Ok.
Ok.
Ok.
First of all, can I just say how extremely exciting it is for me that suddenly everyone has an opinion on private military contractors.
As someone who has written a lot about private military contractors since the Iraq War, I too share the deep concerns of how private contract militia and corporate mercenaries have negatively impacted the legalities of war especially when holding war atrocities to account.
I have also linked Mark’s previous $200m war firm up for scrutiny and I have blogged many times on the dirty politics of Lusk and Slater that helped secure the seat for Mark.
I’ve also been highly critical of his gang patch ban joke and have openly speculated how quickly these new dispersion laws will be used against protestors.
ALL! OF! THAT! SAID!
Ginny was still Helen White level tone deaf in her bullshit attack on Mark during the ZB interview!
Is Ginny Anderson Wellington’s answer to Helen White?
Sweet. Jesus. Christ.
A Wellington Helen White?
We’re going to need a bigger boat.
Let me count the ways in which Ginny was Helen White level tone deaf in her bullshit attack on Mark during that ZB interview:
1 – Timing: If Mark gets pushed into some bullshit symbolic gesture against a gang funeral after the law is passed and it causes the predictable bloodshed, THEN you say, ‘what kind of policing did we expect from a private contract military mercenary’.
2 – Context: As David Shearer points out…
A former Labour leader believes Labour MP Ginny Andersen’s claims about Mark Mitchell’s past as a private security contractor are “divorced from reality” and encouraged her to speak with the Police Minister to better understand the nature of the work.
David Shearer, a former Labour MP and Opposition leader, recently concluded heading the United Nations mission in South Sudan amid working for about 20 years co-ordinating aid in a host of countries including Rwanda, Somalia, Iraq, and Sierra Leone.
It was during that work he interacted with many companies akin to Mitchell’s and said Andersen’s recent claim that the current Police Minister was “paid to kill people” is not a fair description of the work those companies do.
“I think that’s over the top and pretty divorced from reality, it would be better if she had sat down and had a chat with Mark and understood exactly how it works.
…the work Mark was doing was mostly running security for AID groups, damning him for that without the fuck up first is just an attempt to smear him rather than denounce him. Ginny could have taken aim at his time in the Iraqi Tactical Support Unit, which deserves scrutiny but again, not sure of the relevance on bloody ZB.
3 – Audience: This is fucking ZB – Honky Crackersville: Population Mike Hosking. Playing the blood mercenary card to an audience as conservative as ZB makes Ginny look insane. I can not believe she can seriously return to that platform and argue the case for Labour after such an unhinged personal attack.
Look, I think Mark’s gang patch laws are dangerous, counter productive and could well generate a response we can’t predict, but attacking him for settled history about his past on a radio platform where she is supposed to be championing Labour and instead is producing personal attacks that are completely counter productive is bewildering stupid.
He’s about to pass enormous police powers and Ginny is calling him a blood mercenary?
Can we please focus?
People will only care he was a private military contractor after he’s forced the Police to raid a gang funeral and it escalates immediately to bloodshed.
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Het implication that he was a re-incarnation of Mad Mike Hoare was pretty funny and had she done just a little bit of research she would have realised daft. When David Shearer is defending Mitchell, well she has a problem.
I would be surprised if Mark Mitchell agreed to appear with her on newstalk ZB again. Some might say that isn’t the end of the world – but whether you like the audience on there or not, that half hour slot does give Labour access to a large audience.
Let’s not blame “Wellington” for Ginny. She grew up and got schooled on the east side of Christchurch, like Marama. There’s something in the water there, half it later liquified the good earth. South Christchurch has a different perspective altogether, rail yards, once workshops, stock yards, real workers, the best architecture in the Sthn Hemisphere with a splendid basilica, also now munted. Moving to the Hutt didn’t help Ginny either. Someone from Lower Hutt wrote criticising Nicky Hager for being concerned about foreigners in Afghanistan instead of addressing New Zealand’s road toll. Another even referred to glib John Key a statesman. They live on sausage rolls, like Hipkins carried to King Charles 111.The Hutt’s Chris Bishop’s dad drives around Wellington petrol stations searching for sausage rolls. Ginny’s just told us more about the type of person that she is. Wellington has enough on its rainbow, thanks all the same.
“Context” is a very generous heading for that section in the blog post. Also appropriate would be “Complete & Utter Ignorance”.
Martyn – Agreed …Ginny already has a bad rap, she needs to focus on her work – rather than smearing
Ginny has form. Remember just after the election the mother of two young people who helped her campaign claimed that she blamed their lack of work for her lose of the the Hutt electorate. I also saw her behave extremely rudely towards a 17 year school boy who was giving a presentation to a select committee.
She has more sense of her own entitlement than she has talent.
You are the one that is entitled. A priviliged white woman who thanks that all brown people are criminals so you get them lynched,
Anker. That poor boy. I thought it was Elizabeth Kerekere who dumped on him at select committee, but we know that she’s not that kindly disposed towards the cisgender male of the species, and being as she was a green member. I blame Bill English for a lot of this, and the teenage acne which allegedly taught him what it was like to be different from others engendering big hostility vers them.
Well maybe if he didnt bag trans people he wouldnt have a problem.
Even nasty people can be right sometimes, as with Ginny being critical of Mitchell, who claims that his providing food and bullets to the US ‘soldiers’ running Abu Ghraib prison was human rights activism.
Isn’t that a little like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, waiting for carnage meted out on da gangs before questioning Mitchell on his ops in war torn areas. Why couldn’t he just answer the question, albeit it was very aggressively asked. Failure of the moderator not to moderate that conversation. From what Shearer says she did not have a handle on what privateers do and so we all could have been educated on that if Mitchell had told her to back up the bus and explained more clearly what his companies role actually was.
I can completely understand why Ginny said that. As you so eloquently point out Martyn, you have been on about private contractors in war for ages. Truth is Mark Mitchell made himself a multi – millionaire by setting up a private security company to profit from war. Surely the issue is not what Ginny may have said, but how war has become a for profit business for people like Mark Mitchell? Next thing he will be privatising the police. Picking on Ginny is tone deaf imho.
Totally agree with Darien. Why should we suffer a belligerent Govt. Minister who profited from the non “rules based” ‘Attack on Iraq’? Billions were made by corporates from that war.
Why must we protect gangs again? I live around them, and those guys are better left the hell alone unless someone want to summarily and conclusively end them and you’ll only get one go at it. From what I see they would also like to be left alone. Not our world. They only fill a gap because the police are so useless and pollies and corporations are so corrupt and determined to poison everything they touch. Ginny whoever might be a political buthead but count me out of the crying for gangs movement. bad bad bad business. I’m aware how they started and they aren’t that now, and if you want to get all mystical about it you might say they are some long lost modern day equivalent of an ancient maori warrior cult, but seriously, they pose the greatest risk to the people that claim them as their own! The person who kicks the dog might make the hellhound, but you still have the hound to deal with. Count me out.
I’s called civil liberties, you know things like freedom of association and due process. We can already set non association orders as part of parole, bail or home dentention conditions. Next thing National will start assuming any Maori person is a gang member until they can prove otherwise.
I was pleased that this was ‘out’ and gets more publicity every day when she has to apologise.
The fact that his company was used for security for aid means a few jobs.
The fact is he is a revolting human being and I would like him to say how many people he has killed.
Or are you saying ‘our’ security companies are so much better than Black Hawk.
I doubt it very much.
‘Good’ companies don’t get paid $180 million by the US Department of ‘defence’.
fighting for a foreign power for money is treason top and bottom of it…if you wanna live in yankland after your passport is cancelled go for gold
Ginny is typical Labour – she’s never done anything outside of govt from uni all the way to now. Figures.
Helping the US military murder Iraqis is doing something, but doing bad things is bad, actually.