Archive for the ‘World Events’ Category
Thursday, August 31st, 2006
Olaf Wiig, one of the hostages recently released in the Gaza strip, says that being a Kiwi saved his life.
Last night on Close Up, on New Zealand’s TV One channel, Wiig talked about the two weeks in which he and US reporter Steve Centanni were held captive by the Holy Jihad Brigades. When the kidnappers accused Wiig and Centanni of being implicated in American oppression of Muslim Palestinians, Wiig said, “Dude, I’m not American, I’m a New Zealander”. He explained that New Zealand had a difficult relationship with the US, did not support war in the Middle East, and had no soldiers there. “We’re a different sort of people altogether”.
Wiig said that the conversation ended with the abductors saying “We realise you’re a New Zealander, we know New Zealand doesn’t kill Muslims. Unfortunately you’re with a very very dangerous American and we’re going to kill him”.
Centanni, obviously, would not have been glad to hear that news. Olaf kept the accusations to himself until after their release. The fact was Centanni was working for Fox, an American news conglomerate owned by an Australian-born naturalized American, Rupert Murdoch. Maybe these guys were getting Centanni to stand in for Murdoch? Centanni did work as an embedded journalist with the Navy SEALs during Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq.
Olaf Wiig is a NZ born freelance photographer living in Sussex, England. Through this kidnapping ordeal he’s earned himself a Wikipedia entry.
I used to work in the same building as Olaf’s father, Roger Wiig, at that time editor of Crosslink, the newspaper for the Presbyterian and Methodist denominations in New Zealand. Last I heard Roger was living over in the UK, after a stint here in Brisbane. The world is full of Post Kiwis!
See the story at Stuff.co.nz and the video interview at TV One.
Tags: New Zealand
Posted in NZ, World Events | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 16th, 2006
Nebuchadnezzar, (Derek Barry) a resident of Wooloowin in Brisbane, has posted some very helpful stories this week, with insightful comments on the passing of the Maori Queen, the newly launched blog of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Queensland going to the polls, and the proposed legislation on assylum seekers hoping to enter Australia.
Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu died on Tuesday at the age of 75, after a reign of more than 40 years. Dame Te Ata was the longest serving head of the Kingitanga movement - the royal line, which started almost 150 years ago in an effort to stem the loss of native lands to the flood of white settlers arriving in New Zealand. I’m sure it was only a couple of weeks ago I was reading about representatives of the Methodist Church of New Zealand attending celebrations of Dame Te Ata’s anniversary.
On Monday Al Jazeera announced Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, has started his own blog. Iranians found out about this after it was announced on state TV on Sunday and they urged members of the public to send the president written messages through the website. Nebuchadnezzar writes about the difficulty the average Iranian has when trying to publish a blog. Despite the roll-out of broadband, censorship is alive and well in Iran.
Tags: Australia, Blogging, Derek Barry, New Zealand, Pacific
Posted in Australia, NZ, World Events | 1 Comment »
Friday, August 4th, 2006
The Australian Reserve Bank announced yesterday a further increase in interest rates, taking us up a quarter of a percent to 6%. Which means we’ll be getting a letter from the bank shortly informing us that our monthly payments need to increase again. Last time this happened I didn’t bother changing the automatic payment, figuring that it would need to change again shortly. I was right. So I’m just putting more and more into the mortgage via BPay.
We’re being told in the Australian press that the inflation increase is due to the cost of oil/petrol and the cost of bananas. Bananas are around $10 a kilogram in the supermarkets - have been since Cyclone Larry hit North Queensland. But I’d say that even without banana shortages we’d be facing this interest rate rise. It’s an international phenomenon this week.
Megan McCardle at Instapundit says that high oil prices are a big part of this. But she says there’s another part of the story.
“The entrance of China (and to a lesser extent India) into the global labour market has effectively held down prices in developed countries, even when those economies are running at full capacity. Economic bottlenecks and problems with the financial system in China are making it harder for China to effectively export deflation (deflation is the opposition of inflation), which means consumer prices may rise still further.
That, in turn, is forcing central banks to raise interest rates even when the economy isn’t that strong. Both the European Central Bank and the Bank of England did so today, and while the former was all-but-foreordained, the latter move was a big surprise to everyone.”
So what do you think? How inter-connected are we?
Tags: Australia, Economy
Posted in Australia, World Events | 1 Comment »
