Posts by Gary Elshaw
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Thank you for all of your support Russell. The petition going to Minister Parata is now available on the Change.org website.
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Hard News: Bowie, in reply to JP Hansen,
Sortof related. 1:18 into the Underground video. The original animated gif :-)
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That log from December 19 looks like it has many holes in it Keith. And thank you for this article, it vindicates a lot of suspicions.
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Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
...but Cancer does.
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Comfortable
"I'm comfortable with that"
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Douglas Lilburn was my neighbour in the late 90's until he died in 2001. I'd been a fan of his music for a long time and had no idea he was my neighbour until he became very sick and another neighbour who regularly looked after him told me who he was. Douglas for 5 or so years was just the older guy i regularly talked to most weeks when we were putting our recycling out. How cool and unassuming he was, and i feel lucky i was to have met him. I attended his funeral with half of Ascot Street in attendance, and the musical tributes were amazing.
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There has been some great discussion in this thread, but there has been little discussion concerning the timing of the execution of the warrant. Not only does it seem suspicious concerning the amount of time that has passed since the publication of the Dirty Politics book, but it's also worth noting that the material contained within the book has not received any attention from the Police in New Zealand. At all.
It's also worth considering the weight of the crimes recorded in the book compared to the weight of what Rawshark has been accused of. Anyone who has read the book is cognizant of the very material legal and moral breaches of Ede, Slater, Bhatnagar, Collins, Odgers, Graham and co. It appears that the New Zealand Police very obviously believe the publication of a book, that has already reached the threshold of meeting 'the public good' is of greater prosecutorial value than the catalogue of breaches contained within it.
If this was not about intimidation, i would suggest the Police would have executed simultaneous warrants on David Fisher and anyone else who has publicly acknowledged working with Rawshark.
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Hard News: History repeats: New…, in reply to Russell Brown,
Jorge Castaneda has a great article in Time magazine calling for the legalisation of drugs - all of them.
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Gotta be done, right?
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I've just moved in the last two weeks to Samoa for a year to do some volunteer work. I'm hoping to come home in a year depending on tomorrow's outcome - it will determine whether I come home or not for the foreseeable future. The last 6 years have been excruciating for me and I have been one of the lucky ones to keep his job after going through 3 restructures in almost as many years. Needless to say, others have not been so lucky.
I think we all know by now that the suspicions many of us had about media and government collusion have now been, maybe not addressed (even if we did have some individual reporter's mea culpa's before back to BAU), through Nicky Hager's book, but at least there is now a starting point for NZ to have the discussion about the relationship it wants to have with its media and representatives. I used to teach Film and Media at Victoria some years ago, and the sustained complicity between the media and this government has been nothing short of incredible in these last 6 years. There are just too many things the government has never been taken to account for that i think most New Zealanders would be astonished by if things were framed in different ways than they have been. We became the boiling frog.
It started with Legislation under urgency, a slew of breaches of the BoRA (can someone please entrench the Act?), the non-stop dehumanisation of beneficiaries, the secretive selling or giving away of Schedule 4 land after 65,000 New Zealanders marched and said no. I could go on, but most folk here will know what i'm saying and understand the changes we have seen in this time.
National's attitude seems to be a patronising message that this is all some distasteful medicine that's good for us in the long run. It's not. Part of the reason it's so distasteful is not just the ideology, but the process through which these changes have been accomplished is distasteful.
In my professional life a lot of cracks started to appear. I was a public servant and fervently believe in what that means - serving the public AND the government of the day. What happens when you believe your role is no longer of use in serving the public, but merely serving the government of the day?
This has been the strangest and best election i have witnessed, and yet there is nothing in the polls that reflects or suggests any of the events have really made a difference. What has given me hope has been some of the comments i have heard from people who now seem to be, for the first time in a long while, actually engaged.
I voted the day before i left the country and i'll look forward to coming home. Enjoy the day tomorrow everyone, i'll be there in spirit.