This is MEP Licia Ronzulli, with her daughter Victoria. I love it that they allow her to be on the floor of the European Parliament, so long as she isn’t disruptive. A great way to allow female MPs be to bother mothers and legislators.
She has had her daughter attending Parliament with her since she was six weeks old.
I wonder what would happen if a MP in New Zealand wanted to do the same?
Hat Tip: Daily Mirror
The Herald headline:
City council takes on more ‘spin doctors’
This refers to Hamilton City Council. And in fact it is “one” more.
The number of “spin doctors” at Hamilton City Council has increased in the past two years while six other positions in the communications unit have disappeared.
The council, which had to make cuts after the failed V8s street race cost ratepayers $40 million, slashed its budget for the department by more than half – from $739,000 in 2010 to $362,601 for the 2012/2013 financial year.
Their comms budget has been slashed by 50%. I call that good fiscal prudence. That should be the story highlight!
At the same time the number of communications roles grew from six, including one full-time position at Waikato Museum, to seven.
Is that all? Good God Len Brown has six spin doctors just in his personal office. The Auckland Council has over 130 in total. I suspect seven is pretty low for a Council of Hamilton’s size.
Privacy officer Jude Pani, who released the figures to the Herald under the Official Information Act, said none of the communications team would be at the disposal of Mayor Julie Hardaker or any councillors during the local body elections later this year.
As should be the case.
Tony Alexander from BNZ writes:
Against the Australian currency the NZD has risen firmly in recent weeks and now sits at its highest level since October 2009. This movement upward from 80 cents a month ago is based upon a number of things. …
Third, the fiscal track in NZ is surprising on the positive side with revenue inflows running ahead of expectations this year. In contrast in Australia the Treasurer Wayne Swan has had to make a very embarrassing climb-down from his position that fiscal surplus would be achieved in 2013/14 no matter what. Now he speaks in terms of a surplus not appearing for many years. Commentators are noting that a Federal Labour government in Australia has not produced a surplus since 1989, there is growing criticism of the never-ending spending promises being made, and this week Standard and Poors warned that they could cut Australia’s rating in five years’ time.
That is a fascinating statistic. No surplus since 1989.
Fourth, Australia’s currency is more strongly assessed as being tied to growth prospects in China than the NZD.
Fifth, as China grows the expectation is that NZ will benefit more than Australia from here on out because of strong food demand compared with past strong demand for coal and iron ore.
Hopefully the demand will hold up. As unemployment in Spain hits 27%, Europe is going to remain a basket case for some time.
Audrey Young at NZ Herald reports:
David Lange’s former chief adviser Gerald Hensley has come to the conclusion that the former Prime Minister lied about his early involvement in the anti-nuclear crisis that gripped the fourth Labour Government.
Well he was either incompetent, or lied. Maybe both.
But the bigger shock for Mr Hensley came during research for the book. He said not only had Mr Lange told colleagues he had known nothing about the Buchanan until he had returned from Tokelau but he also told some that it had all been the work of Mr Hensley, Foreign Affairs and Defence.
Mr Hensley said the discovery made him feel “a bit sad”.
“I mean, I like David, still, you might say against some of the evidence.
“He was such a warm, humorous, human man and I knew that he embroidered things, altered them round to make a better story, but I hadn’t actually thought of him being an actual liar.
“But I’m afraid you really can’t use any other word for this. It was a conscious lie to protect himself in the debacle that followed the collapse of the Buchanan visit. And I was a bit shocked.”
If Lange said he was unaware of the Buchanan invite, it was a clear lie.
Margaret Pope, initially Mr Lange’s chief speechwriter, wrote to a newspaper in 1994 saying the PM had not known about the Buchanan until he got back from Tokelau, but she had since acknowledged that was not so.
Of course he knew. Officials don’t invite ships without the approval of the Prime Minister.
Mr Hensley, Ms Pope and Sir Geoffrey Palmer will appear on The Nation, TV3, tomorrow at 9.30am.
That could be interesting.
The Herald reports:
The Boston Marathon bombing suspects had planned to blow up their remaining explosives in New York’s Times Square, officials said.
New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told interrogators from his hospital bed that he and his older brother had decided spontaneously Thursday night (local time) to drive to New York and launch an attack with their five pipe bombs and a pressure-cooker bomb like the ones that blew up at the marathon.
The plan fell apart after the Tsarnaev brothers
were intercepted by police in a stolen car and got into a fierce gun battle that left Tamerlan Tsarnaev dead, Kelly said.
It is fortunate that the brothers were such incompetent morons. News.com.au lists 10 big mistakes they made:
If they were not so retarded, they may have ended up at large for much longer, and able to kill far more people.
Stats NZ has reported that China has just over-taken Australia as the biggest export destination in the last quarter.
It is worth recalling that the Greens and NZ First battled against the free trade agreement with China. Thank God they lost.
Labour signed the China-NZ FTA. However their economic policy moves closer and closer to the Greens. I hope they do not abandon their belief in free trade, as they have with free markets.
Here’s the change in export volumes over the last year for our top 10 export destinations:
The fall in exports to Australia, UK and Japan would be devastating if it were not for the growth to China and the US.
Labour and Greens cite California as one of their models for the energy sector. Their plan is to eliminate any market in electricity generation and have a government department solely responsible for deciding how much power we will need in the future, and how much to pay for it. No generator company will be allowed to build a new power plant without permission from the Government.
So how well does this model work in California. Just one month ago ABC News reported:
For the first time since January, rolling blackouts were ordered in California today, turning out the lights in approximately 500,000 homes, including some in Beverly Hills.
Officials at California’s Independent System Operator (ISO), which monitors the state’s power grid, called a Stage Three alert at midday because of increased temperatures, a higher power demand and a lack of electricity from the Northwest.
And more:
Californians are bracing for power shortages and rolling blackouts into the summer as the peak demand for power is expected to exceed supplies from May through September.
Today’s rolling blackouts came as Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham warned that summer blackouts would not be the end of the California’s power problems.
Now maybe you have a belief that the person Labour and Greens appoint to decide how much electricity generation we need will do a better job than the counterpart in California. But I don’t.
“California is just a sign of the what’s to come if we don’t diversify our energy resources,” he said. “The failure to meet this challenge will threaten our nation’s economic prosperity, will compromise our national security and literally alter the way we live our lives.”
Now consider the combination of a central planner, and the Greens refusing to allow any new coal or large hydro generation.
This story at Calwatch also highlights how the California version of an ETS has meant that one power plant sits idle because they have used up all their carbon credits for the year. This is important because Labour and Greens both want to double the cost of carbon credits and dramatically reduce the “free” allocation. So the combination of a central planner and a far more aggressive ETS would post real issues for security of supply.
Duncan Stuart blogs:
Yesterday the manufacturer of the skincare brand Nivea, managed to show their facebook fans just how venal a corporate can get. What they did was publish a photo of an ANZAC Day poppy, in the foreground of a New Zealand flag, and insert their Nivea Creme logo into the middle of the poppy.
What the hell were they thinking? For a start, let’s overlook the complete lack of connection between skin creme and the disastrous Allied WW1 campaign that saw nearly 70,000 allies and 60,000 Turks lose their lives. It was a military fiasco of dreadful proportions: a combination of appalling strategic thinking from the British High Command, enmeshed with sheer guts and courage at the troop level. The courage and heroism of those poor soldiers, damned to die by poor planning is rightly remembered on ANZAC day in my country and in Australia. But what has this got to do with skin care? Nothing whatsoever – so what was Nivea trying to say?
We’ll ignore the fact that they commandeered a trademarked logo of the RSA (the Poppy) or that they they used a national flag to herald their brand.
What really stinks is that here is a corporate who think that nationalism, remembrance and other important values that have helped define our national culture are somehow up for grabs by the corporate sector. Their Facebook stunt showed utterly no respect for the individual feelings of families who lost grandfathers at Gallipoli. Nivea showed a shameless, venal motivation simply to appropriate our community of feelings, and hijack these for the purposes of branding. They found a parade and stuck their big banner in front of it. I can almost hear the PR and marketing team right now. “JB, sir…we can own this event.”
Well they can’t. Brands are mighty powerful things, but the moment they start trying to own deeper and sacred national values – and by sacred I do not mean sporting – then they cross the line which all brands must respect. Authenticity.
Well said.
NBR reports:
Labour Party deputy leader Grant Robertson has moved to try and reassure financial markets that its sudden lurch to favour central planning in the electricity industry is one-off.
In a statement attacking Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce, Mr Robertson says: “Labour makes no apology for stepping in to fix problems in the electricity sector. But this is not a signal that Labour is going to intervene elsewhere in the economy.
“As we said on the day we launched NZ Power, we have no plans to intervene in any other markets.”
How stupid do they take us for?
Labour has already indicated significant interventions in:
They and the Greens often go on about food prices also, and the Greens have lots and lots of ideas about food regulation.
It would be easier to draw up a list of markets where Labour and Greens definitely will not intervene. It would be a very short list.
National Review Online reports:
A recent report released by the Walton Family Foundation shows that charter schools in Washington, D.C., received $16,361 per student in FY 2011, compared with $29,145 spent per student at traditional public schools. Those amounts include federal, state, and local tax dollars as well as support from private foundations.
Some have argued charter schools do better because they may attract some private funding. But it seems again the facts do not stack up.
So despite the much lower funding, how do they do?
The District’s charter schools, which serve 41 percent of the city’s public school students, posted higher overall scores on the 2012 D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System than their counterparts in the traditional schools system, but their gains in math were smaller. Their reading proficiency rates, meanwhile, fell slightly. . .
So better results for less money – no wonder Labour and Greens have vowed to abolish charter schools regardless of how successful they are.
The proficiency scores were:
Claire Trevett at NZ Herald reports:
Mana Party leader has been absent for 49 of the 120 sitting days since the 2011 election.
That’s appalling. That means he has missed 16 entire weeks of the House.
Mana leader Hone Harawira described himself as going “to battle for those without a voice in Parliament” at his party’s conference this month but he has been a rare sight in Parliament this year.
In the nine weeks that Parliament has been in session, the MP has given just two speeches and asked one oral question to a minister.
Mr Harawira has spoken only on the Prime Minister’s statement after the opening of Parliament in January and on a debate into financial reviews of Government departments. Major legislation on which the Mana Party has taken a strong stand but Mr Harawira did not speak included the final stage of the welfare reforms.
Mr Harawira was also away on the day in which Treaty settlement bills were debated and for the passing of the same-sex marriage law, although earlier in the day, he had hosted a “Big Breakfast” for schoolchildren in Otara to publicise his member’s bill for a free meal for low-decile schools.
His absence has been noted. Other MPs on the Maori Affairs select committee said he has only occasionally attended of late.
Mr Harawira has also been entitled to ask four primary questions and about 20 follow-up questions in Question Time but has taken only one slot.
Most Opposition MPs would crawl over broken glass for an opportunity to ask a question in question time, but Hone can’t even be bothered turning up!
Speaker David Carter said a formal attendance record for MPs was no longer kept, but Mr Harawira had been given 49 days of leave since the 2011 election, during which Parliament has sat for about 120 days. Party leaders have more responsibilities than other MPs, but most, including Prime Minister John Key and Labour leader David Shearer, attend on two of the three sitting days.
Party leaders do have to balance parliamentary and party responsibilities. but as MPs they are paid by the taxpayer to be in Parliament, making speeches, asking questions, doing the hard grunt on select committees to improve laws. It seems Hone is mainly using taxpayer resources to build up his party machine.
A spokesman for Mr Harawira said he was in Hawaii for a United Nations event this week. When contacted, Mr Harawira hung up.
Says it all.
Mr Harawira has criticised the Maori Party for its support agreement with National, but Mr Flavell said Mr Harawira had not been in Parliament to challenge the Government, or to put forward alternative ideas.
Despite the cutback in travel to Wellington, Mr Harawira’s travel expenses for the first three months of the year were still higher than any other non-ministerial MP, including Mr Shearer.
We are funding the Mana Party.
The Herald reports:
United Future leader Peter Dunne says he is probably the most lobbied MP in Parliament, as his party has held the balance of power for more than 10 pieces of legislation this parliamentary term.
Mr Dunne’s crucial vote has sealed major law changes including the Government’s flagship asset sales legislation. On the other hand, the minister will oppose Government law changes such as the introduction of charter schools, and has helped private member’s bills from the other side of the House to get over the line.
With Act usually voting along the same lines as National, the ruling party relied on United Future’s vote for a majority in the House.
Mr Dunne admitted that he wielded power that was disproportionate to his party’s one-seat representation in Parliament.
“I’m quite conscious of … not trying to overplay the hand. On the other hand, you don’t want to be silent either.
If someone has to have the balance of power on many issues, I’m glad it is someone like Peter Dunne.
On the one hand, Peter doesn’t overplay his hand. he doesn’t extort the Government for $500 million for pet projects like Winston used to. He asks for a few moderate initiatives and agreements.
And when it comes to individual bills, he does judge them on their merits. He supported Mondayisation and (so far) paid parental leave extension.
He won’t vote against the Government on something that is absolutely critical to them (such as asset sales), but will vote against when the Government can’t persuade him that their view is best.
He initially planned to oppose a bill which aimed to deter people-smuggling.
The National-led Government had a majority on the Immigration Amendment Bill with the support of Act and the Maori Party, but wanted all of its coalition partners onside.
Mr Dunne forced National to change the definition of a mass arrival of refugees from 10 people to 30 people, and also to make changes which made the bill less punitive.
A good example of being constructive to improve a bill.
His key vote has also made him a lightning rod for criticism, in particular on the partial asset sales legislation.
Yet he made it clear before the election he would vote for the legislation subject to certain conditions. He got elected on that basis.
Stuff reports:
Three Labour MPs have met career criminal Arthur Taylor to discuss his court battle to overturn a prison smoking ban.
Justice spokesman Andrew Little, police and corrections spokesman Kris Faafoi and Darien Fenton, who holds the shadow labour portfolio, visited Paremoremo jail yesterday.
Taylor, 56, has racked up more than 130 convictions, including armed robbery, kidnapping and escaping from prison.
Mr Little said the MPs agreed to visit to discuss Taylor’s legal bid to reverse the smoking ban at the prison.
Three MPs? Why don’t they have the entire caucus meet with Taylor.
So now all it takes to get three Labour MPs to meet with you is:
And his grievance is that he can not smoke in prison anymore.
I do hope Labour will soon release their policy on how Mr Taylor’s human rights have been breached, as soon as they have finished nationalising the electrcity industry.
Stuff reports:
Sir Peter Jackson might not have been a New Zealander if not for the courage and tenacity of Kiwi soldiers in World War I.
The Lord of the Rings director said his British grandfather, William John Jackson, developed a respect for the Kiwi character while fighting alongside the Anzacs at Gallipoli.
When Sir Peter’s father emigrated to New Zealand years later, his decision was influenced by the stories he had been told about the country’s inhabitants.
“My dad always told me that the principal reason he chose New Zealand to emigrate to after World War II was the high regard his father had for the Kiwis he encountered at Gallipoli,” Sir Peter told the Ministry for Culture and Heritage.
William Jackson, the grandfather Sir Peter never met, won a Distinguished Conduct Medal at Gallipoli, and fought in most major battles of World War I. He died in 1940, aged 51.
He was lucky to survive. The death toll was horrific.
3 News Political Editor Patrick Gower blogs:
The “Hey Clint!” moment – where Gareth Hughes stops mid-interview and asks a spin doctor what to say – has generated a bit of chatter here and there.
Some people – including even colleagues here in the Press Gallery – have suggested it was wrong to run it, that it was a big call, or even that there were journalistic ethics at stake.
To be perfectly frank, I don’t think this was the ethical issue of the century, or the year, or the week.
Because screening it was the right thing to do. In fact, it was the only thing to do.
I cannot believe there are journalists out there who would think otherwise.
However, I do understand that some in the public like to understand what goes on behind the scenes of political reporting: How we interact with politicians, what’s on and off record, how anonymity and background works. It’s not a secret society – and it shouldn’t be.
So Monday went like this: As soon as my colleague Tova O’Brien finished the interview for my story, she told me what she had.
She’d asked one of the critical questions in the power policy struggle, that after putting a dent in the Mighty River Power sale, potentially wiping hundreds of millions of dollars off it, “are you pleased?”
Hughes had stopped mid-interview, called “Hey Clint!” and asked political advisor Clint Smith what the answer was.
My thoughts, like Tova’s, were “that’s incredible”. I have never ever before seen a politician call out during an interview for a spin doctor to tell them what the answer is:
Neither have I. You ask them for advice before the interview, but you can’t and don’t ask them for lines during an actual interview. At the end of the day the MPs are the ones who stand for election, not the advisors.
The full video is embedded above.
Now I know a lot of people watch “Hey Clint!” and find it funny.
But to me it showed much more than a bit of humour. It showed what we know – the Greens, like Labour, are trying to act like they are not gleeful that the policy is screwing with the MRP float.
In fact, it looked like Gareth Hughes was stoked. It was in the public interest to run it. No question.
It busted spin, in fact, it blew the spin apart.
It showed that the Greens, like Labour, are trying to come up with ‘lines’ to pretend that it’s not about wrecking the float.
Of course it is an attempt to sabotage the float. The policy could have been announced months ago. In fact why didn’t Labour and Greens campaign on it at the last election – so people had a clear alternative? But they can not accept they lost the election, so are trying to sabotage the float.
If you don’t accept that interpretation, then tell me why else they announced it after the float document was released, and not earlier?
They must be besides themselves with joy. One joint press conference, based on a quickly assembled policy, and they have wiped almost a billion dollars of wealth off investors. think how much more damage they can do if they ever get to actually implement policy. Their printing presses will be going non-stop.
Isaac Davidson at NZ Herald reports:
A protest which halted a mining giant’s oil exploration on New Zealand’s high seas and prompted a controversial law change cost taxpayers nearly $1.7 million, documents show.
A pity we can’t send someone the bill.
Protesters’ ships came within 20m of the Petrobras-commissioned Orient Explorer, and some activists swam 200m in front of the vessel, forcing it to veer off course. Officials said seismic vessels could not immediately stop because they were pulling long seismic “streamers” or lines, and if they veered too far from their course it could take four hours to loop back to their original path.
And that is the difference between protest and interference.
If I don’t like the Interislander I can sail all around Wellington Harbour with protest signs saying “Interislander should go”.
But what I can’t do is park my yacht 20 metres in front of their wharf, so they can’t dock. That is interfering with their operations.
The same goes for further out at sea. Protest to your heart’s content. But if you take actions that force a law abiding ship to be unable to do activities it has been granted permission to do – that is and should be illegal.
The Press reports:
The Canterbury recovery will cost almost $1 billion more than the value of Cyprus’ gross domestic product, almost twice Iceland’s and more than double New Zealand’s annual health spend.
And while Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee says the recovery’s price tag is still on the rise, looking set to surpass the latest $30b estimate, Canterbury Employers Chamber of Commerce chief executive Peter Townsend has now gone further, saying the recovery will cost $40b.
Bill English must sometimes gaze enviously at Michael Cullen’s photo, assuming he has a dart board in his office.
The last Finance Minister had a booming global economy, and his biggest problem was inventing new spending schemes to stop the surplus getting too large.
English has had not only the worst global recession since the Great Depression, but also the fiscal shock of the Christchurch Earthquake which as a percentage of the economy is one of the greatest to hit a developed economy in modern times.
The fact we are on track to achieve surplus the financial year after next is a minor miracle, after inheriting a structural deficit projection.
Stuff reports:
Professional investors, while still nervous of the proposal, have begun to question whether it will be implemented, even if the Opposition wins next year’s election.
AMP Capital’s head of equities, Guy Elliffe, estimates it will take at least five years to design and implement the plan, exposing it to the same policy about-face that has National so concerned.
“Most people think it is [going to take] more than one electoral term … but then what is the probability of a Labour-Green coalition being elected twice?” he asked.
Mr Moghe, meanwhile, has maintained his recommendation that investors subscribe to the share offer, which closes on May 3 for retail investors.
I think Mr Elliffe is largely correct.
To implement this policy, first Labour and Greens need to get 61 seats between them. If they have to rely on NZ First, he may not support the policy.
Secondly implementing the policy would be massively complex, probably the subject of huge litigation, and take years to do. It is most unlikely to be done in one term. And with Green/Labour policy veering radically leftwards (printing money, nationalising industries) the economy could be seriously tanking after three years.
But also look at who the Labour and Green energy spokespersons are, who would be the ones to implement this incredibly complex and controversial policy – Moana Mackey and Gareth Hughes. Now I like Moana and Gareth, but a policy like this would need a Michael Cullen or Steven Joyce to implement.
So I think the chances of this policy ever being implemented are in fact quite low.
Hence why I am increasing the amount of Mighty River Power shares I was planning to purchase. Thanks to Greens and Labour, they are likely to be priced more towards the bottom end of the indicated range. This means I’ll pick up the shares for a discount. This is of course bad for the taxpayer, but good for me as an investor. Thanks Russell and Davids.
Feel free to comment below if you are pre-registered and if you still plan to invest.
Note that this blog post is not financial advice.
Stuff reports:
The national census could be scrapped and replaced with an “administrative census” that wouldn’t require everyone to fill out forms, under a plan being considered by Statistics New Zealand.
But civil libertarians should put the champagne on ice.
Statistics NZ said the switch would require a new compulsory “national population register” that would record where everyone lived and which could link to their tax and health records.
Additional socio-economic data normally gathered during the five-yearly census would be obtained from public databases and by a smaller survey that might cover about 5 per cent of the population. …
“Typically a national population register provides the essential population base and is linked to an address register, to birth and death registers, and to other administrative sources such as tax, health and education data.”
Kevin McCormack, secretary of the Council for Civil Liberties, said the lobby group would consider it important the register was used only for statistical purposes and that linked data did not identify individuals. “Otherwise, it is another form of creeping ‘Big Brother’.”
I find it amazing we don’t have this already. At any point in time we don’t have an accurate list of all NZ citizens, all NZ residents etc. The birth and death records are not linked to the immigration records. A register of residents and citizens would be very useful for electoral enrolment verification, as well as statistical purposes.
There are potential privacy issues, but I don’t see such a database as meaning the Government has any additional data on you – just that it is linked together, so that one can statistically analyse it.
Stuff reports:
A group is calling for the Government to consider legalising multi-partner marriages.
The group set up a Facebook page just before the Marriage Amendment Bill passed through Parliament last week, legalising gay marriage.
A statement on the page described multi-partner – or polyamorous – marriage as “responsible, adult, committed non-monogamy,” and said all committed loving relationships between adults regardless of number should be respected and given legal acknowledgement.
“Some Australian Greens have now got a lobby group going, there are several MPs around the world coming out as poly and poly-friendly and it seems the time is right to at least bring it to the attention of the New Zealand public and New Zealand parliament,” the group said.
“This will be a long-term project but with the rest of the world getting on the bandwagon legal multiple partner marriages/unions may one day be accepted.”
It’s an anonymous Facebook group. I’ll take this debate seriously when there are actual New Zealanders living in polyamorous relationships who are willing to step forward and say they want to be able to have multiple husbands or wives.
Most people have gay friends or acquaintances. I know probably a few thousand people and don’t know any of them who are in a polyamorous relationship. There was some Auckland celebrity who was in one a few years ago, but I can’t recall who they were.
Is this a debate that we may have one day? Possibly.
As it happens polyamorous marriages are already recognised in New Zealand law, if they were married in a country which allows them and now live here. I wonder if Stats NZ or DIA has any data on how many of these there are?
This is so ridiculous that I thought the letter may itself be a parody, but it appears to be genuine.
The Civilian did a satirical piece on 22 April where they said:
Pakuranga MP Maurice Williamson is acknowledging that he looks pretty stupid this morning after a series of floods in the Nelson, Waikato and Bay of Plenty regions appeared to contradict his assertion that nothing bad would come of the passing of gay marriage legislation. …
Conservative Party Leader Colin Craig was among the first to point out the National MP’s mistake.
“Williamson likes to talk about big gay rainbows,” said Craig, “but it would help if he understood what the rainbow actually means. After Noah’s flood, God painted a giant rainbow across the sky, which was a message that he would never again flood the world, unless we made him very angry. And we have.”
Prime Minister John Key has reportedly reprimanded Mr. Williamson for being “a big idiot” and is considering removing some of his ministerial portfolios. Mr. Williamson has said that he would accept that, but was surprised to learn he had portfolios.
The bolded paragraph caused Colin Craig to launch defamation proceedings as he thought people may think he really said the words in the article. No, seriously.
The letter from Colin Craig’s lawyers say:
We are instructed that Colin Craig never made the Statement. It is a fiction created by you to make him look ridiculous and the use of quotation marks is designed to give it the appearance of fact. The Statement cannot be dismissed as satire in the circumstances, particularly when it is published alongside quotes from Maurice Williamson which we understand may largely be accurate.
The Civilian makes everyone look ridiculous. It is a satire site. Only a moron would think Colin Craig really said those words.
The chance of a defamation law suit winning would be as close to zero as you can get. But the problem is defending such a lawsuit could cost you up to $100,000. And Mr Craig is a multi-millionaire. And Ben Uffindell is a just newly graduated student.
Colin Craig also tries to get some money out of Uffindell:
Mr Craig also seeks a contribution of $500 towards his legal costs and reserves all of his rights in respect of this matter.
It is a very sad day for democracy in New Zealand when an extremely wealthy political leader threatens an obviously satirical website for defamation, because they took the piss out of him.
The response from The Civilian is great, and is here.
And Danyl McLauchlan publishes a previously unknown interview with Colin Craig.
The Herald reports:
The two brothers suspected of bombing the Boston Marathon appear to have been motivated by a radical brand of Islam but do not seem connected to any Muslim terrorist groups, US officials said after interrogating and charging Dzhokhar Tsarnaev with crimes that could bring the death penalty.
Tsarnaev, 19, was charged in his hospital room, where he was in serious condition with a gunshot wound to the throat and other injuries suffered during his attempted getaway. His older brother, Tamerlan, 26, died after a fierce gunbattle with police.
The Massachusetts college student was charged with using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction. He was accused of joining with his brother in setting off the shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs that killed three people and wounded more than 200 a week ago.
The brothers, ethnic Chechens from Russia who had been living in the US for about a decade, practiced Islam.
Two US officials said preliminary evidence from the younger man’s interrogation suggests the brothers were motivated by religious extremism but were apparently not involved with Islamic terrorist organisations.
In one sense it is more concerning they were not dupes put up to it by a terrorist group, but decided to turn to terrorism based solely on their religious beliefs.
There are approximately 1.6 billion Muslims, and it goes without saying that the vast majority do not practice or support terrorism. Just mindlessly ranting against an entire religion achieves nothing.
And of course there have been terrorists motivated by other religions – Northern Ireland, for one.
But to my mind there is a difference with terrorism done by extreme Islamists. It is that religion seems to be the sole reason for the terrorism.
Most terrorism involves territorial disputes. Northern Ireland was part-religious but partly an fight over the partition or Ireland.
Terrorism in Kashmir is linked to control of disputed territory. Religion is part of it, but not all of it.
Other factors involved in why people turn to terrorism can be extreme poverty, lack of education etc.
But when it comes to terrorism involving relatively well off, well educated citizens, with no territorial dispute – the sole factor often is just their belief in an extreme version of Islam. And to be frank that is scary.
Tony Blair and the IRA managed to find a political settlement that has almost stopped terrorism in Northern Ireland. The same has happened in other areas.
But I’m at a loss to know how you stop people like the Tsarnaev brothers concluding that their God wants them to blow up children who are watching the Boston Marathon. When a religion doesn’t unambiguously condemn violence and killing, and many priests promote rewards in the afterlife for those who kill in God’s name – no wonder. When Iran’s mullahs hand out fatwas encourging people to kill the likes of Salman Rushdie, it is no surprise that you have others decide that killing people for their God is a good idea.
Christianity has it faults, and a chequered history. But the number of Christian priests who in modern times ever call for someone to be killed is almost zero – the odd lunatic excepted. But sadly in Islam, all too many religious and political leaders (and the two are linked) do preach violence in God’s name.
The solutions are not easy. Just condemning 1.6 billion Muslims for the sins of a few is not a solution – just prejudice. But neither is there merit in ignoring the problems and almost unique challenges of Islamic terrorism. The lack of a central authority in Islam, and the inability to modernise their teachings, makes change very challenging.
In the end the only practical long-term solution is to encourage moderate Muslim leaders, to speak out and condemn the extremists, and make clear that terrorism is evil and sinful – no matter what.
But I have to admit I am pessimistic. I don’t see an end to religious terrorism in my lifetime.