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Alastair Thompson Profile picture
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Dec 11 • 17 tweets • 10 min read
A park is not a building site
... by Helene Ritchie - @ScoopWellington

#FaleMalaeTrust #CivicInfrasture #WCC
I think we need to open up a discussion of Lambton Harbour Management & waterfront. This story dates back to 2000 in the very early days of battle to stop the WCC ruining Wellington's Waterfront, a battle that predates that by decades. scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0001…
On 20 January 2000 Scoop was not yet 6 months old. It was launched on June 10th the previous year, Putin had just become the Prime Minister of Russia and George Bush the President of the US. #Y2K had come and gone without incident.
Back then Scoop posted a daily newsletter - a copy of our frontpage which was hand written simple HTML. .... search.scoop.co.nz/search?date_to…
^^ This link takes you to a search query which allows you to look at the episodes of our daily FP Bulletins which mention the waterfont over the first year of Scoop's publication. >> search.scoop.co.nz/search?date_to…
But this is far from the beginning of the latest Waterfront development date predates that significantly. Unfortunately a similar data set dating back to the launch of NewsRoom.co.nz in 1996 is not available.
web.archive.org/web/*/Scoop.co…
web.archive.org/web/2022000000…
The story dates back decades - and needs to be reviewed now via Newspapers as internet news was in its infancy in 1996 - just News Room, Aardvark and a thing called AM. David Farrar's [@dpfdpf's] @KiwiblogDPF arrived seven years later. scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0002…
You can find much more stuff in there & old newspapers.

@internetarchive's Wayback Machine >> archive.org/web/ is a marvellous institution created by the prescient Brewster Kahle (@brewster_kahle) and curated/championed by the astonishing JasonScott a.ka. @textfiles
One of the casualties of the decline of news revenue over the past 26 years is institutional memory. Occasioned in part by the locking of it up paid data services. @ScoopNZ and NewsRoom.co.nz in the early years didn't do this.
And major publishers also failed to provide quality search engines even though as you can see from Scoop's search.scoop.co.nz its not difficult to build a very good one. This was built by Andrew Caudwell at @Catalyst_ITNow, with a contribution from my brother @finlaythompson
NewsRoom.co.nz went entirely behind paywall after the schism. And became a zombie competitor against us. Unfortunately one that was strongly favoured by the establishment.
In 2008.

Scoop.co.nz had a very good working archive search capability from launch in June 1999. Also faceted like the current search database - which is needed if you want to zero in in detail on the past.

Scoop is now NZ's institutional memory.
Albeit unacknowledged as such, except by our several hundred @ScoopPro subscribers past and present to whom we are extremely grateful. [You will find a list here >> pro.scoop.co.nz]

Some of these services can also be used by Scoop Citizens. foundation.scoop.co.nz/citizen2
Ok. So what has this got to do with Wellington Waterfont's renewed battle over development vs public infrastructure?

Instutional memory. Past is prologue in political hot spots & the Wellington Waterfront is Wellington's hottest.
If the WCC officers and councillors and developers with interests who are currently pushing towards project approvals during the Christmas break had this memory - they would realise this will not work.
The history of the Wellington Waterfont is littered with political scalps. Civic society, ratepayers and Wellington's citizenry has always won. And the battles have frequently lasted a very long time.
/ends

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More from @althecat

Alastair Thompson Profile picture
Dec 4
Could you please explain @mrubin1971 what interest the AEI has in this conflict?
On the basis of your intemperate and ignorant rant I’m going to assume you are either a neo-colonial moron or just another redundant mouthpiece of the TPLF. More likely the latter.

Your foolishness / avarice threatens a fragile peace. But I expect you don’t give toss.
You are fast becoming a poster child for the face of the ugly America in Africa.
Read 4 tweets
Alastair Thompson Profile picture
Dec 2
It looks like the Democratically elected Federal Govt of Ethiopia and its UN partners have done an extraordinary job of exceediing experctations with aid delivery to Tigray - both before and after the latest round of conflict (Aug 22-Nov 15).
4000 aid vehicles means (based on a @WFP press release on 25/11 with a count of 96 trucks) that 3000+ vehicles entered Tigray in the last 3 weeks.

This appears to have ended the famine there - making up for 2.5 months of TPLF war interrupted shipments
@WFP But someone (UNSG @AntonioGuterres?) clearly needs to tell @WHO and its DG @DrTedros the good news as he seems to be completely of the loop on this.
Read 4 tweets
Alastair Thompson Profile picture
Dec 2
Let me get this straight.

There is now enough food in Tigray according to @WFP to reverse the famine?

Aid shipments to the area restarted in Nov 15th - and they stopped when war broke on August 24th - so that's roughly 2.5 months with no delivery, then catch up in a month.
@WFP Here's the release issued by @WFP on 25th November.
At that stage only 96 trucks had gone in (in 10 days) assuming they sped up delivery - so 500 trucks in in all, then the shortfall in food cannot have been large when the war started August 24.
wfp.org/news/wfp-accel…]
@WFP In fact, given that the aid that was already in Mekelle supported a large army for 2.5 months - there must have in fact been a substantial aid surplus in warehouses when war broke out.
Read 5 tweets
Alastair Thompson Profile picture
Dec 2
A very interesting press conference with Presidents @JoeBiden (US) @EmmanuelMacron (FR).

Concluding a State Visit by Macron In which it appears the French President managed to make significant progress on several seriously gnarly issues.
Listening to the two President’s remarks and their sincere if subtle responses - and observing that they enjoyed a private conversation with their spouses - it is clear that the interaction between the two Presidents transcended normal diplomatic positioning.
I could be reading more into this than is there, but my impression having watched both for many years is that on this state visit, Macron was serving as a European emissary.

The sharp end of the discussion- Ukraine and efforts to end the war through negotiation is covered…
Read 15 tweets
Alastair Thompson Profile picture
Dec 1
This new meme on the Ethiopian conflict is being used in a somewhat perverse manner in Western Media.

The new subtext is:

“We were not paying attention but now are.”
But the attention that is being paid remains ignorant and oblivious to the most important narrative.

Namely that #TigrayGenocide was always a fiction manufactured by TPLF and embraced by Western powers in a manner which made this war infinitely worse than it ought to have been.
As a result of this continued ignorance in Western media the TPLF’s false victimisation narrative is now flourishing again under this new equally flawed perspective on the conflict.
Read 8 tweets
Alastair Thompson Profile picture
Nov 30
Currently listening to this.

Not sure what to make of it.

First impression: Very similar conspiratorial victimisation thinking as that in some quarters of Amhara region - and in Tigray.
Here is a link to a click to tweet campaign about Oromo Genocide.

The competing genocide narratives in Ethiopia are deeply destructive. Bringing these groups together in the National Dialogue will doubtless be difficult, but is clearly necessary.
The discussion is ending on a pleasantly sane manner, with a discussion on how to resolve the OLA conflict situation in Oromia peacefully.

Professor Egebissa points out that the escalation of the conflict with an objective of “annihilation” of the OLA is unlikely to work.
Read 6 tweets

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