinton-Obama administration. You heard it here first.

Mystery bird song of New Zealand

Do you remember when we spoke last Sunday and how after more than an hour of our instant messaging each other I said that I had to go? That’s because I just had that urge to go hiking along the Southern Walkway that leads up to the top of Mt. Victoria and to do it before the sun set. You hated it, how in the past when we used to go into an angry funk with each other and how I would just storm out of the house without a word and just go off walking somewhere without any purpose. We’ll it was kind of like that except this time I wasn’t angry with you it was more like, baby I miss you so and I can’t just sit here on the floor and IM you forever from my laptop because with all of this nervous energy it’s just has got to be expended somewhere. And it’s got to be before the sun sets. What made it so different this time was that anger had nothing to do with it but it was all about how I could only imagine being together and the love I felt but there was also so much longing which could only be salved if I headed up that hill and then maybe by getting out of breath in the process, I could feel that all is right with the world and get that “into the moment feeling” where you don’t think, you just do. That’s almost what happened but here’s the twist; that bird we marvelled about wouldn’t quite let me get into that meditative state. You know which bird I’m talking about? The one with that song that truly is like a human song, that we used to hear hanging the laundry out side our flat on Wilkinson and we thought was a tui but we’re not ornithologists, hell that song could be any of a number of different New Zealand birds and I just can’t trace it on the web. I walked along that trail that Sunday and I heard that song for the length of it. Like all those birds were on the same page and wanted to remind me that there was no shaking off that melancholy. Now I think that I have got the melody placed – it’s just the beginning of the theme from the film Midnight Cowboy. I saw that movie with my brother almost thirty years ago on a cold day in New York and hearing that brings me back to that time we shared together but now it will also remind me of you and the short time we had in Oriental Bay. Listen carefully to it now, just the opening bars to the theme and tell me if you agree. Dee de dee da dee dee dee.

The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11 month of 1917

November 11th is Armistice Day here in New Zealand and Remembrance Day in Australia. It was once Armistice Day in the U.S but the name was changed there in 1954 to Veterans Day. On November 11, 1917 Germany signed an armistice that ended World War I. Veteran’s Day in the U.S. is a legal government and bank holiday but it is not an occasion in most of the private sector there for a day off from work. Memorial Day is the more important of the two U.S. holidays that commemorate the sacrifices of fallen American servicemen in all wars. It grew out of a tradition started by southern woman after the American Civil War of placing flowers on the graves of Confederate War dead. The Civil War and the 2nd World War have always over shadowed the 1st World War in the consciousness of the American public. In WWI our entry was in the final year of that conflict and far more of the American Expeditionary Forces died from the influenza epidemic of 1918 than from combat. This is in stark contrast to the losses suffered by Australian and New Zealand soldiers in what was called in the 20’s and 30’s, the “war to end all wars”. Over 16,000 Kiwis died in that conflict and on a per capita basis NZ suffered some of the highest casualties of the war. And this was when the population of New Zealand was less than a quarter of a million. That is why the November 11th observance means so much more here then in the U.S. Though it is now more than 90 years since they occurred the names of the WWI battles at Gallipoli and Passendale resonate here in the hearts and minds of Kiwis with the intensity that Omaha Beach and Iwo Jima does for Americans.

Guy Fawkes Night in Wellington

Last night they had a fireworks show over Wellington harbour for Guy Fawkes Day. This is a very curious celebration. It commemorates the unmasking of a plot in 1605 by a group of Catholics to blow up Parliament in London and kill the Protestant King James I. As an amateur historian I was familiar with the story and also how it figures into last year's overrated film, "V for Vendetta". It seems anachronistic for New Zealand, even with its Commonwealth ties to the U.K. , to commemorate a 400 year old event that occured on the other side of the globe and was really all about religious conflict. A lot of Kiwis feel that the celebration should be dropped and that they should be celebrating Matariki, the Maori new year that occurs in July instead. But who cares about history and religious conflict when it comes to a good excuse for setting of fireworks? For a few day's prior to the 5th of November stores in New Zealand are allowed to sell fireworks. I bought a couple of boxes of rockets for Bryan and we took them down to Oriental Parade to shoot off on the beach before the big show started at 9. And everyone else in Wellington had the same idea. The word is out that this would be the last year for legal fireworks in New Zealand. Personally I prefer to see the professionals do their stuff and handle the risk. But I went through same fireworks phase when I was a teenager setting off M-80s by using cigarettes for delayed fuses. And I agree with his assessment made later that night that there's a special thrill in taking lighter or match to fuse.

It was an excellent show and the first time that I have ever seen fireworks shot off from a helicopter.

On the internet know one needs to know you're a phish

It was in July of 1993 that the New Yorker magazine published Peter Steiner's "On the internet no one has to know you're a dog" cartoon. The cartoon didn't need to explain what the internet was and some historians credit the publication date as close to that point in the 1990's when the internet became accepted into the public's consciousness. Much about the internet has changed considerably in 14 years but the authenticity of an email sender's identity still remains less than certain. Nobody know this better than those information security personnel who are in the front lines fighting spam and phishing emails. Presently the problem with spam is that the headers in an email message can be spoofed so that the sender will falsely appear to be from a legitimate domain. Spammers and phishers commonly use botnets which are essentially a network of compromised home and business computers to generate this mail traffic. Anti-spam filtering works by text scanning the content of the email's message body and looking for common words and phrases used by spammers in pushing their sexual enhancement products and hot stock tips (those spams that make it through try to scramble a little or "munge" the text as a foil). Counter-measures begat counter -counter measures and the latest is for spammers to embed images containing text to foil the filtering. To countermand that tactic optical character scanning (OCR) of the image is needed to be done by the receiving mail server and that is a very slow and resource intensive counter-counter-counter-measure. The best solution would be to utilize public key cryptography (PKI) by applying a digital signature that's signed by the sender's private key to the message body of the email. The same web of trust that makes secure sockets layer (SSL) encrypted sessions possible on the web would also validate the legitimacy of these public and private keys. Email gateways could effectively eliminate spam by filtering out untrusted email messages without blocking legitimate senders. This is a now ready for prime time solution because the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has, as of May of this year, made Yahoo and CISCO's implementation of the technology, DomainKey's, the draft standard for digitally signing all internet mail. PKI has been effectively battle tested for more than ten years and while the spammers and phishers are if anything, an ingenious and criminally creative lot, domain keys promises to finally put the kebosh on most spam.

Saying good bye to Lucy

He had been dreading this day even before she had made her final departure plans with the travel agent exactly one week ago. They had just quietly celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary a little more than a week earlier at a Malaysian restaurant on Cuba Street that they had discovered earlier in the month. Now they were going to be separated, not just for two weeks but for an indefinite period, maybe a year or more. The most ever in those 20 years. “Now this bag has some clothes that maybe Suzy is interested in for Wilson”, she reminded him that morning as she had reminded him about the bag three times earlier the night before. He thought about how he was going to even miss her propensity for nagging in that motherly manner of hers (“Please remember to put that cream on your face or your skin will look too dried out”). The taxi arrived and got them to the airport more than 2 hours early. Now was the time to appreciate the small size of Wellington’s airport and how close it was to their flat on Oriental Bay. She ordered a latte and he had a flat white at the café near the departure gates. “I’m going to miss the great coffee here”. She caught the look on his face. “Yes there’s a lot about this country that I’m going to miss. I won’t have that splendid view of the harbour in Flushing, NY”. They talked with hope about her plans to get her nursing license and her career going and maybe deposit some money and how maybe she could return sooner than later. He felt carried along in her optimism or maybe it was that the flat white was being a particularly effective caffeine deliverance mechanism that morning. It was enough to make him think of how coffee had maybe become, in his sleep deprived middle age, his number one recreational drug of choice. They finished their coffees and headed over to the duty free shop. He joined in her perusal of the fragrances and perfumes. The names of new perfumes always seemed to him to be a variation on the theme of decadence or of promised sultry seduction. He played a game of creating new names in his head and thought of Insolence or Abandon and Miscreant. She sprayed him with one of the bottles of men’s fragrances and he was reminded on how he would miss that too. “I have to get some pineapple lumps souvenirs to bring”, she said. “Oh pineapple lumps are sooo good”, the heavyset girl at the cash register said. He took that as a cue to engage the girl in a discussion of pineapple lumps, of which he had heard a great deal of since he arrived in country but was not clear on exactly what they were. “They are pineapple candies with a chocolate wrapping and are so Kiwi and so delicious”, she said and then smacked her lips for emphasis. They walked on the international departure section which turned out to be a single gate. He said, “We might be fortunate in that I can accompany you close to your departure gate because they’ll do the passenger screening close to it” and he was right. Still only passengers were allowed past a certain point and he had to give her his impassioned kiss and embrace a bit away from the boarding ramp than he would have preferred. “The godamm terrorists have ruined the romance of saying goodbye at airports”, he said to her just before she went through the metal detector. “If they made Casablanca today Bogart wouldn’t have been able to get on the tarmac with Ingrid Bergman”. There was a large glass window where he could watch the passengers exit the boarding ramp and step into the plane. Some passengers waved at that point to their friends and family that were along side the window with him. He hoped that like them he would catch her at that moment of boarding and that they would then both wave goodbye to each other but somehow she got on and he didn’t see her. How did people stand to say goodbye 60 years ago with no email or cheap international long distance to follow up? Only snail mail letters. And maybe they were going off to war from this same airport and to not be together for 2 or 3 or more years? The plane boarded quickly, a ground crew pulled the blocks away from the nose landing gear and then it began taxiing away. He waved though he had no idea what side of the aircraft she was seated. It didn’t take long for the plane to find its position and begin its takeoff. He was waving furiously with both hands as it throttled by though he was sure she couldn’t possibly have seen him.