Not again ? MV Rena take II

MSC MV Carole suffers same fate as MSC MV Rena ? 

The 294 meter long, 60639 dwt container vessel MSC Carole went aground on a reef near Jakarta, Indonesia (-6° 1′ 35.904″, 106° 53′ 12.4794″).  The MSC Carole was en route to Jakarta fromFremantle when it struck the reef near the entrance to the harbor.  The vessel was proceeding at 7.5 knots and is firmly stuck on the reef.  Initial attempts to refloat the vessel failed.   Reports state there is no sign of any fuel or pollution being released.  The reason why the MSC Carole struck the reef has not yet been reported.  The MSC Carole is the second largest container vessel currently operating in the world.

This is starting to look like  a company culture is developing.

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.  

Sunday " Lunch "

Significant Other and I decided that having a leg of lamb for Sunday lunch was a good idea on Friday. She didn't have a roasting dish but I have several and of course being a typical Kiwi bloke they are all the usual family hand me down variety with the outside being discolored from years of use. I pulled it out of my bag on Saturday and realised on the spot that it was unacceptable. Before she could call her niece to remedy the situation I took immediate action and put 40 minutes of elbow grease into cleaning the old dish and got it to an acceptable standard. I also pulled out the leg of lamb and pointed out that their was a lot of meat on it and with vegetables we could actually feed us her nephew and niece as well as R and her three kids.

I had a $30 one card reward voucher to spend at Countdown so we popped down to get some veges and other staples. Significant Other was appalled at the the Countdown prices, given that the whole shop came to $37 and we had a 10kg bag of rice, veges, milk and other stuff I can't recall for a cash outlay of $7.00 I wasn't to concerned but I am fairly sure she will not be making the move from Pac & Save any time soon.

Sunday involved a trip to the baker to get some croissants for breakfast  I managed to secure the last 4 which meant Significant Other, Niece and me had a pleasant breakfast  followed by church, now having not looked inside a church since my grandmothers funeral well over 20 years ago I was unsure what to expect. It soon became apparent that this was no ordinary service it was in fact the pastors final performance and tributes rolled in throughout the service, including an memorable analogy that involved "Saving Private Ryan " made even more remarkable because the orders came direct from President Lincoln in the White House. I have no idea if " Saving Private Ryan " was based on fact and this was an attempt to fictionalise it or perhaps Roosevelt was the modern incarnation of Lincoln, given it was a christian event I decided speculation on Dalai Lama style reincarnation being a newly discovered exciting feature of the American Presidency might not go down well.

This is of course the point at which the wheels started to fall off. Sunday Lunch was being provided by the church to farewell their pastor a man who ran a congregation that clearly had no concept of classical theology but a man whose pastoral care I have come to admire greatly, that alone convinced me I could probably get along with him and I did, ironically on his last day in the ministry.

Clearly when you are putting a leg of lamb in the oven at 2.30 pm you are no longer cooking " lunch", R's daughter S about 12 was astonished that I was cooking my explanation that we were cooking a Kiwi meal and I was the only person who could cook Kiwi meal was dismissed as she was learning to cook at school however I gather the modern equivalent of home economics hasn't reached legs of lamb yet as she didn't want to prepare it for me when I gave it to her.

For all that the kids were really patient from left J2, J1 and S.

J2 the youngest amusing us trying on Significant Others nephews shoes.

No pressure well at least not for R. " Lunch " was a success although it started at about 4.00 and took till about 5.30.

Leftovers, actually given the dish was overflowing with vegetables and I carved the lamb onto a separate platter I was not unhappy with uptake particularly given we gave a rice option, the kids loved drowning the rice and lamb in gravy but still ate the veges. The only incongruent note was when a friend of Significant Others nephew  told me he enjoyed the beef and he hadn't had it cooked this way before.

Lots off dirty dishes. You can see the roasting dish bottom right. I bet it has been scrubbed spotless by now. I am not allowed to do the dishes if Significant Others nephew is at home and I felt a bit sorry for him. He had been off for a weekend camp organised by the refugee service and arrived back in time for " lunch " and of course the dishes.

 I make a lot of dishes when I cook and yes I was laughing when I took this but I did feel a little bit guilty about the work I had created for him.

Significant Other is keen to do another lamb roast, she watched everything I did. I doubt I will even be allowed in the kitchen when it happens and I suspect that it will be a fusion dish incorporating some African cuisine ideas.

Photo. On my way home

I was catching the Half Moon Bay ferry back to the city tonight and unfortunately didn't spot this until I was walking down the jetty to board so only had time for this photo.

I guess it is better to discover the runabout isn't seaworthy when launching rather than out in the harbour.

" The worst day fishing is better than the best day working "

Maybe not.

Republican Insanity Explained

I was actually looking for a different republican insanity story, trust me there is no shortage, when I stumbled over this headline

Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult

It was "Cult" that attracted my attention.

"But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP."
Lets face it you don't get much more insane than the modern GOP.

"...it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. To be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots, like Robert K. Dornan or William E. Dannemeyer. But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy."

As you can see the article is a bit dated but I can fully understand the authors reaction.

"It was this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent that impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on Capitol Hill. A couple of months ago, I retired; but I could see as early as last November that the Republican Party would use the debt limit vote, an otherwise routine legislative procedure that has been used 87 times since the end of World War II, in order to concoct an entirely artificial fiscal crisis. Then, they would use that fiscal crisis to get what they wanted, by literally holding the US and global economies as hostages."

The article lists many examples of this type of behaviour.

"Far from being a rarity, virtually every bill, every nominee for Senate confirmation and every routine procedural motion is now subject to a Republican filibuster. Under the circumstances, it is no wonder that Washington is gridlocked: legislating has now become war minus the shooting, something one could have observed 80 years ago in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic. As Hannah Arendt observed, a disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself."

And that is a real risk, the American right seems to have lost the plot.

" John P. Judis sums up the modern GOP this way:

"Over the last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. It is the party of Watergate and Iran-Contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995 and the impeachment trial of 1999. If there is an earlier American precedent for today's Republican Party, it is the antebellum Southern Democrats of John Calhoun who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they objected to and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery."

Remember Rick Perry threatening to take Texas out of the Union in May last year ? That he legally couldn't do that seemed of little consequence to him.

" Undermining Americans' belief in their own institutions of self-government remains a prime GOP electoral strategy. But if this technique falls short of producing Karl Rove's dream of 30 years of unchallengeable one-party rule (as all such techniques always fall short of achieving the angry and embittered true believer's New Jerusalem), there are other even less savory techniques upon which to fall back. Ever since Republicans captured the majority in a number of state legislatures last November, they have systematically attempted to make it more difficult to vote: by onerous voter ID requirements (in Wisconsin, Republicans have legislated photo IDs while simultaneously shutting Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) offices in Democratic constituencies while at the same time lengthening the hours of operation of DMV offices in GOP constituencies); by narrowing registration periods; and by residency requirements that may disenfranchise university students."


We thought Muldoon was bad and trust me he was but he was an infant compared to the modern Republican Party and National in NZ cleaned up the mess something the Republicans are incapable of it would appear in America.

" This legislative assault is moving in a diametrically opposed direction to 200 years of American history, when the arrow of progress pointed toward more political participation by more citizens. Republicans are among the most shrill in self-righteously lecturing other countries about the wonders of democracy; exporting democracy (albeit at the barrel of a gun) to the Middle East was a signature policy of the Bush administration. But domestically, they don't want those people voting.

You can probably guess who those people are. Above all, anyone not likely to vote Republican. As Sarah Palin would imply, the people who are not Real Americans. Racial minorities. Immigrants. Muslims. Gays. Intellectuals. Basically, anyone who doesn't look, think, or talk like the GOP base. This must account, at least to some degree, for their extraordinarily vitriolic hatred of President Obama. I have joked in the past that the main administration policy that Republicans object to is Obama's policy of being black.[2] Among the GOP base, there is constant harping about somebody else, some "other," who is deliberately, assiduously and with malice aforethought subverting the Good, the True and the Beautiful: Subversives. Commies. Socialists. Ragheads. Secular humanists. Blacks. Fags. Feminazis. The list may change with the political needs of the moment, but they always seem to need a scapegoat to hate and fear."

He He  ".. Obama's policy of being black."
What is interesting though is his analysis of the Democrats.

" While Democrats temporized, or even dismissed the fears of the white working class as racist or nativist, Republicans went to work. To be sure, the business wing of the Republican Party consists of the most energetic outsourcers, wage cutters and hirers of sub-minimum wage immigrant labor to be found anywhere on the globe. But the faux-populist wing of the party, knowing the mental compartmentalization that occurs in most low-information voters, played on the fears of that same white working class to focus their anger on scapegoats that do no damage to corporations' bottom lines: instead of raising the minimum wage, let's build a wall on the Southern border (then hire a defense contractor to incompetently manage it). Instead of predatory bankers, it's evil Muslims. Or evil gays. Or evil abortionists.

How do they manage to do this? Because Democrats ceded the field. Above all, they do not understand language. Their initiatives are posed in impenetrable policy-speak: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The what? - can anyone even remember it? No wonder the pejorative "Obamacare" won out. Contrast that with the Republicans' Patriot Act. You're a patriot, aren't you? Does anyone at the GED level have a clue what a Stimulus Bill is supposed to be? Why didn't the White House call it the Jobs Bill and keep pounding on that theme?"

While I am a fan of Obama I do think he could have been more forceful and less compromising with the lunatics that are the current GOP, I accept politics is at the end of the day the art of the possible and no more so than in the USA.

" It was not always thus. It would have been hard to find an uneducated farmer during the depression of the 1890s who did not have a very accurate idea about exactly which economic interests were shafting him. An unemployed worker in a breadline in 1932 would have felt little gratitude to the Rockefellers or the Mellons. But that is not the case in the present economic crisis. After a riot of unbridled greed such as the world has not seen since the conquistadors' looting expeditions and after an unprecedented broad and rapid transfer of wealth upward by Wall Street and its corporate satellites, where is the popular anger directed, at least as depicted in the media? At "Washington spending" - which has increased primarily to provide unemployment compensation, food stamps and Medicaid to those economically damaged by the previous decade's corporate saturnalia. Or the popular rage is harmlessly diverted against pseudo-issues: death panels, birtherism, gay marriage, abortion, and so on, none of which stands to dent the corporate bottom line in the slightest."


This is the part that mystifies me about the American people when the housing crisis hit we were bombarded with images of people in trailer parks flying the Stars and Stripes, hell in most countries they would be burning the flag and a hell of a lot more, just look at Greece.

Pandering to fundamentalism is a full-time vocation in the GOP. Beginning in the 1970s, religious cranks ceased simply to be a minor public nuisance in this country and grew into the major element of the Republican rank and file. Pat Robertson's strong showing in the 1988 Iowa Caucus signaled the gradual merger of politics and religion in the party. The results are all around us: if the American people poll more like Iranians or Nigerians than Europeans or Canadians on questions of evolution versus creationism, scriptural inerrancy, the existence of angels and demons, and so forth, that result is due to the rise of the religious right, its insertion into the public sphere by the Republican Party and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary or quaint beliefs. Also around us is a prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science; it is this group that defines "low-information voter" - or, perhaps, "misinformation voter."

Separation of church and state is something most western democracy's take fairly seriously.


"If Republicans have perfected a new form of politics that is successful electorally at the same time that it unleashes major policy disasters, it means twilight both for the democratic process and America's status as the world's leading power."


It is a sad but I think apt conclusion should the Republicans in this guise ever regain office and inevitably they will.

New Zealand's Slaves

In the September / October issue of Professional Skipper magazine a stark warning was issued about the practices of Foriegn Charter Vessels fishing in NZ territorial waters.

"This has been followed by a group of 32 Indonesian fishermen who quit their boat, the FV Oyang 75 in Lyttelton Harbour. They allegedly received inhumane treatment and are now faced with deportation.

The men left the ship, a Korean-licensed FCV chartered by the Christchurch company Southern Storm Fishing, claiming serous physical, sexual and psychological abuse from Korean officers and alleging the company had not paid them fully for their five months on board.

Southern Storm Fishing has publicly stated it has done nothing wrong and the crew had no reason to leave the boat. The mounting evidence would suggest otherwise."

Oyang 75

I would have thought the examples quoted in that article in conjunction with evidence gathered by The University of Auckland Business School might have improved things

"Their research revealed these foreign charter crews essentially operate in an institutional void, a No Man’s Land. One of the findings, just released, clearly demonstrates the evidence all points towards these people being trafficked persons by unscrupulous manning agents in what is nothing short of slave labour, and this has been going on for decades within the New Zealand seafood industry. Crew told them about being forced to sign false time sheets, of not being paid, brutal beatings, inhumane punishments (e.g. made to stand on deck for hours, without food or water in extreme weather conditions), relentless verbal abuse, degrading sexual assaults, rationing and locking up of food, denial of medical treatment, and how accident injuries were covered up. Others told them how they were often fed expired fish bait, drank rustic water, and bathed in salt water sometimes only once a week.

Now watch out for some New Zealand deepwater fishing industry representatives duck for cover. My guess is before the government’s ministerial enquiry is concluded, there will be some big, red faces about and heads must roll.'

It would seem not the Stuff website today reported on yet another case of this today  although  a search of stuff failed to turn it up tonight but it was the same as all the other reported stories on the behavior of the slavers that we allow to fish our waters but with one critical difference it linked to a Bloomberg Businessweek story about Yusril a slave, living the life of a slave for the benefit of NZ Inc.

" On March 25, 2011, an Indonesian fisherman named Yusril became a slave. Yusril (which is not his real name, to protect his identity) is 28, with brooding looks and a swagger that compensates for his slight frame. That afternoon he went to the East Jakarta offices of PT Indah Megah Sari (IMS), an agency that hires crews to work on foreign fishing vessels. He was offered a job on the Melilla 203, a South Korea-flagged ship that trawled in the waters off New Zealand. “Hurry up,” said the agent, holding a pen over a thick stack of contracts in the windowless conference room with water-stained walls. Waving at a pile of green Indonesian passports of other prospective fisherman, he added: “You really can’t waste time reading this. There are a lot of others waiting and the plane leaves tomorrow.”


Interesting to note the ministerial enquiry reports Friday. Anyway a bit more about NZ's slaves.

" The terms of the first contract, the “real” one, would later haunt him. In it, IMS spelled out terms with no rights. In addition to the agent’s commission, Yusril would surrender 30 percent of his salary, which IMS would hold unless the work was completed. He would be paid nothing for the first three months, and if the job was not completed to the fishing company’s satisfaction, Yusril would be sent home and charged over $1000 for the airfare. “Satisfactory” completion was left vague. The contract only stated that Yusril would have to work whatever hours the boat operators demanded.

The last line of the contract, in bold, warned that Yusril’s family would owe nearly $3,500 if he were to run away from the ship. The amount was greater than his net worth, and he had earlier submitted title to his land as collateral for that bond. Additionally, he had provided IMS with names and addresses of his family members. He was locked in.

What followed, according to Yusril and several shipmates who corroborated his story, was an eight-month ordeal aboard theMelilla 203, during which Indonesian fisherman were subjected to physical and sexual abuse at the hands of the ship’s operators. Their overlords told them not to complain or fight back, or they would be sent home, where the agents would take their due. Finally, Yusril and 23 others walked off in protest when the trawler docked in Lyttleton, New Zealand. The men have seen little if any of the money they say is owed them for their work. Such coerced labor is modern-day slavery, as the United Nations defines the crime.

The owners of the Melilla ships did not respond to requests for comment.

The experiences of the fishermen on the Melilla 203 were not unique. In a six-month investigation spanning three continents, Bloomberg Businessweek found cases of debt bondage on the Melilla 203 and at least nine other ships that have operated in New Zealand’s waters. As recently as November 2011, fish from the Melilla 203 and other suspect vessels was bought and processed by United Fisheries, New Zealand’s eighth-largest seafood company,...  ( cont. below )

Convinced yet ? We are to blame, this is our jurisdiction we NZ Inc. benefit from the sale of these fish. read the full article it will shock you.

Oyang 77 detained crew wages permit removed
Oyang 75 Gone permit revoked
Millina 201 & 203 Detained Probably wages
Oyang 70 Sunk
Insung 1 Sunk
Don Wang Sunk

I would like to think the detentions and permit removals were in reaction to our disgust at the behaviour of the FCV but this has been going on for years. Why do I suspect it has more to do with this.

"...which has sold the same species in the same period to distributors operating in the United States. (The U.S. imports 86 percent of its seafood.) Those distributors have sold those species to major U.S. companies. Those companies — which include some of the country’s biggest retailers and restaurants — have sold the seafood to American consumers."


..." U.S. retailers such as Safeway (SWY), America’s second largest grocery store chain, and Wal-Mart Stores (WMT). When alerted by Bloomberg Businessweek,  spokespeople for both retailers pledged swift investigations. “As with all of our suppliers, we have a process underway to obtain documentation that [High Liner is] complying with the laws regarding human trafficking and slavery, and that [they are] reviewing their supply chain to insure compliance,” said Brian Dowling, Safeway’s vice president of public affairs, on Feb. 17. “We have not yet received certification from High Liner. However, we are following up with them immediately and asking that they provide us with certification.”


Friday  will be interesting we might just have a chance to rescue our off shore fishing industry from an inevitable market boycot, if we will not take responsibility and police it properly I hope our markets collapse and the fish are left in the sea. Any industry that requires a slave workforce is unsustainable by definition.

Jeb Bush-it's my turn

I thought I was reading satire when I spotted this headline

" The Seeming Inevitability of Jeb Bush"

You have got to be joking America, but apparently not.

"With the GOP fundamentally divided, it seems increasingly unlikely that Romney, Santorum, Gingrich or Paul will have enough delegates going into the Convention on August 27th.

This would result in a brokered convention — and the possibility of a “white-knight” scenario.

But who could it be? "

 

Jeb Bush. Well I guess if your father and brother have both been President of the USA you might think it is only fair that you get a turn as well I mean what is democracy without fairness ?

" As Ezra Klein put it:

“A candidate who emerged during the [brokered] convention — or even slightly before it — would have two months and some change to hire a national campaign staff, raise money, get on the air, craft a message, study up on the issues, decide on an agenda, introduce himself to voters, build out a ground game, etc. They would have two months, in other words, to become competitive with Obama’s ferocious campaign organization.”

I suspect President Obama is starting to get concerned that his second term will be marred by the criticism that he shouldn't be President because the republicans couldn't agree who to run against him, after the Tea Party Birthers etc et all and now this nothing would surprise me.

"Bush is an intellectual leader with a successful record as Governor of Florida, and would attract support from traditional Republicans, fiscal conservatives, Democrats, Independents, and Hispanics alike."

Not sure I get the Hispanic reference in this context. To be fair his father had a brain unlike his brother. I really enjoy guys with the mental agility to understand simple concepts such as this.

"...and is the only Republican who is willing to accept that tax cuts need to be accompanied by revenue raising."


You could be forgiven for thinking that America is not a foreign country but a different bloody planet.

"Make no mistake, I am not saying that Jeb Bush is the inevitable nominee. In fact, he is not.

Indeed, the major problem with Jeb Bush has nothing to do with his record or his persona. It’s his last name."

Classic float an idea tactics and then point out that the only thing against the guy is his last name and lets not forget that those crazy Iranians are out there building  nukes. There is nothing like a Bush to deal with that problem.