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Monday, 2 September 2002, 9:58 am
Opinion: Scoop Feedback

In This Edition: Yes, THAT Dail Jones – Green Left? - Time Machine - Open Letter to Hon. Bill English - ILO Rules/Rulz? – Warmongers - Hey Scoop .. You

Yes, THAT Dail Jones

Here I am, leisurely perusing the online version of the Herald, as I am apt to do, when I stumble across a comment from "New Zealand First MP Dail Jones". This has a suspiciously familiar ring to it. And sure enough, after a quick check, my well-founded fears are confirmed--it is THAT Dail Jones, former National MP.

If that wasn't bad enough, when I go looking for online biographies of MPs, it turns out there are no independent bios (unless you want to pay some extortionate amount to a certain subscriber-only site...). In the case of "NZ's Worst", their website still only shows bios of their 5 MPs!

Maybe someone out there can point me to a source of independent info on those chosen ones who set our laws in this country. Or maybe we could start a new site giving the juice on our most beloved ones--quotes, CVs, voting records, dodgy consultancy jobs, etc.

Stephen Walker

Green Left?

Dear Editor,

Why are linking to the Green Left Weekly site? If you merely giving exposure to views that are not commonly heard then why not link to right-wing extremist sites as well?

Cheers

Neil Morrison

Time Machine

To the Editor

New Zealand urgently needs a time machine set between 1162 and 1227. This is to enable us to send Ms Deborah Coddington back to provide natural competition for Genghis Kahn.

However having said that, Genghis Kahn possibly doesn't deserve to be ousted, as he at least provided a decent living wage for his people.

Yours sincerely

Nelson Bell
Mt Maunganui

Open Letter to Hon. Bill English

Darryl W.L.T. Ward
KAPITI COAST

1 September 2002

Hon. Bill English
Leader of the National Party

Open Letter to Hon. Bill English

Dear Mr English

I read with interest your public call for NZ fathers to recognise their responsibilities, repeating the myth that fathers are somehow shirking their responsibilities.

It indisputable that the best remedy for child abuse is to ensure that a child has a right to love and care from both of its natural parents. Children who are denied a meaningful relationship with one of their parents, as happens every day in the Family Court, are at a far higher risk of being subject to abuse as those who retain both a mother and a father. Instead of addressing this problem, we blame those fathers who have had their children stolen, as if it is somehow their fault. We blame fathers' for abandoning their children, even though 70% of divorces are initiated by women, and the vast majority who choose this road do not do so to escape from some tyrannical man, but because the law as it stands in New Zealand gives them an incentive to do so.

Every year our adversarial Family Court system sees approximately 20,000 children legally abducted from one of their parents, almost always their father. By comparison, only 3,000 New Zealand children lost their fathers during the entire Second World War. This makes the Family Court New Zealand's leading child abductor, and for this reason alone, Fathers' Day is a national day of shame.

Even when a child has retained his or her right to a meaningful relationship with Dad, the Court will rarely enforce its own access orders, making them not worth the paper they are written on. Yet we will hound a man to the end of the earth to collect arbitrarily calculated child support payments, which in practice are little more than a form of spousal maintenance.

Until it is recognised that the role of father is more than just being a walking wallet, then New Zealand children and fathers will never have anything to celebrate on Fathers' Day.

Accordingly Mr English, I respectfully call upon you to take issue with the system that causes this tragic state of affairs to happen, instead of playing the old game of blaming Dad.

As Leader of the Opposition you have the opportunity to join the charge against our monstrously corrupt and evil family law system that is destroying the lives of tens of thousands of New Zealand families every year.

To help bring such a noble crusade to fruition would surely be your greatest legacy.

Yours sincerely

Darryl Ward

Paternal English speaks of Father's Day SATURDAY , 31 AUGUST 2002

ILO Rules/Rulz?

Dear Editor

The Speech from the Throne tells us that the Government will advocate trade liberalisation but it will also advocate that trade is consistent with International Labour Organisation rules and environmental and human rights standards.

I have hard evidence, of these ILO rules and human rights standards being breached in Chinese factories from which large New Zealand importing retailers source product for New Zealand consumers.

I wonder what the government intends to do, to prevent these products being sold in New Zealand?

Yours sincerely

Stephen Tindall -the woman
Founder of MADENZ
Mt Maunganui

Warmongers

Sludge,

I read with interest your latest column on this "war with terrorism". I don't know whether you are being cyncial or honest, probably both. My point though is I feel your thoughts are a little extreme and reasonable anti US. While I don't believe dropping bombs on Kabul and other Afghan cities is the answer, what is? Surely cooperation, the winning over of former allies like Pakistan with reasoning and facts is a more logical approach.

Unfortunately I too have a lack of good ideas on this subject hence I can't make a reasonable suggested course of action, though if I could I think I would quite my day job so to speak. Secondly you, unfortunately like many New Zealanders, are a little US-phobic.

The USA is in fact a beautiful country with geographic and cultural diversity second to none. The people of the US are remarkable positive and optimistic and that alone is very enlightening thing which the rest of the world could learn from. Sure they have their faults, but so do many of this country, including many of the inhabitants of certain beehive shaped building in Wgtn.

I feel very sorry for the people of the USA, just like I feel sorry for the peaceful citizens of Kabul. The wall street trader is no less of a man than the Kabul shopkeeper though many like yourself would have us believe that. So if the evidence is that Osama Bin Laden and Co were behind the attacks then they deserve to be bought to justice. Admittedly I don't believe that involves destroying Afghanistan but somehow justice must be served, that is how us humans operate.

Cheers

Duncan

PS Still enjoy your columns immensely even if i don't agree with them.

Hey Scoop .. You

Hi, Someone gave me your website and i went thru the 9-11 "conspiracy" theory page of yours : http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0208/S00068.htm I don't believe i have ever witnessed before such a complete and uncontrolled blithering stream of confused non-sequitors in my entire life. You take the proverbial cake.

I took several psych classes at college, they told me that one sign of schizophrenia is a "disassociation of thoughts." Back then i didn't fully understand what that meant, but conspiracy theorists put that well into focus :p lol. Your site seems to be exactly that - chock full of unrelated thoughts confusing yourself into a bizarre web of seemingly related incidents.

I mean, and to think how much time you've obviously spent on this website; the webpage itself is long and wrought with more nonsense than any one sane person could ever manufacture alone. For example, you cite that mr hauer suspiciously recommended a west nile virus plan " a year before " the outbreak is silly at best. What? Do you think West Nile was invented a year later? It was first found in something like 1932 - for a man with an master's degree in bio-hazards it would have been "incompetent" of him to NOT have recommended a plan for every single, known disease out there.

Another example - you cite this: "Investigative journalist Wayne Madsen reports that on October 2, 2001 - just two days before the first anthrax case was reported in Boca Raton, Florida and a week and a half before the first anthrax was sent through the mail to NBC News in New York - Advanced Biosystems received an $800,000 grant from NIH to focus on very specific defenses against anthrax." How do i break this to you nicely. Those anthraxings sept.11th and after? Ok they weren't the first anthrax cases in the USA. In fact, colleges and universities often have received anthrax scares over the last ten years - of course there are going to be grants to discover plans to combat anthrax. Right now, the NIH is probably issuing more grants to study other viruses and bio hazards as well, if something turns up after they issue these grants - is that too going down in the suspicious department? Did your mother push a blender into your head and puree - it's like scrambled eggs up there, isn't it? (Ok that was uncalled for but i dont take things too seriously including my own insults).

Read this quote of yours carefully and tell me if this doesn't define "non-sequitor" to the hilt: "But when the first anthrax attacks started, the only thing, which worked perfectly, was the distribution of the anthrax antibiotic Cipro, by Bayer. A couple of weeks later, Barbara Rosenberg of FAS (Federation of American Scientists), the magazine New Scientist, the biowarfare convention specialist Jan van Aken, and the ex-UN inspector Richard Spertzel came to the conclusion that the anthrax was homegrown."

Anyway, your whole website is like that... one long, bizarre, rambling, illogical interconnection of disassociated thoughts after the next. Or so i believe. But then again.. i might be one "of them" out to disuade you from "finding out more" about our huge, illuminate conspiracies. muuuhahahahaah

ciao, take your meds and good luck in your future endeavors,

calven mcvetty

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