What's choice?

Maori Party candidate for Hauraki-Waikato Angeline Greensill (and former Mana Maori Party candidate) says "It’s choice to be young and Maori".

Actually Angeline, you can't choose your age, or your genetic history.

Choice is about freedom, it's about being able to choose your own destiny for your body and your property. It's not about initiating force, and it's not about preferring one race over another.

Engaging young Maori people in politics is fine, until you are advocating more government and initiating more force against others - and the Maori Party is.

Showing off in Kapiti

Yep Kapiti Coast District Council looks set to allow nudity on the beach from Paekakariki to Otaki.

Of course it will stir up hysteria from the "liberal" left, thinking kiddies will all be flashed at, and saying it is offensive to the one-brained collective called "women", and the religious will also be upset, as individuals who find the human body an object of shame.

It will be an interesting experiment. Maybe it will all mean little difference at all, maybe those who do act in a threatening manner will be dealt with by the Police. Maybe it will be a little like parts of continental Europe where bare breasts bums and other bits are unimportant.

or maybe the bogun trash in Kapiti will ruin it, along with the handful of pervs who live there.

As the Hive says, should make for interesting times.

UPDATE: Family First NZ is slamming the move, wanting to criminalise nudity on the beaches. Now it is fair enough to want to not look at naked bodies, but I don't want to see men's fat bellies, I don't want to see combovers, I don't want to smell people with BO. I find that all offensive, I find men's penises just funny looking, and women naked are either not worth looking at or rather nice. Again, interesting to notice its priority with the naked body rather than violence.

Liberal Democrats want LESS government

Yes, just as the UK Labour Party looks like it is ready to go further to the left, the third party in UK politics, the Liberal Democrats, is swinging to the right.

At the weekend conference of the Liberal Democrats, leader Nick Clegg called for substantial tax cuts, and a shrinking in the size of the state. He says there should be a £20 billion cut in annual public spending. That's much more than the Tories could dream of suggesting. It is still only 3% of spending.

Yes the same Liberal Democrats that last election called for a new top tax rate of 50% with a 1% increase in the middle tax rate. He is facing a fight, as the Lib Dems have been infected for years by socialists who liked it leftwing alternative to New Labour, and its opposition to military action abroad. He wants to dramatically cut tax credits, subsidies and programmes that are wasteful, like ID cards.

Now this isn't libertarian at all, he wants to cut the lower rates of tax not the top rate, he doesn't want to privatise or get the state out of health and education, but it IS a vision of less state and of abandoning government programmes that fail. For a party that was all about more taxes and more state spending three years ago, this is an encouraging step forward.

The Daily Telegraph is cheering him on with its Saturday editorial:

"We wish him the best of luck. Not only is there the possibility of a hung Parliament but it is also high time that Labour and the Conservatives felt the heat of a third party boldly proposing what most people in this country want: smaller, simpler, better government."

Labour doesn't believe in this, the Conservatives are too scared to believe in it again, could it be that the Liberal Democrats are, for once, the party of less government in the UK?

Maori Party allies itself with Cuban communists!

No, this isn't Trevor Loudon investigating the past of some Maori Party MPs.

It's a press release from Pita Sharples.

Dr Sharples, who I thought of as being a man of some moderation, has said this of 9/11:

"The United States is the world leader in the so-called War on Terror. But in Cuba, for example, 9/11 is the day the people remember the Cuban Five. Those five men have been imprisoned in the United States for ten years for trying to stop terrorist attacks on their homeland that are launched from the United States"

Hold on "the people"? How does HE know this? Cuba bans all independent journalism, it strictly controls all information and a monopoly on the media. So who ARE the Cuban Five, and what did they do?

Well they are Cuban government agents, who infiltrated Cuban exile groups in the USA, as well as engaged in espionage against US military facilities. One informed the Cuban government of an operation whereby Cubans fleed on small planes, that ended up being shot down by Cuban fighter jets. They were convicted of espionage, conspiracy to commit murder and using false identification papers. These convictions were overturned on appeal, resulting in a new trial, which upheld them again, and were again upheld on subsequent appeal.

The men infiltrated this group, which the Cuban communist one party state claims is a terrorist organisation, which Pita Sharples agrees with. In fact the group assists Cubans trying to leave the country, it drops propaganda leaflets and encourages dissent in Cuba.

You see Dr Sharples - Cuba is a dictatorship, a one-party state.

Dr Sharples supports the Cuban view of the world though:

"I am delighted to support the establishment of a NZ committee for the release of the five Cuban patriots announced yesterday" said Dr Sharples. "They can certainly include my name on their list"

“The alleged crime of the Cuban Five was to try to infiltrate the expatriate groups of anti-Castro Cubans in Miami, who had been organising and carrying out terrorist raids against Cuba for many years, while the US ignored the protests of the Cuban government."

Excuse me? Terrorist raids? Says who? Oh yes the Cuban communist regime, which regards any protest march, any independent newspaper, any action by its citizens to defend themselves against the police state to be a "terrorist raid".

So - the Maori Party swallows Cuban propaganda - the Cuban Five case is at best controversial, but to treat Cuba as morally equivalent to the USA, and New Zealand, is despicable.

Then Dr Sharples adds insult to the NZ military saying this:

"when our New Zealand SAS troops confronted their enemy in Afghanistan, it was not clear to me who was maintaining homeland security, and who was fighting terrorism"

So is he really saying that the Taleban were just "maintaining homeland security"?

Is the Maori Party really the Marxist Party I once suspected it to be?
Does the Maori Party really think the Taleban are just the Afghanistan Tangata-Whenua?

Kedgley repeats her bullshit scaremongering

Yes it is this story all over again. Sue "ban it, force it" Kedgley is bleating on about telecommunications equipment being unsafe without any shred of evidence, just her nasty politics of scaring the uneducated.

"Under the new standard, telecommunications companies will be able to clutter power poles in residential areas and even next to schools and childcare centres with new cellular and wireless equipment, including satellite dishes, even if these could significantly affect their health or amenity values."

Yep, spot the scaremongering words "clutter" (because untidiness is important), "even next to schools and childcare centres" (because the equipment might hurt children - in her anti-science world of fear). Then "even if these could significantly affect their health", which they wont.

This harpie of fear uses her cellphone regularly, she makes nonsensical comments like "including satellite dishes" ignorant that almost all satellite dishes radiate less energy than a car aerial.

There is a simple rule of thumb about Sue Kedgley and science - she knows nothing about it. She is one of the worst kinds of politicians there is, one that practices hyperbole of fear, that sidesteps evidence and calls for the use of force to solve almost every problem she finds.

She's enough reason to avoid the Green Party like the plague.