This interview with Jeet Raval is so revealing of journeymen professional sportspeople, sometimes just happy to be there. This section on his final innings, only scoring 31 but finally free of pressures and expectations is v touching. https://t.co/TX4QvwIQ4E...

Great story from Matt Nippert on the Cook Islands https://t.co/uZrHmP9AeG The dark fleet hiding in our own backyard: How the Cook Islands sold its flag to Moscow and Tehran

From @nzherald: A special Herald investigation has found the Cook Islands flag has flown on over 100 oil tankers accused of illicitly trading Russian and Iranian oil, sparking alarm from foreign governments. #PanamaPapers

Story is paywalled, but not for long. A condition of the BGI grant was to eventually unlock the story, which should happen in a fortnight. I’ll repost it again then for those without subs.

Many thanks to Starboard for analysis, and NZME for the time and space, to look into this fascinating but ill-covered corner of geopolitics and Pacific corporate bureaucracy. And thanks also to the Brian Gaynor Initiative who funded my trip to Raro.

Despite my best efforts, the government in Rarotonga - especially its’ PM! - weren’t keen on talking. So I downloaded the entirety of CI Hansard and made it public and searchable to find out how and why they privatised their registry.

MFAT are apoplectic. While they were scaling up aid to Ukraine and signing international agreements to curb the shadow fleet, part of the Realm of New Zealand was selling its flag to let the Russian war economy fill its boots.

Maritime Cook Islands is a private company founded and run by former CI S-Gs. One current director and shareholder is now acting Foreign Secretary. The Cook Island government itself only collects “modest” (typically five-figure) fees from this operation.

While the story itself is more than 4000 words (all gold, honestly), it can largely be told through this single visualisation. Here, with tools from Starboard Maritime Intelligence, we can see the traffic routes of oil tankers flagged to the Cook Islands in August 2024.

The Cook Island shipping registry saw a massive spike in tanker flaggings from mid 2022. What significant geopolitical event occurred around that time, I wonder?

The Cook Islands flagged over a hundred oil tankers linked to shadow fleets trafficking sanctioned Russian and Iranian oil. A Big Read from me about the curious case of Maritime Cook Islands using big data analysis and fieldwork in Raro.

Daryl Mitchell passes Rohit Sharma as the No.1-ranked men's ODI batter 📈 He becomes only the second player from New Zealand to hold the top ranking, joining Glenn Turner who held the spot in 1979.

Taps the sign:

Social media age limits are as attractive and unworkable a policy as GST-free food.

Here's a story I wrote (in 2010!) about what happened behind the scenes between Mike King and the Pork Board. This story was possible thanks to a realisation that the Pork Board was a statutory body and therefore subject to the OIA.

Every third post on my feed being an ad for MechaHitler Grok is just the icing on my end-of-days cake whose candles are woke-banned Tom Thumbs.

Thanks, Elon.

X is amazing because my highest-engaged post in months was posting a story about James Cameron becoming an NZ citizen apparently without dubious queue-jumping and then being inundated by randos complaining he’s woke.

James Cameron has become a a NZ citizen. Unlike Citizen Thiel, he appears to have so in the normal fashion (fulfilling residency requirements and flagging an intent to continue living here) and didn’t lobby ministers for use of extraordinary discretion.

A spending cap? This is no longer the America’s Cup, it’s the Soviet Cup.