Northland By-Election Preliminary Results, 28 March 2015
Candidate Name	Party	Number of Votes
Bonner, Adrian Paul	Independent	17
Carr, Joe	Focus New Zealand	113
Grieve, Robin	ACT New Zealand	68
Herbert, Maki	Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party	94
Holland, Adam	Independent	16
Osborne, Mark	National Party	11,648
Painting, Rob	Climate Party	39
Peters, Winston	New Zealand First Party	16,089
Porter, Rueben Taipari	MANA Movement	60
Prime, Willow-Jean	Labour Party	1,380
Rogan, Bruce	Independent	24
Candidate Informals		42
TOTAL		29,590

Investigation underway as Police hold serious concerns for pedestrian

April 5, 2015

MIL OSI – Source: New Zealand Police – Investigation underway as Police hold serious concerns for pedestrian Auckland City Police have serious concerns for a pedestrian who is believed to have been hit and injured by a car last Sunday morning in Great North Road, but has not yet been identified by Police. On Wednesday 3 April, Police were contacted by a rental car company. A blue Suzuki Swift they had hired to a customer had been returned to them with considerable damage to the windscreen and bonnet. (Pictures attached) An examination of the car has established that the vehicle has in fact hit a person. The driver of the vehicle has been identified and located and is assisting with Police with enquiries and over the past few days the investigation have followed several lines of enquiry. Police now believe the crash occurred at 1.30am on the morning of Sunday 29 March. The unidentified victim is believed to have been crossing Great North Road in Avondale, between the Mobil Service Station and Larch Street. The Suzuki was driving in the right-hand east bound lane, and has struck the pedestrian. Police believe the pedestrian has hit the bonnet and the windscreen and has then been left lying on the side of the road. The driver has left the scene shortly afterwards and Police understand the victim has, at the very least, sustained a head wound. “While we can reassure the public that we have identified the driver and are speaking with him, we desperately need to identify and speak with the victim here’’ says Detective Sergeant Kevin Blackman, Auckland City Police. “We’ve checked with all of the hospitals and are making other enquiries, however at this point we still don’t know who this person is. The information we have is that the victim is possibly a young, dark-skinned woman with long dark hair. There could be any number of reasons as to why that person hasn’t come forward or sought medical help, but we’d encourage them to make contact with us as soon as possible, or tell an adult or friend about what has happened” says Det Sgt Blackman. The driver of the vehicle is a young man. The investigation is ongoing and until all of the facts have been gathered, Police are unable to make any comment about criminal charges at the moment. Anyone with information is asked to call Auckland City Police on 09 302 6641 or Detective Sergeant Kevin Blackman on 09 213 7926. Information can also be given anonymously to the organisation Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. Beth Bates/NZ Police – -]]>

Uri Avnery on Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Bomb?

By Selwyn Manning -

April 5, 2015

MIL OSI Analysis – Source: Gush Shalom – Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Bomb? By Uri Avnery I know that this makes me an abnormal person, almost a freak.I MUST start with a shocking confession: I am not afraid of the Iranian nuclear bomb. But what can I do? I am unable to work up fear, like a real Israeli. Try as I may, the Iranian bomb does not make me hysterical. MY FATHER once taught me how to withstand blackmail: imagine that the awful threat of the blackmailer has already come about. Then you can tell him: Go to hell. I have tried many times to follow this advice and found it sound. So now I apply it to the Iranian bomb: I imagine that the worst has already happened: the awful ayatollahs have got the bombs that can eradicate little Israel in a minute. So what? According to foreign experts, Israel has several hundred nuclear bombs (assessments vary between 80-400. If Iran sends its bombs and obliterates most of Israel (myself included), Israeli submarines will obliterate Iran. Whatever I might think about Binyamin Netanyahu, I rely on him and our security chiefs to keep our “second strike” capability intact. Just last week we were informed that Germany had delivered another state-of-the-art submarine to our navy for this purpose. Israeli idiots – and there are some around – respond: “Yes, but the Iranian leaders are not normal people. They are madmen. Religious fanatics. They will risk the total destruction of Iran just to destroy the Zionist state. Like exchanging queens in chess.” Such convictions are the outcome of decades of demonizing. Iranians – or at least their leaders – are seen as subhuman miscreants. Reality shows us that the leaders of Iran are very sober, very calculating politicians. Cautious merchants in the Iranian bazaar style. They don’t take unnecessary risks. The revolutionary fervor of the early Khomeini days is long past, and even Khomeini would not have dreamt of doing anything so close to national suicide. ACCORDING TO the Bible, the great Persian king Cyrus allowed the captive Jews of Babylon to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple. At that time, Persia was already an ancient civilization – both cultural and political. After the “return from Babylon”, the Jewish commonwealth around Jerusalem lived for 200 years under Persian suzerainty. I was taught in school that these were happy years for the Jews. Since then, Persian culture and history has lived through another two and a half millennia. Persian civilization is one of the oldest in the world. It has created a great religion and influenced many others, including Judaism. Iranians are fiercely proud of that civilization. To imagine that the present leaders of Iran would even contemplate risking the very existence of Persia out of hatred of Israel is both ridiculous and megalomaniac. Moreover, throughout history, relations between Jews and Persians have almost always been excellent. When Israel was founded, Iran was considered a natural ally, part of David Ben-Gurion’s “strategy of the periphery” – an alliance with all the countries surrounding the Arab world. The Shah, who was re-installed by the American and British secret services, was a very close ally. Teheran was full of Israeli businessmen and military advisers. It served as a base for the Israeli agents working with the rebellious Kurds in northern Iraq who were fighting against the regime of Saddam Hussein. After the Islamic revolution, Israel still supported Iran against Iraq in their cruel 8-year war. The notorious Irangate affair, in which my friend Amiram Nir and Oliver North played such an important role, would not have been possible without the old Iranian-Israeli ties. Even now, Iran and Israel are conducting amiable arbitration proceedings about an old venture: the Eilat-Ashkelon oil pipeline built jointly by the two countries. If the worst comes to the worst, nuclear Israel and nuclear Iran will live in a Balance of Terror. Highly unpleasant, indeed. But not an existential menace. HOWEVER, FOR those who live in terror of the Iranian nuclear capabilities, I have a piece of advice: use the time we still have. Under the American-Iranian deal, we have at least 10 years before Iran could start the final phase of producing the bomb. Please use this time for making peace. The Iranian hatred of the “Zionist Regime” – the State of Israel – derives from the fate of the Palestinian people. The feeling of solidarity for the helpless Palestinians is deeply ingrained in all Islamic peoples. It is part of the popular culture in all of them. It is quite real, even if the political regimes misuse, manipulate or ignore it. Since there is no ground for a specific Iranian hatred of Israel, it is solely based on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. No conflict, no enmity. Logic tells us: if we have several years before we have to live in the shadow of an Iranian nuclear bomb, let’s use this time to eliminate the conflict. Once the Palestinians themselves declare that they consider the historic conflict with Israel settled, no Iranian leadership will be able to rouse its people against us. FOR SEVERAL weeks now, Netanyahu has been priding himself publicly on a huge, indeed historic, achievement. For the first time ever, Israel is practically part of an Arab alliance. Throughout the region, the conflict between Muslim Sunnis and Muslim Shiites is raging. The Shiite camp, headed by Iran, includes the Shiites in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. (Netanyahu falsely – or out of ignorance – includes the Sunni Hamas in this camp.) The opposite Sunni camp includes Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Gulf states. Netanyahu hints that Israel is now secretly accepted by them as a member. It is a very untidy picture. Iran is fighting against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, which is a mortal enemy of Israel. Iran is supporting the Assad regime in Damascus, which is also supported by Hezbollah, which fights against the lslamic State, while the Saudis support other extreme Sunni Syrians who fight against Assad and the Islamic State. Turkey supports Iran and the Saudis while fighting against Assad. And so on. I am not enamored with Arab military dictatorships and corrupt monarchies. Frankly, I detest them. But if Israel succeeds in becoming an official member of any Arab coalition, it would be a historic breakthrough, the first in 130 years of Zionist-Arab conflict. However, all Israeli relations with Arab countries are secret, except those with Egypt and Jordan, and even with these two the contacts are cold and distant, relations between the regimes rather than between the peoples. Let’s face facts: no Arab state will engage in open and close cooperation with Israel before the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is ended. Even kings and dictators cannot afford to do so. The solidarity of their peoples with the oppressed Palestinians is far too profound. Real peace with the Arab countries is impossible without peace with the Palestinian people, as peace with the Palestinian people is impossible without peace with the Arab countries. So if there is now a chance to establish official peace with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, and to turn the cold peace with Egypt into a real one, Netanyahu should jump at it. The terms of an agreement are already lying on the table: the Saudi peace plan, also called the Arab Initiative, which was adopted many years ago by the entire Arab League. It is based on the two-state solution of the Israeli-Arab conflict. Netanyahu could amaze the whole world by “doing a de Gaulle” – making peace with the Sunni Arab world (as de Gaulle did with Algeria) which would compel the Shiites to follow suit. Do I believe in this? I do not. But if God wills it, even a broomstick can shoot. And on the day of the Jewish Pesach feast, commemorating the (imaginary) exodus from Egypt, we are reminding ourselves that miracles do happen. – – ]]>

Keith Rankin Questions Capitalist Perpetual Motion?

By Keith Rankin -

April 4, 2015

By Keith Rankin, column first submitted to TheDailyBlog.co.nz I ENJOYED CHRIS TROTTER’s The Common Affairs Of The Whole: Why National is so bad for Capitalism in The Daily Blog last Friday. To reinforce Trotter’s point, capitalism works best when all capitalists bear the costs that they incur. Capitalists themselves, motivated by self-interest, want the costs they bear (but not necessarily the costs they incur) to be minimised. Thus capitalists are more than happy to have someone else bear their costs. National Governments, Trotter argues, are too close to capitalists, and so are prone to favour the sorts of cost-shifting and circulation-stifling policies that eventually undermine capitalism. Trotter says of arch-capitalist Henry Ford: [caption id="attachment_2964" align="alignleft" width="300"] Henry Ford posing next to a Model T.[/caption]

Ford’s vision was clear – but narrow. He could see the advantage of paying his workers enough to purchase the Model-Ts they were putting together on his production lines, but he never made the next conceptual step: the one that would have allowed him to conceive of a society in which the working-class was paid enough, collectively, to consume its own production. This was capitalism’s equivalent of a perpetual motion machine (assuming, of course, that capitalism had somehow discovered a way to exempt itself from the laws of planetary thermodynamics).

So is there a capitalism equivalent of a perpetual motion machine? A good analogy for the circulation of incomes and spending – an analogy that dates back to Thomas Hobbes and William Harvey in the seventeenth century – is that of the circulation of the blood through the mammalian body. While it’s a good representation of an equilibrium system, the human body is certainly not a perpetual motion machine, relying on outside inputs such as food and drink and sunlight. The French économistes – called the ‘physiocrats’ in English – developed the idea in the eighteenth century. Their concept of the ‘net product’ captures the idea of a surplus that is made possible by nature’s external contribution that otherwise enables the free market ‘clockwork’ to work. (A pendulum clock is the closest analogy in the physical world to a perpetual motion machine.) The économistes emphasised the circular flow mechanism. François Quesnay, the founder of this school of economic thought, was himself a doctor. I have played around with the analogy – Circular Flow: Drawing Further Inspiration from William Harvey (2012) – useful because so many who dabble in the dismal science completely ignore the fact that total incomes must equal total spending, much as arterial blood flow should equal venal blood flow. I adopted the approach that it is the capitalists who represent the head of the market economy of goods and services and finance; not the ‘sovereign’ as a seventeenth century writer would have assumed. I place the governments as the right hand, and the workers as the left hand. In 2014 George Cooper employed this analogy – and others – in his interesting book Money, Blood and Revolution. Cooper looked at scientific revolutions in astronomy, biology, medicine and geology and concludes that each of these disciplines was vastly simplified following their revolutions. Economics’ revolution, he claims, is long overdue. (In large part the problem is our backtracking on, rather than our development, of Keynes’ macroeconomics.) In the latter part of Cooper’s book he notes that when capitalism is working well ‘money’ flows easily through the different levels of the social-economic hierarchy. When it’s not working well, capitalism relies too much on debt. (Excess debt can be likened to a drug that frees up clogged arteries, but has potentially dangerous side-effects.) So we could say that capitalism that relies on huge debt imbalances is capitalism treating the symptoms of arteriosclerosis. In terms of Chris Trotter’s argument, and my argument too, Labour’s policies (or at least those based on egalitarian philosophy) get that spending (‘money’) flowing both through the right hand of the public interest and through the left hand of the working class. Unhealthy capitalism is when the capitalists themselves hoard their incomes. Think of a person with a bloated head and chilblains in their hands. That’s a result of management of capitalism that’s too soft on the capitalists. Democracy should be good for capitalism, because the workers outnumber the capitalists.

——————-

Before finishing I should note that economic policymakers love economic growth. The perpetual motion analogy falls down somewhat here. Indeed that’s why we cannot think of 1950-80 as being the system working as such a machine. Yet, the fire in capitalism (fuelled by the twin forces of demand and supply), can create a growing circulating system for long periods of time, though not forever. Perhaps we can use the analogy today of the blood-circulation of a 15-year-old, still growing but past the biggest growth spurt. Whereas blood flowing to the left and right hands in the past stimulated economic growth, in the future it is needed to forestall systemic collapse. Then finally, we should be careful with analogies like perpetual motion machines. Unscrupulous readers may simply associate such a concept with ‘cranks’, the easily dismissed though sometimes very clever people, some of whom have made extraordinary contributions to our techno-modern 21st century lives. Stephen Johnson’ recent PBS/BBC TV series How We Got to Now explores the contributions to modern economic comforts by a range of clever people who few of us today have ever heard of, and who were generally intellectual outliers in their own times. Their legacies remain forever in the public domain. One such unusual person in the past, who we all have heard of, was Isaac Newton. In the first half of his career he was a committed alchemist who also did some really good science and maths. In the second half of his career (as a sound-money man; warden and then master of the Royal Mint) he prosecuted counterfeiters. He hanged people who helped capitalism to flow at a time when the monetary system became somewhat constipated. He made a lot of money through his employment, though he lost much of his share in the South Sea Bubble of 1720. Despite his foibles, we have much to thank Newton for.

——————-

Capitalism requires circulation. Governments soft on capitalists, and soft on inequality, help capitalists to stifle the circulation of incomes that is at the core of capitalism. Governments made up largely of non-capitalists, on both hands, are good for capitalism.]]>

State Of It: Politics, Yes. Leadership, Yes. But Does NZ First Have the Infrastructure to Become the Rural Bloc Option?

By Selwyn Manning -

April 4, 2015

Part one of a two part series – By Selwyn Manning.

New Zealand First positions to export its rural New Zealand representation brand.

Selwyn Manning, editor – EveningReport.nz

AFTER THE NORTHLAND POLLING BOOTHS HAD CLOSED a well positioned National Party insider text messaged me from inside one of the Party’s election night functions.He said: “The mood from some is explosive tonight. The campaign was a disaster with the Sabin bomb still ticking.

All the National list MPs will be watching, and Nats in provincial seats, with reasonable majorities, will be a tad shaken too. A 13,000 vote turnaround in six months…” He added National would likely “concede Northland in 2017. Shocking”.

He feared: “We should lose East Coast, Tukituki, Wairarapa, Whanganui, Otaki and Invercargill in 2017. But it will be tough for Labour to win unless Little allows Nash to find candidates to run there.” That’s the reality-check Northland delivered to National’s true-blue loyalists.

The only uncertainty is whether New Zealand First has the infrastructure to become our version of rural Australia’s the Nationals – the conservative, monarchist, rural-based counterbalance to urban-political-dominance across the ditch. And, whether Labour leader Andrew Little has the courage to let Stuart Nash loose to develop the take-back-the-provinces plan.

AS SOON AS NEW ZEALAND FIRST leader Winston Peters scented the mood in Northland he knew a political vacuum was in evidence – that rural New Zealand, beyond the borders of the Far North, was angry and suffering from a lack of political representation. But can New Zealand First export the win from its Northland base to become the rural New Zealand voter’s option? To achieve this, the party will need an infrastructure robust enough at ground-zero to attract quality representatives who are already recognised for driving solutions to challenges specific to their region. The pressures on New Zealand First – the Party as opposed to its Parliamentary extension – will be considerable. If the Party is to succeed in realising its potential, it must sustain a recruitment drive on a grand scale, all-the-while delivering, from Wellington, solutions for those it seeks to represent.

Cause and Effect: Politically, the Northland result shows rural New Zealand has been promised much only to see its fortunes dwindle.

During the 2014 General Election the National Party’s message to farmers was to expect to receive their bounty from the ‘white gold’ they produced and exported from their gates. Those working within the farming support and service sector picked up the message too.

The promise was: a decent slice of the domestic economy pie-graph was coming, that farmers were going to reap huge rewards, that rural communities and New Zealand as a whole, was about to bask in trickle-down wealth of unprecedented proportions.

But as farmers arose in early Autumn, the Governing party’s promises ran hollow and nothing emitting from Wellington could arrest the reality – the bank balances were turning red.

As Winston Peters said on March 26 prior to the by-election “… Fonterra’s latest downwards revision in the 2014/15 forecast… for a fully-shared up farmer, can be blamed on an urban focused government that is not putting farmers first.

This will hurt Northland’s 801 farm owner/operators and 291 share-milkers given nine percent of New Zealand’s herds are in the region”. (ref. ForeignAffairs.co.nz)

For Northland a reality had broken the day before. When Fonterra returns are in free-fall, whole communities are starved of income. And when the costs of milk production are higher than Fonterra’s Farm-gate Milk Price of $4.70 per kgMS (as announced on March 25), then, the farmers, the rural dependent sectors, workers, families, and communities… hurt.

During the September 2014 campaign, the National Party leader John Key told all of New Zealand we were on the cusp of something very big, something special – the implication was rural New Zealand, and especially farmers, should expect to be rewarded for their farming expertise, investment, and high quality, high levels of production.

But after the election, commodity milk and powder prices could not sustain global downward pressures. The trade-weighted GlobalDairyTrade price index hit a five-year low in December, and by degrees, Fonterra, the co-operative dairy exporting giant, began reducing the value of returns to farmers.

At first, the newly elected National Government insisted returns to farmers remained sound, that the overall trend was positive. But farmers are not fools. Nor are the communities that work with them. Northland voters, like their rural counterparts all over New Zealand, knew their farmers were in trouble – despite producing more milk per head of cow, more milk per hectare of land, they were getting less back for it.

By March 27 2015 Fonterra delivered a forecasts no one wanted to hear. Its interim report detailed:

(ref. ForeignAffairs.co.nz) In the forecast statement, Fonterra’s Chairman John Wilson said that given the results achieved in the first half of the year, and the continued volatility in international prices “the Co-operative was holding its forecast Farm-gate Milk Price at $4.70 per kgMS.”

Wilson added: “Our half-year results are a snapshot of tough conditions in dairy with variable production, demand and pricing. There was also the challenge of generating profit from inventory made in the previous financial year when the cost of milk was higher, but sold in the first quarter of the financial year when global dairy prices were falling.”

Put simply, supply outweighed demand and buyers undervalued milk, which was reflected in prices that declined to unsustainable levels.

Wilson: “Oversupply from dairy producing regions around the world in the early months of the financial year saw the trade-weighted GlobalDairyTrade price index hit a five-year low in December.” (ref. ForeignAffairs.co.nz)

That’s another reality which Winston Peters (the morning after his landslide Northland win) spoke to the nation about.

He highlighted how some farmers were having to borrow hard to sustain themselves through this downward cycle. Add to this the uncertainty factor: no one knows how long the commodity price downturn will last.

That affects the cost of borrowing from banks, pushes interest rates upward to reflect the significance of uncertainty.

Peters pushed for Government support stating it would provide some clarity at a time when confidence in the sector’s performance was being exhausted.

On TVNZ’s Q+A programme (ref. Q+A) Peters questioned why this was a negative. He claimed an honourability to his willingness to help out rural New Zealand and compared this to the dishonourable practice of corporate welfare dished out by the Key Government to SkyCity casino and the $1.7b+ bailout of South Canterbury Finance (ref. Stuff.co.nz).

It was classic Peters politics – compare one sector to another to drive home the divide between commonsense and ridiculousness.

But politically, it drove home a message to rural voters beyond Northland, who will be well aware their National Party MPs will not advocate their interests like this.

They will not go into bat for farmers over their party – at least, not in public. For rural New Zealand, it must have been music to their ears.

For others it exposed the broad-tent National Party’s biggest weakness: party loyalties are supreme. The regions, as opposed to the provincial cities, are New Zealand First’s for the taking.

While Winston Peters has the leadership, the zest, and the tenacity to achieve it, the New Zealand First party has yet to show it has the infrastructure to reach deep into rural New Zealand and turn out candidates that are leaders of their regions.

But, as the National Party insider said to me on Northland by-election night: “The Northland example does show that Joyce’s economic development record is a weak spot.”

If New Zealand First can’t foot it, then Labour will continue to galvanise its connection with Peters, present a good governance rural/provincial/regional development brand, and seek stronger candidates to take East Coast, Tukituki, Wairarapa, Whanganui, Otaki, West Coast, and Invercargill in 2017.

Under this scenario, New Zealand First would anchor in with Northland and urge true-blue party voters to swing its way.

However to achieve this Labour’s leader Andrew Little would be wise to scent the air and promote Napier’s MP Stuart Nash to the front-bench.

It would send the right signals to provincial New Zealand, acknowledge Nash as a regional specialist, provide him with a mandate to develop policy, a much needed campaign plan, and a key role in attracting quality candidates for 2017.

Add to this the angle where Labour positions to really represent share-milkers.

That would drive a wedge between this under-represented group and their farm land owners who remain loyal to National, and potentially foot it with New Zealand First for swing votes in heartland National seats. Recently, there have been some signals on this from Labour.

Take Labour’s West Coast specialist Damien O’Connor this week stating on April 2: “Dairy farmers throughout New Zealand are currently frustrated by the low pay-out from their co-operative company.

Many are concerned that Fonterra has been too busy focusing on satisfying the demands of its investors rather than meeting the needs of farmer supplier shareholders.” (ref. ForeignAffairs.co.nz)

At this stage, National’s arrogance appears to be blinding it to the ‘up you’ message the Northland voters delivered via Peters. These people want solutions, not politics and National’s performance in the House since votes were counted suggests its arrogance-factor has not waned.

If New Zealand First cannot construct the party infrastructure needed to broaden its rural base, then a co-ordinated approach with Labour’s more conservative/centrist MPs may occupy the vacuum created by National.

Much common-ground and high regard is exchanged between Winston Peters and former Labour ‘backboners’ Shane Jones and Dover Samuels.

You can also include Kelvin Davis and Stuart Nash in this group.

But let’s examine such important relationships in the second instalment of this series: New Zealand First’s Challenge: The Conservative Balancing Act.Whatever way this plays, 2017 looks a more interesting election than the bizarre shenanigans of 2014.

State Of It: Factional Fractures In Evidence As National Loss In Northland Looms

Weekend Feature Doco: Inside the Dark Web

By Selwyn Manning -

April 4, 2015

Inside the Dark Web turns to the topic of internet surveillance concerning the pros and cons of the ability for everything that passes over the immense World Wide Web being able to be watched, recorded, and analyzed. –]]>

A cultural treasure: James K Baxter – of time and timelessness

By Selwyn Manning -

April 3, 2015

THIS SLOW GOOD FRIDAY, twitter led me to one of the many national treasures available on the NZ on Screen website (itself a national treasure). It introduced me to a 2000 music video of a Baxter love poem set to music and sung by Greg Johnson: “Let Time Be Still” It is a beautiful sight and sound production combining nostalgia for the summer of love, with an arty blue-lit, romanticised landscape. It demonstrates both the timeliness, and lyrical power and sophistication of Baxter’s poem. It provides glimpses into his rootedness in landscape, and honouring of Māori culture and tradition. It also demonstrates a kind of masculinity that is both of its time, as well as being part of a long legacy. This can be seen in the romantic, orientalising shots of the body of a young woman with moko as passive object of desire. She is mostly shown as part of indoor rooms and city-scapes. Meanwhile, Baxter’s words paint her as part of the natural landscape, prey to the swooping falcon, slipping into the past with the changing of seasons. The links below the video took me to excerpts from a 1997 documentary: The Road to Jerusalem: another national treasure, and is also well worth a look. It constructs Baxter’s legacy in his rural upbringing. It sets his poems in the long tradition of romantic poets; from Robbie Burns through Byron, Keats, Blake and Wordsworth to Dylan Thomas. The natural world is a spiritual guide and resource, while cities and the alleged progress of “civilisation” are sites of everything that is destructive to this spirit and the nobility of human creativity. [caption id="attachment_2911" align="alignleft" width="202"] James K Baxter, doing his postal round in Khandallah, Wellington, 1965. The Dominion post collection, Alexander Turnbull Library[/caption] Clip one begins with an extract from Baxter’s “Ode to Auckland”, accompanied by a montage of overlapping images of people and locations in the city of the Muldoon era:

Auckland, even when I am well stoned On a tab of LSD or on Indian grass You still look to me like an elephant’s arsehole Surrounded with blue-black haemorrhoids. The sound of the opening and shutting of bankbooks, The thudding of refrigerator doors, The ripsaw voices of Glen Eden mothers yelling at their children, The chugging noise of masturbation from the bedrooms of the bourgeoisie, The voices of dead teachers droning in dead classrooms, The TV voice of Mr Muldoon, The farting noise of the trucks that grind their way down Queen Street Has drowned forever the song of Tangaroa on a thousand beaches, The sound of the wind among the green volcanoes, And the whisper of the human heart.

The clips trace Baxter’s life, as explained in the synopsis:

Readings from the poems of James K Baxter trace the poet’s life through its various New Zealand locations, and provide a biographical voice in this film by Bruce Morrison (co-written with Dr Paul Millar). Baxter’s family and friends discuss the man and his work, and the readings and beautifully shot landscapes fill in the gaps. The film won Best Documentary at the 1998 Film and TV Awards. The opening montage, describing “the chugging noise of masturbation from the bedrooms of the bourgeois” of Auckland, is seminal Baxter.

In the second clip, following a piece about his father having suffered in France as a contentious objector in WWII, the reading of some of Baxter’s reflections states:

Objectively I remember my childhood as a happy time, yet a sense of grief has attached itself to my early life, like a tapeworm in the stomach of a polar bear. The sense of grief, even at times a sense of grievance helped me write poems. In a way, the poems sprang out of a quarrel with the status quo.

At school, he learned to distrust “mass opinions” and to pursue his “own ideas”. This led to him feeling like a Jewish person in an anti-Semitic neighbourhood. He claims that the sense of persecution nurtured his poetry writing. The over-emphasis on Baxter’s Jerusalem years, have led to him gathering a bit of a hippy cult following. He was both of that time in the 1960s and early 1970s, and of earlier and future times, . He is part of a line of continuity a discontinuity: of a time that was still dominated by masculine culture, while also being in the tradition of rebels against the authoritarian status quo that diminishes the human spirit, and leads to the persecution of minorities: a tradition that, one way or another, will continue into the future – and hopefully will embrace racial and gender equality. –]]>

NZ welcomes Iran nuclear talks breakthrough

By Selwyn Manning -

April 3, 2015

MIL OSI – Source: New Zealand Government – NZ welcomes Iran nuclear talks breakthrough [caption id="attachment_2269" align="alignleft" width="300"] New Zealand foreign minister, Murray McCully. Image courtesy of Scoop.co.nz.[/caption]

Foreign Minister Murray McCully today welcomed news that an agreement has been reached which lays out parameters for a deal on Iran’s nuclear programme.

“The announcement from the P5+1 (United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China and Germany) and Iran is a significant development, which opens the way for a comprehensive agreement,” Mr McCully says. “A final agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme will have a positive impact on regional stability in the Middle East, and give scope for the further expansion of New Zealand’s relations with Iran. “New Zealand fully supports the P5+1 process, and commends the leadership being shown by all parties at this latest round of talks. “While the negotiations are complex, the agreement which has been reached in Lausanne provides a roadmap through and demonstrates the goodwill on all sides. We hope this momentum can now be converted into comprehensive agreement by the 30 June,” Mr McCully says. – -]]>

Prince Harry to begin military attachment with the Australian Defence Force – Aus Department of Defence

By Selwyn Manning -

April 3, 2015

MIL OSI – Prince Harry to begin military attachment with the Australian Defence Force – Department of Defence

[caption id="attachment_2939" align="alignleft" width="260"]

Prince Harry trooping the colour.[/caption] Prince Harry will arrive in Australia on Monday, 6 April to begin a four week attachment to the Australian Defence Force (ADF). On arrival in Australia, Prince Harry will travel to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, where he will join the Governor General, The Honourable Sir Peter Cosgrove AK, MC, and senior Government officials to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and view the World War I and Afghanistan galleries. At the end of the visit he will have the chance to greet members of the public outside at the Australian War Memorial’s main entrance. Prince Harry will then report to the Chief of Defence Force, Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin, AC for duty. The Chief of Army, Lieutenant General David Morrison, AO and other senior Army officers will join Prince Harry to officially mark the start of his military attachment with the Australian Army. During his time with the ADF, Captain Wales – as he is known in the British Army – will work and live alongside colleagues in the Australian Army in a number of regiments in Sydney, Darwin and Perth. He is expected to take part in a range of unit-based activities and training exercises. These will include urban training exercises, regional bush patrols, flight simulation and aviation activities, joint fire exercises and Indigenous engagements activities. Captain Wales will also take part in routine activities, such as physical training, first aid training and pack marches. Additionally, he will have the opportunity to meet wounded, injured and ill service personnel during his time in Australia, which will compliment his advocacy work in this area in the UK. The British and Australian Armies have a shared military history as well as a long and enduring association. Secondments, exchanges, bilateral training and professional development opportunities are routine practice between our two armies. These exchanges typically range from a few weeks to several months. Military-to-military exchanges provide British and Australian personnel with valuable insight into their counterparts’ operations equipment and training as well as opportunities to build professional personal relationships. As such, Defence’s focus for this attachment is to provide Captain Wales with an authentic military experience in the Australian Army that builds on his previous experience with coalition forces and complements his work with wounded, injured and ill service personnel. Defence has selected units that best utilise Captain Wales’ skills and allow him to experience a broad range of Army capabilities. The attachment will also allow Captain Wales to share the experience and knowledge he has gained over 10 years of military service in the British Armed Forces, including two operational tours of duty in Afghanistan. During his attachment, Prince Harry will travel from Australia to Turkey to attend the Gallipoli Commemorations on 24 and 25 April. Note: The Australian War Memorial is coordinating media accreditation for Prince Harry’s visit to the Australian War Memorial on Monday 6 April, 2015. Defence is aware of the public interest in Captain Wales’ attachment with the Australian Army and will provide imagery of his military activities during his four week attachment. This material will be provided under general release arrangements via the Defence Image Gallery at http://images.defence.gov.au/S20150823 and the Parliament House Press Gallery. International media agencies should contact their Australian affiliates to access vision. The material will be available after midday (AEST), Monday, 6 April 2015. Defence does not routinely release specific details of operational training activities or an individual Defence member’s movements or schedule. Defence thanks the public and the media in advance for their assistance and cooperation in safeguarding the spirit and purpose of Captain Wales’ attachment with the Australian Army. —

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Invasive wasps costing NZ economy, environment

By Selwyn Manning -

April 3, 2015

MIL OSI – Source: China State Council Information Office – Invasive wasps costing NZ economy, environment Invasive wasps from overseas are costing the New Zealand economy more than 130 million NZ dollars (97.24 million U.S. dollars) a year, according to a government report released on Thursday. Wasps were one of the most damaging invertebrate pests in New Zealand, harming native birds and insects and competing for food with native species, said the study commissioned by the Department of Conservation (DOC) and the Ministry for Primary Industries. The study has found that wasps also have a major financial impact on primary industries and the health sector. Wasps disrupting bee pollination activities, reducing the amount of clover in pastures and increasing fertilizer costs, added more than 60 million NZ dollars (44.88 million U.S. dollars) a year in cost to pastoral farming. – ]]>

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