No. Way. A private contractor DID hand over phone records of journalist Andrea Vance after all???
Today in a statement Mr Carter said the phone records of Andrea Vance had been received by David Henry’s inquiry into the leak of the Rebecca Kitteridge report into the GCSB but were rejected.
Fascinatingly, Peter Dunne is refusing to endorse Carter’s new story by stating that David Henry told him that he WAS after those records meaning the ‘mistake’ part of the story is simply not true.
How Dunne can seriously on one hand however decry his information being accessed while voting for legislation that will access ours is an ethical flexibility performed by those without a political spine.
While we are on hypocrisy, hasn’t the Bore of Babylon, David Farrar, been incredibly quiet on journalists being spied on? When the King of Spin has run out of defensive positions for the Government, the National Party should be nervous.
What on earth has happened here? Is spying and rule breaking so habitual within our authorities that they do it without even thinking through the issues of what happens if they get caught? Vance’s information was ‘inadvertently’ handed over the way Stephenson was ‘inadvertently’ spied upon?
How stupid do they honestly take us for?
I can’t work out if this is malicious or a level of incompetence bordering on the criminally insane. How can Key give any assurances to the NZ public about his vast new expansion of spying powers under the GCSB when the current ones they have are being as openly abused as they are now?
What confidence can we the people have when journalists like Stephenson and Vance are subject to the very type of mass surveillance we are all so concerned about?
When the ‘enemy’ are journalists like Andrea Vance & Jon Stephenson, it is the Government who have become the threat. If the GCSB Bill passes, what’s happening to journalists like Vance & Stephenson will be the everyday for all NZers.
Those who are still supporting Key must now ask themselves the type of soul searching questions Richard Shaw and Gerald McGhie are asking. With public broadcasting dumbed down to the level of Seven Sharp, our democracy has suffered. We have been marketed to as consumers rather than appealed to as citizens, and we have allowed this Government in 5 short years to strip away fundamental democratic oversights all over the political spectrum…
The Environment Canterbury Act 2010 “denies access to the Environment Court for the resolution of environmental and resource-management matters in the Canterbury region”, while the Canterbury Earthquake Response & Recovery Act 2010 “prevents challenge to or review of [the] exercise of ministers’ power to exempt, modify or extend provisions of [the] primary legislation”.
With the passage of the Taxation (Tax Administration and Remedial Matters) Act 2011 taxpayers cannot now challenge an IRD tax assessment without the consent of the Commissioner of Inland Revenue.
And in certain circumstances the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Act 2013 takes away people’s right to challenge government decisions regarding payment for supporting disabled family members (and was, to boot, passed under urgency in a single sitting day).
…we do everything casual in NZ, including fascism. Key has managed to replace the intellectual rigor of ideas with the boorish bruise of the Sports Bar smack down. It’s not as radical as book burning, it’s too lazy for that, Key has depoliticized the role of Prime Minister and quietly pushed an agenda that is deeply disturbing.
This is a grave blue world.
For a PM who screamed bloody murder over his private communications being made public during the Epsom teapot fiasco this is pretty astounding.
Dark days indeed, in Hobbit Land
Yet Key remains popular according to recent polling which suggests either the electorate has become so disengaged with politics they now no longer appear interested what’s happening in the Beehive or we are becoming a nation that is so gullible that we accept without question Key’s decisions. It’s very scary as democracy, civil liberties, our privacy and human rights are now at risk from this insouciant and evil government.
Labour must take some of the blame as they have to date; arguably been the worse performing opposition party in the last 40 years. (Perhaps the English years as leader of the National Opposition was as equally as poor) Labours’ impotence has allowed National to become both arrogant and aggressive and the continuing failure of Shearer to become an effective Leader of the Opposition is an indictment of the Labour caucus who seem intent in staying in Opposition.
I despair at the Key government and the evil they are inflicting on us and I despair at the Labour Party for becoming a mere shadow of it former self. Fraser, Savage, Nash, Kirk, Rowling, Lee, Findlay, Coleman would not recognise the current Labour Party.
I note that the Herald Article contains the following: “A company contracted by Parliamentary Service to operate Parliament’s phone system supplied the information to the inquiry.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10905740
I suspect that if you identify the [conveniently unnamed] company who are ‘contracted by Parliamentary Service to operate Parliament’s phone system’ and who – for reasons people are disturbingly disinterested in establishing – supplied the information, then I suspect you will have the real story by the tail.
He couldn’t do it on his own blog, for fear of upsetting his employers, but he has let his feelings be known: http://www.imperatorfish.com/2013/07/he-delivers-and-how.html
Interesting, that blog on imperatorfish, except that Farrar wrote that blog “Democracy under attack” that it referred to in 2007 about stuff Labour was doing……guess that was the point? Or what?
It’s all about satire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire
The point of the Imperator Fish piece, I believe, was the same as Dame Anne Salmond’s point in the Herald, specifically, to point out what a load of hot air National and its mouthpieces (like Farrar) blew about the Electoral Finance Act, and how much more obvious the emptiness of that hot air is in hindsight, now that party is in power, spinning out Act after Act attacking basic democratic rights, as pointed out in the recent Law Society report to the UN mentioned by Salmond:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10897497
Maybe Farrar has realised that Farrar National is fast disappearing, being replaced by Slater National, which doesn’t even bother putting lipstick on the pig.
This is not just “Key’s NZ”, it is the New Zealand system controlled by the establishment we have run the whole show and agenda.
They are the key stakeholders and top leaders in business, administration and more. How did Key get into his job, I ask, who assisted him to become leader of the Nats, who have a vested interest in a US cosey PM, who is experienced with tying up deals that serve the leading business lobbies, the farming lobby and so forth?
There are the defence force “boot-lickers”, just overly keen to warm their ties with the traditional US allies, there are spy agency leaders and workers, who get a thrill from working with the NSA, CIA, FBI from big brother USA, all just happy to “prove” their worth, and get a tap on the shoulder for better careers, perhaps in the US or UK.
The mainstream media, for which Andrea Vance works, is hardly a truly critical media, and they are owned by corporates that have their homes in Australia and links to US investors also.
While Jon Stephenson must be respected for his independent work, I question whether we can throw all journalists into the same camp.
Jon Stephenson goes the extra mile, to dig and find out the truth, I struggle to see too many journalists and reporters of the main media outlets in New Zealand do the same.
Anyway, my point is, Key has so far got a sweet ride by most media, and they have been licking his shoes also, greasing up to get a bit of a one liner or short interview with the shining knight that he has been treated like, our PM.
Key though is just a figure head, a smart and useful one for the elite and establishment, who supported him to get into his leadership role. He would never be where he is, without a truly biased media, that portrayed him as they did in 2008.
So their “enemies” are ones like Stephenson and Hager, and perhaps a few others, but not the journalists as a whole. Dotcom is the enemy also, because he and his lawyers exposed what has been going on all the time. Only because too much has gone wrong, can nobody deny anymore the manipulations, the hypocrisy that has been going on. So the media is now having to do some honest work for a change, reporting on things that show what Key and his peculiar fellows, like his former school mate now heading the GCSB have been up to.
Finally we get some exposure, but I would not rush too fast, to think that Key will be done with all this now being revealed. I notice already the distraction efforts by some on Radio Live, 1ZB and other privately run media, to call much just a “storm in a teacup”.
This is not going to be decided by the people, it will be swept under again by the forces on “the right”, by the forces that are in control, using all tactics they can apply. Only if the people finally wake up and take a stand, and express their anger online, in forums, in the street and definitely at the voting booths next year, will there be a change.
Sadly so far, I see too little signs of that going to happen.
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