The evil Kim Dotcom.... Not really

As far as I can tell Kim Dotcom has broken no New Zealand laws, yet on the 20 January this year the New Zealand Police arrested him at the request of the FBI

" On January 5, 2012,^[41] indictments were filed in the United States against Dotcom on criminal copyright infringement charges along with Július Benčko and 5 other associates. On January 20, 2012, Kim Dotcom, Finn Batato, Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk were arrested inCoatesville, Auckland, New Zealand, by New Zealand Police, following an armed raid on his house. Authorities were cooperating with the United States' FBI and Justice Department...


" According to Dotcom's defence, the police operation against Megaupload was unnecessarily grandiose: "... armed officers arrived in helicopters and dropped into the Dotcom mansion courtyard.


"According to head of security, Wayne Tempero "... the force was incredible ... Had they simply asked us we would have opened the door to any room they wanted to enter." He said Mr. Dotcom seemed shocked by the police action. "I remember him saying "copyright infringement" and shook his head, like he's going "what the hell?". We weren't building bombs in the cellar, we didn't have a meth lab bigger than the South Island here. This was a normal family house


What the fuck is going on here? The raid was on TV it was a gross over reaction by the NZ police and armed offenders squad. Now Mr Dotcom was living in anything but a normal family house he was living in a mansion but all of this is very interesting in a gossip type way as is his estimated 50 million dollars but it is totally irrelevant to the central question  of when did  New Zealand law enforcement agencies start taking  orders from the FBI?

The usually rational centre right Kiwiblog has this to say today

" Kim Dotcom needs $220,000 a month to survive ...I knew the cost of living was going up, but I suspect Mr Dotcom wants that sum of money available to him for other purposes – maybe travel."


Not to be outdone Keeping Stock on the same issue.

" Surprisingly, we don't have a lot of sympathy for the Dotcoms' plight. The figures that they have presented to the Court today are absurd, and will be abhorrent to many. They are asking for more than four times as much PER MONTH as the average New Zealander earns annually.

If Kim Dotcom thinks that this is a way to sway public opinion in his favour, we'd suggest that he has been poorly advised.

And if Kim Dotcom hasn't been doing anything illegal, why does he need to spend $6000 per week on bodyguards? Hmmmm...."

These are blogs that purport to support freedom and oppose unnecessary government intervention in the lives of New Zealanders. Mr Dotcom is German but a NZ resident and entitled to the protection of NZ law. That we are prepared to give up sovereignty to the FBI scares the crap out of me.

This man has not broken NZ law. The agencies of the NZ government should not be under the control of the American entertainment industry unlike the FBI appears to be.

If there is a case to answer then it is civil not criminal under NZ law and Hollywood and there lapdogs the FBI can file a civil case in our courts. I hope Mr Dotcom wins. I hope the NZ Police are forced to pay compensation out of their operational budget. I hope they are forced to beg our parliament for additional funding to cover for the compensation, because maybe they will learn to say no.

New Zealand sovereignty is not up for sale presumably for some mythical free trade agreement that America will never sign or if they do put so many get out of honouring it clauses in it it will be worth less than the paper it is written on.  

The rise of Robertson from the fall of Labour

Danyl at the Dim-Post asks a good question

"What does it say that Carmel Sepuloni came within ~300 votes of defeating Paula Bennett, one of the government’s highest profile Ministers, but wasn’t rated highly enough to get back in on the list because it was more important to get Darien Fenton and Rajen Prasad back into Parliament?"

I can only agree interestingly, my comments at Red Alert are in moderation even though Clare Curran knows I am centre left. That is fear, they are scared that I will say extending Working for Families is an idiotic policy, that taking the GST off  Fruit and vegetables is pointless window dressing. Trevor Mallard makes the following statement.

"We have lost some incredibly talented MPs. Some will be back. And our caucus has some brilliant new additions."

Who Trevor ? Andrew Little? the man who chose to protect the incompetent useless dead wood in your caucus at the expense of real talent. Little failed to win his seat and I don't see him as a potential Labour Leader until he wins one.

The talented Clare Curren had a bloody awful result in Dunedin South. Ele Ludmann at Homepaddock blogs.

 "In Dunedin South National did even better, with a party vote of 13,190 compared with Labour’s 11,429. National’s candidate Joanne Hayes with 11,892 votes nearly halved Labour MP Clare Curran’s majority.
Three years ago when she was a new candidate Curran gained 6,449 votes and had a majority of 6,449, this time she dropped to 15,759 and a majority of 3,867 in what is one of the reddest electorates in the country."

That is a bloody awful result Dunedin South is an electorate I lived in for many years. Hell you could pin a red  rosette on John Minto and he would struggle to lose it. For fucks sake Dunedin voted National  if you look at party vote. I now at least know why Phil Goff spent so much time in Dunedin it mystified me during the campaign but what the hell is happening on the ground down there is beyond me, Goff should have had Dunedin in the bank months ago instead it would appear Woodhouse and Hayes quietly deposited it into John Keys account. A while back I blogged about Curren and Grant Robertson and predicted they would go along way possibly even the top. Curren needs to do a lot better to make that happen.

Phil Goff is finished and in many ways that saddens me, he is my MP and best one I have ever had. A few years a refugee my sister was working with was billed for what I can only describe as a huge cock up by the district health board  they ignored my sister so I rang Goff's office and the situation was resolved in 24 hours. If he wants to stay on as MP for Mt. Roskill he has my electorate vote for life. It occurs to me though that Stuart Nash would be a good fit for the electorate should Goff stand down.

Back to Grant Robertson. David Farrar blogged  on Friday at Kiwiblog  about Mike Smith endorsing Robertson for the Labour leadership.


"Mike Smith is the former General Secretary of the Labour Party. He has just blogged:

Grant Robertson – good electorate MP, got a strategic brain, good communicator. It’s time for a new generation leading Labour in my view.

That is significant for such a senior former official to say Goff should go on the eve of the election.
I think Grant will be Labour Leader and Prime Minister one day. If I was Grant though I would not stand next Tuesday, but instead wait until after the 2014 election."

I disagree I think Grant's time is now, PM John Key's three year honeymoon with the media is over, ACT is dead and Dunn will lose next time round if asset sales go ahead. Labour have a very good chance at forming the next government Keeping Stock is hearing stuff I am not.

"The rumours are circulating this morning of two Camp Davids; David Cunliffe, with Liane Dalziel as deputy, and David Parker, with Robertson as his right-hand man. The third David, David Shearer has been quiet so far, but don't forget that it was Phil Goff who shoe-horned Shearer into the vacant Mt Albert seat in 2009, and Shearer represents a much more centrist group in the Labour caucus."

My thinking would be Robertson with Parker as deputy, incidental I have no doubt Robertson would have to waste time in Dunedin shoring up support he is product of Dunedin.

I took a gamble this election by giving my party vote to Peter's it very nearly came off, the best result the left could hope for was a minority John Key government and no asset sales. We came very close to getting that but John Banks and Peter Dunn winning prevented it happening.

MV Rena: Well that's nice

I see the owner of  the MV Rena has apologised to Tauranga

" Costamare Shipping Company SA managing director Diamantis Manos today issued an apology via video in which he apologised and vowed to co-operate with the investigation.

"To the people of Tauranga, we want to say that we are deeply sorry for the situation that has arisen and the threat you are now facing from fuel oil from the vessel washing up on the beaches in your beautiful part of the world,'' he said.

"It is our ship that went aground and we apologise without hesitation for what has happened.''

The company had sent experts from around the world to help deal with the situation and they were working closely with Maritime New Zealand and other agencies, as well as salvers, to try to stabilise the ship and mitigate its effects. "

That is the right thing for him to and I see that the company will co-operate with the TAIC

" It would co-operate with the Transport Accident Investigation Commission's investigation and had invited it to visit its offices so it could see the safety management system employed on the Rena. "

I know a little about these investigations and I can assure you a lot of very clever seafares will be talking amongst each other preparing some very interesting questions.

I see over at Kiwiblog Maritime New Zealand is getting a lot of flack the truth is most of this is not fair  what should be getting flack is the process in my opinion. When an incident like this happens the first thing that needs to happen is a salver is appointed this happened fairly fast and the salver is responsible to trhe owners not the New Zealand government by declaring MV Rena   and I haven't got my terminology right but effectively a dangerous ship MNZ have the ability to order the salver to do something  or veto an action they propose, that was actually smart. In my opinion the salver should despite being employed and payed by the owners should be responsible to the government.

The volunteering seems to be a total cock up and as far as I know this is being managed by MNZ I think this is wrong I would have left it to an other agency probably the regional council, MNZ have enough to do  dealing with the oil, ship and containers at sea. Ringing back people who have left their contact details on a 0800 number is a distraction, as can be seen on tonight's TVNZ News with a woman saying she hasn't heard back from them  despite  calling last Friday.

" Maritime New Zealand salvage manager Bruce Anderson confirmed this afternoon that salvage teams had been on the craft for four hours today, and had just arranged an extra hour after concluding it was safe to operate on.

Mr Anderson said the vessel was holding together and water was pushing it further onto the reef, with the entire front section now flooded.

While they have managed to board the ship, transport minister Steven Joyce said it may be too dangerous to work inside the hull of the craft.

"I have to take my hat off to these guys. They're working in a challenging, and can I say dangerous, environment."

Now this actually good news I haven't had a chance to discuss it yet but there is a real possibility that when the ship breaks up they will be able to float the stern I gather and get it to land that would make the oil extraction easy and the hull could be  cleaned and then sunk creating a new reef. The bulkheads will be the key to this and the salvage team will be able to determine there condition. I could of course be wrong and it might turn on its tits and sink.

OK I have had a look at the marine forecasts and things look a lot better for the Plenty  area for the next few days the tugs that are holding the stern on the reef might want to think about towing it ashore, the salvage team might want to be making sure the stern will float and the  Navy might want to think about the explosives they need to complete what the sea has started.

The Greens I note have attacked the idea of off shore oil drilling and I also note Phil Goff has said it is  a bad idea. I disagree but we need to have proper risk assessment and then meet that with assets. The truth is that MNZ as I pointed out in this blog when I had a crack at No Right Turn did not expect a 46 000 tonne container ship to drive its self  onto a charted reef at 17  knots ( 32  Kph ).

I guess you could argue that we need to put warning lights on reefs, Astrolabe will currently be returning a radar  return that makes it unnecessary.

" There is enough for everyone "

Just been having a chat with a friend of mine. She is a woman who has very few options by comparison  to me  and in fact probably all the readers  here. This image is used with her permission.

  

You all know what she does. She is 51 although you wouldn't guess that from this photo. I have blogged before on the life of cam girls  in the third world, the exploitation of hundreds of thousand's of  women to satisfy largely white male western appetites.

It was interesting to read on Kiwi blog this.  Following the link on Kiwi blog I found this  I was sort of bloody amazed by the lack of thought in the article. have a look at this

 It tells  a story but not an accurate story.

" A one dollar bag of rice in the U.S. is not the same as a one dollar bag of rice in Indonesia. For an American, who, on average, devotes about seven percent of his or her spending to food, it won’t matter that much if the price of rice doubles to two dollars. An American can likely take the money that would have gone to a “non-essential” item and put it towards food instead. But for an Indonesian, who devotes 43 percent of his/her spending to food, it could mean less to eat."


I agree with this but it assumes that a doubling in food prices in the developed world won't have economic consequences for the poor in the developed world . It will. Look at the UK last week. Look at Somali pirates they used to be fishermen but then  Europe  stole their fish.

There is a way out of this without revolution  it is called taxation, redistribution of wealth on a global scale and one the super rich can't bloody avoid.

The other options well we tried them twice last century. They did seem to solve the problems short term but I don't think a world war is a great solution.