Statistics for the year to June 30, show that 12,541 children aged 13 and under were apprehended by police, with 1522 of them aged nine and under.

Young boys were three times more likely to be caught than young girls.

Good ol' Kiwi Blokes

Racism is a serious problem in the world, with death, hatred, bombs and terrorism problems attendant. But in New Zealand, certain politicians still believe that by shaking this particular branch, votes will fall out of the tree. A white colonial culture that was founded upon a essentially covert treaty that could be interpreted differently for each side is a strange but successful recipe for the cultural assimilation of "European stock" (mainly British) into the noble culture that pervaded NZ two hundred years ago.

One man's racial "enemy" is another man's friend. To complain about the effects of civilisation is one thing, but reactions to invasions of culture is a cause of racism, isn't it?

America is evidently one of the most and least racist cultures. It is the extremes that are evident in American views of the world that we see.
We no not notice moderates, we do not notice those who are gently helping culture to thrive.

We walk past an old man that some thugs beat up and do not check on him because he may be a homeless person or a drunk. This preconception about this poor man, now recovering in hospital, the judgement that people have, oh he is just a drunk. So they leave the man (who turned out to be some kind of saint) lying in a carpark to die? Our culture spends too much time complaining and not enough time helping each other to enjoy our lives.

All races on earth are the same - the same hungry mad creature that believes it is God's special and selected child. What a load of cobblers.

No more Mr Nice Guy

Bomb Threat in Auckland

This story is disturbing.

Senior Sergeant Ross Endicott-Davies said [...] "Obviously it's a hoax by some individual with nothing better to do with his day."

That's rubbish. A bomb threat of this nature is terrorism. We need to find the person who planted this and put them in jail. Pronto.

Alert mobile phone owners form the best intelligence network the police have ever had. We are all willing to defeat terrorists. We have to face the fact that whomever planted this hoax suitcase is indeed a terrorist. Shutting down hospitals and endangering our lives is a crime.

The finding of a suitcase labelled O Bin Laden is provocative, and too blatent to be merely a hoax in itself raises a frightening extreme in terms of bad sense, stupidity that is so foul as to be a threat to itself. This crude piece of theatre was intended to outrage, it was found in a hospital immediately after Bali, probably this year's symbolic nightmare attack.

This global outbreak of terrorist madness will consign the likes of Al Quaeda to dust as Governments tighten controls and terrorists scare people into accepting curbed freedom in exchange for some safety.

Contrast the media involvement in the Washington sniper events of late. Media involvement is seen as a reward for misbehaviour as though public enemy number one is just a child needing reward/punishment behaviour therapy.

By withholding the reward and recognition, the media "punishes" the terrorist or hoaxer? This reveals a media/public attitude that somehow the spotlight of public attention is a bonus. As Ross Armstrong discovered, it can be a complete trial.

In the fight against terror, the media spotlight may be the best defence we have. The public have many eyes and ears.

For an assessment of what each NZ political leader makes of terrorism as the NZ government has passed tough new laws to clamp down on terrorism.
nz herald.

The Green party oppose the new laws due to the effects on protest and civil liberties. They are right to raise issues - the terrorists want to hijack our public communication, but we should not sacrifice freedom of speech as that is our best weapon against the tryanny of ignorance. Our public communication is the best defence we have.

Sad Fact

OPINION

Internet use in the work place has become something to sack people over. An early spammer has to pay nearly $100,000 court costs for a promotional spam in 1998 or 1999. The court fined him only $2000. The plaintiff said that the objective was to "get them out of the business". We are told the Government is sifting through our email, our private conversations and taking us to task over spamming, which I totally agree is right annoying, but to destroy some enterprise because of an early policy error, to destroy a country due to a voting error, or to destroy a person's life because they put their hand into the cookie jar, these trends are disturbing because we do not trust.

www.netscape.com - today (17/10 in fact)

55% so far thought the media coverage made the sniper a celebrity. What is so disturbing about that? The fact that 55% of the general public are that deluded, that's what. Being a celebrity is not a privilege. Being notorious is not a right. It's the media, stupid. Celebrities are the media fodder, people who are hip and sell like Madonna is good press even when she makes a bomb (movie) or a hit (record). She should perhaps heed Plato's advice, but I do not think so, she may yet prove the critics wrong and make four or five incredible films. Classic Monroe was trash Monroe once. Who liked The Misfits within ten years of when it was made? Not many loved this now classic footage of the greatest screen queen of all time. Madonna may be thwarted from a movie career by fame rather than any lack of inherent talent, except perhaps the ability to say no to a script she don't really fit. She should think more carefully about who and what is isn't before doing a Leonardo de Beach now where. Look at sister Cher for the correct acting/diva balance, but then again, Cher is not you. Back to the sniper survey. Why do you want to be a celebrity? Oh the public life is pretty but not all celebrities are Jen and Brad. Some are Winona who is hovering from one rational reason to the next not to go to court. What a reputation that girl has to maintain so we believe she is more than just a little cookoo, but that is such an excellent definition of celebrity. She is her art. That is not why we love her craft, she is just so believable that her own celebrity leads her into the wrong parties where pretty people brag about what they got away with at Sacks - I say good on her if she makes headlines between films and avoids prison. If not, I will weep for America, sad sad country.

Being celebrity can drive one nuts. It can also be deadly. Take Tupac. Already taken. Take Hendrix (okay, that was a long time ago, but more recent than Marilyn - herself living out her own roles of tragic disproportionality.

The sniper does deserve to be a "notorious celebrity" someone we all would recognise if we were to see them at the supermarket, like this security guard who "recognised" someone I never met but was just four degrees separated, so to speak, from, shot someone he "recognised" in the back. Whoops. Celebrity has its perks I guess, and someone else being shot in place of your valuable self is much more likely with the rise of imitators.

At the top of the art of celebrity we find that most popular ever of leaders. With ratings better than Caesar - Saddam Hussein got 11,445,638 "YES!" votes. That's probably a world record of the number of death threats issued in one day, or his celebrity has guaranteed him total success. 11,445,600 people could have stayed at home, and 38 people voted. Or the whole thing could be faked. What difference does it make, he may get the ultimate honour of a qualified Guiness Book of Records entry. Now that's celebrity.

Back to the damn sniper. The most likely scenario in my mind is that the sniper is a terror cell taking pot shots at civilians. That is truly disturbing as so far nobody has caught one. And if they did, it wouldn't stop. Every day that Bush pushes the brink seems to make America a more violated and less-loved influence upon other countries.

Iraq's destiny

Just how much of Iraq does the USA need to destroy?

If Saddam were to step down, the USA would not withdraw their threat, even if Iraq could find no sizeable buildup of weapons threatening its neighbours or, god forbid, the West.

Of course, the West can target with electronic accuracy its carpet bombs as it lurches into the wrong war, perhaps. If Woody is wrong, then lets at least know that is the absolute threat before we become what we fear most: a terrorist nation.

Governments are able to enact terror upon the world as Auckland, New Zealand, presently host of the America's Cup, may remember in 1984 when French Government Secret service Agents blew up the Rainbow Warrior not 1/2 mile from here. They were famously caught and sentenced.

It seems incorrect to balance fighting terrorism and invading Iraq as though they were two sides of a coin. They appear profoundly different problems and both should be addressed, but with entirely different mind-sets.

It felt extremely hard to support the invasion of Afganistan as a relliable way to corner the Al Queada leadership and the best that can be said of it was the byproduct of removing the Taleban reigime. To swing pro-Taleban Pakistan into supporting an American military force must have taken some engineering. Keeping 140 million muslims onside may not be so easy.

Heavily populated and poverty seem to go hand in hand and many "Muslim countries" seem to have that in common. Is their faith maintaining a feudal economy for most? The "Muslim" countries favour rich family bloodlines which must be frightfully defended. Thats feudalism at work. It builds pockets of wealth ready to assert themselves in a captialist economy. The Islamic faith seems to be one that finds capitalism offensive. Captialism finds Socialism offensive and a threat. Both of these attitures are fear based illusions.

The rigid enforcement of a cultural breeding patten due to an extreme conservative set of values in Islam may promote ownership and control of land that is defendable by blood.

The modern or Euro way is to blur the blood boundaries and renounce the need to own the land.

The mistake of the Soviet Empire is not necessarily "communism" itself, but the inappropriateness of communism to the economic state of the majority of the people it sought to rule. The system relied upon plentiful bounty to finance social equality; but the old tools of corruption, power and hate distorted it utterly.

There was no way that a fedal empire like the Soviet Union could support the costs of socialism. Perhaps Sweeden can.

Iraq is possibly and strangely more ready for Socialism than America due to the potential wealth per capita measure, but as a dictatorship with jagged boundaries with rough neighbors, it has failed to recognise the value of its own people. Iraq is behaves like a capitalist war monger that it doesn't need to be.

America already did its nation building there when it installed Saddam in the first place. An American military occupation is not the best way to solve the Iraqui question. Enforced fair elections where Saddam stands against at least five other leaders with alternative futures for the country conducted by the Swiss could be a better solution. Perhaps these leaders could come from other parts of the world and the will of the Iraqui people is enforced by the UN and US Military. It could cost a whole lot less.

Sure Saddam is a butcher, but so is Bush, it seems. He has caused the death of about 4000 Afgani citizens according to many reports that have not been disputed.

The World needs to reign in both of these rampant presidents if their plans are as they have been announced. Afganistan shows that the war is no solution to terrorism. It is just as evil and causes more civilian death. It causes wild dispersion of the enemy and eventual retaliation. Wars of this nature need to be slow sweat it out econonmics affairs where tension rather than gunshots are the order of the day. The best war is one where nobody gets killed.

Marx described socialism as the next stage society enters after it has well mastered captalism and human nature would then be led into a need for altruistic behaviour (leading to conservation and human spirital value) rather than competitive behaviour (leading to growth, and ultimately upsetting your neighbour).

America should have grown up decades ago, and treated its own poor with more dignity. It thinks that it can enforce its programme on a world it does not really understand as it is essentially religiously riveted into captialism as a modus operandii and it can not see beyond its own needs that it is part of a larger thing and not the largest body of people within it.

Iraq is more similar to the USA than most would acknowledge. Both threaten other sovereign states with war. Both have employed weapons of mass destruction.

It is hard to agree with Blair when you can not agree with Bush, but it is also hard to agree with Bush when what he seems to be moving towards in his ever advancing threat towards the Iraqui reigime for reasons which are not now questionable, but openly stated with economic goals. It appears that Bush has revealed everything - he wants Iraq to become the 51st state. It does have more OIL than Texas. Its a naked coup.

And that is a shame as Saddam should consider submitting to the will of the United Nations with a willingness to surrender arms. But that is hardly in the nature of this pumped up militant that America put into place in the first place. No wonder they think now that they have the right to remove him. But the precident America is setting is not healthy for the way in which the world will perceive America as it economically and militarily assumes power that does not belong to it. We do not want the whole world to be like America. Parts of Gemany, rebuilt in the austere post war recovery period are now more like America than Germany.