My latest Close Up ambush

Incensed by the Popata brothers’ chillingly thuggish display on Monday night, I rang Close Up first thing Tuesday and offered to provide some push-back.

Next thing you know, I’m being flown to Auckland for a debate with Hone Harawira and the supposedly ‘moderate’ young Maori blogger Morgan Godfery.

Why is it that the state broadcaster always feels the need to outnumber me two-to-one with lefties — who inevitably and rather tiresomely then label me an extreme right-winger, racist or liar.

Last time it was Willie Jackson and Paul Spoonley, this time Hone and Morgan.

Morgan seemed a pleasant chap, who has done extraordinarily well to become a spokesman for the Maori moderati at the tender age of 20.

After the show, we chatted amicably for two hours, sharing a taxi, dinner and plane ride back to Wellington.

Then he wrote this.

(Note my various replies in the comments section.)

There was a time when being flayed alive by blog commenters used to upset me.

Now I just smile and think of all the intelligent readers they’re alienating by responding to facts with abuse.

Morgan will learn this lesson in due course. 

But back to Close Up.

Sadly, Hone couldn’t be with us in person, as he was hikoiing in Kaitaia.

I found his performance rather subdued compared with my experience last year with the foaming fool Jackson.

(Maybe Hone was knackered after a hard day’s hikoiing. Or maybe it was a deliberate strategy to differentiate himself from his bully boy proteges.)

My strategy was twofold:

1. To seed the phrase Colourblind State into the national conversation.
2. To alert the public to the upcoming Constitutional Review, and the Maori Party’s agenda to impose a Bolivian-style animist/communist/racist constitution.

The more the Lefties mock me for suggesting this wacky-sounding plan (the actual declared agenda of Marxists like Margaret Mutu and Nin Thomas), the less comfortable they’re going to feel promoting it.

I also wanted to confront Maori with their extraordinarily violent past, not for the sheer joy of causing offence (despite undoubtedly doing so), but to wake them up to the real source of their present violence.

Namely: their forefathers, not mine.

The sad truth is that Maori in 1840 were 42 warring, cannibal, communist, slave-owning dictatorships.

The British did not destroy them, as we’ve been led to believe.

In fact, they saved them from blasting and hacking themselves to extinction.

(Somewhere between 20,000 and 60,000 Maori — up to half the race — were killed in the Musket Wars of the 1820s and 30s, compared with about 2,000 in the Sovereignty Wars of the 1860s.)

Today, thanks to inter-breeding, Christianity and British law, they’ve shed most of those violent tendencies, but (understandably) not all.

All peoples, perhaps bar the Moriori, have had to confront a brutal past, very much including Europeans.

Thanks to Christianity (once they’d got through their witch-burning phase), Europeans gave up the bloodlust, and Maori followed suit when they became equal members of the British Empire.

[A commenter has pointed out that my claim that Europeans have renounced violence is not entirely plausible, given the many wars that have been waged on that continent since 1840.

But I'm talking about daily life, which, I hope even he will agree, is less violent than it used to be.]

When Hone and Morgan claim that until Maori achieve the same health, wealth and homicide rates as Pakeha they’ll need more and more Pakeha money, they’re arguing from a position of greed, not logic.

After all, as all Maori radicals seem strangely happy to highlight, Maori are still at the bottom of every social statistic.

Still at rock bottom — after being showered with billions of dollars of benefits, and up to five full and final Treaty settlements.

Clearly, more money is not the answer.

Could that be, I wonder, because too much of it is going to feather the nests of their millionaire leaders?

Whatever, it’s time we turned off the tap and asked Maori to look inward for the answers, not outwards.

It’s time they followed their Achievers, not these Grievers.

I couldn’t get all of these messages across in the debate, but I hope I showed that not all New Zealanders are prepared to be cowed by the standover tactics of wide boys and thugs.

As I said on Close Up, our fathers and grandfathers (including those in the Maori Battalion) went to war for this country.

They paid for their patriotism with their blood.

Thousands more, Maori and Pakeha, paid with their lives.

Have we become so feeble that we’re prepared to surrender this vibrant nation that our forebears clawed from raw bush, with blood, brains, sweat, tears and guts, to a violent minority of a decent minority, for fear of being called a name?

STATE MOUTHPIECE MUZZLES MONCKTON: Is TVNZ the new BBC?

UPDATE: Since I wrote this post about TVNZ banning climate sceptic Lord Monckton, it so happens that I myself have been invited to appear on Close-Up tonight to talk about race issues. Should this drive more visitors here, I’m promoting this post to the home page so it’s the first thing they see! I saw and met Monckton today in Wellington and his accounts of similar attempts by the Left to shut him down and smear him were chilling. I’ll be posting on the experience soon. Now on with this post of two days’ ago…

You may recall the recent Close-Up interview with global cooling-warming (take your pick — he does) proponent James Hansen.

And do you recall which sceptic our government TV channel brought in to debate with him to provide balance?

Me neither. 

That’s because they didn’t make him debate anyone.

(The science is settled, remember?)

Now fast forward to this week. Same programme. Same channel. Same issue.

Only this time, the visiting climateer is a sceptic — with a flair for political incorrectitude.

He’s none other than Margaret Thatcher’s former science advisor Lord Christopher Monckton, here for a few days after a rip-roaring tour of Australia.

Now whatever else Monckton may be, he’s not boring. He’s articulate, amusing and opinionated, in the great tradition of British celebs.

In other words, he’s great television. 

So why won’t TVNZ let him on?

Because they can’t find anyone to debate him.

Huh?

Seems at government TV, only the sceptics get challenged. Warmists — even confused ones who used to be coolists –  just get believed.

We’ll come back to TVNZ’s obvious bias later.

But isn’t there something fishy about not one of our loud, proud warm-mongers being prepared to defend their position on this supposed crisis?

After all, the government has just conspired to ratchet up the price of your food and petrol and most everything else.

Why? Because of the supposed desperate need to impose a carbon trading scheme on our already struggling economy.

So wouldn’t you think Nick Smith would be itching to get stuck into the guy who’s been telling him for years that the climate crisis is a hoax?

Or John Key, who used to agree it was a hoax — till he figured there were more votes in saying it wasn’t?

Or any number of Greens, those brave eco-warriors whose relentless pessimism and loathing for their species got us into this mess?

Or one of the eleven experts at the so-called Victoria University climate debate I went to and blogged about — all of them clustered courageously on the same side?

Why doesn’t even one of these ‘believers’ have the courage to defend their position against the man they like to dismiss as a ‘potty peer’ and a ’swivel-eyed loon’?

Seems Monckton is a man the warm-mongers love to hate, but hate to debate.

Why?

Seems that after all their huff and puff about the science being settled, Messrs Key, Smith, Norman, Trenberth and co. are decidedly unsettled by the thought of being found out.

(As, of course, was Al Gore.)

Of course, they’ll say tangling with Monckton is beneath them. He’s a nutter. Must be. Listen to that posh voice! Get a load of  those big bug eyes!

(The result of an hereditary condition, oddly enough unconnected with the ability to think.)

No mention of why Margaret Thatcher would choose him out of thousands to advise her on matters scientific.  They didn’t dub Maggie the Iron Lady for being soft in the head.

If these climate sages are so sure of their case, why not front up and use their superior logic to shut Monckton up once and for all?

Isn’t that what a real expert would do?

What does their mass no-show tell you about the honesty of our nation’s climate scientists and cabinet ministers?

And prime minister?

And anyway, why does TVNZ feel the need to have anyone at all debate Monckton? Why not apply the same standards to the sceptic as they applied to the scaremonger/warmist/coolist?

Is TVNZ trying to outdo the Biased BBC?

New evidence of eco-exaggeration

How ironic that Close-Up’s attempt to close down the climate debate should come in the same week as the Daily Mail ran this story:

Climate change far less serious than ‘alarmists’ predict says NASA scientist

This is, of course, another NASA scientist, not Hansen: 

Dr Roy Spencer, who works on the space agency’s temperature-monitoring satellites, claimed they showed ‘a huge discrepancy’ between the real levels of heating and forecasts by the United Nations and other groups.

After looking at the levels of radiation in the atmosphere over the past ten years, he believes the Earth releases a lot more heat into space than previously thought.

In other words, the computer models were wrong — just as thousands of sceptics (sorry, deniers; sorry, denialists) have been saying.

Now, come to think of it, this is not the first time I’ve heard about global heat escaping harmlessly into space. I first heard a leading sceptic bring it to light about two years ago.

And which sceptic would that have been?

You guessed it: the apparently not-so-mad Monckton.

I’ll be at his Wellington talk on Friday. I hope to see you there. (Whether you see him on state telly is another matter.)

For details of how to see Lord Monckton in Auckland on Thursday, Wellington on Friday and Whangarei on Saturday, hurry to the Climate Realists website.

Warm-mongers pressure PRINZ into pulling plug

Neil and Esther Henderson have been doing an excellent job bringing a dose of sanity to the climate debate — and Lord Monckton to New Zealand.

But one of Monckton’s scheduled events lost its original sponsor thanks to pressure from our brave eco-exaggerators.

Rest assured, though, Neil and Esther have saved the day.

Read this excerpt from their latest newsletter to see what they’ve been up against:

PRINZ, having volunteered to host two of the public events, has received an overwhelming barrage of negative publicity for their gall in allowing someone whose opinions are perceived as being ‘outside the politically correct mantra’ to speak in public.

PRINZ hunted far and wide to find someone to oppose Monckton in a debate and was unable to find anyone willing to front up.

Funny that.

PRINZ was prepared to continue and turn the debate into a ‘discussion’, but the vitriolic hatemail continued to such an extent that PRINZ has now made the decision to pull out of the Auckland event, and we, the CLIMATE REALISTS have taken over the arrangements.

Well done, that couple.

(And a brickbat to PRINZ for being cowed — but a bouquet for still going ahead with their Wellington event.)

The organisers of the business luncheon with Lord Monckton on Thursday have also received some very strongly worded correspondence questioning their integrity in hosting Lord Monckton and urging them (pressuring them!) to cancel.

Are business people are made of sterner stuff than communication people? Surely not!

Neil and Esther continue:

People, this is horrific!!!

What has happened to free speech in New Zealand?

We would like to urge every single one of you who is concerned about what is going on here, to contact Close Up closeup@tvnz.co.nz and challenge them about their decision not to interview Lord Monckton.

Do it now. I sent them this:

Your bias is showing

Mark and team,

 I was going to say I can’t believe your cowardice in canning your interview with Christopher Monckton.

 But then I guess I can.

If any of you at TVNZ still believe in free speech, I urge you to reconsider, stop being brainwashed by socialist liars, and let the man be heard.

Otherwise be prepared to incur the wrath of the blogosphere – a not-insignificant challenger to your supposed omnipotence.

John Ansell

Back to Esther and Neil:

Did Jim Salinger, Gareth Morgan, Rod Oram, Martin Manning, James Renwick, Kevin Trenberth, James Hansen….(think of anyone else you’ve heard prating the AGW mantra) need someone to present an alternative perspective before they were reported in the mainstream media?

We strongly believe Lord Monckton has a right to be heard. And we believe the public of New Zealand has a right to hear him and make up their own minds. There are an amazing number of accusations flying around the internet about Christopher Monckton. Here is a quote from one of our members who shall remain anonymous:

• “Until this week, I thought Christopher was a rather obscure eccentric Englishman, with a keen interest in mathematics and climate change and a talent for entertainment. “Now, after dredging through endless pages of biography by Greenpeace, Bickmere, Abraham, etc, I’ve discovered that he is an international celebrity of huge importance. “Whole libraries havebeen written about his exploits; newspapers and bloggers record his every move and mood; scholars minutely analyze his spoken word, correspondence, logo, status, etc; activist groups mobilise at his approach.“Seldom does little New Zealand have the opportunity to hear directly from an orator capable of generating such controversy and excitement on the world stage.” 

For my money, Monckton did more than any other single person to inform the world about the Climategate scandal and the shonkiness of Al Gore’s movie, and to neuter the Copenhagen talkfest.

I confess I believed Gore at first.

I was wowed by the slickness and clarity of his PowerPoint show.

I loved the way he got up in that cherrypicker to highlight the hockey stick graph.

And I had no reason at all to doubt his facts. (Like the fact that his hockey stick graph was bogus.)

It took brilliant communicators like Monckton — and Bob Carter and Ian Wishart and Jo Nova – to alerted me to the depth of my own gullibility.

Never again.

Neil and Esther:

We need to get out there and let people know that we have a right to doubt —  we have a right to be skeptical about everything we are spoonfed by the media, and having just witnessed what manipulation goes on behind the scenes, we need to call the media to account and demand balanced reporting and open debate.

Damn right we do.

The real deniers are the scientists and journalists who try to deny us our right to be sceptical about scientists and journalists.

I know from personal experience that the media are far more interested in entertaining than informing. And if the facts aren’t entertaining enough, they just make up facts that are.

They need to be exposed every time they do that. Which is almost certainly many times a day.

I am, of course, rather sensitive to press bias, given that less than a month ago the Dominion Post refused to run ACT’s 40 true statements on the race issue.

What has happened to free speech indeed.

On Close-Up with Willie Jackson

Just had a call from Mark Sainsbury wanting me on his show tonight to talk about the racist abuse on TradeMe over the listing of the personalised plate MAORI for $99,000.

Small-time internet trader Bruce Haliday listed the licence plate “Maori” four days ago for $99,000 and, by last night, the auction had almost 16,000 views and screeds of comments, many of them blatantly racist.

The mildest included: “Any maori that can afford this plate stole the monie” and “Maybe donate half the money to a charity to help prevent maoris throwing their babies into walls?”

Also on will be Willie Jackson and Professor Paul Spoonley.

Paul’s a sociologist from Massey Albany, whose research interests include ethnic policies and political extremism (especially neo-fascism).

So you can see how this is going to go: a two (if not three)-on-one setup to implicate me in the spread of racist abuse.

Suffice it to say, I’m not going to let them get away with that. This is my first time live on a major TV show, but I plan to give as good as I get.

In case Willie doesn’t let me get a word in edgeways, I deplore racial abuse — all the moreso when it’s dispensed anonymously, as tends to be the way on the net.

I once had the experience of seeing my Taiwanese brother-in-law being told to ‘go home’ by a passing carload of youths on his first day in Auckland. I felt ashamed to be a New Zealander.

But I’m not ashamed to tell the truth. Even an uncomfortable truth.

There’s a world of difference between racist abuse and truthful discussion of racial policies. (Or racist policies, as we have in New Zealand and need to abolish.)

No doubt the others will quote liberally from things I’ve written on this blog and in the ACT ad.

And some of those things — especially accounts of Maori cannibalism — are far from pretty.

Like the ghastly account of Te Rauparaha ripping apart a pregnant mother and roasting her embryo on a stick.

That’s sick, but it happened. It was straight from a ship’s diary.

And it’s relevant to ask why Chris Finlayson would want to compensate Ngati Toa $10 million for the loss of what he calls their ‘maritime empire’ that enabled Te Rauparaha to travel to Kaiapoi to slaughter, enslave and devour the local tribe.

(And why the Porirua City Council would want to name its indoor sports arena after such a thug.)

We need to know those things if we’re going to gain an honest understanding of our country’s past.

Otherwise we’re stuck with the dishonest, sanitised, state-sponsored myths we’ve been fed by politically-correct politicians, in league with the grieving, grasping iwi aristocracy.

New Zealand has become the Land of the Long White Lie. It’s time for a revolution of truth-telling about the 4 Big Cons that are being perpetrated upon us: the John Key Con, the Maorification Con, the Global Warming Con and the Teacher Unions Con.

I hope I’m able to make a start tonight. See you at 7pm on One.