The Revolution All Around Us.

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NEW ZEALAND is in the early stages of a revolution. No, not one of those revolutions. The streets are not overflowing with revolutionary crowds. The factories have not been taken over by the workers. The old constitutional order has not been cast aside. The nation’s historical time-line has not been reset to Year Zero. But, make no mistake, a revolution is underway.

At the heart of this revolution is an evolving understanding of what sort of country we live in – and would like to live in. The clearest description of this revolution and its ultimate objectives that I have read so far is contained in a tweet posted in the name of Maori Party co-leader, Rawiri Waititi. To describe the tweet as jarring would be something of an understatement:

“The cau casity of Caucasian’s and their ‘active assimilation agenda’. Pay them no attention, their archaic species is becoming more extinct as new Aotearoa is on the rise. Tangata Whenua + Tangata Tiriti = Aotearoa > Tangata Whenua + Pakeha = Old Zealand.”

Waititi was quick to distance himself from this message, describing it as the work of someone in his office who acted without his authority. Setting to one side the obvious question: “What kind of office is Waititi running?”, the tweet’s content offers New Zealanders a raw and unmediated synopsis of the Maori Party’s revolutionary agenda. “Transformative” barely covers it!

The first element to note is the highly charged racial vocabulary. “Caucasian” is being used, rather than Pakeha, in much the same way as the latter once referred to Maori as “Polynesians”, and for the same purpose. To subsume a geographically and culturally specific identity into a much larger and more general racial category.

Very clearly, it is not a nice category. In the exercise of their “caucacity”, Caucasians are accused of pursuing an “active assimilation agenda”.

This is a curious charge. Historically, “assimilation” was very much on the agenda of the New Zealand state. In the years after World War II, as Maori began migrating from the countryside to the big cities in large numbers, doing everything possible to turn them into “ordinary” New Zealanders was generally regarded as the most “progressive” policy response available to the authorities. Think of it as an early iteration of the “They are Us” formulation.

The intention was to create a “colour-blind” society. The key category was “citizen” – with all that implied about equality of access to gainful employment, housing, health and education. An excessive focus on racial identity was seen as unhelpful in this regard. The objective was a nation in which the terms “Maori” and “Pakeha” counted for much less than “New Zealander”. It is to the policy of assimilation that the members of “Hobson’s Pledge” pay homage with their insistence that we must all become “one people”.

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What makes the tweet’s claim that an “active assimilation policy” is still part of the New Zealand state’s agenda is that the term “assimilation” long ago became a very dirty word in the corridors of power. From the 1980s onwards, the clear policy of successive governments has been to support and strengthen the unique features of te ao Maori. From the Treaty of Waitangi Act of 1975 to the establishment of Kohanga Reo and the recognition of Maori as an official language, the direction of travel has been all one way: from mono-culturalism to bi-culturalism.

It was Donna Awatere, author of the seminal series of Broadsheet articles entitled “Maori Sovereignty”, who rejected this new goal of a bi-cultural New Zealand as insufficiently ambitious. Inspired by the national strategy of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, she argued for a sovereign Maori nation, freed from the constitutional, economic, political and cultural hegemony of the colonial culture which had, through the judicious application of force and guile, supplanted her own.

Inspired by the Palestinians, Awatere argued for a strategy which is best described as “reverse colonisation”. On the one hand, delegitimise the colonisers’ occupation of lands that were never theirs; on the other, offer them the opportunity of assimilating themselves into Aotearoa, the sovereign Maori state that would slowly, surely, and non-violently, replace the colonial relic known as New Zealand. (Those with long memories will recall that for as long as it remained a revolutionary socialist organisation, the creation of a unitary, secular, Palestinian state, continued to be the PLO’s ultimate goal.)

Although Awatere’s personal evolution took her further and further away from the revolutionary vision that inspired “Maori Sovereignty”, her ideas and perspectives were taken up and developed by Maori nationalists across the country.

Perhaps the best way to get an idea of the revolutionary processes at work in this country is to conduct a thought experiment involving another one?

Imagine that the Palestinians living in the occupied territories, rather than descending ever deeper into terrorism and religious zealotry, had adopted the non-violent civil disobedience tactics of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Further imagine that the progressive Israeli political parties, urged on by the Americans, had responded by negotiating seriously with the PLO.

Consider the speed with which the whole situation in Israel/Palestine might have been transformed; the exciting possibility that young Jews and Arabs, together, might have mapped out a future in which the land of Israel/Palestine was deemed to have physical and cultural space enough for both peoples. Who knows, they may even have persuaded their political leaders to set up a permanent tribunal to hear and settle the many grievances arising out of the excesses of Zionist colonisation.

Gradually, thanks in no small part to the state education system and state media, the fearless elucidation of Zionism’s manifest injustices might have persuaded a critical mass of young Israelis to abandon their country’s name altogether. Slowly, surely, non-violently, “Israel” might have come to be known, once again, as “Palestine”.

Impossible? Certainly, Israel/Palestine has a great deal more obstacles to overcome than New Zealand/Aotearoa. Still, if Jew and Arab had stopped firing bullets at each other way back in the 1870s and started marrying each other in great numbers – who knows where that unfortunate land might be today?

Which brings us back to that interesting tweet: and to what is undoubtedly its most objectionable sentence: “Pay them no attention, their archaic species is becoming more extinct as new Aotearoa is on the rise.”

Now, viewed from the perspective of those whose ancestors were, at the turn of the 19th Century, confidently expected to “die out”, this sort of gloating racism is, perhaps, forgivable. From the perspective of the descendants of the colonisers, however, it sounds unnervingly like a direct challenge – an existential threat.

That sentiments like these could so easily put the chant of the White Supremacists at Charlottesville: “You will not replace us!”; into the mouths of angry Pakeha, clearly never occurred to whoever sent out the tweet in Rawiri Waititi’s name. Or (and this is a much more distressing thought) maybe it did?

Waititi is, therefore, to be commended for the speed with which he moved to defuse this political IED. Within a few hours, he had re-written the tweet, and clarified his own position on the slow revolution unfolding all around us:

“A new Aotearoa is on the rise. Tangata Whenua (Māori) + Tangata Tiriti (all other ethnicities who are committed to a tiriti centric Aotearoa) = the Aotearoa I believe in fighting for.”

Strewth! When you put it like that, Rawiri, so do I.

89 COMMENTS

  1. “The factories have not been taken over by the workers.” No. And they never will be. Because the means of production are now empty land and ghost houses. And these will be seized and taken over by the filthy underclass of the homeless and the renters. This is the 21st century, not the 19th…

  2. I find the analogy with Palestine difficult, when geo-politics were involved in setting up the State of Israel, and in maintaining it, in a way which is not applicable to contemporary New Zealand. Assimilation, at the time I recall it being talked about as such here, may have been evolving naturally anyway, even though swathes of people, namely Maori, were economically and socially disadvantaged because of historical injustices which are now being addressed, primarily under the Treaty. Good.

    At the same time, the overt racism of various leaders and commentators, both Maori and Caucasian, is fostering resentment and divisiveness in a likely deliberately counter-productive way, both here, and elsewhere, such as the good old US of A – for whatever agendas.

    In the words of comedian Andrew Lawrence: “ Let’s rake over the crimes of the past to create anger and diversion in the present. Because that’s the only way we can heal.” I stopped taking the Dom-Post when they
    started their series on what shits white people are, blithely ignoring the good, in favour of publicising past-time bad and ugly. But I suppose that that’s easier for them than decent analysis of the present, or responsible concern for the future.

  3. Yes I agree with Snow White: Comparing NZ to Israel is a very poor analogy. The basic circumstances of founding these nations are entirely different. A quick recap for those too lazy to read their own history:

    1.Maori signed the Treaty for two reasons:
    > To end the musket wars where hundreds of thousands of Maori were killed by other Maori, tortured, raped, enslaved and yes, eaten.
    > To end the possibility of the French taking control. The French were still slaving and the Napoleonic rule of law was a very poor when compared to British law.
    2. ALL sovereignty was ceded to the Crown, just as the First Article says it was.
    3. There was never intended to be any form or ‘partnership’. That’s not what treaties do and the Victorian government would never have signed up for any form of partnership anyway.
    4. The chiefs knew exactly what they were signing because we have records of their speeches at the time of signing, letters to each other discussing the terms and the records from the 1860 Kohimarama Conference to confirm it.
    5. The Treaty was a massive success:
    > The Musket Wars ended
    > 10,000 slaves were freed within a year of the Treaty coming into effect
    > The average lifespan of Maori rose from the late 20’s prior to the Treaty to 72 for men and 76 for women today

    • ‘To end the musket wars where hundreds of thousands of Maori were killed by other Maori, tortured, raped, enslaved and yes, eaten.’

      It is hard to believe that ‘hundreds of thousands of Maori were killed by other Maori’ when most skirmishes involved a few dozen to a few hundred (at the most).

      However, I agree entirely on about the enslavement, raping and eating of other tribes, all well documented. (See below).

      There is much debate about the validity of The Treaty, since Maori did not understand the meaning of many of the words they are said to have agreed to, English not being their language and some of the concepts being completely alien to them.

      As we all know, it was not about protecting Maori or partnership, but was about beating the French in colonisation and resource extraction, initially whale oil and timber, but soon afterwards the clearing of land for the establishment of sheep farms, for the export of wool to [expanding] factories in Britain.

      • The treaty was written in both Te Reo and English. Elizabeth Colenso was a fluent speaker of Te Reo having been born in NZ.Her husband William Colenso wrote the Treaty with his wife’s assistance. He could read and write Te Reo.The missionaries at Waimate learnt the language so they could korero before they did anything else.Then they built a school.

    • I agree with the poor analogy to Israel. A people, the Arabs, who historically referred to the Palestine Jews as “our dogs” and forced them to live as dhimmis (inferiors) while taxing the hell out of them are going to suddenly embrace them as brothers, and head for the nearest mountain top to sing kumbaya? What planet are you on, Trotter?

      • Miko Peled whose Jewish mother was born in Jerusalem refused to take the ‘free house’ which became available when hundreds of thousands of families were driven from their homes and land.

        Ethnic cleansing comes with the loot built over lifetimes and generations ,,,,

        Miko’s mother refused to take the bounty of her former neighbors homes and property ,,,, showing both personal morals and no hatred towards the Muslim and Christian Palestinian’s she had lived alongside and co-existed with.

        6 Mins through to 12 mins* for the ugly truth on the blood birth of Israel ,,,and his elderly Mothers sense of shame in response to what happened to the non Jewish neighborhoods of her youth. https://youtu.be/TOaxAckFCuQ

        ,,, gaby, who finally reveled his “the ends justify the means” ideology*,, specifically in preserving Jewish character against the second holocaust of miscegenation ,,,He supports Israels Government banning mixed relationships with anti-miscegenation laws,,, to prevent the threat of interbreeding and fucking their way to annihilation ,,, Which BTW is EXACTLY the same race theory of ‘great replacement’ white supremacists idiots ,,,,

        New Zealands long and slow path away from overt British empire racism has largely been driven by mixed relationships ,,,,,to the point it’s so normal and natural that the vast majority of us would see Govt anti-miscegenation laws and segregated schools as the obvious sickness of a rotten state…. a state of rottenness.

        gaby is overtly racist and a compulsive liar against the ‘Pals’ ,,, But seeing as he brought up dogs we might as well have a history refresher on Winston Churchill ,,, a main figure in the ‘who started it’,,,, for the force and violence that created and maintains Israel. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/winston-churchill-sent-the-black-and-tans-to-palestine-1.3089140

        Churchill was racist anti-Semite Zionist ,,,, but he he ranked darker Palestinians below whiter Jews.

        When the British promised land they did not own,and nationhood ,,, to two different groups of people ,,,, Churchill backed Zionism ,,,

        Winston ,,”I do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger… even though he may have lain there for a very long time.”
        https://www.marxist.com/britain-the-shocking-history-of-tory-party-antisemitism.htm

      • Where dod you get you history from? I am palstinian, Jews who lived in Palestine were palestinians. The only place on earth were Jews were respected was in Palestine. Regardless of your religion, being Muslim, Christian, or Jew you are a palestinian which always comes first. The only time these relationship were poisoned, when zionists claimed that a zionist state is a Jewish state. Many palestinian Jews against this but been marginalised and oppressed like other palestinians.

    • Andrew: “To end the musket wars where hundreds of thousands of Maori were killed by other Maori, tortured, raped, enslaved and yes, eaten.”

      According to Te Ara, the numbers killed are estimated to have been around 20,000. Numbers couldn’t have been as high as you suggest, because earlier estimations of population in the country as a whole were about 100,000 at most. I believe that was Cook’s estimate. However: given a population as small as that, the death toll of the musket wars would have had a devastating impact, as would the concomitant violence and cannibalism. Small wonder the chiefs wanted to sign the Treaty.

      Aside from that, your account is accurate.

    • Andrew.
      Are you attempting to speak for Maori of many generations ago.
      Really!
      The Maori had not joined forces to drive the tau iwi out. They were divided and kept divided.

  4. Coincidentally, I read this yesterday:

    ‘The pā is often mistakenly called Kaiapohia,[6] which is actually an insult to local Ngāi Tūāhuriri whose ancestors died in the pā after they were besieged by Te Rauparaha and his Ngāti Toa allies in 1832. The first attack made against Ngāi Tahu was at Kaikōura during 1827–28. Ngāi Tahu records state that the Ngāti Kurī people of Kaikōura came down to the beach to welcome their kinsmen, the hapu of Tū-te-pākihi-rangi of Ngāti Kahungunu, whom they were expecting as visitors. Instead, they found the fleet of canoes belonging to Ngāti Toa who, armed with muskets, attacked and killed them. Te Rauparaha and his tribes then visited Ngāi Tahu of Kaiapoi to trade muskets for pounamu. The Kaiapoi people soon learned of the attacks on their kin at Kaikōura and a Ngāpuhi warrior staying with Ngāi Tahu at Kaiapoi pā overheard the Ngāti Toa leader planning how they would attack the following morning. Already angered by the desecration of his recently dead aunt’s grave Tama-i-hara-nui ordered a retaliatory attack the following day, killing the leading Ngāti Toa chiefs, including Te Pēhi Kupe. The only prominent Ngāti Toa leader not slain was Te Rauparaha. Te Rauparaha returned to Kapiti Island to plan his revenge. In early November 1830, he persuaded Captain John Stewart of the brig Elizabeth to hide him and his warriors on board. They then visited the Ngāi Tahu people of Takapūneke near present-day Akaroa under the ruse of trading for flax. Captain Stewart persuaded Te Maiharanui to board the brig and be taken below deck, where Te Rauparaha and his men took the chief, his wife and his daughter prisoner. Te Rauparaha’s men then surged ashore to sack Takapūneke. The brig returned to Kapiti with Te Maiharanui and his family held captive.

    It is said that rather than see his daughter enslaved, Tama-i-hara-nui strangled her and threw her overboard. Te Rauparaha then gave Tama-i-hara-nui to the wife of the Ngāti Toa chief Te Pehi, who killed Tama-i-hara-nui by slow torture. His wife suffered the same fate.

    Te Rauparaha then mounted a major expedition against Kaiapoi Ngāi Tahu in the summer of 1831–32. Ngāi Tahu, lacking muskets to repel the armed Ngāti Toa, took a defensive strategy and hoped that Ngāti Toa would not be able to penetrate the wooden palisades surrounding the pā. The ensuing siege lasted for three months. However, during a skirmish between the two tribes, a shelter caught fire. Fanned by the nor’wester, the palisades quickly ignited, allowing Ngāti Toa warriors to enter the village, capture its leaders and kill the people. Ngāti Toa then attacked the Banks Peninsula tribes, taking the principal fort at Ōnawe, in Akaroa Harbour.’

    I’m not too keen on the ‘killed by slow torture’ bit. But that’s humans for you. Well, some of them.

    The point being that after several centuries of population growth, the Maori hit resource limits, and solved the problems generated by hitting those resource limits via armed conflict -just as people in Europe hit resource limits and solved the problems generated by hitting those resource limits via armed conflict.

    Eliminating the bulk of the indigenous populations of the Americas, Canada (Is Canada part of the Americas?), Australia, NZ etc. and assimilating the remnants of the indigenous populations or pushing them onto ‘reservations’ gave rapacious Europeans (I personally mostly blame the Vikings, since they were the ancestors of the Normans, the architects of the system we endure) the opportunity to extract much resource not otherwise available to them, and allowed the Ponzi finance that originated in Europe to perpetuate much longer than it would otherwise have done.

    All that said, we have now reached limits to growth globally, and ‘the cake’ is diminishing in size by the second, as [human] population stabilises in many regions. The wildlife population continues to plummet, of course.

    With current economic-political-social arrangements utterly doomed (a word I first used 20 years ago, and was admonished for doing so), we are in for increasingly ‘interesting’ times as various sectors of society attempt to acquire their share of the diminishing ‘cake’ -or in the case of the sociopaths that currently hold the reins, more than their fair share of the diminishing ‘cake’.

    I guess the call to arms of the so-called elites will centre on the slogan: “Let them eat grass,” as the people of Malta did during the long period when food supplies failed to arrive, due to sinking of supply ships by Axis forces.

    We know that the bulk of the populace has been ‘captured’ by the system and well indoctrinated, so believes the bullshit churned out by the corporate media and the government.

    What I’d really like to know is this: does more than 1% of the populace think beyond the ends of their noses?

    I guess we will find out over the coming months/years, as unsustainable historic economic-political arrangements disintegrate.

    By the way, while I’m here, I’ll point out that we may as well start talking about atmospheric CO2 being 420 ppm, 190 ppm above the long-term normal and 140 ppm above the pre-industrial normal, with all that that involves, including ever-faster destruction of current living arrangements.

    Daily CO2 (CO2.earth)
    Mar. 3, 2021 = 418.30 ppm
    Mar. 3, 2020 = 414.01 ppm

    • Ruthless greed from European traders brought weapons of mass destruction to these islands costing hundreds of lives, eventual land loss and major disruption to the existing cultural fabric.

      Ruthless greed, ignorance and deliberate denial has us facing extinction.

      At least 48 years of ignoring the path we are on after it was well documented as the result of the most extensive study of what man’s activity was leading towards.

      Still the greed and purposefully proliferated ignorance shows little sign of abating.

      What is so hard about recognising that atmospheric CO2, Methane are on the increase, deforestation, loss of habitat and toxic biocides are all on the increase. many species are rapidly diminishing, and yet we get a share market report every noon.

  5. Andrew the TOW was signed to end war, a war that was costing the British too much money, money they didn’t have. And this was a war they were not winning cause us so called savages were too smart when it came to warfare despite being out numbered and not having the weapons the British had. So the pen was used to do the business guns and cannons couldn’t do and that was to wipe us out.

  6. Andrew the TOW was signed to end war, a war that was costing the British too much money, money they didn’t have. And this was a war they were not winning cause us so called savages were too smart when it came to warfare despite being out numbered and not having the weapons the British had. So the pen was used to do the business guns and cannons couldn’t do and that was to wipe us out.

  7. Andrew the TOW was signed to end war, a war that was costing the British too much money, money they didn’t have. And this was a war they were not winning cause us so called savages were too smart when it came to warfare despite being out numbered and not having the weapons the British had. So the pen was used to do the business guns and cannons couldn’t do and that was to wipe us out.

  8. Te Rauparaha was conniving and duplicitous, and of course Kaikoura was a long historic successful whaling centre.

    There must be some way of blaming the slaughter of Kaikoura coast Maori on the colonialists – the massacre of the MacDonalds at Glen Coe was late 17thC , so there could have been learnings ( dreadful bloody word) from there, but I don’t think the Campbells ate them, although cannibalism did exist among the Scots – so maybe that’s where Maori got that from too, while the MacDonalds were much much smarter and they straddled the globe with golden-arched restaurants instead. We got John. He’s ok. I don’t think Key liked him.
    Don’t think Clark did either. I do though.

    Somewhere up the Kapiti Coast there’s a Te Rauparaha swimming pool or swimming centre. This is brutal, and totally culturally insensitive, and it needs to be changed; I am weary with might and power being equated with goodness and decency, and none of this would be happening had the French got us first – better cuisine too. They never ate each other, nor were they into fast food – hence the eating of l’escargots. Mon dieu.

    • @Snow white Te Rauparaha pool is in Otaki I believe and if you think that’s brutal, do you know what he did to the Maupoko on Lake Horowhenua?

      • Control denied: “Te Rauparaha pool is in Otaki I believe…”

        Nope. Porirua. The one at Otaki is in Haruatai Park. Last I heard, it was just “Otaki Pool”. Unless somebody’s recently had a bout of historical amnesia and named it after him. He was a piece of work, right enough.

    • Snow White: “Te Rauparaha was conniving and duplicitous….”

      And cruel. The British had a well-deserved reputation for cruelty. It was Thomas Keneally, I think, who referred to it in “The Great Shame”, in connection with the Irish. And those who’ve been to Ireland and talked politics with Irish people will be aware that they haven’t forgotten the depredations of Cromwell and others. And of course, this is why Captain Cook was remarked upon, for the relatively humane way in which he treated his crews.

      But the British met their match in the indigenes of NZ. A family member has relatively recently been researching the documented oral history of pre-European Maori habitation and conflict in the Auckland area. There had been so much warfare and bloodshed there that by the time the first European explorers arrived, the isthmus was almost unpopulated.

      Prior to first European contact, NZ wasn’t a bucolic paradise: it was Hobbesian. Tribes were ruled by hereditary elites; slavery was the norm. Inter-tribal conflict was frequent and violent, cannibalism routinely practised. In more recent centuries, much of that conflict would have related to access to diminishing food supplies; by the time of Cook’s first arrival, the local people were already beginning to run out of food.

      I think that you know about this history, but others commenting here may not.

      • Before Europeans introduced weapons of mass destruction, Maori leaders had to prove their worth usually by combat and tactical skills. Yes hereditary mana may well have played a part as it also seems to in European circles.
        Strategic alliances against European invasions took a while to evolve and much too late to save land from “confiscation” to be put into the names of European leaders. Corruption was rife.

  9. @ Maori might like to read this then.
    Dr micky bassett.
    ‘NZME pulls racist article and bans Bassett’
    https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2018786126/nzme-pulls-racist-article-and-bans-bassett
    Wikipedia:
    Dr Michael Bassett.
    […]”Bassett took the side of finance minister Roger Douglas, the main architect of the reforms. ”
    […] “He continued occasionally to be involved at an advisory level, for example unofficially advising Don Brash during Brash’s term (2003–2006) as National Party leader.[13] Bassett’s switch of sides reflects the present-day Labour Party’s semi-repudiation of Rogernomics.
    We AO/NZ’ers are at each others throats because we were set on each other by tricky micky and his we play mates.
    don, roger and micky aye?
    Personally? As a non Maori? I’ll go with you guys please? Anything other than a fucking far right zionist infestation. Ask any Palestinian how that’s working out for them?

    • It could have worked out very well for them if they hadn’t mired themselves in 73 years of pointless confllct based on their virulent racial and religious hatred of Jews. Now they are rejectionist losers struggling under their corrupt, terrorist supporting kleptocracies.

      • Gaby it could have worked out well for them if they weren’t invaded by people from far and wide. Get your history in perspective about racism and invasion.

        Bassett was a racist and neocon follower of the Mont Perelin supremacist ilke.

  10. The very sad thing about the Maori Party is they occaisonally give the impression they are purely race-based activists, when their job description as MPs is supposed to be about working for the good of all NZ. Some of the Green Party MPs come across exactly the same way, still activists fighting a cause instead of responsible MPS working for common good. Very sad.

    The fact that Mr Waititi allows people with such radical views to write his tweets for him does not inspire confidence about his values and those of the people he surrounds hinself with.

    I fear the ultimate result of this thinking will be all NZers forced to taking sides, forced into race-based identity politics. I don’t want a race war. I like the old style left when people were colour blind, rather than the modern version where we are taught to hate each other on something as superficial as background DNA.

    • Too late for that Ben we have already been forced into taking sides a long time ago. He was put in there by his people and we expect him to deliver for us and what is good for us is good for whole country. I find it hypocritical how when Maori start expressing such strong opinionated views out come all naysayers cause we aren’t allowed to say those things yet many Pakeha have been freely expressing their verbal diarhoea for decades and the mainstream media have lapped it up and they have been complicit in Maori bashing and expressing monocultural views and stories.

      • Much more than decades and not only in NZ.
        Some see it as a British trait.
        The East India company with private crown shares, took over India using British tax payers to fund their army to enforce the hegemony of a private company which came to rule India, collect taxes and use that money to buy up cheap Indian goods to sell to the lucrative markets of Europe.
        Recent research gave a today’s value on the money extracted by that private company in taxes from India at $US43 trillion.
        Restrain yourself from telling me Mahatma Gandhi was a racist.

    • Ben Waimata: “….they occaisonally give the impression they are purely race-based activists….”

      My impression as well. They want a Maori-only political and social system: that’s what they say. And they’re chasing a chimera.

      “….when their job description as MPs is supposed to be about working for the good of all NZ.”

      Exactly so. But the fact that their political party is the “Maori” party says otherwise.

      “Some of the Green Party MPs come across exactly the same way, still activists fighting a cause instead of responsible MPS working for common good.”

      Don’t they just! It’s for that reason I no longer give them my vote.

  11. These two messages are just tweets. They do not express a serious political position or a viable political program.
    Added to that, while Rawiri Waititi is a good guy who is prepared to rock the boat, he actively participates in the colonialist political system to which he is beholden. He swallowed a camel in giving allegiance to the British Crown, only to strain at the gnat of Parliament’s bizarre dress code. So he doesn’t need to be taken too seriously.
    Both tweets from Rawiri’s office have at their core the false, reactionary, colonialist formulation Tangata Whenua + Tangata Tiriti = Aotearoa
    That is not the way it is, was, or ever will be.
    Enough said.

  12. What is Trotter Smoking.

    By the time, Israel declared Independence, More than 200,000 Palestinians had been driven from their homes and lands. Followed by another 600,000 by the end of the conflict. Never to be allowed to return to their Homes and Lands. Pure Racism on display!

    This was always the plan of zionism. To create a “Jewish State” which by definition was a Minimum of 80% Jews. Ben Gurion was the architect of Plan Dalet – The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. One can find it documented in the writings of Benny Morris, a Jewish Historian. Along with many more Jewish Historians.

    Then about peaceful protest.

    When the People of Gaza did exactly that with the March of Return at the Gaza Concentration Camp fence, Israel carried out a planned Slaughter of Palestinians. Including, I read, More than 800 Medics helping the already wounded and dying.

    On intermarriage.

    If Jewish Males whose mothers were not Jewish have issues marrying a Jewish Girl in Israel (they are forced to marry overseas), how in hades is a Palestinian going to be able to marry a Jewish girl? And what Jewish male marries a non Jewish Woman as their children won’t be defined as Jews.

    All of this is widely Known so I can only wonder what rock Trotter has been hiding under all his life?

    Or is it that he is scared of taking on what is called the NZ Propagandists for Israel by members of the NZ Jewish Community.

    For whatever reason, one needs to read this article by Trotter Knowing that when he speaks of the situation in Palestine/Israel, most of what he writes seems False.

    Peopel need to do the research as I did.

    I used to be an unquestioning supporter of Israel.

    Until I started to question. . .

    You should to.

    Maybe start here – http://www.lettersforpalestine.net/

  13. Some of this stuff shows that people do not actually read New Zealand History before screaming.
    Covid is Pa: There was no war before Pakeha and Maori before 1840. Maori were the majority of the population then and firmly in charge. Anything that happened did so by their rules. Read Fredrick Manning’s ‘Old New Zealand’ for an excellent contempary account.
    Andrew: By 1840 the musket wars were over. Maori leaders, including Te Rauparaha, came to realise that prolonged warfare with firearms was mutally destructive. The introduction of Europeans to the Maori world meant trade was a more prosperous activity and in the 1830s Maori built, crewed and owned ships were taking advantage of markets as far away as California and Guangzhou to sell potatoes, pork and sealskins.
    Read James Belich’s ‘Making Peoples’.
    Hundreds of thousands of Maori dead – that would mean Tamaki Makarau was as thickly populated as modern Auckland and warring Maori were using automatic weapons instead of muzzle loading guns.
    Year ago I decided I wanted to know more about New Zealand History so I spent three years and a shitload of money taking my Bachelor’s at Massey( while I was working). I need not have bothered.
    First some retired racist comes along and writes ‘The Travesty of Waitangi’. I read it and found a lie on every page. The old C–t basically made it all up as he went along. The only bright spot was he had to publish it himself because no reputable publisher would touch it.
    But Kiwis loved it and it sold like hotcakes. He wrote another book saying the same stuff before he died.
    Then various Maori activists say several thousand Maori died with the Maori Battalion – which would be about half the total force of 2nd NZEF.
    What was the point of me learning all this factual stuff when all people have to is spray bullshit all over the place? It is quite disheartening.
    Hopefully if compulsory history teaching ever takes place it might restore some balance – but somehow I think the hysteria merchants will sabotage that as well.

    • Yes your right the war started after the TOW was signed because it was never going to be honoured and after the war came more legislation to take more land, outlawing our language, creating a Native land act/ court was primarily to divide and conquer and take more land as our coloniser couldn’t kill us of. The 1860s onwards the pen was very effective as too many wars was making them broke so the pen became the new weapon of destruction.

  14. I am English, came here 10 years ago. I voted for the Maori party in this last election because they were the only party who seemed to care about wealth inequality and the housing crisis. It upsets me to see this tweet and I will no longer be able to vote for a party that seems to hate me.

    • Well then you better not vote Green, the once environmental party either, because the co-leader, Marama Davidson, blamed all white NZ’ers for the tragic massacre of members of the Christchurch Muslim community by a stunted Aussie nutter, and used the vigil supporting the shocked traumatised Muslims to throw rotten eggs at the colour white.

      To my knowledge, the N Z Green Party has never dissociated themselves from this destructive divisive garbage, so presumably they’re all singing from that same global page of sectionalising society into segregated factions, making it that much easier for the masters of the universe to control the plebs. Left and right are both buying into this idiotic scenario.

      • No she didn’t. You clearly want her to have, though. If you choose to not pay attention, everything is ‘to your knowledge’. Good grief! You’re spinning grievance fairy-tales in your head.

  15. To anyone with the eyes, ears, intelligence to see it, New Zealand in 2021 is functionally an undeclared apartheid state. White NZer’s at the bottom, the only group expected to follow all the rules and do the right thing, largely funding all of the other “oppressed by whites” ethnic and minority groups above us, who generally loath the white race and therefore can and will never be appeased by anything Whitey does for them. Whites enjoy no systemic “privilege” but the untouchables among us certainly do. Any so-called privilege is derived from a common ethic, if anything.

    You are a leftist Chris, so that puts you marginally higher up than a conservative like me (an actual right-wing conservative, so not a National Party supporter), but you are still white my friend. Do you think these people care if you are on the left? No. You are white, so you are in their sights. Add to this the ubiquitous woke and self-hating white liberals who are in power (on both sides of the House), and the slide becomes even more precipitous and inexorable. People like Waititi don’t want equality, they want dominance. Dominance cannot be shared though, obviously. His only crime here is that he accidentally let the cat out of the bag, possibly over a long liquid lunch.

    Yes, New Zealand (now, fashionably and ominously “Aotearoa”) was always essentially a white dominated patriarchy. So what? I am not apologetic. This fundamental is what ensured that we developed into a safe, clean, prosperous and modern society (like all of the other Western patriarchies), conditions that all but the most inept and feckless benefit from, if they want to. If you change the parts, and/or their relative positions within the complex, you’ll necessarily have a different whole. “Different” in no way guarantees “better.”

      • That’s a Big Brain take, innit. It’s OK, you’re in this with the rest of us Simon.

        • AFH
          So who is domination NZ.
          I take it you see domination as a race issue.
          Is that separate to the growing rich poor divide.
          And where did the class issue resolve. and when as I might have missed it.
          Racism comes in many guises most of them learned during growing up.

    • “White NZer’s at the bottom, the only group expected to follow all the rules and do the right thing, largely funding all of the other “oppressed by whites” ethnic and minority groups above us, who generally loath the white race and therefore can and will never be appeased by anything Whitey does for them.”
      Fark me with a feather duster.
      When and WHY did you exit the Ark? It must have been a bloody big surprise when you did to learn there are a shitload of Simons you’re going to have to ‘deal’ with. Maybe that’s when you learned “innit” ?
      But then we know you’re exceptionally qualified to deal with Him and his ilk.
      All rather tedious what?
      I have to ask – are you taking the piss or are you actually a reality? I’m worried I’m falling into the trap of misunderstanding what’s real or what’s the normality in the world of the interweb.
      Hold on……..I’ll google you.

      • Oh, another Big Brain take. What was that, a collection of randomly selected phrases? I’m sure there’s a point in there somewhere.

  16. What the Maori and Palestinian peoples share is a history of colonisation in which they are thrown off the land, subjected to genocide, and the survivors end up as impoverished workers who are criminalized and killed if they don’t respect private property rights in stolen land.
    Colonisation is justified by racist white supremacy. So long as the one survives so will the other.
    The colonised desire to throw out the white supremacists is not racist it is historical justice.
    The cry for Maori sovereignty is not reverse racism. It is a gambit for restorative justice.
    But neither can be realised by doing deals for 10% of kiwi capitalism.
    Nor can a token biculturalism marry the culture of the coloniser with the colonised while the economic divide between them grows and grows.
    Calling NZ Aotearoa to cover this lie puts a brown cloak on a white pig.
    Maori sovereignty will be reached when the colonised and their allies replace the colonial state with a democratic socialist state, that restores to Maori the land and economic wealth necessary to sustain a viable culture, and allows all cultures to coexist as different but equal.
    A political statement that grasps this as an Aotearoa that represents Maori sovereignty transcending the dying capitalist system of the white coloniser is a political program worth fighting for.
    Unlike Chris’s attempt to offer a white liberal program for a truth and reconciliation process such as we see lying in a wreck in South Africa.
    There no way that his fantasy of truth and reconciliation in a bi-national Palestine would have ever been a possibility let alone put to the test.

    • No no no! The only genocide in NZ is the one committed by some tribal Maori groups against other tribal Maori groups in the 1820s-30s, which resulted in 30% of our Maori population dead. You simplify complex human interactions down to an identity politics skin colour divide, which essentially establishes a straw man argument. The reality is far more complex.

      Maori and pakeha began interbreeding very early on, and the idea of seperate races became increasingly irrelevant right from the start. Traditional Maori tribal politics continued right through out colonisation history (some would suggest continue today), when you look at the history of Maori/pakeha conflict you’ll find the majority of maori fighters were on the side of the crown every time. For pakeha the fight was fairly simple, but for Maori the background for which side you were on was far more subtle, and involved multi-generational alliances and grievances. To reduce this complexity to a race issue misses the point to such a radical extent that it is almost wrong.

      Injustice is part of the human condition, it was a normal part of the lives of all our ancestors, and is the same for us today, regardless of race or creed. Many of the European settlers in colonial NZ were very well aware of the injustice their own familiaes had experienced in places like Scotland or Ireland, and were not at all inclined to be pro-British, and treated Maori with respect. Both pakeha and Maori had far sighted, fair, righteous individuals, and both had arrogant divisive and violent members. Such is human nature.

      Any rewriting of NZ history where one race is totally good and one is totally bad is just fake news, end of story.

      Restorative justice requires victims and offenders. 200 years after the event no one alive is either personally liable or personally offended against. Anyone who thinks all Maori historical land grievances can be settled by creating an entire new set of primarily pakeha land grievances, and who think people losing their land 200 years ago can be put right by modern NZers losing their land now, is an idiot who will only create a war. Not to mention a huge percentage of NZ population have DNA from both sides, what side are we supposed to take? And what kind of a fool wants a country where degrees of citizenship is based on DNA anyway?

      • Ben Waimata – Thank you for mentioning the horrific tragedies of the Highland Clearances, and the Great Famine of Ireland – the latter being straightforward genocide of a people officially regarded by some Westminster politicians as a sub-human species, which Maori most certainly were not – not that that is necessarily relevant to the racial hatred spewing out all over the place now.

        What is relevant, is that descendants of those maltreated – often terribly brutalised – Irish and Scottish victims of the English, constituted a significant proportion of the pioneering stock who worked hard helping to develop and build this country, sometimes under initial conditions little better than that of their tipuna, but at least with the chance and the hopes which were denied to them.

        The histories of both these countries alone, can be very painful to read, as is accepting the savagery which was inflicted upon the people. Now they are all being lumped together as colonialist baddies, by ignorami sometimes seeking to better themselves by jumping on the victimhood bandwagon.

        None of my Maori whanau came from privileged backgrounds and all have achieved professional success through hard work and commonsense. None of us think or categorise in particularly ethnic or racial terms, and nor will I be forced to – even if it were practicable, which it isn’t.

        • Many early settlors were Scottish & Irish who inter married with the local tangata whenua. They had experienced the savagery and the confiscations of land in Ireland & Scotland.

          Interesting that Te Arawa and Ngati Porou assisted the British in the late 1800’s in trying to bring Te Kooti under control as they did not want the outbreak of a Civil War here in NZ, especially after the damage done to the Maori population by the Musket the Musket Wars 1820-1835.

          Te Arawa and Ngati Porou obviously believed it was better to work with the Crown to achieve a harmonious result. However the Settlor & Crown thirst for Maori Land continued with many tribes left virtually landless by the 1900’s.

          • The confiscation of the best land suitable for pasture was no accident.
            Try and ask the question as to why confiscation by force was needed, or just, or fair, or unlike genocide.
            The confiscation was planned and ordered by a small group of very corrupt people who had harnessed the power to do so, and did it knowing it would not be reversed.

      • Ben Waimata: “Any rewriting of NZ history where one race is totally good and one is totally bad is just fake news, end of story.”

        Precisely. It would be revisionism of the most egregious sort.

        All the rest of what you say in this comment is just plain common sense.

    • Kia ora Dave
      I am in agreement with much that you say here, but colonisation is not synonymous with “racist white supremacy”. If that were the case, it is unlikely that any Maori would have supported the British forces in the wars of the nineteenth century, and it is unlikely that you would find any Maori participating in the affairs of the colonial state today.
      There is no disputing that the Realm of New Zealand is a colonial state. But who are the “colonisers” and the “colonised?”. Do the terms even have meaning in the contemporary context?
      We do have colonialists of course. In large numbers. Including Chris Trotter, Rawiri Waititi and all those who maintain that The Treaty of Waitangi is the foundation of our nation. That sordid, sullied, dishonored and discredited document may have been the foundation of the colonial state but that is a very different creature to the proudly independent nation of Aotearoa born out of the Whakaputanga and the anti-colonial struggles of the nineteenth century.
      I fear that you, Dave, like almost all those who write for The Daily Blog, and the vast tribe of anonymous scribes who fill the comments section with racist garbage, want to convert our struggle for sovereignty into a conflict between the races which we would surely lose.
      The principles on which our struggle is based are very clear: rangatiratanga, kotahitanga, and mana motuhake. It has no basis in race.
      It is time for you folk at The Daily Blog to begin to tell the truth about colonialism in Aotearoa.

      • And, I should add, the truth about “white supremacy”. One of the roles of the British sovereign is to symbolize the supremacy of the British state, and by implication the British race, over the people of Aotearoa.
        The intention is to to create an aura of British racial supremacy and thereby help maintain the tacit submission of other races (particularly Maori) to the British Crown, and to create the illusion among working people of British descent that they somehow have agency through belonging to the dominant race and culture in this country.
        I don’t need to tell you that beyond the borders of The Daily Blog this strategy is failing. How many Pakeha identify with the Crown? One hundred and sixty years ago the state could force the general population to pledge allegiance to the British Crown. By the twentieth century it could only impose that requirement on state servants. In the twenty-first century the demand for explicit submission to British rule is limited to the highest levels of state, the judiciary, the members of the security forces, Members of Parliament and new immigrants.
        Chris employs a stock argument that the colonial state benevolently aspires to create an egalitarian non-racist society, but is held back by the selfishness and racism of the New Zealand public.
        The truth is the exact opposite. Our people are egalitarian and non-racist.
        It is the institutions of the colonial state which perpetuate the pernicious notion of white supremacy (more correctly British supremacy) and a class based society. The Al Noor massacre, and the public reaction to it, should have made that absolutely clear. The most horrific act of racial and religious violence this country has seen in many years was perpetrated by a Five Eyes operative with close connections to the colonial regime and met with outrage and abhorrence from the New Zealand public.

      • Geoff, I think you read into what I wrote something that was not there.
        I reject race as a social category.
        Race is an ideological slur to justify conquest.
        Our difference is that I argue that Maori sovereignty will will NOT HAPPEN until Maori “and their allies”, the majority of whom will be white, overthrow the capitalist state and create a socialist society in which “all” nationalities can freely realise their self-determination.
        That may be agreement to cultural independence, or economic independence, but if necessary political independence.
        And as is clear from much of the commentary above. Those who resist this revolution will be both Maori and Pakeha.
        The socialist revolution is necessary not only to resolve our colonial history, i.e. to decolonise, but to prevent the catastrophe of a failed capitalist system destroying the ecological basis of human existence.
        Please acknowledge that this is our difference, not that my argument is based on a race war. That is a willful misrepresentation.

        • Kia ora Dave
          I gather that the statement to which you take exception is “I fear that you… want to convert our struggle for sovereignty into a conflict between the races which we would surely lose.”
          It concerns me that on The Daily Blog the words “colonialist” and “coloniser” are normally used as code for “Pakeha/European/white person” and the word “colonised” is code for “Maori”.
          Which implies that the struggle against colonialism is a struggle against the Pakeha, in other words a race conflict.
          Now you intimate that you do not use those words in that way, and I am pleased to hear it.
          I therefore retract my comment that you “want to convert our struggle for sovereignty into a conflict between the races” and apologize for any offense caused.
          So now I expect we can agree that a colonialist is one who assents to the sovereignty of the British Crown in the Realm of New Zealand – regardless of race.
          The other terms used (“coloniser”, “colonised”, “colonist” etc) still require definition.
          On another point, can you explain why you believe that decolonization can only occur under socialism?

          • Kia ora ano Dave
            In lieu of any offerings from yourself, may I offer the following definitions, which may help to further constructive dialogue:
            “Coloniser”: A person who intentionally facilitates the establishment or maintenance of British colonial rule in Aotearoa. (A definition which makes no reference to race, and a category which may include people from any ethnic group).
            “Colonised”: Tangata whenua who willingly or under duress consented to the establishment of colonial rule in Aotearoa. (Note that this definition excludes the likes of Tawhiao Tewherowhero, Rewi Maniapoto, Wiremu Tamehana Tarapipipi, Heni Karamu, Te Puea to name just a few. In other words, if you continue to actively or passively resist British rule you have not been colonised)
            Colonist: A person from another country who settles in Aotearoa primarily for reasons of personal advancement but with the added intention of furthering the process of colonization in Aotearoa. (Meaning not all immigrants or settlers can be categorized as colonists).
            Colonialist: A person who assents to the British monarch’s claim of sovereignty over Aotearoa. (By definition, this applies to all members of the colonial parliament, among others).

    • Hey Simon – Embarrassing or not, at this moment in time we still have the right to be gloriously embarrassing, plain stupid, poignantly elucidating, glossy mag crappy, or downright brilliant. When Ardern’s anti-free speech law is implemented, this moment will pass, and the team of five mil will be shackled by vanilla. What precisely will this achieve ? Transparency? Hmm ? Transformation ? Enlightenment ? Nth Koreanalisation ?

      • Snow White: “When Ardern’s anti-free speech law is implemented, this moment will pass, and the team of five mil will be shackled by vanilla.”

        Hahaha… hilarious! And I completely agree with you.

        “What precisely will this achieve ?”

        Bugger-all, I suspect. It certainly won’t improve the quality of debate. On any issues.

      • Hey Snow White.
        Whats North Korea done wrong except fight to keep out the yanks, ozzies, poms and Kiwis. We had no place being there after the Japanese invaders were gone.
        But the yanks would not allow unification so bombed shit out of Norther Korea until not a multi storied building was left standing at at least two million dead.
        And we helped that happen. It was China with comparatively crude weapons who kept the US Empire from taking a bigger foothold in Asia. ” Go Home Yank” is not a well worn phrase to many.

  17. Many early settlors were Scottish & Irish who inter married with the local tangata whenua. They had experienced the savagery and the confiscations of land in Ireland & Scotland.

    Interesting that Te Arawa and Ngati Porou assisted the British in the late 1800’s in trying to bring Te Kooti under control as they did not want the outbreak of a Civil War here in NZ, especially after the damage done to the Maori population by the Musket the Musket Wars 1820-1835.

    Te Arawa and Ngati Porou obviously believed it was better to work with the Crown to achieve a harmonious result. However the Settlor & Crown thirst for Maori Land continued with many tribes left virtually landless by the 1900’s.

  18. “Waititi is, therefore, to be commended for the speed with which he moved to defuse this political IED. Within a few hours, he had re-written the tweet, and clarified his own position on the slow revolution unfolding all around us…”

    I read his succession of”elucidatory” tweets. It looked to me as if he had just repeated what he wrote in the first tweet, albeit with slightly less inflammatory language.

    Reading his original tweet (and despite his pusillanimous denials, you can bet that he wrote it) I was reminded of that saying: “Sometimes, it’s better to keep silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all possible doubt.”

    He’s entitled to say what he thinks, no matter how stupid it is. Caucasity! Christ….now he’s nicking language from black America? Has he been to the Caucasus lately? I’m guessing not. How the hell do people like this get elected to parliament?

    However. He’s done us all a favour: now we know what that section of Maori who voted for him thinks of the rest of us. If we didn’t already know it, of course.

    “When you put it like that, Rawiri, so do I”

    I do not. We know what the Maori party wants: an apartheid system. They’ve said as much. I remember from my youth, the campaigns we all got involved in, against the apartheid systems of Southern Africa and pre-civil rights USA. I’m damned if I’ll stand by and allow such a system to be resurrected in my country of all places!

    Here we see for ourselves the perils of identity politics. Is that a rabbit hole down which NZers wish to fall? If they fully understand the implications, they will not.

    Like it or not, NZ is a modern representative democracy; no other system could be made to work, given the mix of ethnicities here. Maori and all-comers have enthusiastically married each other ever since the first explorers and traders arrived. There’s no going back. Our best hope is to look forward, and to make a society which will benefit all of our children, no matter their ancestry.

    • D’Esterre – You may then, be of an age to remember the only (I think) Maori M P I’ve known, Bruce Gregory, in his younger days. What a different kettle of fish. Dr Gregory was an Otago University Med School graduate, in itself ever so much better, I always think, than the Auckland Medical School.

      Selected entry, and massive competition, enormous self-discipline, and the sort of hard grind unknown to the dilettantes of Waikato or Massey who may consider pacing up and down Castle Street at dawn memorising the contents of Gray’s Anatomy, culturally offensive and God knows what else – apart from being hard work. Much harder than pondering fanciful interpretations of cloud formations, or the artistic significance of the splatter film.

      Looking back at Bruce, that portrait of the artist as a young man, may have predicted a member of Parliament of whom I cannot remember any negative criticism being made – a chappie doing a good job, and certainly not having a tantrum about having to wear a tie. Prior practical achievement in anything – in almost anything – should count for something when selecting or electing political reps.

      The separatists are hopelessly out of touch with the practicalities and logistics of contemporary New Zealand which, like it or not, is at the very least bi-cultural – even if they themselves live exclusive lives.

      What they want to do ?

      • Snow White: yes indeed, I do remember Bruce Gregory: a man of substance, no doubt about it.

        “Dr Gregory was an Otago University Med School graduate, in itself ever so much better, I always think, than the Auckland Medical School.”

        Yes indeed to that as well. And you’d have the enthusiastic endorsement of my late mother, whose alma mater Otago was. The only REAL university in NZ, I recall her saying comfortably, just to get a bite out of the rest of us who’d been to other unis.

        “…not having a tantrum about having to wear a tie.”

        Waititi has made himself look like a fool over this as well. And there he is, wearing a suit, of all things – albeit of a peculiar colour – and a stetson hat. What was that about cultural appropriation? And he’s the one who’s whined about that. Moreover, he wears the hat in the House: wearing headgear like that indoors was simply not done when I was young.

        “The separatists are hopelessly out of touch with the practicalities and logistics of contemporary New Zealand which, like it or not, is at the very least bi-cultural…”

        Multi-cultural, I’d have said. From the very first, migrants and explorers came from all over the world. And from the very first, those migrants and Maori intermarried, such that neither Maori nor those first arrivals are the peoples they were, back then. And in the intervening years, a culture has developed here which is peculiarly local: a mix of elements from the various cultures which make up our society. We pakeha who have visited the lands of our ancestors – or even Australia! – have seen for ourselves how distinctive we are here, for all that we may speak more or less the same language as those in the lands from which our ancestors came.

        There’s no going back: what’s been done cannot be undone.

        A fortiori, we’ve had 40-odd years of neoliberalism, with the flood of migration it’s brought. These migrants are mostly citizens: they are as entitled to be considered NZers as are people of Maori descent. And pakeha such as myself, who are NZ-born.

        In NZ as it now is, ethnicity – including Maori ethnicity – must be personal. It cannot be political: this country cannot function as a representative democracy when parliamentary seats and local government wards are reserved for Maori. There’s no escaping the fact that this is apartheid: racist in other words. Such an electoral system exactly fits the definition of racism which was accepted when I was young. I wonder what white South Africans think when they come here.

        With regard to the issue of Maori wards at local government level, those of us who’ve checked out the LGNZ website know that Maori are being elected more or less in proportion to their percentage of the population as a whole. So – besides the pernicious aspects of seats being reserved for Maori – there is no electoral need for them. The same applies to the Maori parliamentary seats, of course.

        “….even if they themselves live exclusive lives.”

        My impression is that separatists are looking to postcolonial parts of the world. Africa, for instance. But in doing so, they’re not considering the truly awful things that have happened in some of those countries. Those of us who’re old enough will remember the lessons of such countries as Ghana, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa. Nigeria, tragically still in turmoil.

        The world it seems that they want – an exclusively Maori world – simply isn’t now attainable. If their ancestors had wished for such a world, they would have turfed out non-Maori migrants and refused to sign the Treaty in 1840. It’s instructive to note that they did not.

        • D’Es
          The local ward system will give representation of views from a wider cross section.
          This is not Apartheid by any stretch of the imagination.
          Many local councils had little such representation in the past and presently. Its called talking to each other across the community.
          If we had more people who identified as Maori or were identified by others are Maori in local and national govts, how would that matter apart from invoking fear into some of the minds of those who are not used to the idea.
          Presently many see the situation to be the reverse of that.
          Other ethnic representation is also helpful in sharing viewpoints. We are still a way off from gender balance in governments.
          Enough of the polarisation as too much distorts the picture.

      • You provide a classic example of one person’s achievement based on the seldom reached aspirational aims of the dominant culture. Is this what you consider an example of bi-culturalism? While you have heralded the former MP’s academic achievement in medicine, what did he achieve for Maori or bi-culturalism and an MP?

        This is not vastly different to D’Esterre’s numerous verbose opinionated comments on a few different sites which when stripped back, have more than a sniff of dubious underpinnings. The big pity is that he doesn’t follow the saying he quotes, “Sometimes, it’s better to keep silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all possible doubt.”

        • As far as I know, Bruce Gregory was elected to Parliament as the Labour MP for Kaitaia, and not limited to representing sectional interests, which is as it should be.

          Right throughout the 20thC, Maori achieved in every area which I can think of – including featuring in Pommie- published poetry anthologies. Some have been my friends, and some whanau, and today’s victimhood mentality doesn’t necessarily match the facts of history totally accurately. It is sad if their own people don’t recognise this.

          I agree with D’Esterre that this is a multi-cultural country, but to say so can trigger complicated sort of people -although that in itself may be a healthy sort of sign when our interesting – if fairly limited roots- seem to be producing a society of munchkins.

          D’Esterre is a bloke ? Oh golly. I only read him here and I believed, and still believe that he is a woman, although nowadays that can mean 22 different
          things to 22 different people, processions boycotted in the great cultural bastion of Auckland, lesbian MP’s using words which I have to Google, and twerpesses in the Dept of Education constructing gender choices for innocent primary school children in a way never envisaged by the pioneering Scots who established Otago University for the benefit of D’Esterre’s mum, Bruce, me, and Kilroy.

          • Gregory was selected as the Labour Party candidate for the Northern Maori electorate in a 1980 by-election, caused by the resignation of Matiu Rata.

            As for the rest of your comment – “Yeah, right”. If you have something useful to say, why resort to being a ‘twerpess’ with your comments?

              • Snow White: “Why not ?”

                Why not indeed. And your thoughtful comments are greatly to be preferred to the insult-as-argument, regrettably common in the comment threads on this site.

                It’s my view that those who are quickest to name-call are those who are brassed off that they can’t produce a counter-argument. And that’s because they secretly know that we’re right.

        • Aom: “Is this what you consider an example of bi-culturalism? While you have heralded the former MP’s academic achievement in medicine, what did he achieve for Maori or bi-culturalism and an MP?”

          Though you don’t make it clear, I assume that you’re responding to Snow White. Sadly, it seems that you’ve missed the point being made.

          “The big pity is that he doesn’t follow the saying he quotes, “Sometimes, it’s better to keep silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all possible doubt.””

          Be very thankful that it was Waititi who made a fool of himself, and not you.

          Do you have a countervailing argument? A strategy which, in your view, would bring about – for instance – a bicultural NZ? If so, let’s be hearing it. That would be better than dismissive and contemptuous comments.

          When commenters do what you’ve done, I conclude that it is because they’re all out of counter-arguments.

          If you have a substantive contribution to make, contribute away. The rest of us are waiting.

          • Who is “the rest of us?”

            Maori are under no obligations to be subjected by the majority.

            The way maori wards have come about means a little over 20% of councilors will be maori.

            Now maori have effluence in council decisions in keeping with the treaty.

            • Indeed, Sam.

              I never cease to be surprised at privileged white folk who tremble in terror that Maori should – Thord forbid! – has a few seats at the table of power. Their numbers will never out-vote privileged pakeha – but its the fact they’ll have a voice that disturbs a vociferous minority.

              • The economy is important to. I want its competitiveness to be as efficient as possible. Whining, saying maori are uncivilised and such makes us so uncompetitive. We must keep at this issue so we can all live together.

              • “privileged white folk”

                You equate whiteness with privilege Frank? There’s a white guy at my cricket club who’s missing 3 toes from a forklift accident – is he privileged? There are more than a few homeless white people in my town – are they privileged?

                And as you must be well aware, Maori are already well-represented at the “table of power” as you put it. But the separatist agenda is about a lot more than “a few seats at the table of power”.

                • Pope Punctilious II: “You equate whiteness with privilege Frank?”

                  Yes, unfortunately. He does. And to persuade him otherwise is a fruitless mission, I’ve found.

                  “And as you must be well aware, Maori are already well-represented at the “table of power” as you put it.”

                  From what I’ve seen, he knows this, but doesn’t accept it. Many lefties are in a similar position, as can be seen in the comment thread.

                  “But the separatist agenda is about a lot more than “a few seats at the table of power”.”

                  He and others do not accept this, even though it’s staring them in the face. The separatist agenda is about the tyranny of the minority.

                  The Maori party has made it clear. It wants a separatist system, both political and social. This is apartheid: there’s no dodging that uncomfortable fact. The fact that it’s Maori wishing to establish an apartheid system doesn’t in any way make it right.

                  Apartheid is pernicious: my generation campaigned against it for good reason. Pakeha and other non-Maori must accept that they ought not to be defending it, even if they believe that it will level the playing field regarding justice for Maori.

            • Sam: “Now maori have effluence in council decisions…”

              I have mostly stopped responding to your comments, because I cannot figure out what you mean.

              But here you’ve excelled yourself. What on earth do you mean by this? Or is it bloody auto-edit again?

  19. Ecstasy,. What the world needs now is Ecstasy, sweet Ecstasy.
    Not love dahlings. Soooooo old fashioned.
    MDMA increases the release of serotonin and dopamine in your brain which are linked to feelings [of] happiness, while also increasing your heart rate, blood pressure and body temperature. People generally experience feelings of energy, intensity of feelings, confidence, happiness, openness, closeness to others, dehydration, teeth grinding, feeling hot, and reduced appetite. Most people experience the effects in waves and describe it as ‘rolling’ with the highs and lows leveling out over time. Too much MDMA can make you confused, anxious, feel like vomiting and even hallucinate.
    After using people can experience a comedown with feelings of low energy, difficulty sleeping, feeling irritable and mildly depressed, and have difficulty concentrating. These feelings could last for several days depending on how much you have taken.
    I.e. Who gives a fuck. The benefits far out way the bummer.
    Hugs AND drugs baby.
    Jackie DeShannon
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUaxVQPohlU

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