Picture Says It All

Hard thing for me to say but on his blog our Bomber Bradbury (borrowed the pic from Bomber) has made a call to overseas activists to Boycott New Zealand Goods on the back of John Key and our flash new government's decision to set a greenhouse gas emissions reduction target of only 10 to 20 per cent below 1990 levels at climate change negotiations in Bonn, Germany, rather than the forty percent that so many Kiwis have called for. And apparently even this is only conditional. We can only wonder to what new depths they can find plummet.

Bomber Bradbury:
"National are purposely misrepresenting the costs because they are the party of the farmers and big business, they refuse to make those industries pay for the pollution they create and National gutted the agricultural tax rebate for research necessary to create the technology to cut emissions. ACT have polluted National’s climate change because ACT are taking huge sums of cash from climate deniers like Alan Gibbs. The whole thing stinks to high heaven and we are losing our clean green image."

Gareth Renowden:
"It is now transparently obvious that this National-led government simply does not understand the real challenges presented by climate change. They do not appreciate the full seriousness of the situation that confronts the planet, they underestimate the need to act, and they have completely failed to make any coherent assessment of what could be done. That amounts to gross incompetence, and they should be held to account for it, both at the ballot box and in the court of public opinion."

Our flash Government, who seem to inhabit a different world from the rest of us, are claiming this ridiculously low emissions reduction target has gone down well at the UN Climate Change talks in Bonn. Not so, states one Geoff Keey, who is actually there. Instead, "at the beginning of day two of the negotiations, the NGOs at the talks put out their daily bulletin - ECO - with a focus on New Zealand. The newsletter is a daily tradition dating back years. It's a good light-hearted view of a deadly serious topic. The content speaks for itself," writes Geoff.

You can view the newsletter yourself by clicking here. It is a pdf file.

Geoff Keey:
"It’d be fair to say that some developed country delegates were relieved that the target wasn’t as low as they thought it was going to be. Expectations of New Zealand around here aren’t great at present. But overall I think it's seen as nothing more than a low opening offer. I also got the impression that negotiators and observers thought New Zealand’s conditional demands were over the top. One long-standing observer said to me, it seems that what New Zealand is doing with its demands is saying: “if the rest of the world is really nice to us and is willing to work really hard to reduce emissions, we’ll condescend to do something inadequate.” He also noted that “Kevin Rudd got a standing ovation in Bali, New Zealand didn’t get a single clap at Bonn.” Given that Rudd’s no climate hero, that’s not very promising."

Actions people can take

So, to people overseas, the only way to hurt this government and make them listen is to hit them in the purse strings, especially with our agricultural products, beef and lamb and dairy. Because the producers of these products are easily identifiable as the lobbyists behind this low emissions target. These are the people who are petrified that they will be forced to clean up their act in order to cut our greenhouse gas emissions.

Also people (no pressure, just a suggestion) might like to send our Prime Minister John Key a friendly little email telling him how you plan to boycott our goods due to our pathetic greenhouse gas emissions reduction target. Overseas public opinion may well go far to change this government's stance.

This is John Key's email address - john.key@parliament.govt.nz

New Zealand The Way It Was,
before this new lot took over; a country we could be proud of. I'd like to be proud of it again one day.

The Maori Jesus And The Holocaust

"The Maori Jesus came on shore
And picked out his twelve disciples.
One cleaned toilets in the railway station;
His hands were scrubbed red to get the shit out of the pores.
One was a call-girl who turned it up for nothing.
One was a housewife who had forgotten the Pill
And stuck her TV set in the rubbish can.
One was a little office clerk
Who'd tried to set fire to the Government Buldings.
Yes, and there were several others;
One was a sad old quean;
One was an alcoholic priest
Going slowly mad in a respectable parish."

From James Keir Baxter's poem
The Maori Jesus (Dunedin Poems, 1966 -68)

This picture of Jesus wearing a Maori Cloak is from a church window in Rotorua. Intriguingly he even looks as though he is walking on the water of the lake outside.

To me this is not a religious poem, this is an entirely political poem. I realised this as I was typing the poem, (click here for the full version) on New Zealand Poetry Day. Typing means you take in every word, it slows down your thoughts, sometimes you might find meanings you never noticed before.

And I realised that -

Baxter's Maori Jesus is placed firmly into the working class. He wears workingmen's clothing (blue dungarees/overalls), he eats the traditional kai and colonial bread (mussels and paraoa) of working class Maori. And tellingly he chooses his disciples from the lowest rung of the Maori working/non-working? (it's all about perspective) classes - the railway toilet cleaner, the call girl (Mary Magdalene equivalent perhaps?), the mad housewife, the office clerk (resonant of the British Guy Fawkes even?), the alcoholic priest, the sad old quean. All these people are the disenfranchised, the losers in Pakeha society eyes.

The Maori Jesus comes from a land occupied by another race - the English. They brought their religion as a tool of oppression, they brought their laws which remade most Maori into landless peasantry of Aotearoa/ New Zealand. The story is repeated throughout the colonised/occupied world.

If our James K Baxter had been white Australian, his Jesus could have been an Aboriginal Jesus;
If Baxter was American then Baxter could have written his poem about a Native American Jesus -
By way of diversion Jesus could have even been African American;
in the historical British-occupied India, Baxter could have created his Jesus as an Indian Jesus,
Moreover, if Baxter identified as English, his Jesus could have been a Saxon in the Roman-occupied English Isles -
In similar time-frame Baxter's Jesus might have been Jewish in Roman-occupied Jerusalem.

Oh he was ...

These days he could even be written (in complete reversal) as a Palestinian in Israeli-occupied Palestine.

It's all the same story.

But on the 29th of August in the year 2000 when Tariana Turia (then a NZ Labour MP) gave an
address to the New Zealand Psychological Society Conference which took place at the Waikato University, Hamilton, in which she likened the colonisation/occupation/home invasion of Aotearoa/New Zealand (the Land of The Long White Cloud) to a Maori Holocaust Pakeha (white) New Zealanders were outraged! No one wants to be likened to a Nazi after all - many people even insisted Tariana was showing symptoms of grandiosity to liken the effect of colonisation on Maori to the slaughter of the innocent Jewish people by the evil Nazis.

About the grandiosity, we hadn't met Clayton Weatherston back then, the man who has brought home to all Kiwis the true meaning of grandiosity.

The poem goes on to tell us that:

"The first day he was arrested
For having no lawful means of support.
The second day he was beaten up by the cops
For telling a dee his house was not in order.
The third day he was charged with being a Maori
And given a month in Mt Crawford.
The fourth day he was sent to Porirua
For telling a screw the sun would stop rising.
The fifth day lasted seven years
While he worked in the Asylum laundry
Never out of the steam.
The sixth day he told the head doctor,
'I am the Light in the Void;
I am who I am.'
The seventh day he was lobotomised;
The brain of God was cut in half."

Tariana said:

"I seek not personal attention. I just want us to consider our history as a country and consider how this history has affected the indigenous people, how this history has impacted on Maori whanau, hapu and iwi.

I really do believe that mature, intelligent New Zealanders of all races are capable of the analysis of the trauma of one group of people suffering from the behaviour of another.

I can see the connections between 'home invasions' which concern many of us, to the invasion of the 'home lands' of indigenous people by a people from another land.

What I have difficulty in reconciling is how 'home invasions' emits such outpourings of concern for the victims and an intense despising of the invaders while the invasion of the 'home lands' of Maori does not engender the same level of emotion and concern for the Maori victims.

I wonder why that is?" (Turia, 2000)

The Future is Here: Climate Change in the Pacific

This winter has really been quite brutally cold with way more rain than we in Canterbury are used to, coupled with fierce frosts and ice that sits there all day under grey cloudy days. The weather people tell us this has been the coldest winter in a decade and I find that quite believable.

But over the last couple of days (1st and 2nd of August - gosh it is the 4th and I still haven't posted this lol - better do it today) the weather has become suddenly quite springlike. A northwest airflow bringing strongish winds at times but also warmer temperatures has coaxed me outdoors into the garden, hooray, and there is so much heat in the sun that yesterday I even got a touch of sunburn.

At least that's how it is in Canterbury.

All of this is very odd because traditionally August (along with July) are usually the New Zealand winter's coldest months. Spring shouldn't be here until September or even October, however the last few years have found me gardening earlier and earlier. In 2007 I noted I was busy outside around the 15th August and I forgot to pay attention last year but for me to be out there cleaning up gardens (mowing even) at the beginning of August is unheard of.

Gareth Renowden, (local Cantabrian science writer and author) in his book, Hot Topic: Global Warming and the Future of New Zealand (2007) mentioned that spring arriving earlier and earlier (nice as it might be for me), is a sign that Global Climate Change is upon us now. Right now. We are in it.





This month Oxfam has brought out a report pertinent to the Pacific region The Future is here: Climate Change in the Pacific, click here to read.





The report details the effects of Global Climate Change that are already being experienced by many of our island neighbours in the Pacific region. Many of the island nations are already being affected by tidal surges, coastal erosion, and flooding from the heavy rainfall following more and more frequent cyclones. Fresh water wells are threatened by salt water intrusion, vulnerable homes and gardens need to be re-sited further from the eroding coastlines. Salt water intrusion affects the growing of plants, vegetables, trees. Many (probably most) islands have the main road between communities running around the coastlines; therefore any kind of flooding or storm surges can break communications and help between island communities immediately.

Some small islands may have to be abandoned because of rising sea levels in favour of the bigger islands, perhaps very soon. Some island nations have no islands with higher ground, Kiribati for example. President Tong speaks of the need to up-skill the Kiribati population in readiness for the day when all 100,000 of them will have to move elsewhere and participate in labour markets.

Where Will The People All Go?

Do you know how many people live in the Pacific? By about 2050, 75 million people may have been forced to leave their homes in the Asia-Pacific region due to climate change. This is real.

One thing that needs to be done now is for both Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand to reduce our carbon emissions by 40% by the year 2020 and by at least a whopping 95% by the year 2050. And we need to start now, should have started yesterday or last month or something ...

right: Coastal erosion in Saoluafata, Upolu, Samoa, 2005

BUT here in New Zealand our super flash and utterly selfish new government wants to limit our global emissions target (post-Kyoto) to something in the range of only 15%. To help avoid catastrophic climate change New Zealand needs to be signing on to a 40% by 2020 emissions reduction target at the United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen this December.

What you can do ...

Please sign the Feel The Heat Petition here even if you don't live down in Aotearoa/New Zealand or in the Pacific. Our Prime Minister John Key and his coalition buddy Act leader Rodney Hide need to hear what the voters think, but also to know that the eyes of the world are upon them.

Or you can click on the banner below or the similar one on the right rail for more information. Thank you. Arohanui.

The Chocolate Wars

The last time when I wrote about chocolate, my focus was on slavery and the exploitation of children in particular. This time the focus is on palm oil plantations and specifically on the Cadbury Corporation.


The palm oil industry (as most of us know) is knocking down rainforests and burning peat across Indonesia and Malaysia to expand production to meet the increased demand. This is resulting in the release of massive amounts of greenhouse gases and the destruction of the habitat of endangered animals such as the orang-utan. Deforestation contributes about twenty percent of global carbon emissions; a figure widely accepted and commonly used at United Nations climate change conferences. Most of this country's palm kernel imports come from Indonesia, with the remainder from Malaysia. Both countries are currently experiencing large-scale clearance of rainforest for palm oil plantations.

Below is the latest Whittakers commercial comparative advertising their chocolate product to Cadbury's amongst the recent controversy about (1) Palm Oil being used in the Cadbury's Chocolate bars, (2) Cadbury moving production to Australia resulting in unemployment here in New Zealand and (3) the packaging size changes.



http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/19582/ 13th July

Auckland Zoo, located in New Zealand's largest city, has decided to banish the iconic chocolate brand, Cadbury, from its shelves. because the chocolate maker, one of the country's largest and most popular chocolate manufacturers, has substituted some of the cocoa solids in its products with palm oil, from plantations in South Asia.

“We are advocates for wildlife,” said Auckland Zoo's conservation officer, Peter Fraser. “The biggest threat for animals is encroaching palm oil plantations. The plantations lie in a biodiverse hotspot. Orangutans are critically endangered,” he said. But so are the Sumatran Tiger and Rhino, the small clawed Asian Otter, [and] reptile, and plant species.


Palm oil is derived from mainly from plantations in Indonesia, Borneo, Malaysia and South America. Currently only four percent of palm oil comes from sustainable sources. “We had to look at our shelves and see if there were any Cadbury products,” Mr. Fraser said.

The zoo has been selling Cadbury chocolates in it's shops and restaurant, and palm oil products also form part of the zoo's animal feed.

“If we talk the talk, we have to walk the walk.”

Mr. Fraser said it was not currently possible to remove all palm oil products from the zoo as, in the case of some animals' feed, there is no replacement right now.

Cadbury's Response

Cadbury spokesman, Daniel Ellis, told the Sunday Star Times that Cadbury was a member of the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a body tasked with ensuring responsible and sustainable palm oil crops.

Greenpeace Response

Vanessa Atkinson, Greenpeace New Zealand climate campaigner said that, [being] “RSPO certified doesn't mean that the palm oil you buy is sustainable or that it hasn't caused rainforest clearing or climate impact. There is no segregation of suppliers in the supply chain."

Greenpeace warns that the carbon dioxide released by the draining and burning of peatlands for palm oil plantations in the South Asian region is responsible for four percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Chocolate Eaters Respond too

Many Cadbury's customers are also dismayed and outraged. The outrage is such that bloggers are criticizing the altered product and promising to switch to competitors' products. A petition asking Parliament to put out warnings about palm oil is also in progress. Some consumers are disillusioned with the taste of the new product and are urging Cadbury to bring back the old recipe while others are angry over the effect of palm oil plantations on rainforests.

Apparently Cadbury Australia has been adding palm oil to its products for some time but New Zealanders have only recently been surprised with downsized bars of chocolate which have a different taste and texture to how they tasted before.

Mārire

This seems to have somehow wound up being two blogs in one.

Anyhow, my sister and my mother came for lunch yesterday (we went to Seagers for lunch - really nice) and during the conversation we found ourselves remembering our grandmother (my father's mother) and her motel in Picton which she had named the Marire Motels.

Picton Harbour.

By the time ... my mother first met my father in Wellington in the 'fifties and he took her across the Cook Strait to Picton, my grandmother was a widow (my grandfather had died at age 52 from a blood clot following an operation) and she was running the Sunwick Bed & Breakfast on High Street. My father was one of five children and his two older brothers were already married. I think his sister was helping my grandmother at the time and the youngest brother was still living at home (just).

Actually it was just recently that this youngest brother (as he was driving us quickly to the Wellington airport to catch our plane home back in May) told my mother that he had been present at the dance when my father first met her. He had been with a group of blokes and she hadn't realised at the time that one of them was his brother on a visit to Wellington. It was a nice thing for him to tell her the story from his perspective.

Creating Families and/or Motels

A recent Picture of High Street, Picton

My parents married, and first me (1957), and then my sister (1959) were born in Wellington, then we moved to Taumarunui where my little brother was born (1961). Meantime my grandmother had decided that running a bed and breakfast place was getting too full-on and she wasn't getting any younger so she decided to build motels instead. She wanted to build them on the High Street, handy to the local shops and the beach which would take good advantage of the emerging tourist industry in Picton and had to push her case quite hard through the local council as no motels had been built on the High Street before.

She must have been around sixty at this time.

My first actual memory of my grandmother (I must have seen her before this but been too young to remember) was when our family left Taumarunui, which is in the middle of the North Island, more or less, to live in Blackball way down on the West Coast of the South Island. This was in October of 1962 and we had a really rough crossing over the Cook Strait (between the two islands). My mother had dolled up my wee brother to look really cute for his first introduction to his grandmother in Picton but he was fearfully sick on the ferry and arrived looking white and miserable - a very poor specimen of a grandson right then.

The Cook Strait rail and vehicle ferry Aramoana which was in service in 1962.

My grandmother (a very practical woman) had built her motels as single story units which surrounded three sides of the section of land and were open to the street. They were built of concrete block (I think that is cinder block in the US?), and painted in fashionable 'fifties pastels, each unit a different pastel colour, pink, lemon, pale blue or green. Between each unit was a single garage (the only motels with garages I have ever seen in New Zealand) and the forecourt was laid with small coloured shingle so that if any of the visitors cars dropped oil it could be easily got rid of. Each unit had two bedrooms, a kitchenette, shower and toilet, and a small lounge with dining table and chairs. A shared laundry (agitator washing machine) and several rotary washing lines were to be found in a group around the back of the units.

A corner unit had become my grandmother's home and office. She didn't get out a lot because she always had to be available to answer the phone for bookings but a large window provided her with a view onto the street so she could watch all the comings and goings as they unfolded on the street, and she was very handily placed for her friends to visit her each day. Her unit contained a couch in the lounge which folded out to become a bed, and also, us kids were fascinated by a large cupboard in her lounge from which a bed was pulled down when the cupboard doors were opened. There were also two bedrooms, my grandmother's room had two single beds and the other room had another two single beds and a large canvas cot for the youngest grandchildren like my wee brother, so she was all set up for when family came to stay.

Mārire - the motels, the word, and the meaning ...

My grandmother always had a strong respect and liking for the Maori people and wanted a NZ/Maori name for her motels, which meant something, rather than some irrelevant name dragged here from overseas. As children we never paid much attention to the name, Marire Motels but I remember my grandmother telling me that a local Maori woman had told her that the word meant peace. My grandmother was very pleased that the locals approved her choice of name for her motels.

So yesterday we checked my Reed Dictionary (my better Williams Dictionary is down in Christchurch at my sister's house) and it listed, mārire : quiet, gentle, discreet, placid.

The word mārire was also associated with a movement in the 1860's.

Pai Mārire (Good and Peaceful)

Pai Mārire followers around the Niu Pole

Te Ua Haumēne had been influenced by Christian missionaries after being captured by Waikato Maori back in 1826. It was these influences which shaped aspects of Pai Mārire. He had also learnt to read and write in Maori and became very familiar with the New Testament, especially the Book of Revelation.

Professor Ranginui Walker (Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou/ Struggle Without End, 1990; p 130) tells us that:

"The first overtly anti-Pakeha religious cult, founded by the prophet Te Ua Haumēne, arose in Taranaki, where the Land Wars began. Te Ua had fought beside Wiremu Kingi in the war and realised that something more than military prowess was needed to counter a standing army with superior numbers and weapons. Te Ua gained a reputation as a man of mana when the wreck of the Lord Worsley was attributed to his mystical powers of makatu. He communed with his god, Te Atua Pai Mārire, the Lord Good and Peaceful, and claimed visitation from the Angel Gabriel, who revealed a vision of Te Ua surrounded by all the tribes. The vision symbolised Te Ua's mission of unification, and his cult known as Pai Mārire (Good and Peaceful), signified the new relationship between tribes. converts worshipped around a Niu pole, rigged up like the mast of a ship, and expected to be endowed with the gift of tongues and a knowledge of science. Followers of the cult were promised that when every tribe was converted and unification achieved, the Pakeha would be conquered. They were also promised immunity to the Pakeha bullets if they went into battle crying 'Hapa Pai Mārire Hau! Hau!' It was from this battle cry that the Hauhau cult derived its common name. The cult initiated a new kind of guerilla warfare, which the Secretary of State for Colonial Affairs had warned would be the consequences of confiscation."

Clearly the peace alluded to is between the tribes, and not between Maori and the colonists.

The flag at the top of this picture was Te Ua Haumēne's personal flag. The word ‘kenana’ (Canaan) shows his identification with the Jewish people, a people driven from their homeland. The bottom two flags belonged to Tītokowaru and Pēhi Tūroa, who were Pai Mārire followers.

Tourist Court Motels

A long time later my grandmother sold her motels and finally retired. They were renamed as the Tourist Court Motels and upgraded/modernised. They were repainted white and the single garages became studio units. Shops were built (one each side) at the front where there used to be taps and hoses for the visitors to wash their cars.

Our Children Are Not Our Punchbags

First the Background

A few years back people in our country was transfixed when a judge ruled that a woman who had beaten her kid with a horsewhip was only using "reasonable force" for the purpose of correction, a defence which was then allowed under Section 59 of The Crimes Act. I hate to think what that judge's home life was like.

It came out that many parents who might otherwise have been found guilty of child abuse (whacking their kids with blocks of wood and all sorts of other implements) were using Section 59 as a defence and winning their cases.

Sue Bradford of the Greens Party responded by bringing to Parliament (back in 2003 this was) a private members bill to Repeal Section 59 of the Crimes Act to address this situation. "Parents", said Ms Bradford, "are supposed supposed to be protectors, not attackers, and children should feel totally safe at home."

``````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
"You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let our bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable."

Kahlil Gibran.

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
Finally The Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Act 2007 amended the principal Act, to make better provision for our children to live in a safe and secure environment which should be free from violence by abolishing the use of parental force for the purpose of correction. This bill was passed by an overwhelming majority of 113 to 8 votes.

Some of you who were reading my Yahoo!360 blog may remember me writing on this topic before. We basically got up to about here. All was good.

But ...

The far-right-wing Act Party (Act is anti-regulation of any kind even to protect our kids, it seems) and disgruntled MP Taito Phillip Field voted the minority eight votes. This bill, I could point out, was not actually increasing regulation, it was merely amending the existing regulation to improve it. That point seem to have escaped the ACT party.

The Referendum

Since then, a campaign of misinformation led by much of our media, some extreme fundamentalist christians, Act supporters and sympathisers, and brainless celebrities like Simon Barnett to name a few, has culminated in a Citizens Initiated Referendum. We get to have a referendum if someone circulates a petition and enough of the Kiwi adult population sign it, (I think they need to get about 10%).

The former United Future MP Larry Baldock designed this confusing and heavily loaded referendum question, “Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?” He was collecting signatures on this months before the new law was even finally passed.

The first point which I think needs to be made is that The Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Act 2007 doesn't actually make smacking a criminal offence. The new law has not led to mass criminalisation of good parents.Indeed, a review of police reports have indicated that the number complaints even made have been very small. There has appeared to have been some increase in complaints about the use of more heavy handed force (not just smacking) and some prosecutions (as in the well publicised James Mason case). Other cases have been resolved in a range of other ways including referral to Child, Youth & Family (CYF), case conferencing and advice to parents.

Secondly there are many parents (like me) who do not think that smacking/hitting whatever your kids is part of any good parenting strategy. Quite often stressed parents smack their kids purely because they, the parents are stressed, but as the title of this post notes, our children are not our punch bags. We throw our hands up in horror nowadays when men belt into women (I was just feeling stressed honey) because men are so much bigger and more physically powerful than the women they hit, but surely, we parents are also bigger and more powerful than our kids.

What we find, in fact, is that many young parents don't really want to hit their kids at all but when they themselves have been brought up with smacking as punitive discipline, many times they simply do not know what to do instead. A child advocate came to our town a few weeks back to talk to parents on just this subject and was surprised (and very pleased) that none of the young mums she met had any problem with the law, none of them wanted to smack their kids, what they wanted was ideas and advice and helpful alternatives to smacking.

We all want our children to grow up to be well behaved, responsible people, able to have peaceful and happy relationships with their partners and children. Children need positive, safe and secure childhoods if they are to grow up to be successful, non-violent and happy people.

A recent survey showed that at least 3 out of 4 Kiwis believe this referendum to be a waste of money.

A referendum isn't a cheap thing. This one is expected to cost us $9million. In a recession. Great.

Voting in the referendum runs from Friday 31st July until Friday 21st August, 2009. Kiwis will get our voting paper in the mail between Friday 31st July and Friday 7th August, 2009.

Taken from an interview
on National Radio's Morning Report (June 17, 2009)

Larry Baldock: It is absolutely clear that if a parent uses any reasonable force right now to correct their child right now they are breaking the law…

Sean Plunket: Can you give us an example of that having happened?

Larry Baldock: There are examples that we’ll have available…

Sean Plunket: Can you give us a single example of that having happened, please?

Larry Baldock: There was a grandfather for example, who tipped his grandson out of a chair because the grandson refused to obey his grandfather to turn down the television and so on.

Sean Plunket: Was he convicted and was that a smack?

Larry Baldock: He plead guilty …

Sean Plunket: Was that a smack?

Larry Baldock: No, he tipped him out of a chair….

But wait, there's more...

Sean Plunket: Can you point to anyone who has been criminalised for smacking a child?

Larry Baldock: Yes we can.

Sean Plunket: Please, could you give me an example?

Larry Baldock: Well, I’ll have to go to my list of examples.

Sean Plunket: Can you give me a single example off the top of your head?

Larry Baldock: No, not off the top of my head, I can’t...

Wouldn’t it be nice to send Baldock a bill for $9million?

Provocation? No Way!

We in Aotearoa/New Zealand have been following this case on our news for some days now and I am growing more and more appalled, and I am sure I am not the only one.

It is completely bizarre, that a man who drove to his girlfriends' home, and took with him a nice sharp knife, on arriving, exchanged greetings with her mother, then walked upstairs to the young woman's room, and stabbed her (not once but two hundred and sixteen times, including slicing off her ears and hacking her nose even), claims provocation PROVOCATION if you please - as a defence.




He, Clayton Weatherston, even has a woman lawyer. I'm shocked that he can stand there bare-faced and have that woman lawyer argue provocation as his defence and that this woman lawyer (who really should know better) would agree to bring such a defence to our courts of law.


Imagine if he is found Not Guilty because of this so-called provocation. Could every NZ male now decide to stab a woman 216 times (that's two hundred and sixteen times and don't forget the ears) and plead provocation? Will provocation now become a defence again, for men who beat up their partners? Could violent parents (having lost the ability to plead reasonable force when they belt up their kids with horsewhips and the like) now insist on provocation as a defence instead?

It seems to me we have another piece of law which requires repealing. Where is Sue Bradford when we need her.

The Most Peaceful Country

This was a nice read for Kiwis today. Aotearoa/New Zealand is the most peaceful country on the planet according to the 2009 Global Peace Index (GPI).

The index defines peace as "the absence of violence," and checks out twenty-three qualitative and quantitative indicators of external and internal measures of peacefulness. Internally, these include homicides, percentage of the population in jail, availability of guns, and level of organized crime. External indicators include the size of the military, exports and imports of arms, battlefield deaths, UN peacekeeping contributions, and relations with neighbouring states.

Apparently last year (2008) we came in fourth, and the year before (2007) we were second.

You can check out how well your country scored here.