Peace loving people of the Tuhoe "peace movement"

The Dominion Post's report on the evidence amassed against those arrested on firearms charges makes sobering reading. All of the claims that the police investigation was anti-Maori and the like look like what they are - the opportunistic kneejerk reaction of those who sympathise with the far left. The 156 page affidavit submitted to Manukau District Court includes all sorts of delightful statements. How about the bugged phone conversation on 17 August that went "Get someone to assassinate the prime minister, the new one, next year's one. Just been in office five days, bang ... Yeah, John Key ... just drop a bomb ... Just wait till he visits somewhere and just blow them ... They won't even find you."

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Lovely types them, I guess it wouldn't matter if he was democratically elected, and wouldn't matter what innocent civilians were near them eh?

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If this cannot be universally condemned, then those who refuse to condemn do not deserve to be in Parliament or part of the democratic process. They are friends of those willing to murder for political ends.

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So besides assassinating John Key, bugged conversations told of:

• Calls to kill police and evict non-Maori farmers;
• Talk of using a sniper's rifle to assassinate US President Bush;
• Making nail bombs and napalm;
• How to throw Molotov cocktails;
• Blowing up power stations, gas plants, Telecom, petrol stations and the Waihopai Spy Station.

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The Dom Post lists of many more of the bugged conversations tells us even more:

• "Kill Pakehas" for practice;
• Wanting to emulate the IRA;
• Using the "Al Qaeda manual" on terror tactics.

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It's all bloody frightening, and indicates a desire to engage in an orchestrated campaign of killings, bombings and to create enormous economic damage and carnage. The motive is clear, to divide the country - to try to lead a sectarian Maori uprising against the entire liberal democratic system and capitalist economy. Indeed, sectarian is the word - this is Tuhoe against New Zealand. The Maoist background of Tame Iti doesn't look too out of place here, and those uttering those statements are thugs, the same sort of thugs that wouldn't look twice at shooting you if you got in the way.

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Now the bigger question is this. Do those who have thrown around their slogans and accusations that the police action was racist, fascist, unjustified and politically motivated sympathise with what their "friends" said, or are they too going to react with horror and dismay. After all, this Labour Government is hardly a tool of the liberal right, and Helen Clark has fairly solid leftwing credentials. If HER government can be appalled, then you might ask exactly how the Maori Party, the Green Party and the sycophants of the far left who automatically assumed the Police were being racist and fascist feel about it now?

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The Dom Post editorial clearly points out:

"The police have been accused of over-reacting, and of being racist. Supporters of those accused have argued there is nothing to justify the operation the police mounted, that notions of domestic terrorism are as insubstantial as the Urewera mist, and that those arrested are the victims of some sort of vendetta. They argue that those the police arrested are blameless. Their claims have not been tested in any meaningful way till now. "

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As the editorial further points out, the Police had a duty to act " Police needed to treat that seriously and needed to investigate. To do anything less would have been to fail in their duty to protect New Zealanders. We believe that the police were right to act. "

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Go on, it's time for Keith Locke to express his view, as a self proclaimed peace campaigner now that evidence is out. It is time for the Maori Party to decide what it believes in - do you oppose political violence? Do you oppose murder? Do you oppose mass vandalism to destroy the economy? Do you oppose violent evictions of farmers from their private property? Or is your support for peace about as skindeep as your support for freedom? At least Maia inadvertently may be quite true in her post, as a friend of the fascist left.

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oh and when you see the hikoi supporting those who support terrorism, you might tell them what you think of them. Methinks those on the hikoi might go home and reflect on who their friends are.

Government department boycotts advertising

So MED - the personal department of Jim Anderton has boycotted buying TV advertising during TV3's viewing of the show "Californication" because it's naughty, according to the NZ Herald.

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Here's an idea, MED should stop buying TV advertising. Meanwhile ratings for Californication will no doubt improve as a result - as telling anyone something is naughty, just makes it all the more attractive.

Gordon Brown's "hard headed" internationalism

Gordon Brown's speech at the Lord Mayor of London's banquet yesterday was about foreign policy. The Times reports the highlights were:

• Giving Iran a clear choice, stop pursuing its nuclear programme without IAEA inspections and stop supporting terrorism, and transform its relationship with the world, or face tougher sanctions, including bans on investment in its energy sector and financial sanctions. He will lead for tougher EU and UN sanctions. (not quite military action, but he didn't rule it out);
• The USA is the UK's most important bilateral relationship "I have no truck with anti-Americanism in Britain or elsewhere" he said (good!);
• Urged President Musharraf of Pakistan to respect the constitution, free political prisoners and step down as army chief (good);
• Proposed an international standby civilian intervention force, of police and judges to restore civil law and order in failed states (good luck on that one!).

He also wants to reform the UN Security Council, which of course is a perennial, but which nobody can ever agree on. So what does this all mean? A clear message that there is business as usual from the UK as regards terrorism, Iran and the USA. However, a call for an international civilian intervention force is an interesting one - and where would you stop!! Imagine being a cop in Iraq, you better be fluent in Arabic for starters, but while perhaps laudable it is - in fact, a form of temporary colonisation. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and would be useful for Iraq, but where else? Are British taxpayers and soldiers going to be mercenaries to save states all over the place?

Pacific Blue's domestic launch sees others raise the bar

Good on them, more competition on domestic air routes. It reminds me again of the debates in the 1980s when old Labour (yes before 1984) fought AGAINST deregulating the domestic airline market - and then in power opened it up to 100% foreign owned competition.

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Something Jim Anderton and Winston Peters opposed vehemently, because they loved old fashioned state owned Air NZ. Of course Air NZ is new fashioned mostly state owned now (albeit a publicly listed one).

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The domestic airline market has gone through a full cycle. Before 1987 and Ansett NZ, there was next to no service and fares were expensive. Ansett saw more discount fares, but also saw airline lounges, airbridges, business/first class and hot meals appear on domestic flights. I recall a column by Chris Trotter who saw domestic business class being some sort of class divider between the "haves" and "have nots". I never figured why people who flew were ever "have nots". On top of that, who the hell ever flew domestic business class unless they were:

a. Connecting to a long haul business class flight, so it was part of the ticket;

b. Using a free upgrade voucher which you got as a Gold/Gold Elite airpoints member; or

c. A politician (Rodney Hide used to say he had to fly Business Class to meet his constituents, but Laila Harre also regularly flew business class between Auckland and Wellington).

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Then Ansett became Qantas NZ, then Qantas before Air NZ dropped business class and hot meals a few years ago, to go no frills. Qantas followed suit. Now Pacific Blue is coming in with no frills, Air NZ is responding by introducing a few rows in the front with around 4-5 inches more legroom for "premium customers " (likely Gold Elite/Gold status frequent flyers, full fare passengers and passengers connecting to business class international flights). Qantas has also announced it is upgrading NZ domestic lounges and installing upgraded interiors, more food service and a free evening bar service on flights.

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S0 you might get a good deal on Pacific Blue, but frankly I'm looking forward to sitting at the front end of Air NZ with international long haul economy class legroom, or getting fed for free again on domestic flights. No doubt Chris Trotter will bemoan this as representing a new bastion of the class struggle!

"Big Money" envy

The left uses language carefully when it talks about issues. The term "Big Money" in most countries wouldn't refer to a peculiar small religious group spending a 5 figure sum campaigning against a particular electoral outcome. It usually means businesses funding politics. However, for Labour it is the new "bogey man", and Labour is used to creating language based bogeymen.

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The word "nuclear" is one. The 1984-1990 Labour Government and the Party before the 1984 election eagerly took the word to be a byword for war and pollution. The first big scaremongering messages associated with "nuclear" were that anything "nuclear" would make NZ a target for Soviet nuclear weapons - something that was ok for Australia, the UK and the US in the event that the then communist bloc wanted to destroy free Western liberal democracy, but not NZ - which wanted to distance itself from that. That of course spoke volumes about who was behind being "anti-nuclear", as it was about being neutral between liberty and Marxist-Leninist dictatorship - as if you could be. The second scare is that "nuclear" meant Three Mile Island, Chernobyl - there were visions of fallout, Hiroshima and the like from nuclear propelled ships - despite the evidence to the contrary. The numbers who voted Labour because of this fear are difficult to determine.

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Another is "privatisation", which is associated with people being ripped off, or services being cut, or "flogging off the family silver" -instead of flogging off the fools gold and the mythology around how good state owned monopolies really were. It's a bogey word - which too many of those who are economically illiterate in the media find easy to throw out there, when close scrutiny reveals most of the claims made make little sense.

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So now we have "big money". Visions of Montgomery Burns from the Simpsons scheming with John Key to find ways to send children down salt mines (Winston Peters can get advice on this from North Korea of course), to find ways to poison the population, cut wages and ensure old people shiver in the streets. Visions that those who are successful and well off are only that way because they have taken from the less well off, or cheated them, or been greedy. The idea that wealth is a pie magically baked by "society" and those with "big money" have been so mean as to cut a big slice for themselves. This all forgetting that everyone bakes their own pies - their own pies - you know it's called property, and almost all of those who bake big pies did so from their own initiative and use of reason. The government at best exists to stop people stealing from each others' pies - although it does a good job of confiscating different amounts from most people's pies. OK enough of the pies.

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Helen Clark is now painting a world where you, the voter, is actually quite gullible. You don't know what is good for you, let alone the country - and you can be bought by political parties which get large donations, or by "big money" campaigning for who THEY want. Those parties can dazzle you with flash ads, slogans and advertising and you wont vote for who you want. Her solution is simple, she will ban anyone from campaigning outside a political party. She also wants you to be made to pay for political parties too, even if you despise them all, she likes forcing you to pay for people who well, force you to pay. Nice that. She is hiding all this under the auspices of a threat from "big money".

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So what is "big money"? It is organisations, made up of individuals, who want to spend their own money - remember that phrase "their own money" on political campaigns. They don't want to force you to pay for it, but they want you to vote a particular way. Labour believes, with good reason, that in sum, it will get less money from voluntary donations than National. It thinks this is unfair, so it wants to ban the spending of such money, and force you to pay for political parties to be equal.

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Well not all political parties. The big ones would be nearly equal, the small ones would get bits and bobs - because, after all, Labour finds it hard enough competing with National, to have to worry about those annoying small parties "stealing" votes from their left and right flanks.

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So let's not forget what Helen Clark means when she says "the National Party benefits enormously from big money in New Zealand politics." She means "I wish we did too, and if we can't attract it, they are not allowed it." It's naked party political self interest, and it is, as the Herald has said, all about keeping Labour in power. The last major electoral reform carried out was MMP - by National - and nobody can ever accuse that move of being about keeping the National Party in power!