Yesterday saw the shooting of two police officers as they attempted an unplanned drug raid in Christchurch, very luckily both officers survived and are expected to make a full recovery. Naturally this has renewed calls for the arming of front-line police officers in New Zealand.

This morning I had a brief discussion with some of my colleagues regarding the Australian police force and how they operate. There are some very clear differences: all front-line police officers carry guns, all front line officers carry Tasers, all front-line officers carry pepper spray.

I still remember the controversy around the introduction of pepper spray around a decade ago in NZ and then the more recent introduction of the Taser (something I have been sceptical of). I certainly do not believe that all front-line officers in NZ should be armed at all times, I can only see a sea of controversy erupting as a result of this: crazy nut-cases taunting police into suicide by cop, cops drawing their weapons in inappropriate circumstances (as seen a number of times with the Taser in both NZ and Australia), and the threat criminals feel by an armed police force and subsequently increasing their own “protection” with even more guns and weapons.

However, the latest shooting follows on from the Napier Siege of last year where an officer was killed and the 2008 killing of an officer working undercover. In all three cases there is a common link, unarmed officers confronting criminals with drugs. This is where the NZ police need to get a lot smarter.

Gone is the day where you can send in two unarmed cops to do a drug bust and the respect for authority will just see criminals roll over. If NZ police are going to do any form of drug raid or operate in areas where people are taking drugs there is a very clear need for them to be armed. Going into a gun fight with pepper spray is never going to work out.

Today marks 25 years since French Secret Service agents, allies of New Zealand, committed the first and only act of terrorism ever in New Zealand’s history when they bombed Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior ship while it was docked in Auckland killing one person; an act of war committed by an ally against a pacifist organisation.

I was born two years after the bombing, however, the bombing not only changed New Zealand history it also had an important role in shaping my political views. When I was at primary school during the 1990s the French resumed nuclear testing at Mururoa and during that time Greenpeace sent their replacement Rainbow Warrior II ship from Auckland to protest the testing. My connection to the two ships comes through primary school friends, the father of one of my friends was onboard the Rainbow Warrior when it was bombed in Auckland harbour in 1985 and parents of other friends were onboard the Rainbow Warrior II and other ships when they were detained by the French in 1995.

So 25 years on where are we? Once France had finished “testing” aka bombing the shit out of an island in the middle of nowhere because apparently no one would care they signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty, since then France has not detonated another Nuclear Weapon. However, Pakistan has, India has, North Korea has. The work of Greenpeace has slowed the Nuclear Winter but I don’t think we are out of the autumn yet.

Today Greenpeace have blogged links to 4 videos on the Rainbow Warrior.

They have also posted a long blog remembering the ship, the life lost, and what the Rainbow Warrior achieved.

There is also the remaking of the song Anchor Me done for the 20^th Anniversary

And who can forget French Letter (audio only, can’t find the video):

Finally a year and a half ago I blogged on why it is so important for Kiwis to never forget the Rainbow Warrior.

The latest Underbelly series (The Golden Mile) has to date been fantastic and also quite personal as the events happening in it occurred in streets only a little over a kilometre from my house.

One of the more interesting sideshows of this year’s series has been the ongoing attempts by a former police officer stationed at Kings Cross to sue the makers of the series for defamation. Earlier this year the case was thrown out of court because it was declared that someone could not sue for defamation before they have been defamed. However, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday, now that the episodes have aired the former police officer is not pressing on with the defamation law suits.

The most interesting aspect of this whole saga is the character claiming to be defamed is a very minor character in the story and if the defamation proceedings were not being reported it is likely that very few people would care. Instead pursuing the court cases has kept the issue in the media and it would appear that through this the former police officer is indirectly defaming themself.

I haven’t formed a complete opinion about Israel’s storming of boats in international waters, politically it doesn’t sound right.

However, upon seeing this footage there is no way that you can claim that the flotilla was acting peacefully. Sure if you are being raided your response would be to fight back, but the savageness of the attack against armed soldiers leaves little wonder in my mind as to why people got killed. You don’t go into a gun fight with knives.

Update: Just released IDF video of the “aid” they were carrying:

Earlier today Thomas Beagle on Twitter posted “Kind of weird to think about water sloshing around the planet.” This made me stop and think for a second not just how weird it is, but also how powerful it is.

The 8.8 magnitude earthquake which struck on Saturday was big enough to issue a Tsunami Warning for all these countries:

CHILE / PERU / ECUADOR / COLOMBIA / ANTARCTICA / PANAMA / COSTA RICA / NICARAGUA / PITCAIRN / HONDURAS / EL SALVADOR / GUATEMALA / FR. POLYNESIA / MEXICO / COOK ISLANDS / KIRIBATI / KERMADEC IS / NIUE / NEW ZEALAND / TONGA / AMERICAN SAMOA / SAMOA / JARVIS IS. / WALLIS-FUTUNA / TOKELAU / FIJI / AUSTRALIA / HAWAII / PALMYRA IS. / TUVALU / VANUATU / HOWLAND-BAKER / NEW CALEDONIA / JOHNSTON IS. / SOLOMON IS. / NAURU / MARSHALL IS. / MIDWAY IS. / KOSRAE / PAPUA NEW GUINEA / POHNPEI / WAKE IS. / CHUUK / RUSSIA / MARCUS IS. / INDONESIA / N. MARIANAS / GUAM / YAP / BELAU / JAPAN / PHILIPPINES / CHINESE TAIPEI

In the case of Auckland, New Zealand it is about 10,000km from the epicentre of the earthquake. Not only is it amazing that water can travel so far over such a big distance and have a massive effect* on a country so far away, it is also impressive the speed at which the wave travels. New Zealand has felt the effects of the wave 12 – 15 hours after the earthquake, to put that in comparison the flight time from Chile to New Zealand is 13 hours on an Airbus A340. The Tsunami wave is travelling at around the same speed as a jetliner. That is a very scary thought.

The Tsunami may not be a tree but the age old philosophical question of “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound?” is answered very much yes with the way in which the entire world responses to the threat of a Tsunami.

—

*Massive Effect – I don’t take this to mean widespread distruction, I take this to mean Tidal Surge Chart showing a water movement of 1m+, Widespread Civil Defense warnings, Evacuations of people from low lying costal areas, cancellations of events and warnings for people to stay off beaches, pretty much anything that impacts the daily lives of many thousands of individuals.

The sole power line to the entire Auckland region failed again this afternoon cutting power to around one million people. The only operating power station north of Hamilton is the Huntly coal fired station which cannot supply power to all of Auckland so Transpower cut power to all of Auckland except for essential services like hospitals, sewage and water supply.

However the reporting on both NZ Herald and Stuff reads quite funny:

Police say power has been restored to many of the 5000 Auckland homes left in the dark after a fire underneath power lines prompted mass power cuts from the Waikato to Northland and throughout Auckland this afternoon.

Now I am sure that there are more than 5000 homes in these areas:

Among the Auckland suburbs affected were Remuera, Ponsonby, Epsom, East Tamaki, Freemans Bay, Manukau, Mt Wellington, Newmarket, Onehunga, Birkdale, Beachhaven, Northcote, Glenfield, Manly, Helensville, Hauraki, Forest Hill, East Coast Road, Albany and Belmont.

In fact this image was posted on stuff.co.nz showing the extend of the outage:

Breaking news seems to be coming form the Twitterverse this morning.

It appears that the Auckland City Council’s parking machines were storing the credit card numbers of all cards entered into the machines and the database storing this data has been hacked.

There is a discussion going on here at Public Address: http://publicaddress.net/system/topic,2226,hard-news-a-bigger-breach.sm

There is no reason why after the transaction was processed for the council to store the credit card numbers unless they were using them as a form of tracking of people using the carpark, if this is the case they still should have never stored the credit card numbers, at a minimum a hash sum of the number would have worked. There appears to be much more to come on this story.

Update:

This just in from Mr A. Source:

Auckland City’s PCI certification is under serious review which will compromise their ability to carry out any credit card transactions. This will also potentially impact the new Auckland Council. Basically, internal systems at Auckland City have been compromised.

http://publicaddress.net/system/topic,2226,hard-news-a-bigger-breach.sm?p=142117#post142117

Brain Rudman has a good column in the Herald today about the so called March for Democracy this Saturday.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10609888

How humiliating to live in a country where $500,000 is being spent encouraging people to march up the main street of our biggest city demanding the right to beat their kids.

It could only happen in a country with one of the worst child murder rates in the developed world.

Instead of parading up Queen St this Saturday, waving their wooden spoons and looking for bottoms to belt, Colin Craig, the organiser and bankroller of this crassly named March for Democracy, and his supporters should be holding a candle for each abused child.

It is quite amazing that what is being dubed as the biggest protest march ever is about the right to smack a child. It just goes to show how sad a society we have become when the biggest issue facing us is the right to abuse and hit defenseless kids.

Despite this horrendous culture of abuse, Mr Craig will process up Queen St with his merry marchers to demand that their ancient right to smack their children be restored. Will the penny never drop that he’d be doing more for democracy – and the kids of New Zealand – if his $500,000 went into something as simple as parenting lessons – or support services – for at-risk young parents.

Exactly. If you want to really fight child abuse then put the money into programs that will sort the root cause of the issue. Not provocative and factually wrong tv ads.

The organiser of the ambiguously worded anti-smacking referendum of earlier this year, Larry Baldock, set the benchmark for hyperbole in September when he announced plans for yet another referendum, this one on whether or not such votes should be binding.

“If we do not seriously address these constitutional issues now, our children and grandchildren may be governed in a way our forebears never imagined possible when they resisted oppression on foreign battlefields to protect our liberty.”

This despite the fact that binding referendums have never been a part of the Westminster system of democracy our forebears fought to defend.

Also lurking in the wings is Steve Baron, who since 2003 – first under Voters’ Voice and now Better Democracy – has been campaigning for binding citizens-initiated referendums as a form of direct democracy.

He says he is marching on Saturday and “I hope others will join me and become the 6-8 per cent of society who become politically active, the political gladiators, the select few who get off their backsides to make a difference.”

Bob McCoskrie, national director of Family First, warns that the march is “not a one-off – it is part of a long term strategy to bring representative democracy back to New Zealand”. Like Mr Baldock, he’s got his political science confused. Binding citizens-initiated referendums, which is what this motley right-wing band are demanding, are anathema to the principles of representative democracy.

This form of government dates back to the 18th-century principle, advocated by Edmund Burke, that an MP is not in Parliament to act as his constituents’ delegate, but is elected to represent them, using his skills and best judgment to do what he thinks is best, for both country and the electors.

The development of disciplined political parties has somewhat watered this principle of MP independence down, but the system we have inherited and developed is still a far cry from the principle of mob rule that governance by binding citizens-initiated referendums promises.

The Royal Commission on the Electoral System 1986 decided that “in general, initiatives and referendums are blunt and crude devices … [that] would blur the lines of accountability and responsibility of Governments”.

They threaten the rights of minorities. In Switzerland, the land of cheese and binding referendums, binding referendums enabled a majority of men to deny women the basic right to vote until 1971.

Paradoxically, they also allow minorities to push their own hobby horses. Baron, of Better Democracy, in his rallying call for this Saturday’s march, appealed for “political gladiators … the select few who get off their backsides to make a difference”.

He puts this minority at 6-8 per cent.

6 – 8 percent is nothing more than mob rule. The rich elite with their ability to ensalve the working class. It sounds like the past. The past that the vast majority of New Zealanders do not want to go back to.

Okay the power has just been restored to my flat on Auckland’s North Shore after a cut lasting around exactly an hour and a half.

I am not grumpy about the cut, they are a fact of life.

What I am grumpy about is the fact that it is not a storm so the reasoning for the cut seems to be a little odd. At first my flatmates thought a car had hit a local power pole. But as we have found out the cut is to 280,000 customers in West Auckland, North Shore, and Northland. Which would mean upwards of 500,000+ people would be without power this morning. So why is the power out:

“Just after 8.00am this morning a circuit on the Otahuhu to Henderson 220 kV line tripped while the other circuit was out for maintenance, causing loss of supply for North Auckland and Northland.” – stuff.co.nz

Sound familar?

Lets think back to 2006:

“The 2006 Auckland Blackout refers to the massive electrical blackout in Auckland, the largest city in New Zealand, on 12 June 2006. It started at 8:30 am local time, with most areas of Auckland regaining power by 2:45 pm local time. It affected some 230,000 customers had an impact on at least 700,000 people in and around the city.

The immediate cause of the blackout was determined to be a grounding cable falling across a 110kV transmission line at the Otahuhu sub-station. This was caused by the failure of a corroded shackle, as the result of unusually high winds.^[1] This equipment is part of the national grid, owned and operated by Transpower.

Investigation of this incident found that maintenance of the electricity transmission system was not adequate and that this substation had major and minor design deficiencies.^{” –} 2006 Auckland Blackout

Which in turn sounds very familar to this:

The 1998 Auckland power crisis was a five-week-long power outage.

Almost all of downtown Auckland in New Zealand was supplied electricity by Mercury Energy via four power cables, two of them 40-year-old oil-filled cables that were past their replacement date. One of the cables failed on 20 January, possibly due to the unusually hot and dry conditions, another on 9 February. Due to the increased load from the failure of the first cables, the remaining two failed on 19 and 20 February, leaving about 20 city blocks (except parts of a few streets) without power. - 1998 Auckland power crisis

So in eleven years have we learnt or done anything to stop these incidents repeating? It seems not.

The Herald is reporting that the Bus Drivers lock out in Auckland could last days:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10601944

The lockout followed the drivers issuing the company with a work-to-rule notice.

It is important to note that the Bus Drivers are not on strike, they have been locked out because they gave a work to rule notice which is perfectly legal.

“The drivers have given the unions instruction that we are not to withdraw the work to rule notice unless there is a settlement.”

He said that meant the ball was in the company’s court.

“They will find it very hard to get the drivers back to work now that they have locked them out.”

Yup pretty good way to piss off all your workers, playing hardball is not a good approach in industrial relations.

He also accused the unions of having no interest in resolving the issue responsibly.

He said it could be resolved very simply by the unions lifting their notice of strike action.

Mr Froggatt said the drivers were not on strike as a notice of a work to rule was not strike action.

NZ Bus are clearly in the wrong here. Work to rule would see the buses still running.

Auckland Regional Council said yesterday it may impose a financial penalty on NZ Bus for withdrawing services.

Auckland Regional Council chairman Mike Lee said the approximate figure of $150,000 should not be paid to the company today.

“This is equivalent to a boss’s strike. When workers go on strike, they don’t get paid and neither should NZ Bus when it deliberately locks out workers and therefore the travelling public,” Mr Lee said.

Perfect way to put it. It is the boss’s who have created the “strike” not the employees so good response from the regional council.