Labour’s police spokeswoman, Ginny Andersen, claims Police Minister Mark Mitchell was “paid to kill people” and has asked him whether he kept a “tally of how many you shot” while providing private military services in Iraq.
Mitchell said Andersen’s comments were “outrageous” and she should apologise. Andersen refused.
WTF?
Comrades, I don’t want to defend Mark bloody Mitchell, but sweet Jesus, Ginny is so far off target here it is embarrassing and deeply counter productive.
Look, I too am deeply suspicious of how Mark will handle the new gang powers and the push from upstairs to make some stupid symbolic move against a Gang funeral and I am also deeply suspicious with how quickly those gang powers will get used against protestors, and I have written many blogs highlighting these suspicions.
MANY!
I’ve also questioned his mercenary history because the issue of private mercenaries in wars are a troubling development that demands scrutiny, but as far as I can tell regarding Marks time as a mercenary, his engagement was as ‘ethical’ as it gets in that world.
For Ginny to suddenly pull this up as a debating point and then make a moral stand on it is fucking confused at best and weirdly inappropriate at worst.
As someone who sets up a lot of political panels (BTW The Working Group is returning shortly – to all these people who keep emailing asking when it’s coming back – shortly) there is an agreed respect between panelists and hosts doing live media like this. Be robust, be passionate, disagree fiercely, but unbridled personal criticism of a persons values and morality based on being a private contractor in a war zone conducting UN sanctioned humanitarian is a weird fucking line of argument to go down.
If Mark is such an ethically radioactive person, then she should agree to not appear on any panels with him.
At first I thought she was mucking around, but she got more and more serious with the allegation. Willie Jackson could have said the exact same thing but in a tone letting everyone know he was joking, but attacking Mark over this is ugly and unfair.
If he passes these new Gang powers and abuses them in a stupid symbolic show of force and then extends those powers to protesters, blood mercenary the hell out of him, but to date he has taken a far more considered position on policing and I thought he was being very honest about not meeting the recruitment targets to ensure poor Police Officers don’t pass the test.
Ginny sounded like she wanted to start a fight for the sake of starting a fight and she’s come across very poorly here.
Ginny isn’t a blogger, she’s a bloody MP. She can’t throw this kind of shit without it getting stuck to her as well.
There are plenty of reasons to criticise Mark Mitchell, this was like the dumbest one.
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Another Maureen Pugh?
Oscar “ Another Maureen Pugh ?” Probably not, but certainly not in the same impressive category as tax specialist lawyer Barbara Edmonds. I don’t particularly like some of Ginny’s seeming associates or mentors, but she does have the right to ask whatever questions. Having said that, a John Key-type scattergun approach to politics achieves zilch without evidence or follow-up.
Oscar “ Another Maureen Pugh ?” Probably not, but certainly not in the same impressive category as tax specialist lawyer Barbara Edmonds. I don’t particularly like some of Ginny’s seeming associates or mentors, but she does have the right to ask whatever questions. Having said that, a John Key-type scattergun approach to politics achieves zilch without evidence or follow-up. It’s playing to the gallery.
Bullshit Martyn.
Again you are knocking the left while propping up the right.
Mitchell was a mercenary and mercenaries are paid to kill. No matter what side you are on if you kill for money you are not very nice.
But like Luxons mergers and acquisitions we will never know how many deaths can be sheeted back to Mitchell directly or indirectly.
Hipkins shows his weakness again by saying she went to far. That’s bullshit too.
If what she said was false I would expect Mitchell to be lawyering up right now.
In the US, various state and local governments are criminalising all sorts of things, from giving a drink of water to someone in a queue waiting to vote to abortion – and birth control is on their list as well. I still feel that New Zealand is not quite ready for Draconian laws, although if they’re only used on people the middle class despise it’ll probably be okay. They wake up when anything affects them personally. And of course there is a small but vocal group that will be cheering them on when gang members are put up against the post and shot or whatever. You might describe my faith as touching – but then I never thought Donald Trump would be elected to the presidency of the US either.
To be fair to Ginny it was on a shit stains radio station.
Even Hosking was shocked
Bullshit, Hosking is all show, no trousers. In fact he’s so bad his own wife won’t be associated with his name.
Mercenaries are indeed paid to kill, or at least paid to be prepared to kill if demanded and/or facilitate others into doing it.
It’s a very dirty business, you can’t expect to be associated with it or participate in it and then to leave without acquiring some degree of permanent stench.
It’s good money.
I think the Ginny for whatever reason was so fed up with his repetitive questions in parliament, the same question day after day designed to bully and humiliate. The thing is the right get all upset at any slight against them. Never mind the mass harm they are doing to our country. Ginny says it like it is and all hell breaks loose. You give it you got to take it not run home to your mother. Good on Ginny, any publicity is better than nothing and reading twitter etc. there are many supportive of her stance and she didn’t need to apologize to a Mitchell the mercenary
A little pondering about tour present situation. I’m reading some regency historical fiction about 1800s and am fascinated about the use of mercenaries in wars there. Fighting against Napoleon in the latest book, the Prussians didn’t come, the Dutch King wasn’t doing what was wanted, the Flemish guys were strong fighters etc All this stopping wars and building advanced armaments has taken the fun out of it along with the fancy uniforms with silver lace at the cuffs and bold colours.
I think we have to change our ways to fit the actual tendencies and interests of the genders and particular classes. of our type of complex animal; complex because we are so inherently self-deluding. We aren’t able to act as intelligently and rationally as we think. Our sects of value, religions etc are apparently riddled with sexual misdemeanours as they attempt to be pure and cerebral and so on. If we face what we are and try to control excesses and set up role models of acceptable behaviour and honesty we would spend less time being disgusted with each other. Hollowing out finance as a standard for measuring distinction would be a good move for one.
Mitchell was a sell sword in a dirty war, he deserves no quarter. The arms industry and associated corporations made trillions on the back of unjustified misery. Money that should have been spent on the US and other nations taxpayers that funded the shit show.
Mitchell hounded Andersen in Parliament and he deserves a good slap down. Mitchell scammed and cheated his way into selection originally if you read Nicky Hager’s “Dirty Politics”. He talks tough like a lot of politicians but I’d like to see him try and take patches off gang members–that will be a fight (possibly a war) they won’t win.
Tiger Mountain. Thanks for citing Mitchell’s featuring in Hager’s “ Dirty Politics”. He was one of Lusk’s lads wasn’t he ? Tracy Watkin’s sycophantic ode to Mitchell way back, had him portrayed as a kind kind kind rescuer of lost dogs in Iraq, re-uniting them with sad owners, with damned all about that bleeding wreckage of a country – referenced him as in the mold or mould of John Key, which is enough to send sane people running to the hills.
Tiger Mountain. But wait, isn’t Mitchell the clever pollie who wanted gang members to put make-up on when they wake-up in the morning ? Max Factor? Even if this inane suggestion was feasible, it would render nasty buggers with intimidating tats even more dangerous to the unwary unable to see who’s coming.
If you think private (non-military) security in conflict zones is unethical your thinking is at odds with every rational left-wing ethical thinker in the humanitarian and disaster response area.
Do you think the Red Cross or the Salvation Army or World Vision or Amnesty International want their people in these areas to be guarded and escorted by uniformed military personnel? Of course not!
Aid needs to be delivered to people as far removed from uniformed military people as much as possible to avoid it being conflated with military activity so the people receiving it and those delivering it are safe.
Inaccurately painting someone as an unethical killer and hounding them about their most traumatic personal experiences in conflict so publicly is a horrible and potentially PTSD-triggering thing to do, it also demonstrates the most egregious level of ignorance and cruelty from someone who claims to know something about uniformed service.
What are you smoking, mate? When Mark Mitchell was overseeing the firm that trucked weapons and other supplies to the American occupational forces in Iraq, to enable them to maximize the time that they spent on doing war crimes as opposed to driving trucks and lifting boxes, they were not ‘guarding aid’. They were supplying terrorists who slaughtered kids for fun. They weren’t non-‘uniformed’. They were wearing military uniforms but with beards and more expensive sunglasses.
Do you have any evidence for any of those claims?
He hasn’t confirmed or denied he killed people . You go to war you kill people. Mercenary’s kill people for money. He made a lot of money. He’s gone very quiet so indeed he may have something to hide. Killing Sadam Hussein was one the worst thing the west has done. Isis is the result.
Mitchell was never ‘ethical’.
He didn’t work for the UN, as he claims.
He directly worked supplying the American occupation in Iraq, for six years. The branch of ‘Agility Logistics’ that he was involved in founding, ‘Threat Management Group’, was issued contracts for more than $180 million USD by the US in 2008 alone.
The most ‘ethical’ spin you can put on that is that he was integral in supplying the Americans who were illegally in Iraq with supplies to continue their illegal operations and war crimes. But ‘Threat Management Group’ wasn’t just trucking in supplies to help murder Iraqi women and children, they were also defending those trucks against the heroes of the Iraqi resistance who were trying to make sure the filthy Yanks weren’t able to get those supplies so they had to leave and stop destroying Iraq. Mitchell is a monster. He supported the death and immiseration of tens of millions of Iraqi people.
Not a Mitchell fan, he’s just a cop who’s now an MP in charge of cops.
Labour is barking at parked cars desperately trying to be relevant, and Andersen just happens to be not very clever.
That’s how Mark Mitchell got rich, by killing people as a mercenary. How he got Minister of Police is beyond me, or any job up there.
I do not think he persuaded anyone to wear a suicide vest and kill anyone in the area.
Trevor. Wear a suicide vest ? False equivalence. Nobody ever said that he did. Nobody said WCC was alphabet people intolerant either, but out they danced with their rainbow paint to waste time and money answering non-existent voices heard only in their red herring’d heads.
“I do not think, he persuaded anyone to wear a suicide vest and kill anyone in the area.”
You needed a comma after think, there all fixed now.
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