What happens when a hillbilly visits A/NZ?

Suggestion: go to an electronics store and buy a small proper one.

This was on the January garden trail. The fish-looking thing is a kite.

Far Left representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a.k.a. AOC, is 34 at present; he likes them much younger. He’s 81.

This process (decision making by the Waitangi Tribunal) has no checks and balances, no accountability to anyone, and there is no recourse to appeal. –Piers Seed

By Roger Childs

Showing up the Tribunal for what it is

In his second history book, Christchurch writer Piers Seed provides a fascinating and highly perceptive analysis of what’s wrong with the Waitangi Tribunal process. Entitled Taonga and Contra Proferentem, the author examines how the crucial Maori word taonga has evolved from meaning “property” and all that entails, in the early 19^th century. Today in making judgements on claimants’ cases, the Tribunal allows taonga to mean “anything you care to name” in the guise of the wonderfully vague word “treasure”, 

Piers Seed looks at whether taonga and contra preferentem (a legal term that can mean in ambiguous contract or treaty situations, decisions should favour the party which is on the receiving end) have been used correctly and ethically. He outlines a strong case to support the proposition that many “important Tribunal decisions (have) been based on a very wobbly house of cards.”

A different kettle of fish

In his first book Seed tackled the controversial claims that women, children and older men of the south Waikato town of Rangiaowhia were slaughtered in February 1864. Using all the known eye-witness accounts, both Maori and non-Maori, he emphatically dispels the myth of atrocities being committed by General Cameron’s forces. 

The book clearly demonstrated his skills in analysis and using a comprehensive range of evidence, however in Taonga and Contra Proferentem his focus is not on specific historical events, but on the process by which the Waitangi Tribunal has been making decisions resulting in hundreds of millions of tax-payers dollars being paid out to Maori groups.

By redefining the word taonga to mean “treasure” the Tribunal opened the flood gates to allow claimants to apply the word to “mauri (life force), intellectual property, navigational aids, radio spectrums, languages, ideas, thoughts, rivers or mountains, or indeed anything abstract or spiritual.” 

By favouring the Maori Treaty (Te Tiriti o Waitangi) over the English language version under the legal principle of contra proferentem, the Tribunal effectively denies the Crown the right to challenge its decisions. It may not be a court of law, but often acts like one.

Taonga – a word with many meanings

The author looks in considerable detail at how the word has been translated and interpreted from 1820 to the present day. In a chapter entitled “A chronological history of taonga” Seed starts with Thomas Kendall’s Grammar and vocabulary of the language of New Zealand and examines various dictionaries and collections of Te Reo words through to the online Ngata Dictionary of 2021. 

He does point out that in various publications, notably the Maori version of The Bible, “treasure” is mentioned as a meaning for taonga, but nothing like the “anything highly prized” definition the Waitangi Tribunal has applied. In looking at New Zealand’s historical records he has this to say “ … trawling through this vast documentation we find no records of taonga, as envisaged by the Tribunal, from the time of Captain Cook to the 1980s.”  

He does not examine the Articles of the two Treaties, but does observe that overall the English-language version is a short and “exceptionally clear document pitched at the best possible sweet spot for that place, that time and to that audience”.

 However, the purpose of his book is to show how taonga has become “an underpinning concept of the Maori world” and how the Tribunal has favoured Te Tiriti over the English version in its judgements, according to the principle of contra proferentem.

In opening Pandora’s Box on meanings of taonga anything is possible, and Seed observes that consequently many Tribunal decisions “are … based on fantasy”.

Seed emphasizes that the Tribunal is not a Court of Law but in fact is akin to a Royal Commission. This compares with the United States and Canada where issues related to treaties with indigenous people are decided in the courts and contra preferentum is often applied to ensure that both side are given a fair go. 

Highly recommended

The failings of the hugely influential Waitangi Tribunal is a topic mainstream media will not touch with a rowing oar, fearing at the very least of being called “racist”. Seed emphasizes that his approach to this subject, which affects all taxpayers, is not based on rhetoric but is methodically centred on fact and logic. The book is fluently written, laced with plenty of appropriate analogies and occasional touches of humour, and backed up with supporting footnotes and appendices. 

Taonga and Contra Proferentem fills a huge gap in writing on the Treaty decision-making  process, and provides comprehensive insights into an organization that the government first needs to rein in and then disband. The Waitangi Tribunal has transmogrified into a self—sustaining monolith and its staff probably feel that they have jobs for life. 

(You can purchase Taonga and Contra Proferentem Thoughts on the Waitangi Tribunal Process by emailing info@piersseed.co.nz  and is listed on amazon.com.au. The price is $35 plus postage.)

Who was Portuguese Prime Minister when Portugal, along with the rest of the NATO mob, was bombing Belgrade? You got it.

António Guterres, according to what I have read somewhere, has formally and publicly protested the fact that the people of the newly incorporated regions of Russia participate in the latter’s presidential elections. The reason, he claimed, was that it had been an illegal incorporation, based on an also illegal invasion. Russia would thus have in this case the might, Guterres argued, but she would not have on her side the right.

Does this sit well with a UN Secretary-General? It certainly does, the unaware reader will likely say. That’s precisely what the UN exists for: to show everyone that, beyond might, irreducible to it, there is always (and there will be) the right.

The problem with this – formally impeccable – argument resides, however, elsewhere.

Do you remember Kosovo? It was occupied by NATO in 1999, after this alliance bombed the then Yugoslavia, on various pretexts that later were revealed to be false, forcing it (without a UN mandate, by sheer military might) to withdraw from that territory. Yugoslavia held out for almost three months of relentless bombardment, but eventually withdrew, albeit grudgingly and only against written assurances that Kosovo would remain Yugoslav territory, only provisionally occupied: “we didn’t give away Kosovo, we don’t give away Kosovo”, Slobodan Milosevic then declared publicly.

Kosovo was part of a Yugoslav republic, Serbia, and remained so even when this and the other remaining Yugoslav republic, Montenegro, later legally ‘divorced’, thus ending the very existence of the ‘once upon a time’ Country of the South Slavs.

Serbia does not recognize the right to secession of her provinces, and so she did not recognize the secession of Kosovo when this territory subsequently (in 2008, still under NATO occupation and without holding a referendum with that purpose) proclaimed its independence. She complained about this to the International Court of Justice, but the ICJ did not grant the Serbian complaint, arguing that, while it was true that on the latter’s side was the UN’s principle of protection of the integrity of states’ borders, on the side of Kosovar independence was the also UN’s principle of the defense of peoples right to self-determination.

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As has been said several times, one of the first casualties in war is truth and deciphering and deciding what is true and what’s not from a distance is hard. One source that must always be treated with extreme skepticism is Biden’s White House, which lies almost as much as the Jacinda regime in NZ did. But the mainstream media always believes them.

Al Jazeera’s prime raison d’etre has always been to support Palestinian causes, and more specifically that of the extremist Muslim Brotherhood which is banned in multiple Arab states including Egypt and Jordan. It has been shown to have a willingness to broadcast whatever reports it receives without any concern for veracity. Having said that, it has established a solid journalist presence in Gaza and the Westbank and the video can largely be accepted as real, even if it omits important facts.

It’s a different situation with Ukraine as there are commentators with reliable sources in intelligence on both the NATO and Russian sides and we’ve posted several of their commentaries.

from Mountainside FM via the BFD

After more than 24 hours of letting the story run freely, Qatari mouthpiece Al Jazeera deleted the page featuring their former story, which accused Israeli soldiers of allegedly perpetrating rape against women during the IDF’s latest excursion against Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists who barricaded themselves inside the former hospital-cum-terror headquarters at Shifa Hospital.