tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-124651522024-03-14T19:15:01.366+13:00TUMEKE!Towards an Aotearoan utopia, one blog at a time.Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.comBlogger8852125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-26514916467778340132014-12-06T12:02:00.001+13:002014-12-06T12:02:36.498+13:00Korotake III<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Would the Crown solicitor have appealed a discharge without conviction if the prince had been Harry Windsor instead of Korotangi Paki? Would anyone - prince or pauper - in that circumstance have had the Crown appeal such a minor incident of lower court discretion? Of course not. The appeal was a reactionary measure of populist racism designed for media consumption, but the political implications are that the NZ government is opposed to and is set on undermining the Maori King movement.<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/crime/news/article.cfm?c_id=30&objectid=11369564">NZ Herald</a>:</div>
<div>
--</div>
<div>
<div class="articleMedia altImage c_id30" style="border: 0px; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 12px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto; vertical-align: baseline; width: 300px;">
<figure style="-webkit-transition: color, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><img alt="Korotangi Paki, son of he Maori King Tuheitia. Photo / Brett Phibbs" height="200" src="http://media.nzherald.co.nz/webcontent/image/jpg/201447/SCCZEN_A_050514NZHBPCOURT2_300x200.jpg" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="300" /></span></span></div>
<figcaption class="caption" style="-webkit-transition: color, background-color, border-color, opacity; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; margin: 0px 0px 5px; outline: 0px; padding: 10px 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline; width: 300px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>Korotangi Paki, son of he Maori King Tuheitia. Photo / Brett Phibbs</i></span></figcaption></figure></div>
<div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>The son of the Maori King now has a conviction against his name after the Crown was successful in its High Court appeal.</i></span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>Korotangi Te Hokinga Mai Douglas Paki, 19, was originally discharged without conviction on charges of burglary, theft and drink driving at Auckland District Court, but Justice Mark Woolford overturned that ruling in a ruling released this afternoon.</i></span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>The discharge on the dishonesty offending remained but Paki was convicted for drink driving.</i></span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">
<i><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">However, he will face no further penalty other than </span></span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">the eight-month driving disqualification previously imposed.</span></i></div>
</div>
<div>
--</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The NZ government demonstration in this case is not that 'no-one is above the law and everyone is equal before the law' - because that is patently false if we ask ourselves what would have happened if it was John Key's son, or Prince Harry - the demonstration is that <i>no Maori</i> is above the law. White people in a position of privilege however can still do whatever they please with little consequence.</div>
</div>
Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-12829412297676992342014-10-08T14:15:00.000+13:002014-10-08T14:15:23.925+13:00Die aubtraum<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Kim, :( You cost us votes in the end, mate. There's still love and respect but love and respect with disappointment. Sometimes love and respect is stronger after enduring such a battle, I hope it is with Kim. He has about four million reasons to be upset at the result, but the Mana Movement has only 739 - which are undergoing a recount at the moment. I did keep saying that the party party be cray cray, but could not envisage such a catastrophic result.<div><br />
</div><div>I've been in apoplectic shock since election night and trying to forget a nightmare that unfolded whereby Hone lost Te Tai Tokerau in a gang-bang by the leaders of all the other parties to back Kelvin Davis, and Annette Sykes couldn't take Waiariki because some bellowing loud-mouth standing for Labour decided to split the vote against Te Ururoa making that impossible to win, meaning the whole crew on the Internet Mana list (which would have got 2 MPs) is out of the next parliament. FFS. </div><div><br />
</div><div>Measured against expectations this was a total epic fail, even if some advances were evident. If Hone couldn't hold his seat - or Annette cause an upset in Waiariki - Mana was out. A worse case scenario for Mana and a best case scenario for National. A total epic nightmare that will last three fucking years.</div><div><br />
</div><div>All the Dirty Politics revelations and Tory corruption couldn't beat Tory scare-mongering and an incoherent and compromised Labour-led alternative. Most people were prepared to accept National's creepy right wing nutty stuff (where Hager's exposé was relegated) because of the certainty and stability of the soporiphic John Key. Bill English has borrowed over $50b to keep things on the unsustainable plateau, using mass immigration to prop up the pyramid as they do to get over each slump, so the middle classes have been insulated. Key came to the centre and won it there. And this was despite the defections caused initially by Dirty Politics that saw some National voters go Conservative and NZ First and not come back. It was Labour voters who put National back in - there's no getting around that. </div><div><br />
</div><div>Status quo prevails. Is it any wonder that the party promising the most change and the most to the left - Internet Mana - couldn't break 2%, yet the Conservatives touched 4% and Winston Peters had his best result in years getting 11 MPs. Votes for the right - Nat/Act/UF/Con are a majority with 51.92% without adding NZF on 8.66% taking the Centre-Right to over 60%. The left are a clear minority at this point. Not helping over time is the growing proportion of elderly in the population which will continue a trend to swing elections to the right. The higher turnouts in the future may be more to do with these demographic changes than engaged youth.</div><div><div><br />
</div><div>Mana got 24k votes last time, and got 34k this time - so an improvement. More party votes this time than the Maori Party - a watershed moment lost in all the chronic post-election grieving. There were mistakes on the campaign - as there will be - but a major one was the ballot sheet itself. I still can't understand how the Internet MANA list was not put next to the candidate. What is the legality of having a candidate on a list standing as a candidate in the electorate and not being together? If they come off that list they must be put together like the other parties, surely? I mean, why would Internet and Mana stand candidates in anything other than the three target Maori electorates and Key's Hellensville electorate if the candidate and party were separated? The whole reason behind running a candidate in an electorate is to drag the party up the column... and seeing how that was not how the ballots were printed, and you had to look down amongst the silly bugger parties to find it despite having a candidate standing then what the fuck was the point of that exercise? If it is acknowledged that running electorate candidates gains party votes then it must be concluded that having mis-aligned party/candidate names has cost the party votes.</div><div><br />
</div><div>The 29k disallowed votes on the basis they were not already enrolled on the day are fundamentally undemocratic - engineered not for any reason of validity or integrity or ID purpose, but to prevent the votes of mostly left supporters being counted. It is painful to watch a person go through the special vote process when you know their vote will be discounted based on such a technicality. It is wrong and it is not fair. I have sat as a scrutineer and seen the special votes and as the results always show they are definitely not National or right voters, they are the marginalised and working class voters. The middle class people with their mortgages and their late model cars and their golf club membership and their insurance policies etc. are not the sort of people turning up in their work gears on Saturday afternoon explaining how they moved flats and they did a special vote last time so it must be OK. These diligent and otherwise eligible electors are being disenfranchised. This may add another seat to the left/off the right if Election Day enrolments were allowed, so don't expect National to ever champion that.</div></div></div>Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-45419831268176286372014-09-19T23:59:00.002+12:002014-09-20T00:00:39.926+12:00NZ General Election 2014<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Midnight very soon and the election blackout begins. Please observe. Good luck to our peeps. Get out and vote!</div>
Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-676236622514459872014-09-15T10:05:00.001+12:002014-09-15T10:05:16.032+12:00Cabinet said no?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Election Day -5<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Listening Greenwald on RNZ now saying the NSA(US) used GSCB(NZ) supplied bulk data. Says Snowden was processing metadata - via xkeyscore - sent from NZ to the US. Was this data of NZers trawled by GCSB? Ryan: "On NZ citizens?" Greenwald: "correct." That is going to be game MFing over for JK - he staked his reputation on it and said he would resign or something didn't he? NZers have never been spied on in mass surveillance supposedly. It might be ex-Key score all right.<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The extraordinary last 48 hours - with the PM declassifying and releasing secret spy documents to pre-empt a "moment of truth" to expose him and his National government's collusion with the US and in Minister's roles in using the immigration department to capture Kim Dotcom for Hollywood producers - be cray. It all be cray cray. The moment is at 7pm tonight at the Auckland Town Hall, with Greenwald in attendance and perhaps Assange live from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Unprecedented.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Key was saying yesterday that yes there was a plan to have mass surveillance, but because it would cost about $8b, he personally put a stop to what the GCSB was proposing. Key was also saying much the same thing many months ago too from my recollection, but most missed that the figure proved it had been mapped out and that it had been proposed. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But I also heard him say that 'cabinet said no'. It was cabinet that put a stop to it - not him exactly. Was Key even at that cabinet meeting that said no? Did he mean a cabinet committee, or the whole cabinet? At what stage was this plan advanced? To cabinet level - from what Key has said. So HE didn't stop it. This guy is all over the place and cannot give a straight answer on any of these spy cases.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-83805122977344500652014-09-02T14:22:00.000+12:002014-09-02T14:22:21.673+12:00Waiariki: Marae digi poll has Flavell losing support, Sykes up.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The Marae digi poll on the Waiariki electorate came out yesterday - for what it's worth. They are notoriously unreliable. The landline polls are increasingly picking up older householders and skewing to the middle class establishment that still maintain a landline - missing out working class and youth populations. It isn't worth that much - the large differences in these polls and the election results proves that. So I'm not that surprised to find the <a href="http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2014/09/flavell_massively_ahead_in_waiariki.html">Waiariki polling this time round </a>out of whack:<div>
<strong style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br /></strong></div>
<div>
<strong style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Waiariki Electorate Vote 2014</strong><div>
<ul style="margin: 1.2em 0px 1.2em 2em; padding: 0px;">
<li><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Maori 50%</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Mana 21%</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Labour 17%</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
This looks definitive, decisive... until you consider <a href="http://curiablog.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/marae-digipoll-september-2011/">the 2011 poll</a>: </div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-top: 1.2em;">
<strong style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Waiariki Electorate Vote 2011</strong></div>
<ul style="margin: 1.2em 0px 1.2em 2em; padding: 0px;">
<li><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Maori 59.3%</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Mana 18.7%</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Labour 8.8% [18.8%?]</span></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
In the election of 2011 the Maori Party's Te Ururoa Flavell only had an 1800 vote majority over Mana's Annette Sykes, with the Labour candidate a distant third.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If an 1800 vote majority equates to 59%/19% then what does 50%/21% work out to? is it even a majority any more to him?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Comparing the 2011 poll with this one it shows a fall - a big fall - in Flavell's support and a rise in Sykes' support. It shows that Mana is in a better position now than it was in 2011. It shows that Mana may have picked up some of Te Ururoa's collapsing vote. The fourth candidate may only pick up a few votes in the West of the electorate, maybe 2-3% max so should not have a major impact. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
All up this is quite a favourable poll result for Annette Sykes. It should be a big worry for Flavell, but so long as people like Slater and Farrar and the rest of the media keep misreading it then all the better for an upset based on that underestimation. And if the door-knocking in my area is anything to go by and the extent of the negative reactions from Pakeha men to the National Party over the Dirty Politics saga is reflected across the country on polling day then there could be a major upset possible.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-55074241376305983882014-08-31T01:07:00.001+12:002014-08-31T01:07:23.220+12:00Judith Collins be gone<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I was in Taneatua for a rendezvous when someone came up clasping their mobile phone and told me Judith Collins has just resigned. Wow, Key finally pulled the trigger. The roadshow was coming to Whakatane and Kim Dotcom and the entourage of Internet Party and local Mana branches were in town. When they arrived we all rejoiced the resignation - the sacking of the Justice Minister - in Tuhoe St.<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Looking at the <a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11316704">smoking gun emai</a>l that the PM used to ditch her, it looks weak - as weak as Key had been in tolerating her all this while. Now he pulls the trigger for some bullshit innuendo in a malevolent fantasist's email. Any votes gained by looking strong and decisive are lost three or four-fold by conceding her as a liability and the cause of disunity. Now she is blocked from Cabinet by Key she will plot revenge from her electorate - so the drama is far from over.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The reason Key has used to get rid of her is a creation. The revelations in the Hager book are worse from what I have read this far, but Key had trashed the whole book and everything in it so he had to generate something fresh, something he was not aware of. Odds are the blanked name is David Farrar and it was the same David Farrar which gave Key the polling data showing Collins an electoral drag. And then a day or so, maybe hours later, this email magically appears. That's my hunch anyway. Add it to Winston Peters' allegation that someone from the Collins camp approached him about a Collins-led post-Key coalition government and the PM does not lack a motivation and interest to put her down.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The worst thing about the email is not that Slater suggests <i>former Minister</i> Collins "is gunning for" the SFO Director, it is that a reporter at the NZ Herald was in the habit of providing emails from and about the SFO to Slater in the hope he would get a story in return based on Slater's close relationship with the former Minister. This entails that the NZ Herald reporter was in fact giving these communications to the former Minister - just via Slater. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Why didn't the reporter just go direct to Collins with this? After all that is where the info will end up. Why would a reporter want to empower a middleman the likes of Slater? Slater is not a source he is a medium. Why do these journalists resort to playing Slater's game? It's all very yuck. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I haven't even finished reading the Hager book yet, but the consorting with journalists, the manipulation of iPredict, the shadowy role of PR consultants and so on is all laid bare in that one </div>
<div>
email the PM has been so kind in releasing to the public. If this is how the PM reacts from one faffing email it begs the question: what would he do of he actually read the book?!</div>
</div>
Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-55246552486046524022014-08-30T00:44:00.001+12:002014-08-30T00:44:57.784+12:00Koretake II<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The Crown is to appeal <a href="http://tumeke.blogspot.co.nz/2014/07/koretake-paki.html">against the son of Kingi Tuheitia</a> not being convicted - in a case where the other offenders were all let off without convictions without any name suppression - and the Crown is not to appeal <a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11315010">against the rugby boys</a> whose names are permanently suppressed being let off without convictions - in a case where the offenders killed someone. <br />
<br />
This is justice New Zealand style:<br />
a minor theft and driving charge against the son of the Maori King is appealed by the government on the grounds he should have been convicted; but a stitch-up deal to save face by the Auckland school/rugby old boys that lets a killer go loose without even a conviction is not possible to appeal according to the government law officers.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Crown regards it as an unconscionable reneg to appeal the plea bargain they worked out (without the agreement of the parents of the deceased). With this logic: that it would undermine the credibility of the Crown to make deals if they challenged the outcome of their own deal, the Crown Solicitor thinks they have no grounds to appeal. You make the deal, you can't appeal. It is the Crown deal itself that needs to be appealed by someone independent outside of the Crown - most likely a lawyer acting for the bereaved parents.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
How can there be any confidence or trust in the Crown prosecutors - and the NZ Police - when they conspire to defeat the course of justice as they do? The '<a href="http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roast_Busters_scandal">Roastbusters' rape gang </a>is still at large without a single prosecution after eight months. Mr Sentry Taitoko died in a South Auckland police cell on 23 February and six months later no autopsy report, no nothing - killed without consequence. No-one at the top speaks out or does anything. A suspected killing has taken place in a police station and it is being covered up by the suspected killers - the police staff - and nothing happens, as if it didn't happen at all, as if it couldn't happen. The NZ Police are getting away - most likely quite literally - with murder.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The law and security agencies of the New Zealand government may have an unthinking, reflexive support from many people who will automatically align with the establishment position, but those agencies have very little claim to credibility when they can mask their poor performance with the connivance of officials, politicians and the media. The respect held for these institutions of the Crown are the result of decades of public inertia and misplaced trust. The shallow foundations of this loyalty are exposed by these recent events which reveal the compromised, conflicted and self-serving character of law enforcement in New Zealand.<br />
<br />
There is no political accountability demonstrated or responsibility taken. The Minister of Police is Anne Tolley, the Minister of Justice is Judith Collins - don't vote for these people. Tolley has exercised no control over the NZ Police, allowing unlawful abuse, bashings and shootings to continue. And as for Collins - who the PM has provided political immunity to despite the damaging Oravida scandal and tolerating her peculiar mode of malevolent behaviour - is so nutty she once told the NZ Herald that Ernst Rommel was the person she most admired.<br />
<br />
The New Zealand justice system under the current administration is borderline demonic.</div>
</div>
</div>
Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-23572547563270001702014-08-19T01:19:00.000+12:002014-08-20T09:50:56.995+12:00Dirty v normal politics<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I find something a bit disingenuous about Nicky Hager's style of breathless, wide-eyed pleading - and that tends to get in the way of the facts in his book and what they mean. Holding out some imagined purity of conscience as a standard in politics - as Hager does to exaggerate the significance of his research - seems a bit strained when he's spent the last decade of his professional life working on nothing but machinations of Tory 'sleaze'. The email trail is damaging enough without the embellishment of a tut-tutting that only a saint could deliver. Is he the only adult in the country not to have been inoculated for what are the common maladies of politics?<br />
<div><br />
</div><div>To argue points - as Hager does - with hacked emails in one hand and his finger wagging with the other is not the highest moral ground either. Hager's attempt to occupy a lofty position in the heavens somewhere - when he only covers one half of the hell of the underworld below that is politics and bloggers: National and the right - is undeniably partisan. The Hollow Men followed the same pattern. Focus on the right, a free pass for the left.</div><div><br />
</div><div>The context of the exercise wasn't about the relationship between politicians, their staff, the media and bloggers - it is about National and National-aligned bloggers only. It is an exposé of the political right - not of politics as such. No wonder Key was pushing this line this afternoon - it's just about the only one he can safely mention that does have some credibility. Key's response has been belligerent and curt; but while Hager is not the best advocate for his material, his beatific repose is becoming just as annoying as Key's whiny defence.</div><div><div><br />
</div><div>Politics is by implication - if not by definition - a dirty game, always has been, always will be. We call it 'playing politics' as if it were a low game. The skills of statecraft are not different from ancient times: spies, conspiring underlings, deniability, internal battles within the administration, manipulating messages, wealthy patrons gone rogue... Ok, so now we have 'blogsters' and twitter; but essentially the game and the methods remain the same.</div><div><br />
</div><div>What Hager's would-be readers are looking for, as are all punters, is not the <i>unethical</i> lapses - the tawdry grubbiness of a blogger for hire, comms staff bragging and Judith Collins being mean behind people's backs - they want to know what offences have been committed and who and how many will be arrested. How many will go to the slammer? After five days the answer is still zero. No smoking guns, but some smouldering emails and a couple of warm tweets. </div><div><br />
</div><div>Not even any resignations. Judith Collins has gotten away with more brazen behaviour before without reprimand - as has Paula Bennett who leaked/authorised private information from beneficiaries without any consequence. Consistency with Key's previously loose code of conduct means basically anything goes. It is difficult to dismiss anyone with those precedents established. The dynamics of being 32 days out from a general election means Key will be reluctant to throw any of his crew to the dogs no matter what the level of transgression.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Key is now looking like the lame duck as he takes a hit for the collective failings of his wayward team. Key still has personal headroom as none of the dots so far join directly to him - they end down a corridor wherever Mr Ede and his masked ISP is located - but Key's own handling of the scandal is now what the focus is on.</div><div><div><br />
</div><div><a href="http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/mnr/mnr-20140818-0710-prime_minister_stands_by_minister_and_staff-048.mp3">Espiner interviewing John Key on RNZ </a>yesterday was a moment. Key's answer to whether or not he saw the Official Information Act request to the SIS that Slater had reverse-ordered via Ede and which was released immediately was convoluted to the point he laughed at how he didn't know what was going on. This was nonsense. How could he not know? Key's defence of a National staff member digital dumpster-diving into the Labour Party computer server is a poorly considered position that paints him like Nixon.</div><div><br />
</div><div>If the text of Hager's book does not contain evidence of an offence, the reactions to it from John Key could prove just as damaging all the same. Hager has let us all see under the rock and what crawls out.</div><div><br />
UPDATE: We expect a slater to scuttle out, it is the rest of the critters that are of real interest. It's probably obvious that I haven't read the book yet. I look forward to reading it and realise my reactions would be a lot stronger had I done so. At the moment, however loathsome, Slater et al have merely met my expectations rather than exceeded them.<br />
<br />
</div></div></div></div>Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-46361483633653693862014-08-07T14:12:00.001+12:002014-08-07T14:12:27.993+12:00China's NZ land policy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It must be a full-on barn-burner for John Key to have to call talk back radio hosts to try to put out the land sales fire. The PM does not ring up to have a chat about education policy, or welfare initiatives, or the situation in Gaza - the PM rings up only in reaction to a crisis that can only be put out by the PM. Have a word, sort it out, everyone back on script.<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
That was yesterday on Radio Live when Sean Plunket had evidently gone off the blue script due to the callers' overwhelming rejection of the foreign purchase of land. Key's <i>relaxed</i> routine was pushed into pantomime and ended with his rising tone pitching higher and higher trying to allay the fears. It was rather queer. Like the kid who thinks he's clever and duped the adults when everyone knows what he's done and the suspension of belief is because his punishment is being formulated. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The best he could do was that if the amount of land sales was too much in the future he might limit it somehow, but in doing so he had conceded the point: something had to be done. Key asked people to trust him on his judgement on what was too much and what was not enough. But what answer would you expect from an international finance man who owns houses in Hawaii and so on. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Peeling productive farmland off to Chinese front companies at 10,000 hectares a time so they can build their own various primary industry and extractive empires and cut NZ out of the equation is far beyond most people's tolerance threshold.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The PM is in a cleft stick. Key is caught between where National's neo-liberal free trade ideology and National's conservative, bigoted, provincial base and public opinion sit - on the one prong - and the Chinese people, companies and government on the other. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It is the China-NZ 'free' trade agreement that is casting the shadow over land sales - not the Treaty of Waitangi. The Maori view that the land be vested back to the actual original owners - the Tangata Whenua - is not a question a Pakeha would usually entertain no matter how large it looms. It is the concern that China will interpret NZ as having broken the FTA if land sales are prohibited. It is a potential trade risk across all trade 'partners', but it is China that holds a FTA and high expectations of future investment and return from buying the land. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Key can't move with populist reaction against foreign buyers without provoking diplomatic and commercial pressure from China. There would be huge pressure internally from within the National caucus and Auckland membership to keep foreign buyers, because there would be huge pressure from their Chinese cash cows that they will close their wallets if their fellow Chinese were kept out of the property game. The FTA was negotiated with the understanding these conditions would continue to prevail.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It is the state policy of China for their companies to buy land here - lots of it - and they have access to cheap Chinese state credit to do it. The Chinese can afford to pay a premium to be the highest bidders - more than any NZ bidder could, or any other foreign buyer. The Chinese are buying strategically and for the long-term. They will start sending their people over to staff these facilities too - the Chinese insisted on labour and visa rights for their workers in the FTA. Most people are </div>
<div>
aware of this general scenario that is unfolding and are opposed to it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There is only so long a political leader can dismiss the concern. It is clearly not in NZ interests to be run by absentee Chinese landlords. You can hear the percentages falling off the Tories every day it is in the news - it is directly related to how high-pitched John Key's voice gets. Pretty soon only dogs will be able to hear him.</div>
</div>
Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-62727120339530251102014-08-05T23:27:00.001+12:002014-08-06T11:59:47.507+12:00WW1: a century later NZ none the wiser<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The NZDF commemorate the outbreak of the First World War with 100 gun salute in Wellington. How inappropriate for that imperialist mass slaughter. A hundred crosses, or a hundred candles, or a hundred doves, a hundred seconds of sirens, 99+1 luftballoons, or a hundred anything other than weaponry/explosions would have been fine. But no, the creative genius of government and military demand one hundred shots from the artillery regiment. Ghastly.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I remember my Great Uncle Snow, but he never told us any tales and his medals can't speak.<br />
<br />
I remember interviewing old Norm around the corner for a school project: Paschendale, battles as "stunts", death, madness, quivering flesh in the gas-filled crater, the worst scenes imaginable. I scribbled away, hiding my mortification. I stuck to the questions, I asked about bayonets, guns, tanks, gas, combat. And so the horror proceeded. A no-man's land of crater upon crater, the ocean of mud, duckboards, the big push, over the top, the barbed wire, gas masks on all the time, gas in every shell, mates torn to pieces, wholesale carnage, bombardments, the most awful conditions, wounded, a hospital of jabbering shell-shocked, cripples. And then shipped back home to NZ with the compliments of the Empire. I will never forget that encounter and the impression he left me with: when the war ended it had been so traumatic that they truly believed that it was the last war and that peace would be permanent, that the expectation - not just hope - would be that a rational system of sorting out disputes between powers would prevail - there would be no more war. It was the war to end all wars - they believed that then. The day the war ended was the happiest day ever. A war more awful than this had never occurred or could be allowed to happen gain. This is what I learnt from Norm.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Today NZ has its military at the disposal of the Americans, not the British, but the roll call of imperialist occupation is the same as it was a century or more ago: Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Chief of Army was on RNZ this weekend talking about 'evil' people in Afghanistan needing a military treatment and how teaching the occupied peoples English and spreading Western values was part of the NZDF mission. Army engineers would help build things, he said, and described what was some sort of armed development agency. Letting his troops be used as an act of colonisation in a NATO drama was apparently in our interests. Afghanistan was apparently in our neighbourhood. There were lots of good reasons for NZ forces to be in there he said, but I never heard any from him that made any sense. He was proud to come from a long line of soldiers which may account for what a prize fool that man was. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In a constitutional sense only is NZ better suited to avoid a general conflagration than it was when the Premiere and the Governor rubber stamped the declaration of war from Britain a hundred years ago today; but the NZ entity of this era seems just as embroiled and beholden to the same forces of imperialism as a century ago which led to such a calamitous folly. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I think of all the thousands of names down the halls of the Auckland War Memorial Museum and how they were sacrificed for greater European interests. I think how conned they were to have enlisted. Their grotesque, moronic enthusiasm. How wrong they were to be conscripted. How right it was for those Waikato and others who resisted that conscription. How right the seditionists were to preach peace and neutrality despite the hostility from the warmongers.</div>
</div>
Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-68372919179393129592014-08-02T14:48:00.001+12:002014-08-02T14:48:43.803+12:00UN/US cease-fire deal designed to fail<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Of all the appalling things caused by the Jewish state's latest Gaza incursion it is easy to overlook the compromised role of the UN and how they have been used by US/Israel to promote a cease-fire agreement that was impossible to maintain, thus giving Israel an excuse to wage another round of attacks.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
From yesterday in the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/israel-presses-ahead-with-gaza-offensive-calls-up-16000-more-reservists/2014/07/31/40281e0d-819f-4ebf-9a7c-5f36bda97e36_story.html">Washington Post</a>:</div>
<div>
--</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 24px; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i><span class="dateline">GAZA CITY —</span> Israel and Hamas began observing an unconditional, 72-hour humanitarian truce Friday morning [...]</i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 24px; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>In a joint statement, Secretary of State John F. Kerry and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said both sides in the conflict are sending delegations to Cairo for negotiations aimed at reaching a lasting cease-fire.</i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 24px; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>During the 72-hour respite [...] Israel will not withdraw its forces from the Gaza Strip, a demand Hamas had previously made as a prerequisite to peace talks.</i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 24px; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>[...] </i></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 24px; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>“As a response to the United Nations’ request and in consideration of our people’s situation, the Palestinian resistance factions have agreed to a humanitarian and mutual calm for 72 hours, starting</i></span><i> from 8 a.m. tomorrow, as long as the other party is committed to it,” Sami Abu Zuhri said. “All the Palestinian factions have a unified attitude toward the issue in this regard.”</i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 24px; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>Earlier Thursday, Abu Zuhri had said that Palestinian factions, including Hamas, would head to Cairo as early as Friday for peace talks if the Israelis agreed to a cease-fire.</i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 24px; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>[...] </i></span><i>Jeffrey Feltman, the U.N. undersecretary general for political affairs, said that although Israel had made no initial public statement on the cease-fire, “we have received assurances from all parties” that they will respect the pause. It was his understanding, Feltman told CNN, that “Israeli forces will stay where they are. What we want to see happen is for all fighting between the two sides to stop” to allow humanitarian aid deliveries, the gathering and burying of bodies, and a cessation of Palestinian shelling in Israel.</i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 24px; text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 24px; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>Kerry said both sides had agreed that during the pause, “neither side will advance beyond its current locations.”</i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 24px; text-align: left;">
<i><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">[...] </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Kerry stressed Thursday that Israel may continue what he called defensive destruction of tunnels over the next three days.</span></i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 24px; text-align: left;">
</div>
<div>
<i>[...] <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: -webkit-auto;">Underscoring the obstacles to ending the war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday vowed before the truce announcement to destroy the tunnel networks “with or without a cease-fire” as the Israeli military called up 16,000 more reservists to bolster its offensive in Gaza.</span></i></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: -webkit-auto;"><i><br />
</i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 24px; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>“I won’t agree to any proposal that will not enable the Israeli military to complete this important task for the sake of Israel’s security,” Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting in Tel Aviv.</i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 24px; text-align: left;">
--</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 24px; text-align: left;">
Do you see the inherent problem with this ceasefire agreement? And why it cannot possibly work?<br />
<br />
While both sides are not to advance beyond their positions the fact is Palestinians have forces in tunnels underneath and behind Israeli lines and the Israelis say they will not stop destroying the tunnels. Israel going into tunnels or destroying tunnels is advancing from their present positions and is a violation of the cease-fire... Except that John Kerry (according to the Washington Post above) reckons that is OK. It's not OK, it is a contradiction.<br />
<br />
What happens when the IDF attacks a tunnel during this so-called cease-fire? As Bibi has vowed to do. The Hamas forces would have every right to defend themselves wouldn't they. Under John Kerry's logic the Israelis are free to attack the tunnels during the cease-fire but if the Hamas forces in the tunnels fight back they are breaking the cease-fire. You see what a sick joke this agreement is and why it is impossible to observe. It is an American deal, an Israeli-American deal. The UN is sanctioning a faulty agreement which demonstrates how faulty and compromised the UN is.<br />
<br />
So I was not really surprised to wake up to this news... <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/02/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-conflict.html?emc=edit_na_20140801&nlid=56827907&_r=0">NY Times:</a><br />
-- <i><br />
[...] two Israeli soldiers were killed and the militants apparently escaped with a third.<br />
[...]<br />
Israel said the attack, from under a house near the southern border town of Rafah, took place at 9:20 a.m., soon after the 8 a.m. onset of the temporary truce secured by the Obama administration and the United Nations, whose leaders squarely blamed the breakdown on Hamas.<br />
<br />
Hamas’s account was confused. One leader was quoted claiming credit for the abduction, then backtracked. Others contended that the clash unfolded at 7 a.m., before the cease-fire, although Palestinian reports of fighting near Rafah came three hours later. And one said that in any case, the Hamas gunmen acted only to counter “Zionist incursions.”<br />
[...] <br />
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman, said the Givati force had been working to decommission a tunnel under a home inside Gaza more than an hour into the cease-fire when at least two Palestinians emerged from another shaft. “One came out shooting after the other one blew himself up,” Colonel Lerner said. <br />
[...]<br />
Israel sent text messages to area residents to remain in their homes as forces rushed farther into Rafah, bombarding it from the ground and air to block the captors’ escape.<br />
<br />
Safa, a Gaza-based news agency that has run a live blog during the war, first reported artillery fire in Rafah at 9:55 a.m. The Health Ministry spokesman announced new fatalities there at 10:10 a.m. The Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, issued a statement hours later, denying that the clash occurred after the cease-fire.<br />
[...]<br />
The escalation was strong and sustained, with reports in Rafah of airstrikes and heavy artillery shelling past midnight, as Israel’s top ministers met for hours to consider next steps. Colonel Lerner said the operation “now has three components, not two: it’s rockets, tunnels and an abduction now.”<br />
--</i><br />
<br />
The NY Times report is just so virrulently pro-Zionist I had to take chunks of propaganda out of those quotes. But what the IDF is saying is that they were in an operation against tunnelling at the time. And not surprisingly the group in the tunnel (which could have become cut-off) were only left with two options given they were under attack: either they defend themselves, or they attempt to surrender (which would have been dangerous). The terms of the cease-fire are just ridiculous. Trying to blame Hamas for this inevitable "violation" is spurious. And yet that is what John Kerry and his Korean side-kick are doing: using the impossible and contradictory terms of an American deal as the standard to which they hold the Palestinians.<br />
<br />
NY Times:<br />
--<br />
<i> Both Mr. Kerry and Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, demanded an immediate and unconditional release of the Israeli officer. Mr. Ban described the attack as “a grave violation of the cease-fire” that called “into question the credibility of Hamas’s assurances to the United Nations.”</i><br />
--<br />
<br />
On the contrary, Mr Ban, the agreement itself calls into question the credibility of the United Nations. To see the UN collude like this with the Americans so that Israel can scorch-earth a refugee camp and kill hundreds more civilians is disgraceful.<br />
<br />
So the UN is all about negotiation until it comes to an Israeli POW in which case there is no negotiation at all! Hamas is supposed to surrender their prisoner immediately and unconditionally. When the negotiated release of a single Israeli POW (Gilad Shalit) was able to be traded for a thousand Palestinian POWs such a proposition is fanciful. The UN is not neutral in this conflict, they are behaving as agents for the US and Israel.<br />
<br /></div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-30521019466539856112014-07-31T22:29:00.001+12:002014-07-31T22:29:25.240+12:00Have they got to 2000 yet?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The last time Israel invaded Gaza (it isn't a "war" in any traditional sense - it is a ghetto liquidation with consequent resistance) was between the American presidencies of Bush and Obama. The Israelis wiped out over a thousand Palestinians that time before Obama could be sworn in. The IDF used phosphorus shells on UN schools in that rampage with barely a murmur. <div>
<br /></div>
<div>
During that former outrage Foreign Minister McCully was on holiday and didn't offer an acknowledgement of the crisis until the Greens provoked him. The Israelis for all their slaughter were invited by National to open an embassy in Wellington! Now the killing has long surpassed a thousand what perverse welcome mat will the National government be rolling out on this occasion?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
National has offered nothing but a few words of bi-partisan rhetoric in condemnation when any independent government would have expelled the Israeli embassy for the bastion of Apatheid that it is. There is an expectation that a Labour-led government would do this very swiftly after taking office - there would be disappointment if they did not. Israel use and abuse their allies - after the Mosad passport spies were uncovered the Israeli diplomats should never have been let in.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Now in 2014 Israel has sensed Obama's weakness as a last term President. Israel is particularly threatened by the Hamas-PLO alliance. Israel is lashing out, again. Just like Bibi, I didn't blink - or blog - until the death toll ticks over a thousand. That is sad.</div>
</div>
Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-36768903603271930132014-07-24T01:14:00.001+12:002014-07-24T01:14:15.066+12:00Koretake Paki<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
What reason is there for the Crown Law to be appealing a discharge without conviction for a drink driving offence and a theft from a car? <br />
<br />
--<br />
<a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11298031">NZ Herald</a>:<br />
<br />
<div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>Korotangi Paki, 19, was let off charges of burglary, theft and drink driving by Judge Philippa Cunningham after his defence counsel successfully argued a conviction would ruin his chances of succeeding to the throne.</i></span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>He had earlier pleaded guilty to all the charges, which related to two separate incidents dating from March this year and October 2013.</i></span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>In a statement, media advisor for Crown Law Jan Fulstow said an appeal had been made.</i></span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>"Crown Law does a very careful and thorough review of cases such as this before a decision is made.</i></span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>"Having now completed a review of this case Crown Law has today filed an application in the High Court to appeal the matter.</i></span></span></div>
<div class="advert" id="DivContentRect" style="border: 0px; clear: both; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 12px 20px; outline: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: -webkit-auto; vertical-align: baseline;">
</div>
<br />
--<br />
<br />
But what has this to do with Crown Law? Who told them to commence a review? If the only reason for the review was because Mr Paki is the son of Kingi Tuheitia then there is a problem here. Maybe it was the police prosecutor who made the request?<br />
--<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: -webkit-auto;"><i>However, police prosecutor F. Gul Qaisrani, opposed a discharge without conviction, saying it would send the wrong message to society.</i></span></div>
--<br />
How often do Crown Law step in to appeal what are quite minor offences such as these? How many times a year would this happen - is this routine? Was the police prosecutor unable to appeal on their own for some reason? I pose these questions because to an outside observer it would appear the NZ Government was trying to disinherit/disqualify a successor to an authority that rivals it's own. Why else would the Crown be doing this? What pressure has gone on here?<br />
<br />
Which look is worse: letting a 19 year old off a conviction because it would disqualify them from holding a responsible office to which they were expected to succeed; or having the talkback/talkhate radio of braying, ranting, racist red necks determine prosecution strategy and the merits of appeal? The District Court decision doesn't appear unreasonable or unjust - it's a line call. <br />
<br />
If Crown Law are appealing just because he is the King' son then they are making an error of disproportionate and special treatment - the same thing they say the District Court judge has done.</div>
Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-37141500994109517302014-07-16T16:08:00.001+12:002014-07-16T16:08:15.213+12:00Immigration NZ/NZSIS no interest in NZP/FBI 'joint op'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
To all the disingenuous half-wits on talk-back/talk-hate radio who say 'if Kim Dotcom has done nothing wrong then he should be happy to go to America to face the charges and prove his innocence' the question must be put to them:<br />
Q. Why are the Americans not prosecuting Kim in NZ, under NZ law, for his supposed copyright infringements? Why do the need to drag him off to a Hollywood court?<br />
A. Kim has committed no offence under NZ law. There is no NZ victim here. There is no case to answer, but in the USA where the corporate lobbyists have purchased politicians and own the law.<br />
<br />
Copyright should essentially be a civil matter - a trade dispute with commercial remedies. To justify their claim - as Hollywood does - that their production costs and marketing expenses relate to the popularity of artists and content is one stretch, that this infers the right of the middle-men to get rich from it by an over-priced and exclusionary licensing scheme is another, and that it should be at the cost of government agencies and involve the imprisonment of the opposing party in the copyright dispute is yet quite another and no less extraordinary. And no less wrong. The extra-territorial concessions obtained through treaties secured by the Imperial powers over weaker nations (often by naval force or threats of naval force, invasion, annexation and colonisation) in the period to the last war were no less ambitious.<br />
<br />
The hypothesised and exaggerated losses attributed to file hosting/sharing websites such as Mega and that supposedly undermines the artist's right to a fair wage for the likes of Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke seem an unconvincing ploy by the moguls. Would Pharrell be otherwise any less happy as he purports to be? Undermining the maximum potential yield of on-sold territorial royalties from re-runs of the likes of Friends does not seem a convincing concern for a government other than the one owned by Hollywood. Unfortunately NZ it seems - under National - is owned by Hollywood too (certainly after John Key changed the labour laws to suit Warner Bros following a visit by a delegation of them to his house this has been so).<br />
<br />
Kim was arrested at his home and him and his family and household were given the Ruatoki treatment because he is being <b>extradited</b> under a treaty with America which has been ratified into NZ law - but Kim is not being <i>prosecuted</i> under NZ law for anything. As I understand the situation no legal proceedings - criminal at least - are underway by the Crown or the Americans or a <a href="http://nzpca.co.nz/private-prosecutions-nz/">"McCready's friend" </a>or anyone else against Kim and his Mega cohorts. It's only an American offence. It's not a real crime, it's a Hollywood crime. A Hollywood crime involving a Hollywood bust searching for a Hollywood ending.<br />
<br />
So it is with little amazement, and with much anticipation, that documents have now been released proving that Kim Dotcom was set-up by the NZ government - the security and intelligence apparatus and the Immigration Service conspired to have Kim's residency approved for the purposes of the Americans extradited him to the US. The <a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11293885">NZ Herald has the documents</a> from the SIS stating "political pressure" was being exerted from Immigration NZ. The Immigration CEO knew the FBI and NZ Police were going to do "a joint op" on Kim from this <a href="http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/249811/dotcom-claims-us-pressure">RNZ News article</a>. And yet all this is kosher? Rotten Wellington.<br />
<br /></div>
Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-44681627397585761852014-07-08T16:38:00.003+12:002014-07-08T16:38:56.688+12:00Volkner execution<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">The Whakatohea rangatira, Mokomoko, was given a full restorative pardon by the NZ government for his wrongful conviction for murder at the Auckland Supreme Court in 1866 and subsequent execution and interring at Mt Eden prison. This was made law <span style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969);">in a unique Act of the NZ Parliament last year which is recorded in <a href="http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2013/0150/latest/DLM4093702.html?src=qs">text of both English and Te Reo Maori</a>. From the Preamble:</span><div><span style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969);">--</span></div><div><div class="subprov" style="border: 0px; clear: left; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="labelled label" style="border: 0px; clear: left; font: inherit; margin-right: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="label" style="border: 0px; float: left; font: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px -3em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0.5em 0px 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">(1)</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>In 1866, Te Whakatōhea Rangatira Mokomoko was tried and executed for the murder of Carl Sylvius Volkner. Following conviction, two of the co-accused of Mokomoko admitted their guilt. Those persons have since been pardoned. Throughout the trial Mokomoko maintained his innocence.</i></span></div></div><div class="subprov" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: white; border: 0px; clear: left; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; font: inherit; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="labelled label" style="border: 0px; clear: left; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; margin-right: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div></div></div><div><span style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969);">--</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969);">My input to the Bill <a href="http://tumeke.blogspot.co.nz/2013/07/te-reo-langauge.html">here</a>. I see</span> last month Kereopa has been pardoned too for his conviction in the case.<div>--</div><div><a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11278442">NZ Herald</a>:</div><div><div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>The rare statutory pardon for Kereopa Te Rau, included in a Treaty of Waitangi settlement with a Rotorua iwi, has passed into law without fanfare.</i></span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: -webkit-auto;"><i>A result of careful research and a tribe's unshakeable belief, the pardon effectively means Kereopa is no longer guilty of the murder in March 1865 of German-born Carl Sylvius Volkner, an Anglican missionary who was hanged from a willow tree and then beheaded beside a wooden church near Opotiki.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>Kereopa was among several Maori convicted of Volkner's murder, a crime which one historian maintains set back race relations by 100 years.</i></span></span></div></div><div>--</div><div><br />
</div><div>So, as far as I can determine all the defendants for this matter - the prosecuted 'murder' - have now been pardoned in one way or another by the Crown; indeed it seems to be NZ government policy for some decades to do so. The NZ government is doing so regardless of the level of involvement, or what their individual defences were to the Crown charge of murder. It follows then that it is NZ government policy to acknowledge that all the convictions, at least, were wrongful. But why were they wrongful? what makes it wrongful? especially when confessions were forthcoming according to the Crown? It isn't a case of mistaken identity on which this turns, but the status of what occurred.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Is it the NZ government's practice of English law in its courts that are at fault? - that it was a faulty prosecution, faulty jury, faulty judge, faulty law? - is that the reason for these pardons? The pardons flow because they are given for more than that. The act of killing and how that came about is not deemed murder by the Crown anymore, that is what follows from what the Crown is doing. The killing of Volkner was not murder, but rather something else.</div><div><br />
</div><div>That something else is an execution - a lawful killing. The time for the Crown to complete this circle and embrace the corollary of its own logic is close.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Volkner is the case of the German Anglican missionary who returned - against warnings - to his native parish in time of war when his denomination was aligned to the Governor, the NZ government and the British who had in the previous year invaded their relations further along the bay. Volkner was involved in other districts and accused of assisting the British military. He came with Grace - another Anglican Missionary - wittingly or not as agent provocateurs of the Governor. </div><div><br />
</div><div>Volkner was identified as an offender on arrival and promptly arrested along with Grace. He was put under house detention after he was made to understand the charges and had answered questions put to him. Interestingly all accounts I have seen say that Volkner accepted and submitted to the proceedings. Did Volkner and Grace accept the legality, the validity, of the proceedings? I think Volkner probably did as Tino Rangatiratanga and tikanga Maori was a fact, not just an assertion, and Maori authority was a day-to-day reality in the 1860s and it had always been so up to that point. A hui began of the people from outside who laid down the Aukati, and the local rangatira, which sat all night before a sentence of hanging was determined the following day and the execution was carried out that day. This was done, let us be clear, by Maori authority on charges of trespassing an Aukati and espionage to abet the enemy (being the NZ government in breach of the Treaty of Waitangi, signed Opotiki 27-28 May 1840).<br />
<br />
What Kereopa did next with the deceased, after the execution, was literally eye-popping but was the sort of ritual desecration not incomparable with Victorian era barbarities performed by some British authorities (which is all putting it politely). The Governor, Grey, had declared war on the Kingites when he crossed the Mangatawhiri in 1863 and he declared war against all tribes when he pre-emptively put a night-time curfew on all Maori shipping in the Waitemata. Every day since has been a backward step for Maori and a step forward for the settlers. Which is why the Crown's reversed position on Volkner is hopeful. A decent settlement becomes possible with the Crown's acknowledgment. If that Maori authority was lawful back then, then when did it ever stop being lawful? All the way up to capital offences. If it can be practised in those circumstances why can't it be practiced now?</div></div></div>Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-33105484516219474292014-07-04T00:55:00.000+12:002014-07-04T00:55:09.915+12:00MFAT: everything rotten and wrong with Wellington<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">A foreign diplomat is up on attempted rape charges in Wellington in May and the Chief Executive of MFAT says he knew nothing about it until last Friday...<div><br />
</div><div><a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/10225839/Diplomat-to-face-charges">Stuff reporting</a>:</div><div>--</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: -webkit-auto;"><i>Key expressed confidence in McCully, and McCully expressed confidence in Allen, despite wide acknowledgment that Mfat's communications both internally and with the Beehive failed.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: -webkit-auto;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>McCully admitted that while he was briefed on the situation on the day Rizalman was arrested, that was the last time it was raised with him, until the media began questioning him on Friday, more than a month after the accused and his family fled.</i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>Allen himself was told nothing about the incident until last Friday, which he said was created by Mfat's strategy of "compartmentalising’’ information to limit its spread. He said he should have been told and that Mfat's communications policy would form part of an independent review.</i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>Allen may face further scrutiny after he failed to follow up a warning from the Malaysians that the messages given by New Zealand were less clear than Key and McCully claimed.</i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>The Malaysian high commissioner Rosmidah Zahid was called into a meeting with Allen on Monday night, during which she raised the fact that her officials had taken away a different message from Mfat about New Zealand's preference for where Rizalman should face justice.</i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>[...]</i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>"We didn't at that stage know there was in fact a foundation for what appeared to be the ambiguity that had been raised with me by the high commissioner,'' Allen said.</i></span></div></div><div>--</div><div><br />
</div><div>In other words Allen doesn't know what the fuck is going on in his own department - as per his policies. But it's quite alright, because he is now reviewing these policies! Uh-ha - and this is supposed to be sufficient considering all the shit he has got his boss into? No, that won't do. These people are in an over-funded little world of their own and it is about time they came crashing back down to Earth. Allen really needs to be sacked, and really soon. </div><div><br />
</div><div>To accept this head of department's gross mismanagement on so many levels - political, administrative, legal, not to mention diplomatic - would speak gigabytes of the unaccountability of the Wellington public service. MFAT has always thought itself above other departments (coasting along on the self-serving, delusional, mythic mistruth that the New Zealand government exercises an 'independent' foreign policy which the record shows it clearly does not) and this wretched, unwarranted arrogance is the very core of this scandal. That is what must be dealt with. A clear signal must be sent for once, something unambiguous. Allen, for a start, must go. It's either him or McCully - Key must see this.</div></div>Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-37330326045853141322014-06-30T19:59:00.000+12:002014-06-30T19:59:22.364+12:00The Tuhoe deal courts disagreement<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="250" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/assvuitbhA8?list=UU2AzwibqDYZsPtxf9TWd4Xg" width="400"></iframe></div>
Video of the Upokorehe demonstration at Maraetotara, Ohope from April this year. They won their <a href="http://www.opotikinews.co.nz/webapps/i/88879/228222/558335">court case</a>, but that won't stop <a href="http://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2013/0146/6.0/DLM5481230.html">the legislation</a> rolling over the top of neighbouring Iwi interests and over the top of internal Tuhoe Hapu interests if the government and Tamati Kruger have their way. <div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Bill is bad because Tuhoe interests clash with other Iwi who have not settled with the NZ government - the sort of first-in-first-served scenario which suits the interests of the Crown and brings conflicts with their whanaunga in other Hapu. It is also bad - as all these settlements are - because the settlement is fundamentally unfair: being a diktat of the colonial regime to ensure its continuation and not an avenue for self-determination. Tuhoe is unique because the Bill also represents another possibility dismissed. The terms are only a fraction, a shadow, of what their <a href="http://www.nzlii.org/nz/legis/hist_act/udnra189660v1896n27469/">1896 legislation guaranteed</a> - full local autonomy and the Crown restricted to limited public works purchases of land within the Urewera.<div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Tuhoe settlement entity has already built its headquarters at Taneatua, and one does wonder if this has been paid for by a NZ government inducement (or bribe) to ensure they go along with the legislated agreement set up with Kruger et al. By handing out a small bit of lolly the government hopes it can buy the outcome. Contrary to the official lines that everything is fine, there </div>
<div>
is disease within Tuhoe from what I understand - and there is certainly disquiet amongst the neighbours if you hear the remarks at the end of the video from Big Jim!</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-25366623540473124262014-06-24T15:55:00.001+12:002014-06-24T15:55:59.066+12:00Mixed media: what is better broadcasting?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Who could disagree with the objectives of a lobby group like the <a href="http://www.betterbroadcasting.co.nz/">Coalition for Better Broadcasting</a>?</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
--</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>In 2013, some of the people behind Save RNZ and Save TVNZ 7 joined together, along with media, legal and government-relations experts, to form the Coalition for Better Broadcasting Trust. The CBB aims to grow into a well-established and vocal supporter of public service broadcasting and media for many years to come. [...] <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The aim is the long-term education, enrichment and entertainment of</span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span>all<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">New Zealanders (not just Household Shoppers aged 18-49).</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">--</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And who could disagree with the first point of their ten point plan? A public service television channel.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">--</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>Such a channel could be similar to the hugely popular TVNZ 7. It could include elements of Maori TV, Open University, Parliament TV or access television like Triangle/Stratos. It could follow the SBS model, a BBC2 model, or it could simply be TV One without advertising.</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">--</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br />
</span></div>
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: -webkit-auto;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: -webkit-auto;">Could be any format, so it draws no objection. Who doesn't want a public service - ie. ad-free - TV channel paid for by other people? I have advocated for much the same thing in principle in several blogs here and over at The Daily Blog.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Apart from a logo like a collapsed neon sign, who could disagree with anything in CBB Chief </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Executive Myles Thomas puts forward in his </span><a href="http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/06/13/coalition-for-better-broadcasting/">post at The Daily Blog</a><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">--</span></div>
<div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<blockquote style="border-left-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 4px; margin: 15px 0px 20px 20px; padding: 25px 35px 10px;">
<div style="padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>1. Defrost Radio NZ funding</i></span></div>
<div style="padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>2. Establish a non-commercial television channel</i></span></div>
<div style="padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>3. Fund these with a small levy on SkyTV and other commercial broadcasters, and on ISPs/Telcos</i></span></div>
</blockquote>
--<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But. Why is funding the issue with RNZ? RNZ is a white's-only Europhilic diversity fail. RNZ meets the CBB's own definition of 'what isn't better broadcasting': "</span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">limits contributions based on age, race, religion, politics, wealth, dress-sense or hairstyle."</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I have demonstrated and quantified the racial exclusivity of RNZ in several posts on The Daily Blog. Any additional funding would be to fill the pockets of white people in an organisation that does not employ or permit non-white people to contribute in any meaningful way. RNZ is a Pakeha institution for and by Pakeha: they are the audience, the voice, the editors, the management, the staff. No equivalent Maori radio network exists.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">While RNZ broadcasts everything in English and under-delivers on its pathetic target of sub-one hour per day average Maori content (most of which is in English), Maori TV is 51/49 Reo/English. Which is better? Which is more representative of the nation? It's like black and white on the discrimination metric. RNZ is bad broadcasting.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As for point 2. MTS and Maori TV have been here for 10 years as a public service broadcaster - a </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Maori broadcaster, for everyone. The equivalent state Pakeha TV channels are TVNZ One and 2 - which is the rub - they are not commercial-free and never have been. Basically the CBB want a white version of Maori TV from what I can work out through the Pakeha jungle of nomenclature: 'Kiwis' and 'New Zealand' being the controlling concepts. What the ambitious lobby group of elderly production staff, academics, government types and people wanting to pay to be on the Roll of Honour don't seem to appreciate in any of their website statements is the cultural binary. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">By government convention in its public service budget allocations all of radio goes to RNZ and all of TV goes to MTS. Each get about $32m pa in direct funding by the government. And TVNZ sits there beaming out vulgar populism in between ads and gives that profit to the government. That's broadcasting policy under National and was no different under Labour before them when MTS was set up to satisfy the language obligations flowing from Waitangi Tribunal litigation. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In part the CBB is overlooking Maori TV as qualifying as public service broadcasting, or worse. Maori TV has minimal advertising - of which most is public service notices anyway - it is difficult to maintain it is not essentially (if not technically) public service broadcasting in its current state. But CBB is born from Save RNZ and Save TVNZ7 campaigns dominated by the self-interested white middle class insiders who want to establish a permanent lobby outfit for their conservative/orthodox vision. Such a group have little comprehension or interest in recognising Maori or any Treaty obligation, let alone anyone else outside the Anglosphere given Diversity is at No.9 on the ten point plan and their definition of minorities is always subsets of Pakeha. Those are my observations from what they have put out.</span></div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So Radio NZ gets the same amount as MTS in direct funding - that is how the government splits its public service broadcast funding - straight down the middle. But MTS doesn't have a radio mandate or radio channel, and RNZ doesn't have a TV mandate or TV channel. It's an asymetrical split - and a product of legacy and inertia and not of design or consistent policy. It is fair to ask why things are the way they are and then suggest how things could be rationalised or realised. But I am not sure the CBB are asking these questions and whether they represent the status quo or reform. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">How can a combined cheer squad of RNZ and TVNZ7 fans be pro-reform? Just about nigh on impossible. They are institutional and pro-establishment. They are fighting defensively on the basis of status quo ante being progress. They are a creation of the reaction inside a government system of policy, lobbyists, lawyers and the overlap of professional careers, ie. high wank in Wellington. The CBB say they stand for all the audience, but from available data they are composed of a narrow segment of audience that most people would describe as grumpy old farts in their cardis, on a committee, writing grumpy letters to the editor.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The nation's basis - according to the government at least - is applied to broadcasting. One Treaty partner is a proud and noble warrior-conqueror people living in a state of war with their neighbouring tribes before they found their way by ingenius navigation to settle in Aotearoa many generations ago. They are represented by RNZ operating the National and Concert radio networks. The other partner is the indigenous people, the Tangata Whenua, represented by the Maori Television Service operating the Maori TV and Reo channels on Freeview. That is the binary. This is the dynamic.</span></div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Public service broadcasting - by which we mean no f***ing ads and nothing moronic - is a big umbrella in the shit storm of commercial TV under which shelters very strange company. I recall discussions from Act members back in the day when formulating broadcasting policy: many Pakeha people who were willing to sell every state asset imaginable fought like Devils for their precious RNZ and the NZSO.</span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Why make those peculiar exceptions when they are prepared to sacrifice every other form of cultural subsidy? To them those institutions are the agency of European heritage vital to maintain a sense of their identity. **everyone elses's identity. These organs, like the Universities, are crucial to the Pakeha infrastructure of self-belief and status. It is an elite concern. It is a government concern.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">From what it appears, the CBB is another manifestation of this Eurocentric mentality of the Pakeha, clinging to foreign content and notions in a far away land from their origin and pretending this is national self-expression. It is thoughtless colonialism. The CBB refer to the European Union definition, they do things like refer to Mexico, Ghana and Fiji as 'third world'. NZ with its National and Concert programmes and its symphony orchestra is therefore supposedly... first world? A first world thoughtless colony.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-33492142816204094282014-06-19T16:27:00.000+12:002014-06-19T21:28:26.095+12:00Media makes maelstrom of forgotten 11 year old form letter<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Duncan Garner on Radio Live was raving apocalyptic about David Cunliffe yesterday afternoon. I hadn't been paying attention to media so I had missed it. It must have been the self-inflicted wound of the century by the way he was flabbering. Like he'd taken a brown paper bag off an Asian dude in a carpark of a Chinese brothel and Joyce had played the video of it in parliament or something. Not even. <br />
<div><br />
</div><div>If it was a damaging blow it was only so because the set up by the Nats was delivered by the media - right on cue. A king hit is what both media and Nats were proclaiming. Press gallery hysteria meets National Party campaign tactics never had such an over-hyped anti-climax. </div><div><br />
</div><div>The increasingly detached and overtly partisan Tory chief cheerleader, John Armstrong, was the first on his hind legs in <a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/john-armstrong-on-politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=1502865&objectid=11276526">the NZ Herald</a> (to whom the Nats provided the drop) spouting resignation. The headline says Cunliffe's resignation may be in order. To many reading it seems far more appropriate to wonder if Armstrong's resignation may be in order. <br />
<br />
After all Armstrong has given John Key a free pass on every one of his brain-fades, untruths and reneges. All his raspy dry patrician outrage and incantations, all to oust Cunliffe for - of all things - forgetting about a form letter he had signed 11 years ago! Armstrong has been a physical husk of his former self for several years now. His hollowed Munchesque figure they have in the Herald reveals this fact. Unfortunately the debilitation seems to have caught up to his mind. The seagulls in the lobby of parliament may find it useful feed, but what value is this Tory hack in the sense of commentary to the general public? Him and Garth George roosting up in the balconies of HMNZ Herald like bats - that's the image. A right pair. Mad as bats, way past their prime, and then there's John Roughan and Fran. Bless them one and all. <br />
<br />
The Herald was just the first reptile in the waterhole to take the bait - the pack will do the rest. Pity the Herald never called on the 'Roastbusters' rape gang cops or the police minister to resign, they haven't called on the police commissioner or the police minister to resign over the NZ Police cover-up of the Sentry Taitoko death in custody which has been on ice since February. So many reasons to call to resign - and that is just the police minister. Pity the focus and priorities of the velvet commentariat are so trivial. Pity the media is triviality en mass.<br />
<div><br />
</div><div>Cunliffe had delivered himself an 'upper cut' as the TV One man put it in his live cross later that evening in their seven or so minutes of this lead item. I didn't catch TV3, but I bet Paddy Gower was in some upper realm of ecstasy doing the same thing: a hatchet job. I haven't seen more of an orchestrated beat-up on TV since the WWF wrestling show was last on air. RNZ was playing at it too, labelling Cunliffe 'beleaguered' - yeah beleaguered from media hysteria of which RNZ is part.</div></div><div>Unless Armstrong has seen additional evidence in the drip feed behind Donghua Liu that does cast real and reasonable doubt over Cunliffe's competence or honesty then there was no reason for him to take that line. There is a lot of rumourmongering about dirt, but is this on others in Labour or on Cunliffe? [More is promised for tomorrow's edition according to the Herald's twitter feed tonight: a Labour Minister and a trip up the Yangtze. If this is anything like Worth up the Khyber then it's going to be a rum do.]<br />
<br />
</div><div>What a ridiculous frenzy. The media are attempting to manufacture a crisis on the basis of what National reckons is below standard. Laughable is it not? Collins and Oravida, Key and the GCSB, Williamson, Wong, Worth... the Nats have corrupt practices in trumps compared with Cunliffe. The day the media hold National to the standard they hold others is the beginning of the end for National. Until that day dawns it is going to be a tough ride in the Labour saddle. </div><br />
[Updated 9pm]<br />
</div>Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-2789288214098867072014-06-12T18:44:00.001+12:002014-06-12T18:44:21.780+12:00David Carruthers exonerates NZ Police as he is paid to<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12465152"> </a> <i> </i> <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12465152"> </a> <i> </i> <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12465152"> </a> <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12465152"> </a> <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12465152"> </a> <br />
NZ Govt appointed 'Independent' Police Conduct Authority chairman, Sir David Carruthers, has been a busy chap. So many malevolent and brutal policemen to keep slapping on the hand with a wet travel chit, where does one find the time? The cops have already told him to <a href="http://www.police.govt.nz/news/release/police-response-ipca-report-0">fuck off </a>even on that - claiming it's double-jeopardy to have another bullshit round of internal discipline for the little thug. Why isn't the cop who lost his cool because he had to work a shift on Christmas Day and took it all out on a motorist in his own front yard with every torture device at his disposal... why isn't that thug cop getting charged? Carruthers said it was unlawful... so prosecute him. Oh that's right there is no-one to do that except the NZ Police who are also the criminals in these cases. <br />
<a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/rotorua-daily-post/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503438&objectid=11272606&ref=DP_Tw">NZ Herald</a>: <i>On December 25, 2011 Mr Smillie was signalled by police to pull over as he was travelling along Arawa Rd in Whakatane. Despite the officer activating the patrol car's lights and siren Mr Smillie failed to stop and instead accelerated before turning into his property at high speed.</i><br />
<div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>The officer followed Mr Smillie onto his property and advised him that he was under arrest for failing to stop and that he was required to undertake a breath screening test.</i></span></span></div><div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>Mr Smillie actively resisted the officer's attempts to subdue him and after being warned that OC (pepper) spray would be used if he kept failing to comply, the officer drew his OC spray and used it against Mr Smillie</i>.</span></span></div><div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">--</div><div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">Why was he being pulled over? There's so much they won't say and why they won't report it. The judges must have accepted some time ago in a series of steps in logic and tolerance that a constable may stop a motorist without any reason and make them perform things to satisfy them they are not unlawful and therefore may chase people who are not suspicious and arrest people who question their lawful authority.<br />
<br />
From what I can work out the motorist/householder was never guilty of anything other than wondering why he was being persecuted. He remonstrated with the cop and then the cop attacked him. Now we have the IPCA saying that using chemical spray in people's faces is OK if there is 'resistance'. They are lowering the threshold each time. The original justification and only legitimate justification is using it is to prevent immediate harm. And that immediate harm does not include the usual physical apprehension of an arrest initiated by the police officer themselves, let alone a policeman attacking someone, and it is not to induce compliance. It certainly won't 'calm down' anyone - it is to cause them immediate acute debilitating pain which is the opposite of calming . Use as a compliance measure is just simply torture. They are torturing someone until they will do as they are told by the torturer. Carruthers thinks its basically kosher - both chemical weapons and electric shocks (so long as they don't last too long, say 10 secs or more depending). This is Carruthers' position. It is untenable for the IPCA chair to try to mitigate human rights abuses as he does. Torture is about 10 years imprisonment isn't it?</div><div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">--</div><div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">NZ Herald:</div><div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>Despite the use of the spray Mr Smillie failed to calm down and the officer subsequently struck Mr Smillie with a police baton and pushed him against the fence in an effort to apply handcuffs. Following this Mr Smillie fell to the ground.</i></span></span></div><div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>The officer then retrieved his Taser from his police vehicle and warned Mr Smillie he would be Tasered if he continued to refuse arrest. Taser Cam footage showed that the officer then released the Taser for 13 seconds before attempting to handcuff Mr Smillie. The officer then picked up the Taser and discharged it a second time before handcuffing Mr Smillie and returning to his police car.</i></span></span></div><div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>"The Authority finds that the deployment of the Taser on two occasions amounted to an excessive use of force and was contrary to the law," Sir David said.</i></span></span></div><div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>"This was aggravated by the fact that on the first occasion the Taser was used for an extended period of time of 13 seconds.</i></span></span></div><div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>"The first use of the Taser was not in self-defence, as claimed by the officer and given there were other options open to the officer short of using the Taser, the Authority considers Mr Smillie's arrest could have been effected less forcefully after waiting for the arrival of other police officers."</i></span></span></div><div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i>Following the incident Mr Smillie was charged with assaulting police, possession of an offensive weapon, refusing to accompany and failing to stop. On 19 July 2012, at the Whakatane District Court, police withdrew the charges of assault and possession of an offensive weapon and Mr Smillie pleaded guilty to the charges of refusing to comply and failing to stop.</i></span></span></div><br />
<div style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; max-width: 540px; outline: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">--</div><br />
The other <a href="http://www.ipca.govt.nz/Site/media/2014/2014-Jun05-Taite.aspx">IPCA whitewash exoneration of police brutality</a> is even more extraordinary due the plain ill-will involved. Long story short: Carruthers says that after you've shot them in the chest through the spine so they are a paraplegic (and they're splayed on the ground swearing mad shit at you as they would) if they don't roll over and do exactly what you say you can then kick them really hard in the face to stun them - that's OK. Shoot them, kick them in the head, put them in a wheelchair for the rest of their lives and no harm done. It's all legal. Cowardly behaviour. Revolting stuff.<br />
</div>Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-7026543401142217182014-06-09T13:45:00.000+12:002014-06-09T13:45:00.034+12:0013 unlucky for some<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Anyone else notice that the election campaign has already begun? It started at some point between Hone Harawira of the Mana movement signing an alliance agreement with Vikram Kumar for the Internet Party on 27 May, and when Laila Harre was announced as leader of the Internet Party a few days later. <br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This was the end of the last lunar month of the Maori calendar, but because the next moon had risen before the Matariki stars were again visible the beginning of the new year will be the moon after that. This is the intercalated month between years - an in between time. It is called Te Tahi o Pipiri, meaning the first of the first month (Pipiri) rather than the last of the last month...but the new year - Te Tau Hou - is not until Pipiri. To my understanding the intercalary month is a chance to convene and wananga in the 'spare' time every two or three years, falling as it does in autumn when it is seasonally convenient to meet without the pressure of agricultural considerations.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It was the reaction of National and the right that defined the moment, when they went into attack mode - the first to blink, to show their fear. David Farrar, for example, uses his twitter to react defensively to issues as they arise, to discredit and rebuke, rather than using it to push National policy or putting up cat photos. So it was fascinating when Farrar went in overdrive over Harre, but more so about the money. The only time Farrar goes green is with envy! <br />
<br />
The right are apoplectic in a rage-dance hypocritcial that someone else has found their way into the pockets of a rich white man and that horror of all horrors it's a brown hand! One of their paragons of entrepeneurship and pirate prince of tech-geek uberdom is going to give his millions to a party of Maori and the left. This has the right fuming like a stuffed diesel. The Lusk/Slater takeover failed for the right, Bradbury won for the left - that is why the pain is so acute, the bitterness so feral in the media. The right lost a $4 million arm wrestle and they are super pissy about it. And then there's John Banks.<br />
<br />
The open and shut electoral donation case (a surprise to the utterly corrupt political class as evidenced by <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/10132049/F-off-says-under-pressure-Banks">Boag and Prebble</a>) is the private prosecution's finest hour (even if it was the Crown who was forced to take on the trial). Boag was on the Team Banksy mayoralty campaign that ended in disaster and she was present and in command at National's all-time disastrous 2002 campaign - so I do sincerely hope she is fully involved in many more campaigns for C&R and National. Her and Labour's Mike Williams are constantly on the commentators rounds in the media despite them both being maladroit in the arts of corrupt practice they show such devotion toward.<br />
<br />
I feel slightly sad for Banks even though I can't stand the man. He certainly deserves a hefty sentence seeing how much hate he's dished out over his career, if not for maintaining a series of gratuitous fictions to distance himself from Kim Dotcom. Pity then the judge's kid gloves have already saved him from a slap. Act is down to zero MPs, losing its already slim parliamentary resources in the process. This meltdown is legendary.<br />
<br />
John Banks will resign on Friday: Friday the 13th, a full moon of the 13th month.</div>
</div>
</div>
Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-71506053186117536332014-06-05T13:49:00.001+12:002014-06-05T13:56:03.386+12:00Coat-tailing etc.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Coat-tailing, dinner-jacketing, sleeve-pulling, belt-looping, shoe-lacing, hat-tilting... and a cup of tea.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
MMP is about proportional representation and making as many votes count toward representation as possible. In the our MMP system, the second part - making votes count - is imperfect as we have many wasted votes to parties under the arbitrary and high 5% threshold. As much as it may upset people the coat-tailing provision inside an imperfect system does make more votes count and so is more democratic than not having it. Labour's vow to put up legislation to end the rule and reduce the threshold to 4% is undemocratic - a cynical move to cut off left wing competition.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
MMP reform list for me:</div>
<div>
* Citizen-only voting rights.</div>
<div>
* South Island electorate quotient and General/Maori population division abolished as basis for electorates, ie. no General or Maori electorates or rolls, just one register of enrolled citizens.</div>
<div>
* Party vote threshold lowered from 5% to 2%.</div>
<div>
* Parliament total raised from 120 MPs to 130 MPs on condition that MPs basic salary be set independently by the Remuneration Authority at between min. 1.5 and 2.0 max. of average full-time wage/salary.</div>
<div>
* 99 MPs elected from multi-member electorates of 3, 4, or in the case of urban areas 5 seats each. </div>
<div>
* Remaining 31 MPs apportioned as to party vote equation as currently, but those returned will be from candidates with smallest losing majority in an electorate (returned as extra MP for that electorate ie. all MPs are electorate MPs, there are no 'list' MPs as such and no 'list' candidates, or indeed the need for a list).</div>
<div>
* Party pluralism and minimum representation for reo/sex/age:</div>
<div>
1. Parties may only stand maximum number of candidates of one less than total returned (ie. 2 in a 3 member electorate, 3 in 4, and 4 in a 5. Parties with two or more candidates must have at least one candidate a man and one a woman.)</div>
<div>
2. Sectional ballot forms to ensure minimum guaranteed representation while every voter gets to vote for every candidate on an equal basis: In 3 seat electorates the form is divided into two parts based on the language competency of the candidate - English and Te Reo - returning the highest polling candidate from each part and then the next highest polling candidate from either part. In electorates returning 4 or 5 seats all the candidates (regardless of language) under the age of 40 will appear in one part and the other two parts will be for English and Te Reo candidates over the age of 40.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I've posted on these issues before - this is a summary. Looking at Ireland's similar situation with population and national condition I see the Irish lower house has 166 MPs in multi-member seats (with 20+ independents), the Northern Irish assembly at Stormont has 108 (going to 96).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-28172203329341575092014-06-03T03:30:00.000+12:002014-06-03T03:30:27.660+12:00Queen's Birthday 2014: Honouring police corruption<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">The outgoing NZ Police Commissioner, Peter Marshall, has been given a CNZM by the government. That is below the re-instated knighthood so no one seems to have noticed he has been honoured. Honoured by the Queen. With the ongoing scandal of protecting the 'Roastbusters' rape gang from prosecution (because one of the young men was the son of a policeman) being his last and most memorable achievement as Commissioner, it is disconcerting to say the least to find the National government has decided this conduct is worthy of a medal. Marshall's services to policing includes the services of protecting young rapists who want to be policemen, it includes protecting police who kill.<br />
<br />
He - and now new Commissioner Mike Bush - would have been dismissed and investigated for a conspiracy to defeat the course of justice in this case if we had any politicians and officials with courage and integrity. We clearly don't. The elected officials are uniformly gutless individuals incapable of action. Cowards to a man. This is a collective failure of the political class and of civil society generally. Despite, or perhaps because of, recent horrors India and Pakistan seem to be more responsive to police connivance in rape than New Zealand where the media refuse to expose it and describe it as criminal.<br />
<div><br />
</div><div>To add to the disgraceful inappropriateness of honouring a rape gang godfather the National government have honoured a senior police detective from the same district where they killed a man in their custody earlier this year in a police station and after three months there isn't even a coroner's report. The police force of the New Zealand government is quite literally and without much, if any, exaggeration attempting to get away with murder. <br />
<br />
But don't worry they've got the Royal honours system so they can't possibly have done anything wrong - not in the Queen's eyes at any rate. <br />
<br />
Her Majesty the Queen of New Zealand has condoned it all in her honours list. Those Westy skanks who get raped by wannabe cops and those Rewa gangstas that get bashed to death by them when they graduate are all part of good policing... according to the government's decisions on who they have chosen to elevate in the public esteem.<br />
<br />
The past and recent evidence suggests that NZ Police are effectively unaccountable: they can - and do - assault, rape and kill as they please and Police Ministers such as the inept current Minister, Anne Tolley, let them. Tolley referred her own police force to the toothless and misnamed Independent Police Conduct Authority on the Roastbusters scandal without taking any other action and still maintaining she has confidence in the Commissioner! And yet with no political or civil pressure her contradictory and untenable position - and the criminal position of the NZ Police - persists.<br />
<div><br />
</div><div>The <a href="http://www.police.govt.nz/news/release/queen%E2%80%99s-birthday-honours-current-and-former-new-zealand-police-staff">NZ Police statement</a>:</div><div><div>--</div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: -webkit-auto;"><i>Peter Marshall, CNZM: for services to NZ Police and the community. Mr Marshall was Commissioner of NZ Police from 2011 to April this year. He led the policing change from a largely responsive model to one of being actively focused on victims and preventing crime. He encouraged a partnership approach to road policing which led to the lowest road toll recorded in the 60 years since records were kept; delivered sustained reductions in recorded crime whilst managing within Police’s allocated budget; and responded to the drive for government organisations to deliver better public services. He was awarded a MNZM in 2000, and was a former Commissioner of the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force.</i></span><br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i><br />
</i></span></div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: -webkit-auto;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: -webkit-auto;"><i>Gary Lendrum, MNZM: for services to NZ Police and the community. Detective Senior Sergeant Lendrum has consistently provided outstanding service to victims’ families as well as enhancing the NZ Police reputation by conducting thorough investigations. He is highly regarded by his peers in Police and the wider justice sector including prosecutors. A pioneer of and trainer in investigative interviewing, Gary is a mentor and role model for past and present investigators. He’s a leader in intelligence sharing and in crime prevention, and is currently a team leader with the Major Crime Unit for Counties Manukau CIB.</i></span></div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: -webkit-auto;"> </span></div><div>--</div><div><br />
</div></div></div><div>Sentry Taitoko died - presumed murdered - at a South Auckland police station, killed by police staff on 23 February. To date, after three months, no response or release of information from the NZ Police has been forthcoming. They are covering up their killing, as killers do. The District Command are shutting it down. Now relate this to the specialities for which the detective is being honoured. What sick irony. What provocation. Below is a copy of the <a href="http://tumeke.blogspot.co.nz/2014/03/sentry-where-is-toxicology-report.html">blog I posted on 19 March</a>, it might well have been addressed to Detective Lendrum:</div>--<br />
<I>Dear NZ Police,<br />
<br />
Got that report yet, killer? Been more than a couple of weeks now. Waiting for the afternoon media shit-drop to bury this one? Like last time. Like how you buried, you know, how you killed him? You know. Someone in a police uniform did something to Sentry Taitoko which killed him. Killed by the NZ Police at a police station - all for the crime of disorderly conduct... in his own house. <br />
<br />
How is any of this possible? It must be because you think you are above the law and not subject to it. It must be because you investigate your own crimes. Just like when one of your son's is caught being in a rape gang run under the cover of the Waitemata D's in west Auckland - nothing gets done.<br />
<br />
Now, where is the toxicology report? <br />
<br />
So glad [Peter Williams QC] is on it. Maybe you won't get away with it this time.<br />
<br />
Yours, etc.</I><br />
--<br />
</div>Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-86550462164560298972014-05-28T19:17:00.001+12:002014-05-28T19:17:10.351+12:00Tracksafe tragedy in making<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Just watched a TV One News item on 'Tracksafe' for Auckland school kids now there are finally electric trains. A booklet and singing a naff song are supposed to protect 5 year olds from being killed crossing rail lines? That is cheaper than fully fencing off the rail corridor and removing all the level crossings, but that is what must be done now the services have increased. It should have been done <i>before</i> electrification. Obviously electrification of their trains in their thinking is more important than ending the killing of people by their trains on level crossings.<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
How many more will be killed before they do this? I bet at least a dozen, maybe 20 or so from the turn of the century. We've already had people in wheelchairs caught in the tracks on level crossings being hit and dragged along the line by trains and nothing gets done. Pretty hard to top that, maybe two or three kids taken out all at once? Still not horrifying enough to justify a $1m pedestrian tunnel or bridge, a $25-$30m road/rail realignment? <div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Not to have planned to do this - and all the added expense of foregone opportunities and cost escalation and time delay when these separations are done - isn't just incompetence, it amounts to sabotage. It is an expense in the design of the system that needs to be dealt with rather than pretend they can operate lines which are going to have trains every five minutes going a across roads without any incident when the traffic impact is already going to be chronic at that frequency. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There should be no level crossings of any description in the urban area and the whole urban corridor should be fenced off. It is reckless to encourage children (let alone adults) to cross rail lines by making paths and roads across them - level crossings are inherently unsafe and getting more dangerous over time as speeds and services increase. The signs etc. provide a false sense of security. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Tracksafe team and Auckland Transport are responsible for all those who die on the tracks so long as they remain accessible and unfenced. If people want someone to blame for each death, blame them.</div>
</div>
</div>
Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12465152.post-77365371752778896822014-05-28T00:34:00.000+12:002014-05-28T00:34:49.091+12:00Mana - Internet deal well telegraphed<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There is <a href="http://mana.net.nz/2014/05/mana-movement-and-internet-party-confirm-plans-to-work-together/">agreement</a>. Since Kim Dotcom's address at the Mana AGM in Rotorua in early April a combined Mana and Internet Party list was likely. I felt at the time that as long as the top of the IP list are acceptable to Mana and there is a range of policy the two can agree on then it would be go. The potential of rolling the anti-government votes from two different strands into something bigger than their individual parts was just too much to turn down. <div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Sue Bradford was quite clear about her opposition to any deal at the AGM and so her resignation was not unexpected, indeed it would have been very odd had she stayed on. I wonder if her list ranking position was higher, such as John Minto's, would she have reacted in quite the same way?<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-OsCSmT5K89LUwxOExmUjJpN2c/preview">document</a> signals a new logo for Mana as well as a combined logo for the list amongst other things. The list: Mana: 1,3,4,7,9,11... IP: 2,5,6,8,10... By this we see that at approx. 4.5% both will get three in apiece and so I take this as being the target list vote sweet spot - appropriately ambitious. Both parties bring valuable things to the table and the leverage and how they make that work will be a fascinating case study in time, but right now things look positive, there is momentum.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The component parties and the provisions were all explained at the Mana AGM. Branches have had time to feed back and most are comfortable with trusting the leadership to assess the credibility of the IP team and follow their judgement. It is a risk, but one worth taking on balance - that is my feeling and that of most members. If it gets John Minto in, or Annette Sykes - if she doesn't take Waiariki off Flavell and enter as an electorate MP - then I am prepared to vote for whoever person x is that will lead the IP and take the No.2 slot on the list. And I state that having no clue who that person is, which indicates I doubt that the Mana team and the Kumar-led IP team would pick someone unacceptable to the wider Mana membership. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A youthful celeb would be helpful to speak to the digital generation demographic, but they would have to know their stuff on the web side to attract solid support.</div>
</div>
</div>
Tim Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00312560617723715754noreply@blogger.com0