TREASON

Since the 1980s in New Zealand it has become compelling to apply the meaning of treason to those persons in positions of power who act in a manner disloyal and injurious to the general population. The two governments of David Lange probably constitute the most significant period of treason in New Zealand history. Conscientious and professional civil servants were labelled irrelevant underpaid monkeys and replaced with a multitude of overpaid monkeys whose brief was to act with force, unpredictability and irrationality. History and context were also irrelevant; everything was done as if newly hatched by flippant adolescents.

The lives of those who did not, could not or would not play the game were turned upside down so that money could move from the public sector into the pockets of select individuals. Muldoon called them the Greedies. The first excuse for the upheaval was the need to get rid of the national debt. It was all a lie. The debt is as bad as ever. Whenever a new government comes in Treasury delivers a paper outlining a severe situation requiring extreme right-wing
measures. Currently the Brash Commission nicely supplements this.

This impulse continued through the 1990s, was somewhat quiescent in the 2000s, resurfacing now and again showing impatience with community and democratic process. A lone outlaw from the rogernomic era comes shooting his way back into town (Auckland) and is allowed to force major changes by a sheriff who watches quietly from behind his curtained office window. That same sheriff, with the laid-back manner and smiling visage, is doing a lot of quiet dismantling in other areas of social service without a peep from the newspaper office next door.

There are now 20,000 young New Zealanders who cannot find work, many with university degrees. Despite this an overpaid peanut called Jonathan Coleman, MP for Northcote and Minister of Immigration, unveils the Silver Fern Visa which actively entices young people from overseas to come to New Zealand looking for work. This is an act of disloyalty and injury to our young people and their families. Otherwise known as treason. There can be no excuse for it other than a variation on the old story of monkeys and peanuts.

New Zealand has been spared the determined attention of the United States. Despite betraying us into accepting an undemocratic americanisation of our economic and social life, Lange did his thing - a very important thing - which resulted in our anti-nuclear stance and this may have helped deter any such attention. But like a death wish, politicians and media hanker after what they fondly term a 'free-trade deal' with the United States. It is always spoken of as a given positive. Nowhere in the mainstream have I heard or read a critical view. Yet it must be known that the United States does not practice free trade. John Key must know this in order to tell us to be ready to make concessions. Ultimately these will be concessions on our sovereignty. An act of treason.

For decades people and nations have wanted to like and get along with the United States, but the US is constitutionally unable to recognise and practice genuine mutual respect. It is like the man who has a willing woman happy to go along with him but he much prefers to drag her into a dark alley and rape her. Not OK behaviour, but let's look the other way.

CHOMSKY, NOAM. WHAT WE SAY GOES

These are conversations with David Barsamian in 2006 and 2007 about United States power and world affairs. If I had only one person to read on these matters it would have to be Chomsky, he is that rare individual - an academic with the ability, insight and courage to call a spade a spade. He cuts through the crap to the essential truths. He is an international treasure. His interviewer is excellent in not wasting time with idiotic questions. The primary truth in these interviews would be as follows: "the United States is a leading outlaw state, totally unconstrained by international law, and it openly says so. What we say goes."
Rating: Excellent

THE WAYS OF A BULLY

An assessment of Israeli playwright Hanoch Levin by drama critic Michael Handelzalts states: "He dissected Israeli society and described it in detail: the crudeness, the insensitivity, the interpersonal violence, the oppression, the gluttony, the intolerance and the cruelty. He wrote about people who enjoy feeling superior and causing pain, who thrive on this and who love to harass their interlocutors and haggle with them for the sake of the haggling".

It looks like the nation of legend turning desert into paradise is nothing more than a lousy bit of cheap fiction. This may come as a bit of an eye-opener for anyone with a blind spot for Israel. Mainstream commentators always report unfolding events involving Israel at face value, as though that nation is committed to some kind of constructive process involving others besides itself. Whereas for anyone following the behaviour of Israel as reported by uncensored media this asseessment gives some understanding of the nature of this particular bully in the global playground.

In that playgrond the United States and Israel stick close together. One is the major bully roaming about insisting upon being in charge of everything and in control of everyone. The other is the little devil of a lieutenant tripping around him, goading him to do things, telling tales about others and getting permission and protection do do his own bullying. It seems to be his mission to keep trouble and hatred alive. Why?

The answer seems to be that this particular bully enjoys feeling superior and causing pain, and thriving on this for its own sake. There is a truly malevolent intent in his psychology. He likes being a bully; he wants to be a bully; to glory and gloat in being a top dog. Apologist commentators harass and haggle any evidence or justified criticism as though everything is a playgound game.

A bully of course expects others to change. Israel went into Gaza and massacred 1400 people. There were no consequences for the bully. When Netanyahu visits Gordon Brown some months later there is not a word about this and continuing behaviour. Instead they jointly voice what others (Palestinians, Arabs, Persians) must do and what Israel will not do.

Between serious bouts of violence against the weak the bully is continually harassing them. An example: Israel sends low-flying aircraft over Gaza creating sonic booms instead of dropping bombs. This is described as educational and almost humanitarian, gently reminding the residents who is top dog. This is like holding a replica gun to a person's head instead of a real one, the terrorising effect is pretty much the same. And it is a real hoot for the bully.

Another example: Palestinian children near a settlement have to be escorted to school by Israeli soldiers to protect them from settler harassment, including the shooting of firearms, but the soldiers often fail to show up or when they do are themselves guilty of harassment, such as driving along beside the children so fast that the little ones cannot keep up. For the bullying soldiers a great way to start the day.

There is a psychological sickness behind such behaviours, the sickness of the torturer. The fine line - if there is one - between the bully and the torturer does not exist in the case of this little devil of a nation.

The bully's denial of wrongdoing is often reinforced by a technique of suffocating the victim by presuming to speak for him. This is an Israeli habit. On the surface this may appear as no more than an insufferable patronising superiority. An example: a Jew from multi-cultural New Zealand "returns" to apartheid Israel and tells us that Palestinians - some of whom are working on his new house under armed guard - prefer to live apart. The victim is reponsible for the apartheid.

Another example: while Israel is busy killing the 1400 people in Gaza and deliberately destroying more of their infrastructure senior politician Livni appears on screen to inform us that her country is helping the people of Gaza against Hamas ( the party they democratically elected).

There is a further strange quality to this particular bully. Witness Livni in the United States, while busy thrashing Gaza, literally sobbing that "we" have had enough, "we" cannot take any more. Immediately a cartoon came into my mind of a large adult beating a child while expressing such sentiments. We cannot hope that Israel will drive itself mad because it already is mad. Decades ago Golda Meir also felt sorry for herself because the Palestinians were making her do violence toward them. It is a very puzzling psychopathic condition, but there can be no excuse for it.

Unfortunately the mad psychopathic bully in the playground is a ticking time-bomb, a danger to everyone, and not a ready candidate for rehabilitation.

APPROPRIATE MURDER

Nato aircraft again kill more "unpeople" in Afghanistan and the German general responsible states that the action was "appropriate". This is an attitude that any contemporary Israeli general would endorse with those contemptible Arabs and Persians in mind. It is also an attitude that any general of the Third Reich would have endorsed. Did the SS have generals? If so, they would have fully endorsed it too.

Update: At least 100 people were killed and the German Minister of Defence has resigned because of the cover-up. So contemporary German government not yet as bad as the Third Reich and a whole lot better than the Israeli government.

JAMAIL, DAHR. THE WILL TO RESIST

About soldiers who refuse to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. A story of courage and conscience from out of the pit of evil. An excellent foreword by Chris Hedges. "We do not have the power or the knowledge, nor do we have the right under international law, to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan. It is not for us to debate the terms of the occupation. We divert ourselves in our dotage and decline with images and slogans that perpetuate fantasies about our own invulnerability, our own might, our own goodness. We are preoccupied by national trivia that pass for news, even as the wolf pants at our door. These illusions blind us. We cannot see ourselves as others see us. We do not know who we are or what we have become. "We have fed the heart on fantasies," wrote William Butler Yeats, "the heart's grown brutal from the fare.""
Rating: Very good.

INTREPID JOURNEYS

Intrepid Journeys is a very instructive series. Apart from the George Henare episode it shows more or less uncouth representatives of my society visiting the apparently less fortunate and making fools of themselves.

Sometimes thoughtfulness breaks through but the temptation to be idiotic or offensive is too great. Meanwhile the hosts look on with dignified bemusement and treat their strange guests with quiet patience.

IRAN

I remember when Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The United States never gave up insisting upon it despite a complete lack of evidence before they invaded. They repeated it so often and so belligerently that mainstream media chimed in and - in a so-called democracy - the population could only look on and protest without influence. Many people allowed themselves to be taken in, though it was an obvious lie even at the time.

We now have Iran and its nuclear weapons of mass destruction. The United States never gives up insisting upon it despite a complete lack of evidence. They are repeating it so often and so belligerently that mainstream media is chiming in and - in a so-called democracy - the population looks on and protests without influence. Many people are allowing themselves to be taken in, for it is an obvious lie.

We are having a replay and any lessons from very recent history just pass us by. And this, after a century of mass education.

This new lie stands alongside a breathtaking hypocrisy. Iran belongs to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and within the Treaty wishes to develop nuclear power. Sorry. Israel refuses to belong to the Treaty and has nuclear weapons which it refuses to have inspected. No problem. Pakistan also refuses to belong to the Treaty and also has nuclear weapons. No worries, we are in the process of dismantling its sovereignty in order to maintain "stability" anyway. The United States has just encouraged India to develop nuclear weapons. So far, so good.

Iran is doomed because it insists upon being an independent sovereign state. It has a democratically elected government based upon a distorted form of democracy. In the United States distortion consists in the population having to be mere spectators between elections. Elections constitute a phoney selection between two dominant candidates who are interchangeable and supported by wealthy elites. New Zealand reflects this. Election time is when we imagine we are participating in democracy. Our wonderful free media encourages us in our futile imaginings.

During the Obama election not a principled word was said about Iraq. But there were a few rumblings about Iran. Look to the future. The weapons industry is booming and these weapons need to be tried out somewhere. A lot of people are employed. When we have devastated as much of the Middle East and Asia as is possible and necessary our greed can continue to feed without hindrance upon oil.

What can possibly go wrong?

REINHART, TANYA. THE ROAD MAP TO NOWHERE

The author, an Israeli academic and activist, deceased in 2007, gives an inside view of Israel's political deception and duplicity in its efforts to bamboozle the international community and to oppress and imprison the Palestinian population. Resistance to the apartheid Wall by not only Palestinian villagers, but also Israeli and international activists is a ray of hope, but the picture also contains Israeli military violence and Palestinian Authority collaboration, both of which completely undermine democratic protest. Rating: Excellent.

KHADRA, YASMINA. THE SIRENS OF BAGHDAD

The author is an Algerian male living in France and he does not write pot-boilers. He writes with distinction about a number of issues thrown up by American occupation of Iraq. Rural life during and after; irrational military behaviour; civilian suffering; the need for revenge; the chaos of urban life; the different forms of coping and resistance; betrayal and retribution; the killing of fellow Iraqis; hatred of the West. In a world full of inconsequential fiction, here is a novel that manages to get inside every facet of imperial occupation of a Muslim country. Rating: Excellent.

MARQUSEE, MIKE. IF I AM NOT FOR MYSELF

If I am not for myself Zionism will speak for me. This is a political autobiography of an anti-Zionist Jew who subjects the ideology of Zionism to rational scrutiny. He takes an internationalist, humanitarian stance which will not accept discrimination, injustice and ethnic supremacy no matter where it shows itself. And it shows itself in Zionism. He analyses the writings of a journalist grandfather, a Jew on the American Left. He illustrates but fails to explain how this earnest left-winger was completely blind when it came to the establishment and behaviour of Israel. His father, also a Jewish leftist, involved in civil rights, was the first person to call him a self-hating Jew. The shortcomings of political activity for the realm of consciousness are evident. The author then goes on to become active in the British Labour Party. Does not his own political activity now lead him to have an over-tolerant view of the current Jewish diasporic attitude toward Zionism and Israel? An attitude of being Israel's willing helpers? Rating: Very good.

GAZA WAR WON'T STOP DAD

During Israel the Brave's most recent all-out assault on the people of Gaza I read an item in the local newspaper entitled "Gaza war won't stop dad's trip to Israel" in which a Devonport resident was returning to Israel to be at his daughter's graduation. It sounded as if he were doing a brave thing in the face of danger and adversity. I wondered if he was feeling a little fearful of being subject to the humiliation of Gazan airport officials and Gazan security checkpoints on his arrival. Or whether, once installed in Israel, he feared a sudden neighbourhood attack from Gazan aircraft and helicopter gunships. Or whether, perhaps, he feared the arrival of Gazan tanks in the street intent upon levelling his dwelling and even killing him as he tried to make his escape, mistaking him for a sniper. His death an unfortunate event in the name of Gazan security. My heart goes out to him.

UNITED NATIONS ANTI-RACISM CONFERENCE

I believe the New Zealand government made a mistake in refusing to attend the United Nations Anti-Racism Conference, and in claiming to be in good company by doing so. The United States insisting upon waging war in the Middle East, and Israel insisting upon terrorising Palestinians and others are not good company to be in.

At an anti-racism conference it is not acceptable to the United States and its coalition of evil to hear charges of racism by one country about another. What then is the point of such a conference? The Iranian president and his government may justifiably be criticised about many things, but when he describes Israel as a cruel and racist regime he is completely correct.

If we could put aside whether we like the messenger or not and listen to the message, responding accordingly, we would be acting responsibly. But we have to be informed and knowledgeable before we do. I have tried hard to study and understand and I can agree wholeheartedly that Israel is indeed a cruel and racist society. It is the apartheid country of our time.

I am married to a New Zealand born woman who happens to be Jewish. Our six children are therefore deemed to be Jewish. Both she and they are therefore qualified to go and live in Israel as a “right of return”. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and their descendants driven out of Palestine by the formation of Israel have no such right. To any decent-minded person this is not only absurd and unjust, it is an example of apartheid in action.

It is the continuing policy of promoting the influx of foreign Jewish immigrants which is keeping fanaticism, racism and hatred alive in Israel. Many of these immigrants, like religious converts, are articulate and aggressive. From the Palestinian perspective they are simply more foreigners arriving to displace them in their own land.

In not attending the conference New Zealand has chosen to place itself apart as if in a superior position “in good company”. Interestingly, this superior good company comprises what could loosely be termed white race nations. The formation of this good company is an act of racism in itself, an act of apartheid on the international scene.

I want New Zealand to be a nation of integrity and courage, standing by its own bicultural and multicultural values, with an independent mind on international matters.

SAS IN AFGHANISTAN

I do not support sending New Zealand troops to Afghanistan. I believe it is vital for New Zealand to reconsider its military commitment. With the change in US policy toward increasing engagement in Afghanistan the unjustifiable devastation the US has brought to Iraq will now be intensified in Afghanistan. Only this time New Zealand will be involved.

Can I assume that we are in agreement that Iraq is an illegal war? This is why New Zealand is not involved. Unfortunately, when we put aside righteous 9/11 anger, the war in Afghanistan is equally an illegal war. As with Iraq, the US insisted upon doing its own thing.

Afghanistan did not go to war against the United States. A small group of Saudis and Egyptians carried out a criminal attack. They did not live in Afghanistan but in Hamburg. They did not go to flight school in Afghanistan but in Florida. They may have been inspired by someone living in Afghanistan, but that did not give the US the right to invade Afghanistan weeks after the attack. That is not self-defence.

By mid-December 2001 U.S. bombs had killed 3500 Afghan civilians. The Guardian newspaper printed an article titled “The innocent dead in a coward’s war”. By 2003 10,000 had been killed. It has continued counter-productively and will now get even worse.

Now the new American president has “officially” extended the shameless murder to Pakistan and surely the use of drones to kill civilians has to be the ultimate in a coward’s war.

New Zealand must continue to present itself to the world as a multi-ethnic nation with a sense of balance and justice. It is not balanced nor just to be aiding the US ‘right or wrong’ at this moment in history.

ISRAEL IN PALESTINE: A PRIMER

Criticism of Israel often leads to claims of anti-Semitism by apologists which are designed to deflect attention from the issues which merit discussion. They are as hateful in their determined intolerance and dishonesty as anti-Semitism itself.

If what Israel has just committed in Gaza had been done by any other nation without the acceptance of the United States, the whole world would be voicing its criticism.

In his Nobel Prize speech Harold Pinter stated: “The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them”. The same could be said about Israel. Certainly the New Zealand mainstream media are extremely hesitant in criticising Israel.

I have tried to take an interest in the Israel / Palestine situation for four decades, and I believe that I have reached a number of valid conclusions. None of them are controversial and I apologise for their obvious nature, but they appear bothersome because apparently we are meant to keep quiet.

The first of my conclusions is that Israel is a nation founded by terrorist activity. An increasingly aggressive settlement of Palestine from the 1880s leading to terrorism in the 20th century killed and drove from their homes and lands 750,000 Palestinians. Many of these people and their descendants now exist in Gaza. It is not acceptable for Jewish people, renowned for intellectual and artistic achievement, to use religion and its texts as an excuse for this terrorism. And although it is understandable, it is also both dishonest and unacceptable to use the holocaust as an excuse.

Israel is not a victim. Jewish people in World War Two were victims, but the contemporary state of Israel is a powerful military force, fully supported by the most powerful nation on earth. It is wrong for Israel to continue to convince itself and the world that it is always and essentially the victim.

Israel is a racist society. If you found a nation for one group of people, a Jewish nation, then it follows as a matter of fact that the foundation of your nation is racist. It also follows that another group of people, the Palestinians, previously and still living within this nation are unavoidably a negative problem. So long as Israel = Jewish nation the mindset of any Israeli government to the Palestinians will be inherently racist. This is completely at variance with social developments in Western countries, mistakenly said to share common values with Israel, which make efforts to forge multicultural societies.

Israel practices apartheid. It has chosen apartheid rather than multiculturalism because it must maintain Israel as a Jewish state. A growing, developing, educated and participating Palestinian population would be a threat to this. So Israel cannot allow peaceful coexistence where all individuals possess equal rights. Some elements of an apartheid state found in Israel include: complete control of all elements of the lives of a group of second class citizens; the need for ID cards in order to travel; the subjection to checkpoints for any movement; the requirement to live in defined areas; arbitrary arrest and detention without charge; the ability to kill without excuse or apology. Israel goes a step further than South Africa by building enormous walls and structures to encircle the defined areas. If the subject population threaten to get out of control, for example by electing the wrong party, then intervention occurs. Sometimes it just occurs anyway.

Israel has never negotiated in good faith. It has strung the Palestinians along for six decades. Negotiation is a game and an end in itself. There is always a reason not to do the right thing. There is always another condition to derail an agreement. There is always someone to blame. The blameworthy have included the PLO, then Fatah, and now Hamas – the very people you must talk to in order to find a just solution. If you demonise them then you do not have to be responsible for a solution, for any solution may mean that you have to relinquish power and control. Yet if Israel has an acceptable person with which to negotiate still nothing happens. Abbas, the Palestinian Fatah president, has been available for negotiation for some time now and Israel has given him nothing – except more checkpoints in the West Bank and more Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. When a person in his position feels the need to write in newspapers directly to the Israeli people for their understanding, this underlines the disdain with which the Israeli government is treating him. Israel need not negotiate with Palestinians when they are divided: Israel will not negotiate with Palestinians when they are united.

Israel has created and is creating the most enormous open prison system in the world. These prisons, given the relentless nature of Israeli policy and behaviour, are on their way via ghettoes to concentration camps. These prisons can be and are shut down at will at any time. This can be done in part or in whole whenever an excuse can be claimed, or it can be done quite arbitrarily. The imprisoned population can be subjected to lack of food, warmth, shelter and other basic necessities of life whenever the occupying power decides.

Israel is responsible for the Palestinian resistance. It is inevitable and a human right that when an occupying power mistreats its subjects they will resist. In films of World War Two we applaud the efforts of the Dutch and French resistance when they blow up the armaments and kill the soldiers of the occupying military force. The Palestinian resistance finds this difficult because they are so bottled up and the occupying force is so much more powerful. Because the Israeli military can mistreat the Palestinians from arm’s length the resistance has adopted the questionable tactic of firing rockets into the Israeli civilian population. Israel refuses to learn the right lesson from this, namely that it is unacceptable for any group to lose some of their people to military force. This tactic merely gives Israel the supreme excuse to blame and to kill further. Israel and “the West” refuse to acknowledge that it is the role of any resistance movement not to allow the occupying force to feel comfortable in its abusive power. In the current crisis, Israel speaks of seeking “peace and quiet” for itself, not ever of dialogue and justice.

Israel is completely self-centred. It appears to have a complete inability to empathise with others, to see their point of view, even to be interested in it. Its racism equates the death of one Israeli (even a soldier) to hundreds of Palestinians. If a human being is self-centred in this way we would say that his development is somewhere between a child and an adolescent with sociopathic tendencies. The USA, as parent of this unruly child, has overindulged and spoiled him all his life. As a result he is demanding, self-righteous, overbearing and out of control. If anyone in the neighbourhood dislikes his attitude and behaviour he will respond with some form of bullying aggression, knowing that Dad is always there to back him up. He becomes the neighbour from hell.

My final conclusion is that Israeli spokespersons lie to the media. Time and again they will, with a reasonable face, indicate what reasonable actions are being taken, only for the persistent media watcher to discover that Israel will not be doing those actions at all or are doing the exact opposite. It is the old story: pay no attention to what is said, but attend to what is done. Unfortunately, in “the West” it works the other way round for most people. When Israeli spokespeople speak to the media they do so from out of an attitude and national character which has created a militant, racist, apartheid society and all the trappings which go with this.

Some of these trappings include the stubborn assertion that Israel is always in the right, and also the inability to consider that a mistake or injustice has been committed, let alone a crime. This can lead to quite extraordinary statements: that because Hamas exists and because it lives among the Gazans it is responsible for the death of 400 children, not the Israeli military who fired missiles, shells and bullets at them. I assume that, in an individual, this severe inability to take responsibility for one’s actions would be recognised as some kind of mental or moral incapacity.

Norman Finkelstein, son of holocaust survivors, has said that if Israel does not wish to be likened to Nazis then it must stop behaving like Nazis. This is true not just for the war on Gaza, but for the war on all Palestinians for the last sixty years. Over this time Israeli policy has shown that it does not respect the Palestinians, it does not care about Palestinian civilians, and it does not want Palestinians to get too close. In the words of Peres it wishes the Palestinians would just disappear.

The only proper solution is integration. This happened in the US in the sixties and in South Africa in the nineties. De Klerk had the statesmanship to realise that apartheid could not continue, it was morally bankrupt. We cannot live in ethnically pure states and democracy cannot be based upon tribalism. There has to be a one-state solution. Part of the one-state solution requires compensation for the Palestinians. New Zealand has experience to offer in the manner in which crimes committed by an occupying people might be addressed by an integrated nation.

Imagine if New Zealand, which has the same kind of population numbers as Israel, were able to virtually dictate American foreign policy and thereby that of Europe? How weird. That one small country with such a small population could cause so much trouble in the world! It would surely go to our heads. We would probably come to believe that the United States was also our country.

SCOTT WATSON

Despite plenty of pointers to the contrary the police in New Zealand get quite a good rating from the general public. This may be from watching Police Ten-7 or Motorway Patrol. The guardians of the law are very nice on those programmes. And yet a smiling policeman is a duplicitous creature.

I have had personal experiences in previous decades where police took the side of the offender by taking the view that if only one person had a problem with the situation then he must be at fault. That is not very nice. And only last year a very nice policeman decided not to pursue a case by quoting reasons totally at variance with legal advice previously obtained. He had no obligation to put in writing why the police decided to drop the matter.

However, these are trivial matters. The real problem with police in New Zealand is to make sure you are not anywhere near the scene of a high profile murder. It is almost a tradition now for the police to get it wrong by picking on an innocent person. Without thinking twice I can name Arthur Allan Thomas, David Bain, David Dougherty, Rex Haig and Scott Watson. I know there are others I should remember. Then there are uncertain cases where they may have the right person on fabricated evidence – David Tamihere, or Mark Lundy.

What is laughable about this conviction of innocents is that it always begins with a detective’s hunch. And yet the police establishment has the cheek to criticise psychics! Indeed, if we put two reputable psychics on a case under such conditions as laid down by the TV programme Sensing Murder, we would arrive at a far more reliable outcome. A hunch is nothing more than a very low-level, unreliable psychic event.

Some time ago I wrote to the Minister of Justice about the injustice of keeping Scott Watson in prison for a crime he did not commit. Indeed, if any crime was committed it was by certain persons who worked hard to put him in prison. He replied to the effect that something was being done. I now find that all that is being done is to appoint a crown prosecutor to assess the case. Is this really good enough?

Does the Minister of Justice not wish to personally take responsibility and acquaint himself with the details of a case of injustice? He only has to read the book and / or watch the DVD by investigative journalist Keith Hunter. In reading that book or watching that DVD all he (or anybody) needs is 1) common sense and 2) a sense of justice. He does not need to hide behind the obfuscations of legal protocol. It is the devious paths of legal procedure which have contributed to this case of injustice. And now he is asking the same malicious nonsense to assess the previous crime.

I find it embarrassing to discover that I know and care more about an important matter of injustice than the Minister of Justice of my country. In comparison with the Bain case the Scott Watson case is completely clear-cut. Some of us may still be unsure about the former, but unless we want to be perverse the latter is certain. The work has been done for us.

Does our Minister of Justice not think something should be done about crooked police officers and corrupt prosecuting counsels? There are far too many high profile cases in New Zealand in which innocent people are being convicted. It is not the fault of juries. It is not just that New Zealanders can be subject to police incompetence. Quite clearly we can far too easily be subject to police criminal behaviour.

Should there not be a law whereby such police and prosecutors who knowingly convict an innocent man can be punished?

Update. In August 2010 the Independent Police Complaints Authority reports on the miscarriages of justice as outlined by Keith Hunter and concludes there were none. This after an inordinate length of time and the statement that it has been exhaustive, implies as always that they must have got it right. The ongoing injustice is sickening. Indeed, it declares that where the police failed in best practice was when the public and media interfered. It would not have been the quiescent establishment media the Authority is pointing at but the very investigative journalism which has dared to question police and prosecution integrity. No doubt it also includes those members of the public who felt used, duped or ignored by police during the process of setting up Scott Watson, and who have had the temerity to complain.