Miraculous reversals

The Earthskyscience update tells me the moon and Neptune are in Aquarius tonight. So this is what happened tonight:

* The ALP caucus rolled Julia Gillard (Australia's first woman PM) as leader and installed Kevin Rudd (the former PM who was himself rolled by her) as PM in time so they didn't miss the State of Origin match.

*Len Brown, the first Mayor of an amalgamated Auckland, was interviewed on the historic government undertaking to half fund the Auckland city rail tunnel, in doing so the National Party have changed their longtime policy and conceded the Auckland Council Mayoralty to Len.

*TV3's 3rd Degree show featured a stupendously simple observation by a kiwiblog geek (that even looked and sounded like David Farrar) that he reckoned solved the Bain Family Massacre case because a police murder scene photo showed Robin Bain had marks on his fingers that corresponded to the same marks one gets from loading the .22 gun that was the murder weapon. This all shows that Robin did it and not David, according to the geek and everyone else associated with the David Bain support camp. Problem is the same photo that shows the correspondence does so as if it were posed for the purpose, as if it were staged by someone especially to demonstrate the marks go with the magazine clip. The magazine is on edge about a centimetre from the fingers of the hand with the marks outward. The police photographer could only have staged it because they noticed the marks and the alignment with the magazine and wanted to show it clearly. They would have put that in their report, their notebook, and someone else would have seen it and discussed it and it would be in their paperwork and all discoverable in the court cases. So I take it the photo is as the scene was and not staged by the cops. A clip sits on edge and on carpet only 1cm away from the hand of an adult male who has fallen dead to the floor (from shooting himself). Wouldn't the thud jolt the clip over, esp. on carpet? The chances of that happening like that in the photo are so remote. In the scenario I paint the planted clip is pressed into his hand by David and stood on edge to complete the story as a sure alibi. Because the Bain's hideous taste in textiles didn't just stop at self-designed jumpers, it meant their blue vomit swirl pile carpet would distract the police forensics and the defence who missed it totally. If anything the obviousness rather reinforces the idea of David having set it up. This evidence really settles nothing though, each side will claim it backs them.

*Nelson Mandela...

TV Review

My TV review on Sky TV and sport is posted up over at The Daily Blog .

The fix

The grand rort that is the pokies industry looks to have little to fear from what has become of the Maori Party's attempt to curtail the excesses of the inherently corrupt gambling regime.

Stuff:
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The Government is promising more reform of non-casino gambling after a watered-down bill was reported back to Parliament yesterday. Internal Affairs Minister Chris Tremain and Maori Party MP Te Ururoa Flavell are due to announce a harm-minimisation package tomorrow.
That comes after a weakened version of Mr Flavell's Gambling Harm Reduction Bill was reported back from the commerce select committee.
[...]
The bill aimed to return the proceeds of pokie machines to the communities they were made in and give local authorities more control over gambling operations.
But the committee rejected the plan to return 80 per cent of profits, instead allowing for regulations to ensure more of the proceeds returned to the same geographical area.
It also ruled out imposing the use of pre-commitment, player tracking, or other harm-minimisation devices, saying it would be "premature to mandate specific approaches".
And it ruled out removing horse racing from the list that could receive gambling profits.
Labour reserved its decision on supporting the bill but the Greens will now vote against it.
--

The regulations are bullshit because it lets in the likes of former National Minister, Paul East - the pokies lobbiest - to get in the ear of the Minister and get everything their way. Without firm statutory limits the regulations could be piss weak and will be piss weak - just the way they want it.

The fundamentally conflicted relationships and motivations between publicans, their manufactured "charities" and the politicians culminate in effectively siphoning off millions each year from the poorer communities into the wealthier communities.  The cause of these pokie parasites is not being addressed by the bill.

NRT observes:
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Meanwhile, the Labour Party did not issue a minority report on the bill, and instead "reserve[d] its position". Clayton Cosgrove was on the committee. Clayton Cosgrove was also in SkyCity's corporate box last week. You can draw your own conclusions from that.
--

It is apparent why this corruption has gone unchecked for so many years, despite the many cases, when both major parties are in on the fix.

TV Review

My TV review is posted up over at The Daily Blog . This week, Lotto: Bum's rush.

De-commissioning

The extraordinary scenes at a select committee yesterday are a bullet in the career of NZ Police Deputy Commissioner Bush. The would-be executioner, Trevor Mallard, backed by an irate Labour delegation demanded the tough questions be put. When the Police Minister, Anne Tolley, intervened to save him the embarrassment it got nasty. The media seem to be downgrading this to some sort of political stunt of little consequence. It is far from that. Never has such a senior police official been subject to such accountability. The issue here is that Bush condones corruption. Mallard has every right to call him on it.

Stuff:
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A select committee hearing has descended into acrimony after Labour MP Trevor Mallard appeared to threaten the job of a senior police officer. Mallard abruptly left a select committee after an exchange of angry words with Police Minister Anne Tolley after he questioned the decision of Deputy Police Commissioner Mike Bush to speak at the funeral of former police officer Bruce Hutton.
[...]After Mallard attempted to question Bush on the issue Government committee members objected that his questions were out of order. But Mallard hit back and appeared to threaten Bush's job.
"We're deciding whether or not to continue his salary, that's what we're deciding now," he said.
Mallard then got embroiled in an exchange with Tolley who said that was not his decision before Mallard abruptly left the committee.
Speaking after the committee, Bush said his comments in the eulogy were for a grieving family and weren't meant to be taken by any wider audience.
"They weren't meant to cause any offence to anyone."
--

 NZ Herald:
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The eulogy by one of the country's police officers for a controversial detective was scripted to offer praise for his integrity - despite the former colleague being found to have planted evidence.
Documents reveal deputy commissioner Mike Bush was offered his own personal endorsement for former detective inspector Bruce Hutton, the officer who led the flawed inquiry into the murders of Harvey and Jeannette Crewe.
Previously, Commissioner Peter Marshall backed up his deputy, saying the eulogy included "a range of positive comments from the service file of Bruce Hutton".
[...]Documents released sourced through the Official Information Act show there were comments which did not come from Mr Hutton's service file.In contrast, they were made written in a section of the speech in which Mr Bush shared his recollections of Mr Hutton.
In a reference to the Crewe inquiry, he said: "It is a great tragedy and irony that a man of such character should have been subject to devastating accusations of dishonesty."
--

Bush can never make Commissioner after this.

Fifth corner of the PRISM

It is rather telling that both the PM - the Minister in charge of the NZ spy agencies - and the former head of the GCSB are clueless about the PRISM metadata trawling undertaken with dubious legality by the American government.

RNZ:
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A former director of the Government Communication Security Bureau says the agency never used information gathered by the top-secret United States intelligence monitoring programme under his watch.
[...]
Sir Bruce Ferguson told Nine to Noon his staff never cooperated with Prism.
But he was not able to confirm to the programme whether or not anyone knew of the existence of the programme.
--

Ferguson says he didn't know, so he doesn't know whether any information was used or not - he's out of the loop. And he's out of touch - which is perhaps why he was chosen for the role. There's no-one more discreet than someone who is completely ignorant.

NZ Herald:
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Former GCSB boss Air Marshal Sir Bruce Ferguson said the sacrifice made to enjoy the relationship was small - even though New Zealand was extremely unlikely to suffer a terrorist incident like the September 11, 2001 attacks."We are a democratic, free country because of others, not because of us. That's the way it is when you're a small country."
--

Ferguson was a small cog in a machine that is really run by and for others and is comfortable being a tiny tool for their purposes. He thinks the NZ security institutions are weak and ineffective on their own without assistance from the big powers. What he doesn't seem to acknowledge though is that the vaunted democracy and freedom he uses to justify spying is not premised at all upon whoring one's country off to foreigners. Switzerland, for example, is democratic and free without military alliances.

What Ferguson seems to mean when he says democracy is threatened by not having spying is that the nation could be either invaded or taken over internally by anti-democratic forces if we didn't co-operate with the US. The fact is starkly opposite: if we stopped co-operating with the US and the UK then our democracy would really be in jeopardy because they would use anti-democratic methods to destabalise and overthrow our government to suit them in the same ways they have all around the world.

And as for "freedom" - NZ cannot be free because of a dependent relationship with others. NZ is only as free as NZ's big power chums let it be free. The freedom is illusory. NZ has the freedom to enforce the American's bullshit copyright laws, the freedom to enact union-bashing laws, the freedom to enact laws to protect off-shore foreign oil corporations, the freedom to be like America. That is not my idea of being free.

--
He said there was a certain amount of naivete in the New Zealand public about the dangers faced. "Don't look at the cataclysmic 9/11 things - they are extremely unlikely to happen here. It could be nothing more complex than some foreign power or foreign organisation with the flick of a switch turning off Wellington's sewerage system, or if there is a bit of a problem with a trade agreement, suddenly we find power goes off in certain cities. It's not necessarily going to kill anybody but would certainly damage our economy."I would think it does matter if the hospitals all lost their power for 24 hours [and] those on life support systems start dying, or you'd have to evacuate Wellington within 36 hours if the sewerage system failed.
--

Ferguson is giving a briefing to would-be terrorists about how to cripple Wellington! Unbelievable. The Hong Kong-based Chinese-backed billionaire who bought Wellington's local power line company is clearly the centre of that scenario. And so we have the whoring off of NZ assets to the Chinese being held up as some sort of justification for having the Americans (and everyone else)spying on us all?

--
But Sir Bruce said information sharing was governed by "protocols". "No country wants any other country intentionally or unintentionally looking on their own citizens."
He said it made sense to share information "likely to end up in a terrorism incident" in a friendly country.
"You don't want to know all about 9/11 before it happens but then after say 'I told you so' or 'I knew about that but didn't think I should tell you'. That would make your friendship last about five seconds."
--

Didn't the Americans know about the French agents before they attacked the Rainbow Warrior?

It's not murder

Last week: A police officer shoots and kills a man, Morehu, at the New Plymouth golf course, and the media dutifully report the NZ Police version of events. They helpfully run the standard PR lines of the police as they roll out. They are totally spun. All the while their whitewash 'separate and independent' investigation of themselves and by themselves is scripting the exoneration.

Within the first 24 hours RNZ was leading with police have (somehow) 'saved a life' by having shot Morehu. Radio Live was leading their bulletin with police 'gave aid' to Morehu (after they shot him). The police brass was on TV that night spouting the usual rubbish that all the police involved in the killing were heros and courageous. All of the police assertions went unchallenged in the mainstream media from what I have seen.

Today: the Stuff site has downgraded the killing to a 'police shooting'. The NZ Herald's mobile site at least doesn't even have a story on it today. RNZ was claiming that police had shot Morehu as 'returned fire' trying to suggest a rapid exchange or gunfight which even the police version does not support. Just chuck another nigger on the meat wagon and let's get a coffee - that is the prevailing stance by the establishment. Nothing to see here, move along in an orderly manner, we don't want a scene. It's not murder, it's not even a killing.

Last week: Some boys beat and kill another boy, Dudley, at Kelston after rugby training and the media dutifully report the NZ Police and establishment version of events. It had nothing to do with rugby the school says. With former all Black coach Sir Graham Henry being the former head of Kelston it must have nothing to do with rugby or rugby culture. With most rugby thugs being aspiring policemen the cops aren't keen to push any further up the charging scale than they have to either. Being brown is an indication of guilt and an aggrevating factor as far as the NZ Police go... unless you are a potential All Black or Policeman, and then, suddenly, the establishment haven't got the stomach for dishing out their normal instinct for blood. The excuses start counting. It's not murder, it isn't even a killing.

Today: Stuff's headline is a 'fatal fight' not a bash and a killing. That maybe an innocent fight club turned to death match because of a mix-up in the rules or something - one of those freak things or whatever - that's the angle. At the NZ Herald it's a 'tragedy' and the Dudley parents headlined as saying 'no time for anger'. That doesn't mean there are no time for questions. The media aren't asking any, they are hollow conduits for the establishment agenda. Both these cases are clouded in official fog.

Dunne over

This morning Peter Dunne is smelling like a sizzling fat juicy goneburger. The champion of quality French hairdressing is bouffant flambé. The grey mediocrity of his grey Wellington beltway constituency must abhor the type of scandal that Winston Peters has attempted to make under privilege. They must be unimpressed (but maybe not quite as much as Dunne) that his Jim Anderton-style vehicle of convenience post office box party has been deregistered. His party members - like himself - won't say whether they will stick around till the election. He can't blame them when he as leader, now in mid-2013 refuses to say if he will stand again in late 2014. The wheels are falling off and he's down to half a unicycle. It's time to wind up the bastard concoction that is United-Future. The United is meaningless in a one man caucus, and it has no Future. It has ceased to exist officially.

Dunne will be more concerned that the Speaker is taking it seriously and the extra $122k as nominal leader is in jeopardy. Dunne's concern, I imagine from his long comfy tenure as the permanent Minister of Revenue, would be that his ministerial beamer is on the line too - not so much that he could hold his party AGM in one.

His surgeon's bow-tie of sobriety and rectitude won't help him through the existential crisis of no-one caring about Peter Dunne. He's smashed crackers at the bottom of the barrel right now. The voting shows his ticket dips below the natural threshold at which point they contribute to the 'overhang' and are deemed parasites in the electoral system.

So to re-cap: There's this geek who looks like a 18th century French pimp, whose electorate is a like an over-indulged Paris Arrondissement with a bastard Christian-gun nut parasite party in tow using electoral chicanery to lever coalition deals that render him in charge of the government's revenue.

He's spread the IRD's tentacles into Australia and just instituted arresting people with outstanding student loan debts as soon as they enter the country! In what will probably be his last bureaucratic tinkering of any significance he has also announced a $1.5b IRD computer upgrade that is already being mentioned in the same breath as INCIS. The Dunne-led initiatives are few and far between, nothing leaps to mind that would define a legacy to show for being in government for the most part of a quarter century.

The Nats are running out out mates.

---
UPDATE 3:00PM:
NZ Herald reporting the most extraordinary scenes in parliament. It is apparent the Speaker isn't taking this seriously at all. Carter is a shocker - he makes Lockwood look saintly.
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NZ First MPs and Labour's Trevor Mallard have walked out of Parliament in protest after Speaker David Carter allowed United Future MP Peter Dunne to keep the extra funding and entitlements that come with being a party leader, despite the de-registration of his party.
Mr Carter announced that decision today but both Labour and NZ First objected, saying if Mr Dunne's party was not registered then it clearly did not meet the rules required for those resources.
Labour MP Trevor Mallard also described the decision as a "farce" and when asked to apologise, refused and chose to leave the Debating Chamber instead.
After objecting, NZ First leader Winston Peters said that if Mr Carter did not produce the legal advice he based his decision on, then his party would boycott Parliament until that happened. His caucus then left Parliament after the Speaker refused to discuss the matter further, beyond saying he had received advice on it before making the decision.
--

It's limping to a certain fate. The vultures are hopping all over the crawling carcass, pecking the eyes and guts out of it before it has the dignity of death.

--
Earlier, Mr Mallard had argued that as well as extra funding, party leaders held certain positions, such as membership on the important Business Committee, which Mr Dunne should no longer be entitled to.
He said it was the wrong decision because Parliamentary rules required a party to be registered with the Electoral Commission for those entitlement to apply.
His colleague David Parker said if United Future was not registered, then in effect Mr Dunne and independent MP Brendon Horan should be treated the same.
Winston Peters had said the Speaker should have acted as soon as the Electoral Commission advised that the party was no longer registered.
Leader of the House Gerry Brownlee said Mr Dunne was elected as a party leader in 2011 and was entitled to continue to be recognised as such.
--

Gerry Brownlee's pudgy little digits all over this one according to NRT. The Nats have to protect Dunne, but now the smell of blood is in the water the end must be near.

Pic: Dunne accepting a novelty giant cigarette lighter from British-American Tobacco for his services to commonsense.