Time for a Colourblind State

Last night’s Close Up piece on Hone Harawira’s militant nephew shows what happens when a government pursues a policy of endless appeasement.

It’s time this chamber of Chamberlains started running New Zealand as though it were a democracy.

I propose to ensure it does this by launching a petition for a referendum on a colourblind state – a referendum that it can ill afford to ignore.

To ensure that the government listens to the will of the people, I’m fundraising for a major public education campaign to expose the 40-year brainwashing campaign that has denied New Zealanders their right to know the truth about Crown-Maori history.

I’ve spent the past year doing little else but studying this history, and believe me it is a very different history from the one we’ve been forcefed by our schools, universities, politicians and media.

Helping me prepare for this campaign have been nine authors who between them have written over 30 books on this subject.

Very soon I’ll be setting up a site where you can read the documents I have read. Prepare to be amazed – and enraged.

One of these documents is Governor Hobson’s final English draft of the Treaty, missing for 149 years and found in 1989 – but covered up by an embarrassed government and minimised by its tame historians.

Why?

Because, like the Maori ‘Tiriti’ into which it was translated, it makes no mention of Maori owning forest and fisheries, and makes it clear that the Treaty was with all the people of New Zealand, including settlers.

Tonight it’s my turn to appear on Close Up — with Hone Harawira and another Maori, Morgan Godfery.

(I’m getting used to these two-on-one ambushes, but will do my best to get a word in edgeways.)

More on the campaign when I return from Auckland.

If you’d like to donate to the very considerable costs of a high-profile advertising campaign, please do so here.

Before long, there will be a trust, Facebook page and website. But the first step is fundraising.

Non-iwi Kiwis: don’t count on Coddington

I was concerned about the implications of the racist stacking of the Constitutional Advisory Panel.

 So I emailed the one panellist I thought I could count on to stand up for the 85% of New Zealanders who are not Maori.

(And also, I hope, a large number of those who are.)

That panellist was Deborah Coddington.

I now realise I was wrong.

I now realise that Deborah, like most, if not all, of the others, has been chosen for her pro-Maori bias.

‘Marks-ism’ leads to classroom warfare

An economics class insisted to their professor that Obama’s socialism worked.

Why?

“Because there’ll be no poor people and no rich bastards. At last we’ll all be equal,” chorused the students.

So the professor said:

“OK, we’ll run an experiment on Obama’s plan. I’ll average all your grades.

“You’ll all get the same grade. None of you will fail, and none of you will get an A.”

After the first test, the grades were averaged. The whole class got a B.

The students who’d studied hard were upset. But the students who’d mucked around were over the moon.

The second test rolled around. The students who hadn’t done much work the first time did even less this time.

And those who’d studied hard for the first test now decided they wanted a free ride too. They put down their books and went partying.

The second test average was a D!

No one was happy.

In the 3rd test, the average grade was an F.

The tests went on, but the scores never did improve.

The classroom had become a snakepit of bickering, blaming and name-calling. No one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To their great surprise, at the end of the term the professor failed the whole class. (He’d never before failed a single student.)

The professor told the class:

“Socialism is also bound to fail. Because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great. But when government takes all the reward away, no one will see any point in working.”

It couldn’t be any simpler than that.

Remember, there is a test coming up: next Saturday’s election.

Now here are five of the best sentences you’ll ever read. They all apply to the above experiment:

1. You can’t legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
2. What one person gets without working for, another person must work for without getting.
3. The government can’t give anyone anything that it doesn’t first take from someone else.
4. You can’t multiply wealth by dividing it!
5. When half the people figure out they don’t have to work because the other half will take care of them, and when the other half figure out they’d be mad to work because their pay will be given to someone else, that’s the beginning of the end of any nation.

Thanks to the excellent Foundation for Economic Growth for sending me the original (which I tinkered with for effect).

Should we fence all rivers to protect toddlers from slack parents?

The Dominion Post devotes half this morning’s front page to the bleatings of a drowned toddler’s uncle that the council should have fenced the river in which his 2 year old nephew drowned.

A family hit by a drowning tragedy had repeatedly pleaded with the council to build a fence where a toddler died.

Sukhraj Singh, 2, died and his cousin Archilles Kaui, 3, remains in hospital in a critical condition after the pair wandered into Gisborne’s Taruheru River on Thursday.

“I’ve been asking myself all night, would this have happened if the fence was put up in our neighbourhood? And the answer is no. Because those toddlers would not have been able to get past the fence”, Sukhraj’s uncle Hemi Jahnke said.

And why were the toddlers able to get anywhere near the river? The Dom finally reveals all in paragraph 10:

Before the tragedy, Archilles’ mother, Diana McIntyre, had been visiting Sukhraj’s mother, Jamie Taewa, at her home in Atkinson St. It was thought about 10 to 15 minutes passed before the women noticed the two toddlers had wandered off.

Well sorry, but any mother who lets a toddler out of her sight for 10 or 15 minutes near a river has no one to blame but herself if the child drowns.

That’s a hard thing to write at this sad time, especially as the poor mother may well have arrived at the same conclusion and does not necessarily share the uncle’s view.

But for the uncle to blame the council (ie the rest of us) is outrageously unfair.

Members of the family were part of community group Kia Kaha Mangapapa, a charitable trust started to try to make a positive difference in the area. The idea of a fence at the reserve was brought up at several hui called with Gisborne District Council last year. Archilles’ parents, Ms McLean and Frank Kaui, attended one of the meetings.

Mr Jahnke said the council had agreed to put up the fence.

“They did have a plan for the fence but because the fence was going to cost too much it started getting smaller and smaller. Eventually it turned into just a fence around the culvert.”

He was angry with the council.

“How many lives have been lost in river accidents because the council says they haven’t got enough money?

“And them listening now is not going to bring back Sukhraj. It’s not going to bring back a baby boy. But someone needs to be held accountable.”

Damn right. And I think most of us have a fair idea who.

Gisborne District Council acting chief executive Nedine Thatcher-Swann said it was “inconclusive” whether fencing the reserve would have made a difference at this stage.

Fencing every waterway into which a poorly supervised toddler could wander would certainly make a huge difference to the amount of public money available for other services. Or to Gisborne residents’ rates bills.

In my view the Council did exactly the right thing in refusing to assume the role of parents.

“Around the country and the world it is very unusual to find our natural environments – rivers, lakes or ponds – fenced.”

And so it should be. Do we really want to turn our country into an unsightly baby-prison, just so we can protect our toddlers from slack parents?

I grew up in a house near the Waiwhetu Stream in Fairfield, Lower Hutt. The Stream got a bad press for being badly polluted down the industrial end, but the suburban reaches were and are a delightfully meandering waterway that greatly enhances the ambience of the area.

It remains unfenced, despite being bounded by houses for miles, and is dotted with reserves, also unfenced.

Presumably, parents who choose to live there, like mine did, also take responsibility for watching their children.

I hope the Dominion Post will reflect on the message their story sends, and provide some balance in the coming days.

RIP Viv Ansell (1919-2011)

After a determined bid to defeat medical science, Dad breathed his last on Monday, exactly four weeks after his stroke.

This is my first experience of losing a close family member — a prospect I’ve been dreading for years – and I must say I’m feeling better than expected.

Perhaps it’s knowing that Dad is free of pain after living a long and happy life. Perhaps it’s the relief of seeing Mum coping so bravely with the loss of her husband of 55 years.

Or perhaps it’s the long period of adjustment that a bedside vigil affords you.

Whatever the reason, the experience has drawn our family closer together and we look forward to giving him a good sendoff on Friday.

Despite my earlier reservations about the pill that cost him his life, it’s been a privilege to witness the dedication of the doctors and nurses at Hutt and Wellington Hospitals, who cared for him like he was one of their own. 

That’s all you can ask for in the end.

What the ‘wonderdrug’ is doing to my Dad

You may have seen this article in the last Sunday Star-Times about the lethal side-effects of new blood thinning ‘wonderdrug’ Pradaxa (AKA dabigatran).

In today’s edition, there’s another story of a Pradaxa victim in Tauranga fighting for his life.

Sadly, I have a good idea of what this man and his family are going through. 

The reason I haven’t been blogging is that for the last three weeks, my 91 year old dad has been fighting the same fight, after taking the same drug. 

A couple of nights ago, a doctor told us he’d be surprised if Dad had more than a few hours to live.

There’s only so much battering a 91 year old body can take from the combined effects of a bad stroke, pneumonia, blood loss, incontinence, bed sores, and the repeated invasions of various body parts by various tubes.

All caused by a ‘wonderdrug’, taken once.

While the transfusion machine pumped the fresh blood of some generous unknown donor into the repeatedly punctured veins of his purply-black arm, we called in the family, gathered round his bed, and waited.

With insight gained from his wife who nurses the dying, the young registrar predicted that the life or death call would be made by Dad himself.

Luckily, some time in the wee small hours, he chose life. Late the next morning, oblivious to our anxiety, he awoke refreshed from the deepest sleep he’d had in weeks.

Another bullet dodged.

I told him the doctors were surprised he was still with us. His raspy, oxygen-assisted response was inspirational and unforgettable.

As himself, my father was not the gloating type. He was a gentle man in every sense.

But of late, with his slim reserves of expressive energy, he’s learnt to cut to the chase. With all the force he could muster, he grunted majestically (and somewhat Muldoonishly):

“Heh … heh … heh … the … doctors … don’t … know … me!”

Some med students trooped past his room. I explained to Dad that he was now in a teaching hospital (Wellington, having been transferred from Hutt in an ambulance the previous day).

Screwing his face into a wink, he muttered:

“We’ll … teach … the … doctors!”

Dad started teaching doctors about the will to live in 1919. For him, the Twenties were more wheezing than Roaring.

It was by no means certain that his weedy, sunken-chested, asthmatic body would make it through to enjoy the Great Depression.

He first listened to his beloved All Blacks on the radio in 1928 — a ritual I was to repeat at the same age in 1967, propped up in his and Mum’s bed.

To suggest in the 1920s that this sickly kid would one day watch his team contest the 2011 Rugby World Cup would be to invite admission to one of Her Majesty’s lunatic asylums.

Yet for the best part of 91 years — until 6.30am on 5 September 2011 – Dad was true to his name: Vivian — full of life. 

On his 90th birthday he invited everyone back for his 100th, and fully intended to keep the appointment.

His gym-going was as religious as his church-going.

This past summer, he came second in the over 90s section of a Hutt Valley bowls tournament. (The other entrant was just too good.)

As he recently wrote in a book about his 43 years with the BNZ (originally written just for family, but now happily purchased by 400 past and present bankers), “I may have had to discard my rugby ball and tennis racquet, but I’ve still got my marbles.” 

And he did. A few months ago, he published that book. Now he can’t read one.

Two weeks ago, he managed to watch half of the All Blacks-Tonga match before drifting off, but not before confidently asserting that the final score would be 42-9.

(He was wrong. It was 41-10.)

Last night, he couldn’t be bothered watching the All Blacks play France on the TV staring him in the face.

One little dose of the ‘wonderdrug’ was all it took. One pill.

On the Wednesday, he was taken off his warfarin. At 5.30pm, he swallowed his first and only dose of dabigatran. By 9.30pm, he was feeling so weird and disoriented that Mum had to call an ambulance.

The next day, his doctor put him back on his warfarin, but by then the ‘wonderdrug’ had done its worst.

At Father’s Day dinner on the Sunday, he told me he’d “had a bit of a setback”, the first I heard of the above.

The next morning, Mum awoke to the thump-thump of Dad hitting his head on the bedside furniture, and his body flopping on the floor. 

He’d had two small strokes in 1998 and 2005. But this was a biggie. Into Hutt Hospital by ambulance, fortunately to the Wellington region’s only dedicated stroke unit.

And the staff are dedicated too. They just can’t be there all the time. Neither, sadly, can we.

He can’t swallow, so has to be fed through a tube. In the delirium brought on by the stroke, he keeps trying to pull the tube out, and all too often succeeds.

For the last few days we thought we had him tamed, but this morning when the watching nurse was distracted, he yanked it out again.

Each time he does this, he has to endure having a long plastic tube inserted up his nose and down his throat into what we hope is his stomach, but is sometimes his lungs. Then they have to do it again. Once it came out his mouth by mistake.

Every time they put the tube back in, he has to be X-rayed to check the food is going into the right cavity.

I’ll spare you the details of the other orifices. Suffice it to say that, at times like this, it’s a shame we have so many.

We don’t know how this story will end, or when.

If you can spare a thought for a 91 year old man who’s led a good life, his sub-conscious would, I think, be pleased to hear from you.

Key confesses: National socialist

The leader of the party founded to oppose socialism has confessed to being a socialist himself.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/5509870/Wikileaks-Key-said-Kiwis-have-socialist-streak

John Key told an American diplomat in 2007 that National could not adopt conservative policies because “a socialist streak runs through all New Zealanders”.

And yet he campaigned on them anyway.

Asked if he had a socialist streak he said “absolutely” and confirmed, “I’m a product of the welfare state.”

Key equates socialism with caring and “having a heart”.

And thinks highly of Michael ‘Decade of Deficits’ Cullen. (Not to mention Rob ‘Think Big’ Muldoon.)

And this in the week when food prices hit record highs thanks to Key’s heart-felt, caring Emissions Trading Scheme.

So now it’s official. The New Zealand National Party is, in fact, the National Socialist Party.

I hope that clears things up for any National supporters who still pretend their party is centre-right.

Douglas points to why youth unemployment doubled

This graph from ACT’s Roger Douglas illustrates John Key’s duplicity in first helping to cause, then pretending to care about, youth unemployment.

National, Labour and the Greens — all parties bar ACT – voted down Roger’s bill to reinstate youth rates and get kids off the couch and into work.

By refusing to allow kids to be paid less than adults, Key deliberately allowed the number of young unemployed to double.

Now he’s offering a dollop of your money to any boss who pays a kid an adult’s wage.

Why not just let the boss pay the kid a kid’s wage, and let the kid work their way up – the way most of us did?

Excellent graph, whoever did this.

EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT THE TREATY, BUT WERE TOO TERRIFIED OF BEING LABELLED A RACIST TO ASK — Part 1: Maori Ask British for Protection From Maori

This is the first of a series of posts designed to bust the myths created by the Treaty of Waitangi grievance industry — myths shamelessly presented as truths by your government. 

If you think it rude of me to expose these facts, tough. If conmen are going to tell lies about my forefathers, I’m going to tell the truth about theirs.

Much of what you see below is distilled from New Zealand in Crisis by Ross Baker of the One New Zealand Foundation. 

In the plainest English I could muster, here is the boiled-down background to the drafting and signing of the Treaty:

c.1350 — Maori meet the tangata whenua

• Maori history tells of seven canoes arriving from Hawaiki in around 1350AD.

• They find New Zealand already inhabited by people they call the tangata whenua.

• Maori historian Dr Ranginui Walker confirms: “The traditions are quite clear: wherever crew disembarked there were already tangata whenua (prior inhabitants).”

• These first inhabitants are either driven into extinction or merge with the tangata Maori (just as the tangata Maori have merged with the Pakeha). 

• Ranginui Walker: “The canoe ancestors of the 14^th century merged with these tangata whenua tribes.”

• Thus Maori are not indigenous to New Zealand. 

• Nor are they the tangata whenua — the first people here. 

• Indigenous means here from the start — like the aborigines who’ve been in Australia for 40,000 years.

• Maori have been here only about 650 years – only 300 years longer than Europeans.

• Maori have never been a united people, with a long history of inter-tribal bloodletting.

• Ranginui Walker: “From this time on [the 14^th century] , the traditions abound with accounts of tribal wars over the land and its resources”.

1771 — fighting with Frenchmen

• In 1771 in the Bay of Islands, Maori kill Marion du Fresne and 24 of his party for ignoring wahi tapu when fishing.

• In retaliation, du Fresne’s crew kill 250 Maori and torch their village.

• Ever since, the Maori are afraid of the French.

1820-30 — Maori slaughter 20-60,000 fellow Maori

• By 1820, the Maori v Maori Musket Wars have been raging for around 15 years. They will go on for about another 25 years.

• There are around 500 battles in all.

• In 1820, Ngapuhi chief Hongi Hika sails to England.

• He asks the King for muskets. The King declines, but presents him with other gifts.

• In Sydney on the way home, he trades all the King’s gifts for 300 muskets and gunpowder.

• He then leads his tribe on a rampage south. They slaughter 20-60,000 of their defenceless countrymen, out of a total Maori population of 100-120,000. With up to half the population wiped out, it has been called the world’s worst holocaust.

• In one attack on the Tamaki pa, Ngapuhi kill more men, women and children than are killed in the whole 27 years of the 1845-72 Land Wars.

• By 1830 the southern tribes have armed themselves with muskets and are planning to head north for revenge.

1831 — Waikato annihilate Taranaki, who slaughter the Moriori

• The Waikato travel south and attack the Taranaki tribes.

• They kill one-third and enslave another third. The remaining third flees south to the Wellington area.

1831 – Northern chiefs ask King for protection 

• In 1831, it’s rumoured that the French naval vessel La Favourite intends to annex New Zealand to France.

• The French would have two reasons for doing this: as further payback for the killing of du Fresne and his crew; and to protect the French now living in Hokianga.

• The natives decide to place a British flag on the mission flagstaff. They reason that if the French tear it down, the missionaries will appeal to Britain for protection.

• Thirteen northern chiefs write to the King of England, asking him to protect them.

• They tell the King they only trust the British: “It is only thy land which is liberal towards us”.

• They reveal their fear of the French: “We have heard that the tribe of Marian [the French] is at hand, coming to take away our land”.

• They ask the King to guard their lands from other tribes and nations: “Therefore we pray thee to become our friend and the guardian of these islands, lest the teasing of other tribes should come near us, and lest strangers should come and take away our land”.

• At the time there are no property rights. To the Maori, might is right — they hold their land only as long as they can defend it.

• The King acknowledges the chiefs’ request by sending a British Resident, James Busby, to New Zealand in 1833.

1835 – Declaration of Independence

• New Zealand-built ships are sailing to Sydney.

• These ships are not registered, so have no flag to sail under.

• So James Busby introduces to the northern tribes a Declaration of Independence.

• This gives them a form of identity, and a flag under which New Zealand ships can be registered.

• In 1835, thirty-four Ngapuhi chiefs sign the Declaration of Independence.

• This declares their territories independent states. It states they will meet in Congress each year.

• The annual Congress is meant to make laws to dispense justice, preserve peace and good order, and regulate trade.

• But, as always, inter-tribal fighting takes precedence over political co-operation.

• The Declaration is abandoned without one Congress meeting being held.

• The Declaration can’t give full sovereignty, as the chiefs can’t form a united working government.

• Tribes only have power over their territories as long as they can defend them.

• No united political structure exists in New Zealand at this time.

What historians say about the Declaration of Independence

Claudia Orange:

“Even though the declaration asserted sovereignty, Maori, who saw themselves as tribal rather than as members of a nation, would have been unable to exercise full rights as an independent state, there was no indigenous political structure upon which to base a united congress.

“However, it did introduce Maori to the idea of a legal relationship with Britain and therefore, five years later, to the Treaty of Waitangi”.

Michael King: 

“The Declaration had no reality, since there was in fact no national indigenous power structure within New Zealand”.

King also pointed out that some of the United Tribes were at war with one another within a year of signing the Declaration.

Paul Moon:

“The Declaration represented a regional goodwill agreement rather than a national document of truly constitutional significance”.

1835 — Maori massacre Moriori in Chathams.

• In 1835, 900 of the Taranaki (Ngati Mutunga and Ngati Tama) who flee to Wellington, want to avoid being harassed further.

• They commandeer the brig Rodney and sail in two trips to the Chatham Islands.

• Many are sick when they arrive, and are nursed back to health by the peace-loving Moriori.

• When they recover, and for the next seven years, the Maori slaughter or farm the Moriori to near-extinction.

• Historian Michael King: “They were laid out touching one another, the parent and the child. Some women had stakes thrust into them; they were left to die in misery. The rest farmed like sheep over the next few years into virtual extinction”.

1837 – Call for better government 

• In 1837, inter-tribal fighting worsens in many parts of New Zealand.

• Busby can do little to stop it, as he has no forces.

• The settlers, traders and 192 chiefs want more official commitment. They appeal to Britain for a better type of Government.

• As inter-tribal fighting worsens, the Maori population plummets.

• Musket- and goods-hungry Maori are selling vast tracts of their land to land-hungry Europeans.

• Britain is twice asked (in 1831 and 1835), and twice promises, to protect the people and their property.

• To bring law and order to both Maori and non-Maori, Britain is obliged to take more control.

• To do this legally, they need to make New Zealand a British Colony.

• To make New Zealand a colony, Britain has to get the chiefs’ consent to sovereignty over the whole land.

• For two years, the Colonial Office debates the best way to become involved in New Zealand. The British don’t really want another colony.

• With extreme reluctance, the Colonial Office sends out William Hobson, a highly ranked Officer in the British Navy.

• Hobson’s job is to negotiate a treaty with the chiefs that will give Britain sovereignty over the whole land.

• That treaty will give Britain the legal right to set up a government.

• A government will bring law, order and protection. It may investigate and settle land sales, titles and disputes.

• The government will act for all the people of New Zealand, settler and Maori alike.

Next: the drafting and signing of the Treaty.

UPDATE: It’s taking me longer than expected to gather my evidence for Part 2. (There’s just so much of it, and I’m also contending with a family illness.)

For now, I urge you to click on the Comments thread below. It has attracted some experts in the field who have spent decades studying this subject. I’m finding their contributions enlightening.

What Windschuttle said that inspired Breivik

 It is truly sad for the placid people of Norway that their two best-known citizens would seem to be a traitor and a mass-murderer.

• Vidkun Quisling — the wartime minister-president who collaborated with the Nazis against Norwegians, especially Jews.
• Anders Breivik — the gunman who slaughtered young Labour Party members in protest against Muslim immigration.

Breivik says he was inspired by, among others (including philosopher John Stuart Mill), the editor of Australia’s Quadrant magazine, Keith Windschuttle.

Needless to say, Windschuttle has not been having an easy time of it lately.

What passes for lefty logic runs like this:

1. Breivik is a mass-murderer.
2. Breivik hates the way Western media hate  the West.
3. Breivik loves Windschuttle’s speech hating the way Western media hate the West.
   THEREFORE:
4. Windschuttle is a party to mass murder.

Guilty as charged, wouldn’t you say?

And there’s a Kiwi link too.

You see, the speech Windschuttle made that Breivik took such a shine to was made in New Zealand — at Amy Brooke’s Summersounds Symposium in 2006.

(This was a wonderful event which I also attended in 2007, 2008 and 2009 — making me, in the eyes of at least one blog commenter, a fellow murderer.)

Here’s what Windschuttle actually said (the subheads and paragraphing are mine):

The Adversary Culture

The Perverse Anti-Westernism of the Cultural Elite
by Keith Windschuttle

For the past three decades and more, many of the leading opinion makers in our universities, the media and the arts have regarded Western culture as, at best, something to be ashamed of, or at worst, something to be opposed.

Ad that Dom banned cleared by ASA

My ACT ad that contained 40 statements of fact has been cleared by the Advertising Standards Authority.

MAORI RADICALS ADVERT NOT IN BREACH – ASA

The Advertising Standards Authority has rejected a complaint about ACT’s controversial “Fed up with pandering to Maori radicals?” newspaper advertisement.

Twelve people argued the advert was “misleading, offensive, racist, in breach of the requirement for a due sense of social responsibility and likely to play on fear”.

The ASA said a political party advocating a robust view on matters of public interest allowed the public to see the party’s position. There was no breach of codes and no grounds for the complaints to proceed, it ruled.

Yet the Dominion Post refused to “allow the public to see the party’s position”. 

As a private company, they had the right to ban the ad. (Whether they had the right to charge ACT full price for the space is another matter.)

But the public also has the right to know that the capital’s daily newspaper is politically biased against ACT.

This is the ad that the Herald ran, and the Dom banned:

What sort of democracy do we live in when a monopoly newspaper can be so cravenly politically correct as to ban a question that most of its readers would answer Yes to, backed by 40 true statements?

Oops — got the wrong end of the stick

When I wrote my last post about Parliament passing the fingerprint law under urgency I was under time pressure myself. (Well OK, my sons were hassling me to go for a beer.)

Coming back to it and reading the online version, I could not have got the gist of the One News report more wrong.

In fact, the law change does allow young offender fingerprints to be stored — great.

Apologies to the MPs I misrepresented.

(I must say I found it very hard to believe that Judith Collins could be signing up to something that would make life easier for criminals, so I’m pleased it was me who stuffed up, not her.) 

I hope that’s the last time I put together a post in a hurry. I’m a slow writer, and this is why

The Evans Bay Turtle

What is it about Wellington and its circular landmarks with eccentric nicknames?

The under-50s won’t remember when the twin-domed Welsh Dragon Bar in the middle of Kent and Cambridge Terraces used to be a public toilet block, known by all as the Taj Mahal.

At the far end of the same dual-dragstrip is the Basin Reserve, so named after the 1855 earthquake turned Basin Lake into a swamp, which the council then turned into a sports reserve.

Over in Thorndon there’s the parliamentary Beehive, which Sir Basil Spence designed on the back of a serviette. And the Cake Tin, named by yours truly in response to a call for a nickname by the Evening Post’s Angus Morrison.

(Note: popular rumour has it that the Cake Tin was named by an Auckland talk show host, which is why it wasn’t popular for a long time with Wellingtonians. Still others say it was Andrew Mehrtens. Being a rather obvious name, it was probably all three of us.)

And now we have a new stadium to name: the Kilbirnie Indoor Sports Centre in Evans Bay. It’s not quite circular, but near enough.

The Dom Post’s Hank Schouten is calling for nicknames, so I sent in this letter:

Like the Cake Tin, the new Kilbirnie Indoor Sports Centre is a good example of smooth, single-minded design.

Now, what to call it?

I worry that the architects’ favourite, The Limpet, while anatomically accurate, might be a bit, well, limp to catch on.

So what about the Saucer (as in flying), the Clam, the Oyster, the Stingray, the Flounder, the Slater or the Frisbee?

(Had they built it where Councillor Andy Foster wanted, it could have been the Downtown Indoor Sports Centre — DISC.)

A friend of mine argues noisily for The Trilobite, a creature I had not heard of, but which it clearly resembles.

But the nickname with the best combination of stickability and seaside relevance would have to be the Turtle.

What do you think? Feel free to suggest a name of your own. I may run a poll of the best of them.

But to me, if I squint as I drive round the bays I see a beached, bleached white turtle shell whose occupant is wisely staying indoors.

(As well he might. When I drove past on Monday, there was thick snow just around the corner in Shelly Bay.)

How we make the news in Aussie these days

The Tasman wage gap, which John Key once pretended to want to close, is also a poverty gap.

Here’s how it’s being reported in Australia. 

Of course, setting the poverty line at 60% of median income is a typical lefty linguistic trick. 

Poverty is starvation. Being only 60% as rich as the averge person is envy.

Still, relative to 30 other First World nations, New Zealand’s performance is shameful:

20th for children living in poor households

21st for infant mortality

29th for measles immunisation rates

29th for child health and safety

3oth for teen suicides.

Thanks Ross for sending me this clipping.

Putting it bluntly — a police chief speaks his mind

I dedicate this post to Garth McVicar.

It’s a San Francisco police chief giving the bedwetter media a bollocking for making a big deal of the speed one of his officers was travelling when he was killed chasing an armed felon.

This guy would make a great politician. He knows people despise the liberal media’s warped sense of justice, so doesn’t hesitate to get straight on the front foot.

Why do most public figures lack this instinct and resort to weasel words and apologies?

We should celebrate people who speak plainly. They’re islands of truth in a sea of deceit.

Thanks Digby for sending me this video.

NBR editorial on Maorification

I coined the word Maorification with the deliberate goal of getting it into the language.

When ACT declined to use it, I decided to use it myself.

To me, no word less blunt — no euphemism like the racialisation preferred by my friend Stephen Franks — can do justice to the process by which New Zealand is being taken over by radical Maori.

Every day, I wonder whether it was the right thing to do to use that word.

It goes without saying in this topsy-turvy land that it would get me branded a racist. Anyone who refuses to agree that Maori should own New Zealand out to the 200 mile limit is branded a racist.

And sadly, it was always bound to upset some very good Maori people. (Not to mention legions of cringing white ’wets’ eager to suck up to Maoridom and disown their Western inheritance at every opportunity.)

But I think it was the right decision. Like it or not, Maorification is the right word.

Because this reverse takeover of the silent (and silenced) majority by a noisy, intimidating minority is real. It’s affecting and infecting every institution in our society.

And it’s speeding up. 

And if we don’t jolt people into recognising the extent of it, it will soon be too late.

And so I was pleased to read this in today’s NBR editorial:

Beware sting in taniwha’s tail

A government plan to dovetail New Zealand into tail-wagging Maorification must be resisted.

If mishandled, the continued insidious encroachment into national affairs of the Treaty of Waitangi, its floating and fanciful “principles,” and craven kow-towing to a tax-draining minority, will impede – not enhance – economic development.

Foreign and onshore investors, as well as trading partners, may think twice when they see a country regarded as multiculturally stable embark on a path fraught with the prospect of racial privilege. Thanks to Maori and appeasing politicians, New Zealanders remain unnecessarily confused and at odds over a myriad of so-called “Maori issues,” including the true status of the foreshore and seabed, for example.

Confused largely and quite deliberately by Appeaser-General Chris Finlayson — champion (when he wants to be) of plain English law.

Conflict continues over ownership of natural resources.

The rabid property demands of Tuhoe – who want their own private fiefdom in the hills – are evidence of a brand of racial separatism that has no place in New Zealand.

This uncertainty for the majority has now spilled over into who may use national symbols such as the silver fern, who may perform a haka and who pays for clipping the lucrative koha ticket.

I prefer to use the true meaning of koha: ’bribe the tribe’. Let’s be honest, when a sum of koha can persuade a taniwha to return to its lair (as happened with the Waikato Expressway), we are dealing with an extortion racket.

Collectively, various Maori demands have been accommodated to such an extent that the pendulum has swung too far toward a minority at the risk of damaging the national good.

I use the pendulum analogy too. It’s about balance and fairness, and we cannot strike a fair balance when so much of the truth about the Treaty and its signatories remains unknown by the public.

Which is why greater scrutiny is needed over a recently announced 12-member constitutional advisory panel, whose dominant terms of reference are heavily skewed to favour the Maori minority. The ostensible purpose of the panel, which will cost the taxpayer $2 million in its first year, is to conduct a “wide-ranging review of New Zealand’s constitutional arrangements.”

This includes the size of parliament, length of the electoral term, Maori representation, the role of the Treaty and whether a written constitution is needed.

While some objects are worthy of careful consideration on behalf of all New Zealanders, the blatant swing toward matters favouring Maori should give cause for concern.

Maori Affairs Minister and Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples, for one, sees consultation with Maori and the place of the Treaty in just about everything as a priority.

It is evidence of the strong pro-Maori slant that the panel will report to Dr Sharples and Deputy Prime Minister Bill English.

In the proud National tradition of allowing the Maori Affairs Select Committee to hear submissions into the Marine and Coastal Areas Bill!

While the panel’s musings and recommendations could simply be ignored, this is unlikely given its influential Maori imbalance.

With five “non-Maori New Zealanders,” five Maori, one Pacific Islander and one of “Asian ethnicity,” the panel is, on the surface, stacked against more than three-quarters of the population.

Figures produced in a 2010 Ministry of Social Development report on population ethnicity showed New Zealand’s population to be 77% European, 15% Maori, 10% Asian and 7% Pacific Island. (The same report projected the 2016 population would be 73% European, 16% Maori, 13% Asian and 8% Pacific Island.)

I see they had the same trouble I had with the MSD stats inflating the total to 109%.

The 77% actually includes ‘Other’ and ‘New Zealanders’, so I thought it safer to use the number 68%. But it makes no difference to the point they’re (and I was) making. 

While Vote Maori will contribute $500,000 and the Ministry of Justice $1.5 million to pay for this panel, Maori get a greater say than their representation in the general population.

Economic growth and investment confidence should not be threatened or undermined by the potentially nation-fracturing agenda of a minority.

It’s fair to say most New Zealanders believe the present constitutional structure works, based largely on the proven democratic Westminster system and backed by the rule of law.

And more of them need to say so. That’s why this issue needs to be front-footed. People need to learn not to be silenced by the threat of being called racist. That’s a trick, and it’s worked a treat, and it’s high time it stopped working.

While Maori continue to be over-represented in the unemployment, child abuse, drug using, anti-social and general criminal offending stakes, some hotheads have demanded farcical “rights” over land and citizenship.

These demands, while nothing more than thinly disguised racial separatism, if met would still require all other New Zealanders to pay for them.

While a constitutional advisory panel should act in the interests of all New Zealanders, the racial bogeyman already stalks the land.

Well said. 

And I do like this anonymous reader’s comment:

I dont believe it !
Finally an article with the spine and backbone to tell it like it is…
Is it possible that finally the little kiwi can face up to the reality that enough is enough.
Only last month a Muriel Newman blog article stated “What all of this means is that talk of Maori marginalisation is self-serving nonsense. A recent government report estimated the total value of Maori corporate assets at a whopping $37 billion. Thanks to the generosity of New Zealand taxpayers, the Maori aristocracy has become very rich, and is getting richer. Maori leaders could use their vast resources to lift the performance and aspirations of their people. They choose not to. “

Waiting for the usual chip on shoulder cringe pc set to do the usual in defense of their wallets….But maybe the taniwhas just a worm due for turning.

Thanks to reader Graham for alerting me to the NBR.

Out of the frying pan into the fridge: the hysterical record of climate change

Since Queen Victoria’s time, climate “scientists” have been telling us climate change was going to kill us. But they keep changing their minds on whether we’re going to fry or freeze.

The media, of course, are happy either way, as long as they can scare us into reading all about it.

Read this timeline and weep — or steam. (Blue you freeze, red you fry.)

It’s nearly all from the interesting site But Now You Know — The Search for Truth in Human Action .

The Ever-Changing Climate Change Timeline

1895
 Geologists Think the World May Be Frozen Up Again 
New York Times

1902
Disappearing Glaciers…deteriorating slowly, with
a persistency that means their final annihilation…
scientific fact…surely disappearing. 
Los Angeles Times

1912
Prof. Schmidt Warns Us of an Encroaching Ice Age
New York Times

1923
Scientist says Arctic ice will wipe out Canada
Chicago Tribune

That scientist was Professor Gregory of Yale University, the US representative to the Pan-Pacific Science Congress.

1923
The discoveries of changes in the sun’s heat and the
southward advance of glaciers in recent years have given
rise to conjectures of the possible advent of a new ice age 
Washington Post

1924
MacMillan Reports Signs of New Ice Age 
New York Times

1929
Is another ice age coming?
Los Angeles Times

1932
“If these things be true, it is evident,
therefore that we must be just teetering on an ice age”
The Atlantic
This Cold, Cold World

1933
America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776;
Temperature Line Records a 25-Year Rise 
New York Times

 So now they claim global warming’s been going on for 25 years. Yet for that whole 25 years, they were warning of an ice age.

1933
“…wide-spread and persistent tendency toward
warmer weather…Is our climate changing?” 
Federal Weather Bureau

1938
“Global warming, caused by man heating the planet
with carbon dioxide “is likely to prove beneficial to mankind
in several ways, besides the provision of heat and power.”
Royal Meteorological Society

1938
“Experts puzzle over 20 year mercury rise…Chicago
is in the front rank of thousands of cities throughout the world
which have been affected by a mysterious trend toward
warmer climate in the last two decades.” 
Chicago Tribune

1939
“Gaffers who claim that winters were harder when they
were boys are quite right… weather men have no doubt that
the world at least for the time being is growing warmer.”
Washington Post

1952
“…we have learned that the world has been
getting warmer in the last half century.”
New York Times

1954
“…winters are getting milder, summers drier.
Glaciers are receding, deserts growing.”
U.S. News and World Report

1954
Climate – the Heat May Be Off
Fortune

1959
“Arctic Findings in Particular Support
Theory of Rising Global Temperatures”
New York Times

1969
“…the Arctic pack ice is thinning and that
the ocean at the North Pole may become
an open sea within a decade or two”
New York Times

1969 
“If I were a gambler, I would take even money
that England will not exist in the year 2000″
Paul Ehrlich

(Erlich now predicts doom from global warming, so this
quote gets an honorable mention, even though he was
talking about his crazy fear of overpopulation)

1970
“…get a good grip on your long johns, cold
weather haters – the worst may be yet to
come…there’s no relief in sight”
Washington Post

1974
Global cooling for the past forty years
Time

 Huh? But for just about all of the previous forty years (whizz back to 1934) they’d been saying the earth was getting hotter!

 1974
“Climatological Cassandras are becoming
increasingly apprehensive, for the weather
aberrations they are studying may be
the harbinger of another ice age.”
Washington Post

1974
“As for the present cooling trend a number of leading
climatologists have concluded that it is very bad news indeed”
Fortune
(Winner of a Science Writing Award
from the American Institute of Physics
for its analysis of the danger)

1974
“…the facts of the present climate change are such that
the most optimistic experts would assign near certainty
to major crop failure…mass deaths by starvation,
and probably anarchy and violence.” 
New York Times

1975
Scientists Ponder Why World’s Climate is Changing;
A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable
New York Times

1975
“The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside
nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death
and misery for mankind.”
Nigel Calder
Editor, New Scientist
in International Wildlife

1976
“Even U.S. farms may be hit by cooling trend”
U.S. News and World Report

1979
The Cooling of America
Time

1981
Global Warming “of an almost unprecedented magnitude”
New York Times

1988
“I would like to draw three main conclusions.

“Number one, the earth is warmer in 1988 than
at any time in the history of instrumental measurements.

“Number two, the global warming is now large enough that
we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause
and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect.

“And number three, our computer climate simulations
indicate that the greenhouse effect is already large
enough to begin to effect the probability of extreme
events such as summer heat waves.”
Jim Hansen
Testimony before Congress
(For context, see His later quote
and His superior’s objection)

1989
“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound
to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must
include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts.

“On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human
beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world
a better place, which in this context translates into our working
to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change.

“To do that we need to get some broad based support, to
capture the public’s imagination. That, of course,
means getting loads of media coverage.

“So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make
simplified, dramatic statements, and make
little mention of any doubts we might have.

“This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find
ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula.

“Each of us has to decide what the right balance
is between being effective and being honest.
I hopethat means being both.”
Stephen Schneider
Lead author 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Discover

1990
“We’ve got to ride the global warming issue.  Even if the theory
of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing –
in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
Senator Timothy Wirth

1993
“Global climate change may alter temperature and rainfall
patterns, many scientists fear, with uncertain
consequences for agriculture.”
U.S. News and World Report

1998 
No matter if the science [of global warming] is all phony . . .
climate change [provides] the greatest opportunity
to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Christine Stewart
Canadian Minister of the Environment
Calgary Herald

2001 
“Scientists no longer doubt that global warming
is happening, and almost nobody questions the fact
that humans are at least partly responsible.” 
Time

2003
“Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been
appropriate at one time, when the public and decision-
makers were relatively unaware of the global warming
issue, and energy sources such as “synfuels,” shale oil
and tar sands were receiving strong consideration”
Jim Hansen
NASA global warming activist
Can we defuse The Global Warming Time Bomb?

2006
“I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation
of factual presentations on how dangerous it is,
as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to
what the solutions are, and how hopeful
it is that we are going to solve this crisis.”
Al Gore
Grist

2006
BE WORRIED. BE VERY WORRIED.
Climate change isn’t some vague future problem — it’s
already damaging the planet at an alarming pace.
Time

Now: The global mean temperature has fallen for four years in a row, which is why you stopped hearing details about the actual global temperature, even while they carry on about taxing you to deal with it…how long before they start predicting an ice age?

 

The actual Global Warming Advocates’ chart, overlayed on the
“climate change” hysterics of the past 120 years. Not only is it
 clear that they take any change and claim it’s going to go on
forever and kill everyone, but notice that they even
sometimes get the short-term trend wrong.

Of course NOW they are talking about the earth “warming for
the past century”, again ignoring that they spent much of
that century claiming we were entering an ice age.

The fact is that the mean temperature of the planet is,
and should be, always wavering up or down, a bit,
because this is a natural world, not a climate-controlled office.

So there will always be some silly bureaucrat, in his air-
conditioned ivory tower, who looks at which way it’s
going right now, draws up a chart as if this is permanent,
realizes how much fear can increase his funding, and proclaims
doom for all of humanity.

2006
“It is not a debate over whether the earth has been warming
over the past century. The earth is always warming or cooling,
at least a few tenths of a degree…”
Richard S. Lindzen
Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology
MIT

2006
“What we have fundamentally forgotten is simple primary
school science. Climate always changes. It is always…
warming or cooling, it’s never stable. And if it were stable,
it would actually be interesting scientifically because it
would be the first time for four and a half billion years.”
Philip Stott
Emeritus professor of bio-geography
University of London

2006
“Since 1895, the media has alternated between global cooling 
and warming scares during four separate and sometimes
overlapping time periods. From 1895 until the 1930′s the media
peddled a coming ice age. From the late 1920′s until the 1960′s
they warned of global warming. From the 1950′s until the 1970′s
they warned us again of a coming ice age. This makes modern
global warming the fourth estate’s fourth attempt to promote
opposing climate change fears during the last 100 years.”
Senator James Inhofe

2007
“I gave a talk recently (on fallacies of global warming) and
three members of the Canadian government, the environmental
cabinet, came up afterwards and said, ‘We agree with you,
but it’s not worth our jobs to say anything.’ So what’s being
created is a huge industry with billions of dollars of
government money and people’s jobs dependent on it.”
Dr. Tim Ball
Coast-to-Coast

2008
“Hansen was never muzzled even though he violated  NASA’s
official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did
not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind’s
effect on it). Hansen thus embarrassed NASA by coming
out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his
testimony before Congress”
Dr. John S. Theon
Retired Chief of the Climate Processes Research Program 
NASA

 
Next time you see the usual “global warming” chart, look
carefully: it is in tiny fractions of one degree. The ENTIRE 
global warming is less than six tenths of one degree.

Here is the Global Warming Advocates’ own chart,
rendered in actual degrees like sane people use.
I was going to use 0-100 like a thermometer,
but you end up with almost a flat line, so I HELPED
the Climate Change side by making the temperature
range much narrower, and the chart needlessly
tall to stretch the up-down differences in the line.

JA: I made this other picture as a variation on the one at the top:

 

What would Maggie have done with the rioters?

After the pathetic response by British authorities to the riots, I can’t help wonder what Margaret Thatcher would have done in David Cameron’s shoes.

A lot more than talk tough, I bet.

She’d have had those watercannons and rubber bullets on the streets faster than you could say Arthur Scargill.

This is what she said at the time of the miners’ strike:

“What we have got is an attempt to substitute the rule of the mob for the rule of law, and it must not succeed. It must not succeed. There are those who are using violence and intimidation to impose their will on others who do not want it. The rule of law must prevail over the rule of the mob.”

And again, casting the miners as unpatriotic:

“We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty”.

By the way, did you know Scargill’s strike was funded by the KGB?

After his Wellington talk, Lord Monckton was telling us about his time with Thatcher, and how the government were tracking Scargill travelling round the Soviet Union collecting money and instructions.

Appeaser-General to compensate cannibal’s tribe for loss of South Island dining rights

Appeaser-General Chris Finlayson wants to pay the descendants of Te Rauparaha $10 million of your money for the loss of their right to capture, kill and cannibalise the Maori of the South Island.

In the words of Dr John Robinson in his book The Corruption of New Zealand Democracy — A Treaty Overview:

Mr Finlayson has made an offer for a Treaty settlement to Ngati Toa, which includes a payment of $40 million, plus $10 million in recognition of Ngati Toa’s former marine empire, $6.31 million for capacity building and an additional amount of $100,000 as claimant funding (the Government also promised to support applications for resourcing from the Crown Forestry Rental Trust).

Ah yes, the CFRT — the agency that refused to pay Robinson for his research on Maori depopulation until he’d reversed his conclusion to echo their politically-correct view of history. 

But how intriguing that Ngati Toa possessed a ‘marine empire’ — presumably patrolled by a blue-water navy. And not exactly for peacekeeping purposes, as we shall discover in a future post.

And how intriguing that the supposedly Honourable Chris Finlayson intends to give $10 million of your money to Ngati Toa for the loss of this marine empire?

I know Chris Finlayson. We were on good terms until I realised that he, along with John Key, were traitors intent upon giving my country back to its former owners, with no payment for improvements.

He is also a master lawyer and self-styled champion of plain English. He has the skills to say exactly what he means with deadly precision. When he wants to.

But this time — as with so many of his pronouncements on matters Maori — he doesn’t want to. So I’ll say it for him.

By ‘loss of Ngati Toa’s marine empire’, Finlayson means the loss of the right of these Taranaki invaders (who wiped out the tribe that had been here for centuries) to paddle across Cook Strait and slaughter, enslave and feast upon the South Island Maori.

Compensating the descendants of their chief cannibal, Te Rauparaha (whose depraved devourings earns him a separate post), for the loss of that right is going to cost you and me $10 million.

And that’s just the appetiser for a much larger Ngati Toa claim.

As part of the package developed to recognise Ngati Toa’s maritime empire, the Crown offers to explore the development of a redress instrument that recognises Ngati Toa’s role as Kaitiaki of Cook Strait and the coastal marine area in Port Underwood and Pelorus Sound… and supports Ngati Toa in developing a statutory plan articulating Ngati Toa’s values in relation to these areas.

While most of us cast our vote and make submissions, the Ngati Toa extended family will have the right to prepare management and planning documents — all because of the warfare of ancestors 190 years ago.

And not just warfare. Also the cruellest imaginable slavery and cannibalism — including the eating of women and children.

And for these despicable acts, plus wrongs done to them by the evil white man that Finlayson has yet to reveal (or should that be invent?) the tribe is to be rewarded. By you.

It is strange and indeed corrupt to make such a generous offer of taxpayers’ money without settling the grounds for the complaint.

As I wrote at the time to the Minister, “The situation as I understand it is in contradiction to common sense and logic. Surely there would be no consideration of a settlement in the absence of a clearly specified wrong.”

Surely not? Yet that’s exactly what’s happening. Finlayson wants to pay $10 million of your money to a tribe for no reason he is prepared to divulge.

Here the truth of what happened in a past century is not to be determined by historians in an open and public debate, but written by the aggrieved party, about to profit from a settlement based on a biased interpretation, behind closed doors and after the settlement is agreed.

Again in the words of Minister Finlayson, “The Ngati Toa historical account is being negotiated concurrently with the rest of the Ngati Toa settlement and will be agreed before the deed of settlement is signed… All settlement redress, including the historical account, is confidential while under negotiation.”

You read correctly. Your head lawyer is rewriting the tribe’s history with the tribe, behind closed doors, in order to concoct a reason to pay the tribe with your money for something your forefathers almost certainly did not do to their forefathers.

What kind of an idiot is Chris Finlayson? Answer: a ‘useful idiot’. 

But look at this next bit:

Even the very little information available shows that the basis of the settlement is wrong. The claimed maritime empire never existed. This was made clear by the Waitangi Tribunal:

“We consider the idea of a sustained ’overlordship’ to have little basis in Maori customary thinking. … the idea of an overlordship is now seen as the legacy of an imperial rhetoric.”

So even the ridiculously pro-Maori Waitangi Tribunal does not agree with the Appeaser-General that Ngati Toa possessed a blue water navy.

The Maori had the great luck that the colonial power was 19th century Great Britain.

Damn right they did. Imagine if they’d run into the Spaniards. Or the Belgians.

Or, worse, if the tables had been turned and the Maoris had colonised Britain. Imagine that. Would they have treated with the inhabitants — or on them?

(Remember the Taranaki tribes’ discourteous response to being welcomed ashore by the peace-loving Moriori in the Chathams – to capture, enslave or exterminate all but a few of their hosts.)

The concept of citizenship developed through the Cromwell revolution, the Glorious Revolution, the French and American revolutions, and the calls to end slavery (which succeeded across the British Empire in 1833) had become accepted.

The British, like all races, had a bloodthirsty history. But by 1840, they’d put their piracy and slavery behind them.

British politicians and the Colonial Office wanted to work with other peoples and respect their rights. Article Three of the Treaty of Waitangi promises that equality.

That promise of equal rights by the then-greatest civilisation on earth to a population of Stone Age tribesmen was evidence that the British, far from being the bully boys of modern myth, were in fact the most compassionate of colonisers. 

But equality is nowhere near good enough for the Maori leaders of today. They quite sensibly prefer the reverse takeover model — especially as our leaders seem dumb enough to give it to them.

This should be the clear basis for constitutional reform if the country is to move forward together, 170 years later.

Instead there are continuing claims, and settlements, based on bloodthirsty conquest. The example of the fate of the Chatham Islanders is not unique.

The Moriori paid a high price for appeasing the Maori. As will we if the relentless Maorification of our institutions continues.

In the case that has interested me particularly here, concerning the south Wellington coast, we find that Ngati Toa showed no respect for Ngati Ira’s love of the land, customary title or wahi tapu.

They killed them, enslaved them, and drove them out.

Now their descendants demand the rights that were denied the former inhabitants of this land.

Words change their meaning. Culture, tikanga, changes with time as well as differing between tribes. Wahi tapu is said to refer to a few artefacts but is then called upon to justify control of the whole Kaipara Harbour.

And of course Kaipara Maori are using wahi tapu as an excuse to block the installation of power turbines on the harbour floor. No doubt greasing the iwi’s palm with the appropriate bribe will quiet the upset spirits.

Tangata whenua once was established by living in a place so that after just ten years in Wellington Te Atiawa could claim ownership and the right to sell that land.

Ngati Toa and Te Atiawa only arrived in Wellington two decades and one decade, respectively, before the settlers. And yet they demand compensation of many millions of dollars.

Now those who have lived their whole lives in a place, even for several generations, both Maori and non-Maori, are refused that status, which is claimed by descendants of the temporary residents of 1840, no matter where they now live.

Dr Robinson gets to the heart of the matter here:

The focus is no longer on a search for the truth. History is reinterpreted and reinvented to suit political aims. Historical accounts may even be omitted when making settlements, or written by the complainant behind closed doors, out of view of the public whose money and land are being handed over.

It’s time to expose the Maorification scammers, starting with the Appeaser-General who has made it all so very possible.

I’ll be blogging on this and more in due course.

You will read of the astonishing lengths to which Finlayson went to avoid saying the word ‘free’ when pressed by ACT’s David Garrett about public access to beaches during the Marine and Coastal Areas debate.

You will read gory evidence of what a depraved beast was Te Rauparaha,  for whose crimes against humanity you will soon be asked to compensate his great-great grandchildren. (That’s right, you will be paying them.)

You will read about the true history of the Treaty of Waitangi, including its fraudulent reinvention in the 1980s that kick-started the Maorification scam.

By the time I’ve finished, the Treaty conmen will be thoroughly exposed, with no big words to hide behind.

For now, I suggest you get a copy of The Corruption of New Zealand Democracy – A Treaty Overview by John Robinson.

New London Olympics logo

    

Thanks Mike for sending me this. Wish I’d thought of it!

 

Well done, DomPost

After hammering the Dominion Post on Close Up for banning my ACT ‘Maori radicals ad’ that contained 40 statements of truth, I’m pleased to be able to congratulate the paper for yesterday making these two letters their lead and second letters of the day:

Where does that ‘science’ definition leave Al Gore, then?

Lorna Sutherland’s comments (Letters, August 8) highlight an interesting attitude to democracy and proper science. 

(That’s meant to say August 8. Of all the eccentric habits of WordPress, automatically turning the number eight followed by a close bracket into a smile takes the cake!) 

Does she agree that her denial that Lord Monckton should be permitted a platform to discuss climate change extends to former United States vice- president Al Gore, who is similarly lacking expertise and experience in science?

Is she aware that Dr John Abraham’s comments on Lord Monckton are subject to critical comments about misrepresentation and falsehoods ?

By what measure would we ever give the Greens, Niwa’s Dr James Renwick or anybody else the right to decide what may be presented by any person on any subject in public?

Real science is proven by sceptical trial and debate. False science has hidden data, insufficient record of proof, and protection from open query and dissenting opinion.

Real science isn’t proven by so-called consensus, authority or taking someone’s word for it.

Is Ms Sutherland aware no peer- reviewed scientific proof appears to exist that climate change, warming or whatever is driven by human-induced carbon-dioxide emissions, and the theory is supported by conjecture only?

I suggest she take tuition on what it means to live in a democracy.

GRAHAM CLAYTON
Taupo 

What have these people to fear?

Our climate change scientists and, maybe, politicians, seem to be running scared. They have refused to debate climate change with Lord Monckton because the matter is now agreed upon and settled among scientists. Really?

It was also said that to debate with him would give Lord Monckton and his unscientific ideas credibility. If our scientists’ views, which cost a lot of money, are so right, what have they to fear?

IRENE FAGAN
Island Bay

Well said, Graham and Irene.

Monckton, Greenpeace, NASA and Nazis

This is a good video to watch if you want a quick insight into the sceptic side of the global warming debate.

You’ll see clips from The Great Global Warming Swindle, the movie featuring Greenpeace founder-turned-sceptic Patrick Moore, NASA scientist Roy Spencer and other eminent sceptics.

Then in the middle you’ll see Lord Christopher Monckton completely monstering (with logic) a noisy gang of young Climate Scientologists who were silly enough to  disrupt his Copenhagen meeting.

Seizing upon the parallel with the bullying tactics of the Hitler Youth in the same city, he quickly gained a global audience by describing them as such.

When a Jewish member of the gang objects, Monckton front foots like a true Thatcherite. He tells the offended heckler that if he and his mates ares going to behave like the Hitler Youth, he’s going to keep calling him that.

(What a shame Monckton isn’t the Lord Mayor of London right now.)

This is all great sport, but in amongst it all is Monckton’s point:

Although these young hecklers are rude rather than murderous, There is a very real parallel between the green movement and evil regimes like the Nazis.

And that is the huge number of deaths from starvation being caused by food shortages, caused by rising food prices, caused by the conversion of food crops to biofuel.

The greenies never have an answer to that one. I made this little ad about it:

This is the way to defeat the Left. Tell the graphic truth about how their pathological stupidity invariably hurts the people they make such a play of pretending to care about.

I want to start a ‘teach tank’ to put ads like this in front of the public.

Right-wing politicians have tried to bust the media blockade, but failed. Ads like this will  cut through. If the media won’t run them, we just plaster them on poster sites.

They needn’t be big ads, but they do need to be plentiful, and regular. There are so many issues to cover. 

Such a campaign, from a brand that becomes trusted for its clarity, will change the polarity of politics.

Now, who wants to fund it?

If the IPCC was a corporation, its leaders would be in jail — Auditor

This interesting comment from auditor Mervyn Sullivan on the blog But Now You Know– The Search For Truth in Human Action. I’ll soon be posting my version of their Climate Change Timeline.

But for now, read this (I’ve bolded my three favourite lines):   

As a professional auditor, I’m forever obtaining and evaluating evidence. I became interested in the climate debate because of Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth”. So I decided to examine the evidence.

I have spent thousands of hours researching… to understand both sides to the climate debate (e.g. I went through the IPCC’s AR4 report, but I also went through the “Climate Change Reconsidered report by the NIPCC; I read books, blogs, magazines, research papers, authoritative web sites, and more).

Sounds like a thorough kind of guy. And what did he find?

I have come to the firm conclusion that nothing about our weather and climate is unprecedented. I have come to the conclusion that climate scientists still need to learn so much more about earth’s complex chaotic climate system before they can be so bold as to claim that CO2 is the key driver of catastrophic man-made global warming and climate change, or that certain weather events have been caused by man-made global warming. I have also learnt that predicting weather beyond say a couple of weeks is too difficult, and on that basis, predicting future climate is simply impossible.

Climate is average weather, is it not? 

I have not found any persuasive evidence that proves CO2 is causing catastrophic global warming or even driving climate change as claimed by the IPCC… there is no empirical evidence supporting this view. 

I have come to the conclusion that the evidence is stronger in support of the idea that our climate is driven by numerous complex factors involving, for example, solar magnetic activity, cosmic rays, cloud formation, lunar position, and ocean currents.

Just as the sceptical climate scientists have been saying. 

I also think the Central England Temperature record is probably a reliable temperature proxy record to work off. It shows no evidence of any runaway global warming since the mid 1600s.

I wonder if this news has reached East Anglia. (As in the University of). But here’s his killer finding: 

If I had to issue an audit opinion on the IPCC AR4 report, it would have to be a disclaimer opinion. In fact, I would go so far as to state that if the IPCC AR4 report were subject to the same standards of accountability as under corporations legislation, the IPCC members would probably be facing jail sentences for releasing misleading information to the public, and grossly deceiving the public by claiming its report was based only on peer reviewed scientific literature (the best science) when in reality, approximately 30% of the 18,500+ citations are now known to have related to “grey literature” such as articles by campaigning organizations like WWF and Greenpeace… which are not even close to being peer reviewed scientific literature. 

Surely the United Nations wouldn’t really parrot left-wing propaganda? And surely — despite one of its head honchos being Helen Clark — it’s not really using eco-catastrophism as a pretext for socialist world government?

What I have also learnt from my research is that the climate change debate has become over-politicized to the point that it now overrides real climate science. It’s now all about regulating and taxing ‘carbon’ to fix an imaginary future problem. To even think that certain people could assume that humans could tame and control the weather and climate, Mother Nature, demonstrates the madness on the part of some, in relation to this debate over man-made global warming. 

Comment by Mervyn Sullivan | February 9, 2011  @ 06:48 |

Now at this point, of course, our resident warm-mongers Judge Holden and David Winter will immediately leap in to somehow blacken this auditor’s name. (The Green Party Black Ops Manual on the Flaming and Defaming of Heretics offers a host of plausible smears.) 

And I can’t defend him, because I have no idea who, where, or how good an auditor, Mervyn Sullivan is. 

Nonetheless, I thought you might find it interesting to hear from a man who spends his life sifting truth from lies.

To socialist-pessimists from capitalist-optimists: Cheer up!

A word to all you red-green (and, of late, yellow) malcontents who infest the comments section of this blog with your relentless nit-picking and overweaning planetary pessimism.

Whether you like it or not, guys, (and I know you don’t), you are members of a species with a stellar record of problem-solving.

I’m very sorry to have to say that, but the optimists among us (AKA capitalists) just keep dreaming up ways to make our lives better and better.

Including yours. Have you noticed? I guess not. It’s not really in your interests to look.

Despite the best efforts of communism and socialism (which I call Applied Pessimism), not to mention eco-pessimism (Applied Pessimism for Profit), things are getting better on this planet all the time.

If you think it’s not, ask yourself: which time and place in history would you like to be transported back to? (When some clever capitalist develops the inevitable time machine, I’m sure that can be arranged.)

When you’re back there in your colonial house or pre-colonial whare, liberated from annoyances like electricity and motor cars and vaccines and flush toilets — as you contemplate your new-found squalor and imminent demise – you may start to feel that life in the 21st century wasn’t so bad after all.

You may be forced to concede that all those gizmos you used to take for granted came to you via the evil capitalist Industrial Revolution and the fertile minds of geniuses with incentives.

As we speak, all over the Third World, that same reprehensible system of market capitalism is lifting millions out of poverty in former socialist-pessimist societies like China and India. 

Like it or not, capitalism has been doing this now for 200 years. Have a look at Hans Rosling’s beautiful moving graph of the Health and Wealth of Nations and you’ll see which nations have gone ahead the fastest — and which haven’t.

And you’ll see that all nations are healthier than they were in 1800. And all but a few corrupt African basket cases are wealthier.

You can’t stand the idea of that, can you? Especially as all your doomsday prophesies never quite complete the journey from wishful theory to reality.

The history of Western civilisation in recent times has been one of relentless, inspiring and beneficial progress.

Yet always you gloom-mongers would have us believe that all we hold dear is about to collapse.

Either it’s our economic system, or our health, or the computer system, or the climate and life as we know it.

The disgraceful thing is how you’re quite happy to frighten the children to further your goals.

But you don’t frighten the grown-ups. That’s because people who’ve been round the clock a few times recognise your tactics. We’ve noticed how most of these scares can be avoided with the payment of a large amount of money to some socialist cause.

Meanwhile society, fueled by capitalism fueled by optimism, advances regardless of your wishes. The rich get richer. And so, as long as their governments aren’t corrupt, do the poor.

So how about dropping your absurd addiction to socialism-pessimism and drink to the good times (ie the last 200 years)?

Your latest crisis of convenience is global warming. Sadly for you, many, if not most, people now agree this is an eco-socialist-pessimist plot to transport us en-masse back to your colonial house.

That’s because, despite all the efforts of the socialist brainwashing factory that purports to be the state education system, these people have somehow retained the capacity for joined-up thinking. You should try it.

Instead of creating diversions and parroting the party line about whether Monckton is qualified to make the sense he makes, how about doing the unthinkable and thinking for yourselves?

Yes I know it sounds an odd thing to suggest.

But how about actually watching his debate with Tim Lambert and making up your own mind?

You can do it in the privacy of your own home, so the Church of Climate Scientology doesn’t have to know.

And you don’t have to worry that Tim doesn’t hold your end up, because he does. He argues his case well. You may even conclude that he won the debate. Or you may be persuaded by Monckton. That’s what an open mind is for.

So have a look. Assess them both on their merits. With your eyepatch off.

And afterwards, if you feel like it, tell me what you thought.

Meantime, I’m raising my glass (which is a lot more than half-full) to my ingenious species and the continued success of capitalism-optimism. 

Tip for right-wing political marketers everywhere:

Our philosophy of freedom and free markets is, above all, the philosophy of optimism. So: own it. Move voters 5% to the right by embracing optimism and optimists as the antidote to socialism and pessimists.

(Note to Nats: optimism does not mean managing socialism with a smile. )

The real reason the Greens chickened out of debating Monckton

You may have heard the Greens trumpeting their principled decision not to debate global warming sceptic Lord Monckton. 

You may not have heard that they discovered their principles only after seeing this video of Monckton debating scientist Tim Lambert in a more tolerant land called Australia:

Before they saw this video, they were happy for their climate spokesman, Kennedy Graham, to accept Monckton’s challenge.

After they saw it, they were not. They pulled out.

Not because they didn’t want to dignify him. (Ever heard of a politician turning down a chance to humiliate a high-value opponent – especially one so supposedly inept?)

No. They pulled out because they knew they weren’t going to win. They were either going to lose or — just as damaging to their claim that the science is settled — draw.

It wasn’t his showmanship they were afraid of. It was his facts. 

And what was the fact they were most scared of exposing to the light? What was the truth they were terrified of the public finding out?

That Monckton is clearly not the nutter they’ve been pretending he is.

When you see the debate, you’ll see that his grasp of the science is every bit as credible as that of the scientist he’s debating. You might even think moreso.

But the point is, to make his point he doesn’t have to be more credible. Only as credible.

The proposition before us is that the science is settled.

Settled in favour of global warming being a huge crisis that we need to rectify immediately by diverting trillions of dollars from otherwise productive activities.

That’s the line we’ve been fed. That’s what the Greens would have us believe. That’s why we’re saddled with an ETS.

And that’s why the poor are struggling to cope with higher food prices and higher petrol prices and higher most other prices.

That’s the sacred gospel of the Church of Climate Scientology that gets non-believers branded deniers or denialists – modern-day heretics.

And that, I think you’ll agree after watching this debate, is a myth. One that Monckton, among others, has busted.

I suggest you watch it from start to finish. It’s 1 hour 53 minutes — 15 You Tube videos — but worth it.

The moderator is sceptic and former Wallaby coach Alan Jones. He occasionally makes his bias clear, but is otherwise fair.

I think it’s a good scrap. Lambert is less polished than Monckton. (Aren’t we all?). But after a nervous start, he makes his points well.

Monckton, when challenged, is assured in his rebuttals, and both men answer each others’ probing questions pretty well.

It’s a debate everyone should see. It’s just a shame that New Zealand’s red-green-yellow politicians, scientists and journalists do not possess the courage of their convictions to allow the public to examine both sides of this supposedly crucial issue.

How disgraceful that a government would steal people’s money to avert what they claim is a crisis, then refuse to debate its reasons in public. 

Not only that, but it empowers its employees to brand anyone who asks it to do so as the modern equivalent of a witch.

(Thank Gaia for the blogosphere!)

Correction to percentages in previous post

Thanks to the two readers who pointed out that my percentages in the previous post about the ethnic split of the Constitutional Advisory Panel totalled 109% and 110%.

Just seeing if you’re awake. Now fixed.

While my school maths results prove that I’m quite capable of making computational errors unaided, this time I had help from the  Ministry of Social Development, whose census stats I copied accurately. 

Seems they’d bundled up Other and ‘New Zealanders’ under European. Also 10% of people identified with more than one race.

Anyway I trust the revised split of 68% European, 15% Maori, 9% Asian, 7% Pacific and 1% other is about right and adds up to 100%.

Of course, the point of my post remains the same.

Sorry about the error.

Maorification of Constitution begins as Sharples stacks advisory panel

This really stinks.

If you thought the Marine and Coastal Areas Act was a hijack of democracy, it’s nothing compared to what’s coming.

Next on the Maori-National government’s Maorification agenda is an all-out assault on the New Zealand Constitution itself.

Once they’ve had their way with that, New Zealand as we know it will be gone.

The Maorification of the Constitution began on Thursday with the naming of a wildly disproportionate Constitutional Advisory Panel.

In a country where 68% of the people are European and 15% are Maori, the committee is stacked 50-50.

A 50-50 split may be even. But it’s hardly fair.

The only New Zealand population it remotely resembles is our prison population. 

Pakeha capture

What is the smiling tiger Pita-Peter Sharples up to? No doubt he’s planted a tame Pakeha or two in the panel to give him the crucial majority?

Well, looking down the list above, I see two interesting names.

First, Michael Cullen — my ’Wastemaster-General’ in the Taxathon TV ad of 2005.

This is the former finance minister  who so loved his country that he quite deliberately booby-trapped the economy with a decade of deficits — just to make life harder for the incoming government.

And how does the not-so-Honourable Michael make his living these days?

Why, partly as Principal Treaty Claims Negotiator for Tuwharetoa.

(The tribe to which,  as Treaty Negotiations Minister, he awarded over $100 million of your money in the 2008 ‘Treelords’ settlement.)

Doesn’t that smell a bit fishy to you?

If Cullen is not tame enough, one of the other Pakeha members is former National minister John Luxton.

The panel bio notes that Luxton has expertise in Crown-Maori relations, experience in co-management (as co-chair of the Waikato River Authority) and representing Maori interests.

But at least former ACT MP and investigative journalist Deborah Coddington ought to be a safe bet, right?

I don’t think so. See my UPDATE 3 below.

Hiding the agenda

The consitutional review is  a condition of John Key’s uniquely unnecessary coalition appeasement (sorry, agreement) with the Maori Party.

You know it’s going to be bad when Anthony Hubbard of the Socialist Star-Times tries to snow you that the newly-named panel is  “unlikely to be more than a Mad Hatter’s tea party of unanswerable riddles and pointless in-fighting”.

Yeah right.

The government’s  main agenda is obvious: to elevate the bogus version of the Treaty of Waitangi to the status of official sacred cash cow for their Maori con artist mates to plunder at will.

But look how this lefty journo does his best to keep that news from you.

(Actually you can’t look unless you’ve got the actual paper. His column’s not online.)

First Mr Hubbard diverts your attention to the republican issue.

He pretends that the real reason the committee won’t be looking at ditching the monarchy is that John Key doesn’t want to.

The real reason, of course, is that the Maori Party doesn’t want to. Replacing the Queen could kill the golden Treaty goose. And we can’t have that.

Then he tries to make you believe that the big issues for the panel will be the size of parliament, and the length of the parliamentary term.

And then, and only then – in column six of his six-column column — does he casually gloss over the real hidden agenda:

Some of the other subjects for the committee — the Treaty, Crown-Maori relationships and Maori representation — are contentious in theory but in practice many people find them boring most of the time. New Zealand voters tend to fall asleep when the word “constitution” is mentioned.

Yawn, yawn, nothing to see here, move on.

Boring you to sleep

No doubt the Star-Times, Sharples and Obfuscator-General Finlayson will be pumping out lots of big, boring words to try and keep you comatose for the duration of this constitutional stitch-up. 

But I plan to be doing the exact opposite — stripping their bloated word-carcasses of their fat, and distilling from the layers of putrid gobbledygook their true meaning and hitherto-hidden agenda.

You know where to come for the real truth.

Sharples apparently thinks his Constitutional Advisory Panel is a ‘good mix’.

 Course he does. He’s shamelessly stacked it with a quarter more Maori and a quarter fewer Europeans than their populations warrant.

Ngai Tahu leader Sir Tipene O’Regan and legal scholar John Burrows will lead a government appointed panel which is to lead public discussion on constitutional issues including the status of the Treaty of Waitangi.

Panellists like Sir Tipene (who a friend used to know as Steve “before he became a Maori”. and who told a friend of a friend that he is Tipene “only in certain circles”) will undoubtedly try to lead the public. 

And when he does, I hope by then the public will be savvy enough to push back.

80s Treaty tricks

I hope people like you will ask people like Sir Steve to show you proof that the Treaty is a ’partnership’ that contains ‘principles’.

Because they won’t be able to.

Unless they’re written in invisible ink, there’s nothing whatsoever in the Treaty about partnerships or principles.

Why not? Because they were conjured up in the 1980s out of thin air.

They were the figments of the activist imaginations of a judge, Robin Cooke, and a prime minister, Geoffrey Palmer (who later regretted it, and who some say resigned because of the damage he knew he’d cause).

Once Cooke and Palmer had cooked up this fake Treaty of Waitangi, it became much easier for guys like Tipene-Steve to extort money from you and me.

There is only one place this panel will try to lead you: away from the truth.

Do not go there.

The real deal

The truth is that the Treaty was a simple deal done mainly because the northern Maori had been begging the Brits for ten years to protect them from three very real threats:

• Vengeful Maori — tribes plotting utu for Ngapuhi’s musket massacres of the 1820s.

• Vengeful Froggies – French would-be colonisers bent on avenging the massacre of Marion du Fresne and his crew in 1772.

• Bad Brits — escaped convicts and other disreputables causing trouble in lawless Kororareka.

Without the Treaty, the tribal musketeer-slaver-cannibals would have slaughtered and eaten each other to extinction by 1860.

(I’m not making this up. Between 1825-40, Maori had already blasted, hacked, boiled and gnawed back their numbers from 120,000 to 50-60,000. That, Tariana Turia, was New Zealand’s true holocaust.)

The Treaty deal was that the British got the country, and the Maori got the same rights as the British.

That was pretty much it.

By any measure, it was an excellent deal for the times.  

I’m working on a series of posts that will spell out, point by crystal clear point, what happened before and after the signing of the Treaty — and how  various conmen have been distorting the truth ever since.

But back to this poisonous panel.

Who will speak for non-Maori?

 At least Dr Sharples, unlike Hubbard, is honest enough to admit the panel’s main purpose:

“An important part of the review process will be consultation with Maori, particularly on the place of the Treaty of Waitangi in our constitution,” Dr Sharples said. 

The most important part, I’m sure he meant to say.

“The members of this are well placed to seek out and understand the perspectives of Maori on these important issues.”

Indeed the five Maori members and one Maori employee certainly are.

My question is: who will speak for the 85% of New Zealanders who are not Maori?

And will their views count?

The panel will also consider electoral issues including the size of parliament, the length of the parliamentary term, and number and size of electorates and the status of Maori seats

And with the panel overloaded with Maori, guess what they’ll find?

It will also consider whether New Zealand should have a written constitution and Bill of Rights issues.
Dr Sharples said a Royal Commission was considered to carry out the work, “but just selecting people of mana and a range and setting them up under their own authority and giving a lengthy period would have the same effect”

Course it would. Rigging your own panel is much cleverer than expecting a judge to do your bidding.

(Mind you, our judges are biased enough, as we know from Lord Cooke, and the bench that overturned 160 years of settled law with the Ngati Apa decision on the foreshore and seabed in 2003.)

“These guys don’t actually set the kaupapa, it still comes back to parliament. A Royal Commission usually comes up with some golden recommendations and if you don’t take them people question you.”

Well, we can’t have people questioning us for ignoring expert recommendations (like the 2025 Taskforce), can we?

But with Prime Appeaser John Key and Activist-General/Obfuscator-General/Appeaser-General (you choose) Chris Finlayson driving the Maorification agenda, don’t expect critical  questions to be tolerated.

And if Finlayson’s arrogance over the Marine and Coastal Areas Act is any guide — not to mention chair Tau Henare’s rude put-downs of  submitters to the Maori Affairs Select Committee – don’t expect straight answers. 

UPDATES

UPDATE 1

One of my more abusive commenters has pointed out the difficulty of identifying by race, given that many of us are a mixture of two or more. Certainly, we know that all Maori are.

So here’s an idea: Since we’re such a multicultural lot, why don’t we drop this preoccupation with ethnicity, metaphorically rip off our skins and set up a colour-blind state — with one  law, and one electoral roll,  for us all.

Could work?

UPDATE 2

We now find that Sir Tipene/Steve O’Regan is being sued by the Financial Markets Authority for his role in the Hanover Finance collapse.

Is it OK for a man being sued by one government agency to preside over another government agency – especially one advising on matters at the very core of our national being?

No Prime Minister, it’s not OK.

UPDATE 3

I had puzzled at why the notoriously biased Sharples would include former ACT MP Deborah Coddington on his tame advisory panel.

Was it to give the appearance of balance? Or is Deborah really a wet in dry’s clothing?

(Or just a wet, full stop?)

This Herald article confirms that theory, where she happily parrots the views of tame Treaty industry historian Paul Moon:

“Yes, the English ripped off the Maori, too, when it came to getting them to sign the Treaty of Waitangi.
“Henry Williams deliberately mistranslated from Maori to English to protect his land holdings, and numerous other travesties were perpetrated.”

Then we have this ridiculously saccharine account of Deborah’s dinner with the Turias.

Note the priceless ending: “Leaving is like saying goodnight to kin, such is the warmth of Tariana and George Turia.”

And I’ve no doubt the Turias are very warm, hospitable and genuinely caring people, as are most Maori.

(And, for that matter, most humans.)

But Tariana is the leader of an openly racist political party. And Deborah is an investigative journalist. 

Does this totally uncritical restaurant review suggest to you that Ms Coddington can be trusted to fairly represent your wishes?

HERALD LEAKER NOT ME

I am being suspected by ACT of leaking an email from me to Don Brash and John Boscawen to the Herald on Sunday.

The words are mine, but they did not get them from me — unless they hacked my computer.

The journalist David Fisher is certainly getting a reputation for misrepresenting people (including me — see his beatup about the orange handcuffs). But I don’t know what else he’s capable of.

Anyway, I do not leak private conversations to the media. 

And I do not lie.

Nor would I do anything to deliberately damage Don Brash. I still believe he’s  the best qualified candidate to be prime minister.

Those who know me know that I place great store in telling the truth (albeit bluntly).

Those who don’t will no doubt pronounce me guilty. I guess there’s not much I can do about that.

It’s been an interesting few weeks.

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.