I don’t know this woman personally. All I know is that this is a frightening case for its insights into the judicial system.. Shamed for all the world to see in the media, this so called “benefit fraudster has “appealed her sentence in the High Court. Her original sin and conviction was for living with someone that MSD has deemed to be her partner.
Defence Chief Tim Keating and the Prime Minister exhibit the “colonial” reflex in completely ignoring the villagers as a source of information. Bill English looked at a few American videos of the battle and considered that to be enough to reject any inquiry. Keating didn’t consider evidence from the locals as relevant enough to mention.
We need Government that uses its powers to rebalance the extremes of free market capitalism, and we need politicians who aren’t frightened to say words like free market capitalism.
Two interesting polls out yesterday through Horizon.
The myths of neoliberalism are vital for it to continue as the dominant ideology, and the most important myth of neoliberalism is that with just some hard work from the individual you can be rich.
The Housing Crisis is still paying political dividends to National as the property speculating middle classes continue to back Bill English, but if Millennials and Gen Xers turn up angry at the polls, it could spell an end to National’s dream of a fourth term.
I think it tells us something about the failing landscape of journalism in NZ that the National Party can make hard right ideological decisions confronting the nation, and there isn’t the intellectual depth within our Press Gallery to even recognise and call it out.
It is insane that we can live in a country where there is a bloody investigation over how a drug dog was shot at Auckland airport but there won’t be an investigation into serious war crime allegations.
What are we to draw from his willingness to turn his face from the inhabitants of the Tirgiran Valley who have spoken so movingly of the terror, pain and loss they experienced at the hands of SAS troopers and US helicopter gunships acting in our name? Doesn’t he want to make certain that New Zealand does not have blood on its hands? And if there are SAS personnel out there with grave misgivings about the orders they were obliged to follow on the night of 22 August 2010 – doesn’t he want them to be heard? Or are a handful of weather-beaten Afghan peasants, and their brats, not worth the effort?
“In the past two weeks since Hit and Run was published there have been calls for an independent inquiry from New Zealanders from all sides on the political spectrum. It is disappointing and concerning that Bill English has refused.”