Monday 2 June 2014

Fisking Bradbury & The NZ Herald

Martyn "Bomber" Bradbury, the darling of the left, self described political strategy genius, and now founding member of the Internet Party, has in his latest opinion piece for the NZ Herald, self congratulated himself for the greatest political alliance in NZ's history. (Note the slight paraphrasing, and general air of sarcasm.)
Of course we know that Bradbury has been working behind the scenes of the Internet Party for a long time, supplying them with his great insights into political strategy (again the sarcasm, but I can't help it), for a fee of course. Whaleoil leaked this to the world a few months back, to much general amusement at the irony of a supposedly internet savvy party failing to protect their documents and allow them to be leaked.  Providing us with solid knowledge that there is a convent of media and hard left political actors forming to back the Internet Party, both publicly, and by well placed media articles. Once this had gotten out, I would have thought it would have rendered this strategy DOA, but alas I was wrong, as we can now see with the opinion piece from Bradbury in the NZ Herald, with I note, no disclosure statement.
But enough of the image problems, lets focus on the meat of his piece, the reason for the perfectly sensible merger of the Internet and Mana Parties.

The apparent basis for this union according to Bradbury is the raid on the Dotcom Mansion by the NZ Police at the request of the FBI to arrest Kim Dotcom on charges relating to his company Megaupload, for piracy, racketeering, and other criminal charges.
Now I like many, was appalled at the use of the NZ Police Special Tactics Group (STG), a more highly trained heavily armed, and permanent group of Armed Offenders Squad members to arrest a group of people on what was not really more than piracy charges. At the time I compared it to use of the an armed Air Force helicopter to stop a speeding car. Making jokes to my friends about this online, and wondering what was going to happen next time I went more than 4kph over the posted speed limit.
Soon though we began to see the real Kim Dotcom, and I began to no longer feel sorry for him.
But a fair number of us have been unfairly harassed or otherwise detained by the Police at one time or another, so for Bradbury to base his argument for Dotcom's radicalization, on the raid, is in my eyes stretching it too far.
When 70 armed paramilitary police kick in your front door, terrify your whanau, seize your assets and use illegal spying to justify it, I think it has a deep effect and radicalises a person. That's what I think has happened to Dotcom.
After all given the number of people who have suffered unfair treatment at the hands of the Police, don't you think we'd have seen a general rise in the number of people radicalized in NZ? I would, and we haven't, so perhaps Bradbury is just making up reasons to make the odd couple seem legit?
Lets see by rebutting some of his further arguments.
Oh and one more thing Bradbury, the STG are not paramilitary, as much as you would love them to be, as then it'd fit your hard left, struggle against the evil right wing state story. They're full time sworn members of the NZ Police, and have nothing to do with the military, other than using their transport, and training facilities from time to time.
But lets not not get facts in the way of your good story now aye.

His next point is that both party founders Hone and Dotcom are anti-establishment rebels (note the choice of words to reinforce the struggle). Well yes I guess you could say breaking the law is anti-establishment, but then a lot of people do that, and we don't all hang out together or form political parties on that basis do we? If dislike of authority, or breaking the law is all it takes now to be considered an anti-establishment rebel, then the political left has fallen further than anyone has given it credit for. What happened to the real rebels of the political left, those that fought the establishment for things that mattered like racial equality, banning nuclear power, or the rights of minorities? Has it all died now, and all that is left is fighting minor injustices for the benefit of those who have done wrong. If that's the case I'd be ashamed to call myself a lefty today.

The only reason Dotcom has supposedly found his radicalized, anti-establishment self, is because he can see the prison cell he may end up in, over in the Good ol US of A. And it terrifies him. Nothing greater than that. No great cause worth fighting for, just self interest in ensuring he isn't locked up next to Bubba in some prison cell for the foreseeable future, and that he isn't dispossessed of his assets and money that allow him to live the lifestyle he does.
The only way they can do this is to change the government, as the Minister of Justice, and the Cabinet have the final say on all extraditions. If Dotcom can ensure he has a paid up MP that can help form the next left leaning coalition government, then he's achieved his goal, and his $3 million plus spend is money well spent.
Of course if he were to admit this his, and by association Hone Hawawira's, and Martyn Bradbury's political careers would be over before you know it.
So I guess they all have to keep up the big lie, that there is some greater cause behind the Internet-Mana Party than changing the government to keep Kim Dotcom in NZ.

I just wish the media would force them to be honest about it, rather than swallowing the political cool-aid that is being served up by these two parties.
If they don't I'm worried about how many NZ voters won't know about it, and come election day vote to make NZ a banana republic, where one man can buy his international freedom.

No comments:

Post a Comment