Hard News: Te Qaeda and the God Squad
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Ben: "Instead of embracing people who sought to live in comfort and success in an increasingly Pakeha world, [Maori culture] spurns them as race traitors."
Stephen: "Yikes. Does it really?"
Che: "No... it doesn't, and that is a gross generalisation".
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wish Scoop would desist from using this sort of language. This is a serious issue yet it reads like text from a school magazine produced by year-13 students.
Yep, tend to agree with you there. I don't think the "wacky organic farmers" concerned will be giggling and making carrot jokes. I think that even hippies (or business people depending on your angle) get pissed off when separated from their cellphones.
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"Actually most Maori I've met in the wider circle are also similarly disinterested in the culture that is an accident of some"
UNINTERESTED, please!!
(While we are on the infelicities in Mr Wilson's Te Reo Pakeha)
;-)
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One is rather reminded of when homosexual Bloomsbury author Lytton Strachey was tried for pacifism during WW2. When asked what he would do if he encountered a German soldier about to rape his mother, he replied "I would endevour to interpose myself."
Lytton Strachey had the best dying words of all time:
"If this is dying, then I don't think much of it."
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Who didn't sign that non-binding UN doco?
"We have made some study of overseas circumstances, and while it is far from complete, by reference to the history and development of Canada, Australia, and the United States of America, it appears that aboriginal autonomy was more thoroughly suppressed in New Zealand than in those comparable countries. Parihaka provides an illustration of this."
"In our opinion, that was one of the messages of Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi. Much the same was to be sought by Mahatma Gandhi in India and, later still, by Martin Luther King junior in the United States of America. It is probably no accident that each of these leaders taught of divine law. Effectively, they were jurists promoting higher constitutional norms. "
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Interesting turn for the thread. I'm still really pissed off about the way Pita Sharples has looked to ramp this up without apparently knowing much in the way of facts. Quotes are:
"I can hardly believe that negative history is repeating itself," he said.
"These storm trooper tactics violating the cultural sanctity of kainga, kura, kohanga reo, let alone the whenua and papakainga within Tuhoe remind me of the atrocities committed at Pariihaka, and of the pursuit of Te Kooti Rikirangi."
Dr Sharples said he was disgusted.
"What is the real reason for the use of the Terrorism Suppression act in this orchestrated campaign against so-called activists?
"No charges have been laid under that Act since it was introduced in 2002 so what next – are we going to see charges and trumped up evidence to justify this very extreme police action?
"This action has violated the trust that has been developing between Maori and Pakeha and sets our race relations back a hundred years."
Has he Godwined himself with the "stormtrooper" reference? And shouldn't words like "atrocities" be saved for the really big jobs?
I really hope this sort of talk doesn't become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I was wishing Ron Mark would join most of his Parliamentary colleagues and just STFU for a few days, but Sharples has blown right past him.
The Stuff readers' response doesn't fill me with hope either.
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Did you hear Derek Fox on Nine to Noon this morning? Not as strong as Sharples, but pretty dismissive of the police nonetheless. And making some good points.
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That was just mean Russell. I actually followed that link and then had to have someone else close it for me.
Unfortunately today I really do have nothing better to do. Thank god there is a 40 page print out around here somewhere.....DO NOT CLICK ON THE LINK ABOVE!
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Me either. There's some not very nice stuff in there. I hold no brief for gun-toting activists, but I'm astonished by the implicit trust in the police that some of the commentators have.
Derek Fox made an intersting point on National Radio this morning, that somehow in Tuhoe country the cops thought it was okay to have the AOS there in full kit, but that they didn't make the same display of force in the nice white communities.
I'm not sure about the veracity of this statement (as in, I just genuinely don't know what the facts are), but if Mr Fax has the facts correct, then it does seem odd that it was the Maori activists who were treated to the greatest display of force.
But this is where we so need more concrete evidence. Any word on when we will get to know more?
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Possibly the comparison to Parihaka was stretching it but to Rua Kenana maybe not so much
The parallel there is quite good, and not just geographic. Rumours of "disloyal" Maori playing with guns in the hills, plotting who knows what. In that case, though, the farce turned into tragedy when the police started murdering people (and they were murdering people; the courts found that the warrant they relied on to arrest Kenana at his home was unlawful, and that Kenana's followers were entitled to use force in self-defence against their unlawful arrest. The "morally resisting arrest" finding related to an earlier incident, where he simply refused to go with poloce).
This time, at least, no-one is dead. But I wonder how much of that fear of maori with guns is still there amongst the authorities...
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I'm not sure about the veracity of this statement (as in, I just genuinely don't know what the facts are)
The chap whose house was searched and PC's seized in Taupo said the officers were in blue with flak jackets. But not AOS. I'd call that a fact.
No doubt the police would say they weren't expecting to meet armed resistance there.
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but that they didn't make the same display of force in the nice white communities.
Seeing Sam Buchanan in the paper (who I have seen around for decades from attending the same French classes, to having him shout slogans at me when I attended a lunch function at a particular embassy one year), made me wonder if the rounding up of the "usual suspects" was a purely opportunistic thing.
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I found the story of Rua Kenana gripping on so many different levels when I was reading it last night. At 12:30.
A bit nuts really to be trying to take that on board at that time of night. Interesting that White Fungus published that before all this happened. I had it sitting around ready to read and bamm, it becomes topical.
According to what I read (and it is not in front of me, and no I will not google it ; ) he was being arrested for selling booze. At the time pakaha could. Maori couldn't. In spite of this and many other things it looks like he was trying to work with the system having been convinced by the rhetoric of "one law for all", he even had a flag up with words to that effect. -
Totally OT, but I followed Michael's link to the Waitangi Tribunal, and got stuck here:
Though the lions rage still I am for peace . . . Though I be killed I yet shall live; though dead, I shall live in peace which will be the accomplishment of my aim. The future is mine, and little children, when asked hereafter as to the author of peace, shall say Te Whiti, and I will bless them.
Te Whiti o Rongomai, 1881
Presumably "lions" is a reference to the British, but I'm enchanted by his use of this metaphor -- had he seen a lion? Surely not. There was no moving-image or sound-recording technology available. So it's based on perhaps only some black and white engravings -- hand-coloured if yer lucky -- and maybe a photo or two; some tall tales and maybe an enactment of "lions raging". What sort of education had Te Whiti had? Where did he learn about lions? Missionaries?
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Also - don't they all wear those ant-stab flak jackets? I saw a cop pulling someone over the other day & noticed he was body armoured as he approached the middle aged woman speeder.
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Where did he learn about lions? Missionaries?
I reckon that'd be it.
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I'm presuming the Bible
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Stephen
Educating Te Whiti - religious imagery for lion. I mean how many English remeber their Lion?As a youngster, Te Whiti was well educated by Maori elders, who taught him about the traditions of his culture.
It also appears preacher Minarapa Te Rangihatuake taught Te Whiti scripture and to read and write. Te Whiti also became a pupil of Lutheran missionary Johannes Riemenschneider. The young Maori was baptised Erueti (Edward), which he later rejected in favour of his sacred name.
Te Miringa says Te Whiti's beliefs were based strongly on traditional values and knowledge, mixed with some Christianity.
"He showed qualities that were close to Godliness, but I can't say he was a religious man. He was buried without a Christian ceremony. That was his own wish.
"I don't see a row of churches that were built down the coast by Te Whiti and Tohu. There wasn't even a church at Parihaka."http://www.pukeariki.com/en/stories/conflict/pacifistofparihaka.htm
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Lions -> bible stories. Daniel and the thorn in the paw etc.
Rua Kenana has an excellent page on Wiki, which probably copies heavily from somewhere else. He also opposed conscription, predicted that the Germans would win WW1, and declared that if he had any money, he'd donate it to the Kaiser.
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Where did he learn about lions? Missionaries?
I reckon that'd be it.
Yep, Te Whiti, Te Kooti, Rua Kenana bloody fascinating melding of religous imagery, charisma, a bit of the crazy, and sheer crafty adaptablility to changing circumstances.
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3410, LOL, I'll stop if you do. You stop first :-) The outcome I was talking about was the NZ government suspending civil rights under Terror legislation, and I stand by my statement that only people who love violence for it's own sake would seriously want that. It's a hypothetical statement. If that was not a likely outcome, perhaps violence would be justified. Or if it was going to happen anyway. Or if it had already happened.
I'm probably not right about a lot of stuff, but I hope I'm usually accurate in my memory of what I said. Or perhaps I'm just the only one who cares :-)
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Kowhai, thanks
Yep, Te Whiti, Te Kooti, Rua Kenana bloody fascinating melding of religous imagery, charisma, a bit of the crazy, and sheer crafty adaptablility to changing circumstances.
I was hoping you were still reading. Can you recommend a text which deals particularly with these aspects you mention? I am researchingan art project.
ps. I'd have emailed you this in person if I hadn't lost your bloody email address!
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I mean how many English remeber their Lion?
Every time the British Lions go on tour?
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That the police didn't entre the kiddies school bus doesn't stand up.
Three road blocks & Herald photos of AOS using mirrors to check under cars as part of a detail search, but maitain a possition they did not have a looksie on a bus?
That compromises their perimeter and makes the detailed searches (as shown in the Herald photos) redundant.
And kids are terrified about something.
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