The face of abuse
A Judge has allowed this photo of a two year old who was almost killed by two men who over seven weeks body-slammed, tackled, whipped and kicked him.
Read the full story on the NZ Herald. One of the saddest things I have read.
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Tags: New Zealand
March 18th, 2006 at 10:20 am
That is too awful.
March 18th, 2006 at 10:21 am
When I read stories like this I just know that the answer is to make people apply to have children. Tito should not be allowed the breed. She is beneath contempt. No human mother could let that happen to her son. She is therefore not human and should be kept on a leash at the pound. Unless we stop wanton breeding by people who are not fit to be parents this will continue. Stop it at the source. Deny shitheads like this the right to breed. And yes, I am serious.
March 18th, 2006 at 11:34 am
This is almost to sad for words.
It fills me with rage when I read she was going to be able to apply for home detention as well!!!
This mother is pure scum all she is worried about is what will happen to her. She stood by while this poor defenseless child was subjected to wholesale torture Gooner is right she is not fit to be a mother and she is not fit to be treated like a human
March 18th, 2006 at 12:21 pm
When I read things like this I’m not sure which infuriates me the most: the fact that scum like Tito and the mother of Lillybing allow and participate in the savagery inflicted on their children or the inevitability that they will sooner or later get knocked-up again and bring another child into the world to be abused and neglected or dumped in someone elses lap to take care of.
March 18th, 2006 at 12:54 pm
I have a solution for this, it is called a bullet. These scum don’t deserve to breathe air and I would be happy to pull the trigger.
March 18th, 2006 at 2:06 pm
Shocking I agree,
I wonder what the boy will grow up to be like in 20yrs time?
I don’t doubt he also may continue the cycle, the odds are all stacked against the kid from the time he was born by the look of it.
In my view there is the face of a future criminal, but I wonder who’s fault is it?
March 18th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
Sure the woman deserved her sentence – but I don’t think Farrar meant his post to be a lightning rod for misogynistic hate speech.
“Breeding” requires 2 people – and conservatives hate abortion – no? So the solution is for poor people to just not have sex – like the current legislation in Kansas, I guess.
March 18th, 2006 at 5:29 pm
Mr Gowing said she had not taken appropriate steps to stop her son’s ill treatment but that she had found herself in a difficult situation.
“She got sucked into the whole atmosphere and attitude of Mr Wharewera, who she fell in love with,” he said.
. . .
The abuse culminated in the boy being admitted to hospital with severe head injuries after Harley Mac Wharewera savagely beat him with a roll of wallpaper wrapped in newspaper on September 21.
Wharewera, 20, is serving 10 years in prison after also admitting forcing the boy to eat dog faeces.
Well, gee – its easy to see how that could turn a girls head.
March 18th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
Anyone with experience in a Trauma/A+E situation will know that this case is not entirely rare.Since we don’t do eugenics and selective sterilisation anymore we will just have to get over it and accept,with however much disgust,that the likes of Tito and her associates will continue to breed , kill,maim or raise prison or social welfare fodder. What we may be able to change however,is the level of punishment being offered on conviction and the possibility of such people ever being considered suitable for home detention.Education only works for the educable.What about the rest? What was this Judge THINKING?
March 18th, 2006 at 7:10 pm
It’s pathetic when anyone sticks up for this nasty evil bastard Wharewera but his sister said,”He’s very shy quiet loving person. He’s really good around my kids.” Yeah right
March 18th, 2006 at 9:20 pm
“In my view there is the face of a future criminal, but I wonder who’s fault is it?”
Try those arseholes who offer welfare at the drop of a hat to scum to pump out unwanted unloved kids Cadmus. Oh wait….thats you!
Why the suprise? This is what happens when values and personal responsibility are crushed under Nannys social justice.
March 18th, 2006 at 9:34 pm
“In my view there is the face of a future criminal, but I wonder who’s fault is it?”
Rodney Hide’s fault isn’t it Cadmus?
Ruth, I don’t apologise for hating these people. I don’t care who gets ‘chopped’. And I’m no conservative. Being poor is no excuse for inflicting this on a two year old. Having children is the most serious responsibility one can take on. If you can’t take on that responsibility you don’t have them.
March 18th, 2006 at 9:44 pm
What took you so long James? I’ve been quietly waiting for you to trot out your standard “nanny-state” line all damm day.
So far the right wing’s response to this tragedy has been:
How sad!
How disgusting!!
How can we stop them breeding?
How soon can I put a bullet in their brains?
How can I twist this to blame the Labour government?
What we read from the right is a catalog of “misogynist hate speech” that represents the total abdication of any form of “personal responsibility and values”. Go guys. This kind of moderate conservative sensibility goes down a treat with “mainstream New Zealand”…not. But hey keep it up, it’s just the kind of extremist stuff that lost you the last election.
March 18th, 2006 at 10:24 pm
Logix, I didn’t ask how to stop them breeding. The answer to that is clear. I’ve seen babies being fed dog faeces and hash cake. I’ll say this again: people like this must not be allowed to have children. Fuck them, their ‘rights’ and the horse they rode in on.
Oh btw, what is your solution? You offered nothing.
March 18th, 2006 at 10:40 pm
Crimes such as this have happened at all times in our history, regardless of the political regime, left, right, fascist, liberal, democratic, despotic…whatever. The responsibility for the crime lies with the those who committed it. (And on the face of it, home detention does seem totally out of line.)
But the truth is that not all people are capable of functioning as responsible adults, even less so as effective parents. Look around you at how many so-called adults are unable or unwilling to deal with addictions such as drugs, gambling, risky loveless sex, bullying and abuse, etc. Even something as deeply loathed as paedophilia has those in it’s thrall. We are all deeply flawed beings, all of us capable of the kind of self-delusion that propels us on paths of complete ruin and destruction, even when the rational mind knows otherwise.
So what are we to say about these two men and the failed mother of this child? Their failure is complete and abject, they deserve our horror and contempt for their actions, or lack of action… they are the lowest of the low. But human they remain, and we all share the same possibility of a moral failure equally catastrophic. None of us know our future, none of us can predict exactly what moral test will come our way, nor can any of know if our integrity will be adequate for the crisis. I do not imagine for an that any of us reading this blog would be likely to feed dog shit to an infant….yet it is a prideful hubris to insist that we are immune to some other act equally abhorrent in it’s own way. The nature of Tito’s delusional thinking is no different to the kind of human failure that is an absolute commonplace, and it is of course exceptional in that her sheer brute dysfunctionality overcame even the normally powerful maternal instinct.
I looked at the picture and firstly felt shame, a sense of sadness that my own species is capable of these things. And then my mind wandered off to consider the millions of other innocents who suffer worse fates, equally tragic, and the victims of causes far more “respectable” than Tito’s.
Gooner,
You ask for a “solution”. There is none that we can impose. Humans will fuckup regardless of how many rules, regulations and restrictions we put in place. The only way people will live up to standards and principles is if they WANT to. Shovelling money at them will not work, threatening them will not work, monitoring their every thought will not work…it has to come from within. This is why religion is such an enduring feature of all human culture, despite the fact that all prior examples degenerate into power mad heirarchies….yet some how it is only religion that has reliably given the masses of humanity a compass they were willing to follow. Yet how can I endorse a solution that appears so flawed in it’s own way?
I wish I knew gooner, I really do.
March 19th, 2006 at 5:30 am
Two things strike me.
Logix you say ‘You ask for a “solution”. There is none that we can impose.’ and ‘What we read from the right is a catalog of “misogynist hate speech” ‘.
What all those posters feel is is disgust and yes hate for someone that would do this to a defenseless child.( as I write this my 18mth old is playing in the same room with me.I shudder to think what I would do to someone that did something like this to him)
That they suggest solutions such as a bullet is not surprising considering the amount of times we have seen this sort of thing on the news. There is a solution, well a partial on anyway, send these people to prison for a very very long period.10 years is not sufficent. Home D is an obvious joke for the mother(if she gets it).
As you said there is no solution. So all we can do is get these people (after the crime unfortunately) of the streets and into somewhere with no children to abuse.
second thing – Funny how this sort of abuse thing is an almost exclusive Maori club. Maybe Bill Bush should be doing something about that instead of worring about friggin sports.
Allah protect us.
March 19th, 2006 at 6:45 am
Logix…if you ain’t part of the solution you are part of the problem and buddy…you are! Your team…and the Nats to a degree have sent out the message for years that breeding is right that should be subsidised by unconsenting others.The result has been a massive upsurge in people in no state to raise children having them as a lifestyle option.The solution is to remove the monetary incentive to breed in the first place and remove children from those who do so anyway and then abuse them.
March 19th, 2006 at 8:26 am
Ruth: “misogynistic hate speech”
“So the solution is for poor people to just not have sex”
Firstly I would dispute that she was poor, she was probably on the DPB. Many employed NZers are on low incomes and she wouldn’t have been much worse off than them. She certainly would have had enough money for housing, electricity, food and clothing. You can’t excuse her actions on the basis of her being poor.
“Misogynistic” really? why does everything have to become a woman’s rights issue.
Logix: As humans we may fail, but not to this degree. Tito’s actions were abhorrent. Some of the other failings that you equate with Tito’s abuses aren’t as horrific. I don’t accept your claim that these abuses have always gone on. Child abuse has been on the increase in NZ. Our society has support services, standards, and laws and to claim that any NZer, you and I, for instance could become a completely disfunctional Tito, without a complete break-down of social mores, is just ridiculous. Worse it, exuces Tito’s actions.
March 19th, 2006 at 8:46 am
I read somewhere on studies that had been done of the saftey of children with adults. The most dangerous for a child was to be in a situation where there was a boyfriend of their mother. Because the boyfriends are not biologically related to the children, they don’t have that intrinstic protectiveness to the children and can even see them as competition. In the wild it is typical for males to kill the offspring of others so that they can then replace them with their own.
The only solution that civilisation has managed to come up with to this problem is marriage and children within marriage to the married spouse.
March 19th, 2006 at 8:48 am
Oops, when I said “in the wild”, I was referring to wild animals.
March 19th, 2006 at 9:04 am
I would dispute that she was poor, she was probably on the DPB.
Classic. According to Work and Income solo Mums with a single child on the DPB get about $200 week after tax. That must be how they can afford all those drugs, lottery tickets and Faberge eggs we keep hearing about the DPB funding.
The solution is to remove the monetary incentive to breed in the first place and remove children from those who do so anyway and then abuse them.
More first class absurdism. Do you really think that morons like Jill Tania Tito are going to change their lifestyle because there’s no ‘monetary incentive’ for them to breed? And do you think that her son would have been better off if we didn’t have socialised medicine? Would the market somehow magically invent a system in which infants abused by their poverty level parents are provided with first-class health care? Or would this type of crime simply vanish as soon as the government stopped interfering in peoples lives – you know, like it did in Victorian London.
March 19th, 2006 at 9:07 am
The only solution that civilisation has managed to come up with to this problem is marriage and children within marriage to the married spouse.
Well . . . that and a little something called the justice system, but why split hairs?
March 19th, 2006 at 9:16 am
Danyl, the justice system punishes the wrongdoers after the fact. Marriage reduces the chances of this sort of thing happening.
March 19th, 2006 at 9:20 am
James,
have sent out the message for years that breeding is right that should be subsidised by unconsenting others.
This conflates two separate questions.
1. Is having children a right? Tricky. If faced with massive overpopulation pressures, then for example the Chinese have attenuated that right to just one child. Unfortunately at the expense of about 100 million girl babies…
Or if you are suggesting that in NZ we restrict breeding to suitably approved applicants…well that is a can of worms. Care to try listing your criteria?
2. The subsidising of children. Well I can remember reading Dickens if nothing else, and I seem to recall that even in the “good old days” when there was no welfare, women still had children born into poverty, and they still starved, fell ill and died or were sent off to “workhouses” and the like. I guess you would be happy to call this “personal responsibility”?
March 19th, 2006 at 9:49 am
Since some of you are making wild generalisations from a single case, I shall do likewise. Auckland serial rapist Joe Thompson was the biological son of a married, employed couple. Neither the legal formality of his parents’ relationship nor their source of income were enough to protect him from a horrific upbringing, for which he later took revenge.
I suspect that Tito’s family history was equally traumatic. That does not excuse her actions, she is fully responsible for them. But to expect marriage or welfare cuts to prevent dire situations like this is absurd.
March 19th, 2006 at 10:06 am
Contrarian, my saying that marriage is the safest place for children does not negate the possibility of something going wrong. Look at child abuse, most child abuse occurs to children of single parents. This does not mean that child abuse does not occur to children of married parents, just that there is less child abuse in these situations. Less does not equal none.
March 19th, 2006 at 11:13 am
Danyl, I have a friend on the DPB with one child and she receives $300.00 in the hand and that doesn’t include child support. My point is that society gives unemployed single woman money to survive and they have options. They don’t have to live such a degrading life.
March 19th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
Not sure if anyone has mentioned it yet but Tito’s son is currently in the care of her mother. IF Tito gets hom detention, where do you think she will reside? I’m guessing with her mother. I just don’t get it, why do ‘the authorities’ keep putting children who have suffered so much back into these situations??? It was so sad to read about the case of the wee baby who was beaten so he is now permanently brain damaged… a newborn baby placed with a other who the year before had had her two older children taken off her as they were so malnourished and lacked basic developmental abilities (like walking – they were 4 and 7). Something is seriously f***ed up if that is ok./
March 19th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
Oh, and as we debate this, American B-52’s appear to be bombing the Iraqi town of Samarra and surrounding villages.
Fortunately we can be assured that no Iraqi babies will be harmed as B-52 bombs only target “terrurusts”.
March 19th, 2006 at 2:04 pm
Lucyna wrote:
March 19th, 2006 at 2:24 pm
James you say …
“Try those arseholes who offer welfare at the drop of a hat to scum to pump out unwanted unloved kids Cadmus. Oh wait….thats you!”
Elsewhere they tell people that the State/govt has no money for them, They have had their share of Welfare, so they make life the best way they can.
So desperate for $$ they put their kid into whats called a “Chicken Coup” where young kids become the pleasure of a sick few. Butt Plugged, burnt, tortured, for a few bucks in the parents pocket.
The above is tragic enough, what your advocating James would make the problem far worse than what we know have in NZ.
You see James both National/Labour govts are prepared to put a child first. OK this type of incident will happen again no doubt. It is tragic.
But it could be a hundred fold if certain people were running NZ, and many were forced into substandard housing or living on the streets.
You see James that is why many in National don’t want you and your ACT mates anywhere near the treasury benches, who could blame them!
March 19th, 2006 at 5:50 pm
May I suggest that when something this digusting and tragic happens that it is not the time to try to score political points.
March 19th, 2006 at 6:41 pm
The likes of Tito and those of similar persuasion have a purpose in life after all.They make the rest of us look good by comparison.Both the crime and the shock /horror reaction will repeat…as we speak,little kids are being horribly abused and quite soon the death of another one will hit the media.As I mentioned earlier,these crimes will always be with us,for whatever reason,but the punishment meted out lately does not seem to fit the crime.When I think of this Tito creature even being CONSIDERED for home detention,my blood pressure rises.And yes,I wonder about the preventive effect of longer sentences etc.But dammit,why don’t we actually punish them..I know that one way or another Tito will be a cost to taxpayers as long as she lives.I’m all for spending more on her imprisonment than fucking home detention,where she may well conceive another poor kid to be abused.
March 19th, 2006 at 6:48 pm
To many words not enough bullets.
March 19th, 2006 at 8:59 pm
So Cadmus… the answer that child abuse fans like you and Logix offer is …”well what can we do? Stopping the funding that allows them to continue in this lifestyle is just cruel and leaves them in a worse position”. Well I say what about those who are forced to pay these scum to wallow in their dependancy? Why are the responsibile and the productive judged to be in debt to the lazy and irresponsible? What about the responsibility of the needy not be become a burden on their fellow Kiwis if they can help it? Welfare that could go to those who do need a hand up is spent on scum who want to bludge on someone else as of right, do you consider that just?
But this suits Labour down to the ground.Dependant morons who are welded to welfare are the life blood of the Clark/Cullen agenda.To hell with kids being abused and lives lost…as long as the plebs scratch their X next to Labour on the day who gives a damm about them…right?
March 19th, 2006 at 11:14 pm
James,
Take a cool evening walk mate and have a quick think about just how many people utilise our welfare system in a moderate and honest manner, and who seek to get themselves into a self-supporting situation as soon as possible….I suggest to you that this describes the huge majority of DPB recipients. Now have a think about the tiny handful of child abusers that are similar to this case.
You are making the old conflation error, eg if one man commits a rape, then all men must be rapists.
Why are the responsible and the productive judged to be in debt to the lazy and irresponsible? What about the responsibility of the needy not be become a burden on their fellow Kiwis if they can help it?
There is an old saying “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him to fish, you feed him for a lifetime”. Yet in our modern world we have come to realise that this old bromide is not the whole story. If indeed you are sincere about the task of improving the lot of your fellow humans, there are some complex and difficult dimensions to consider. Broadly speaking there are four aspects:
1. Relief; giving the hungry fish may be needed so that they can live.
2. Personal Development; teaching the man to fish so that he can form a plan to feed himself.
3. Community Development; arranging so that there is fishing equipment available, and a stocked pool to fish in.
4. Structural Development; arranging so as everyone has equitable opportunity and access to the fishing pool.
The question you ask is focussed on the first two aspects, the dynamic of compassion and responsibility. It is as you are saying quite hopeless, indeed debilitating if all you ever do is offer charity (in the modern parlance, welfare) without ever requiring the recipient to respond and act towards building their own future.
The reason why you question leads nowhere is that it is framed with no consideration to the latter two aspects…the role of communal development and social justice. It is clearly pointless to teach a man to fish, if there are no fish to catch, yet that is usually a technical problem that human ingenuity can solve….but by far the most common reason why the poor remain impoverished is that the system is designed to unjustly prevent from the fishing pool altogether.
If you honestly examine the roots of your own prosperity you will find all four elements at work, to some degree, at some point in your life; you have been helped, you have been encouraged to help yourself, you have lived in a nation where resources are plentiful, and most vitally, you have not been unjustly blocked and barred from sucess. All four elements must be present….take away one or more…and there will be poverty in at least one form or another.
Nor am I measuring poverty in purely material terms here. Almost all of what I am saying can be interpreted in ethical or moral terms as well. No..I’ll go a step further….it is prerequisite for the moral dimension to be addressed first. Tito’s failure is first and foremost a moral one. Bereft of a personal moral compass, trapped into an underclass swilling with violence, theft, drugs and disrespect it is entirely obvious that monetary welfare alone was an entirely insufficient solution.
At the same time I have to cheer on old uncle bob…go to it…I look forward to your murder trial and hopefully very long prison sentence if you were ever to have the actual balls to put your foolish words into action.
If you are sincere James in your question, then you might want to frame your thinking in the terms I have suggested, that true progress depends on a constructive mutual interdepedence between the individual and the society they live in. The right wingers make the mistake of pivoting the entire weight of the relationship on the individual; and left-wingers make the complementary error of locating all responsibility with the collective. Both are correct, and both wrong at the same time. Hence the perpertual skirmishes and petty arguments between them. Unless and until we frame the debate in terms of uniting the role of both individual and society, that our fundamental paradigm is that of “mutual interdependence” then we remain trapped in futile debates, throwing spent ammunitions at each other from positions of intellectual bankrupcy.
But did you really want a solution? And are you in a position to afford one, if it were offered to you?
March 20th, 2006 at 4:22 am
There is a way of uniting individualism with caring for each other, human benevolence is voluntary – it isn’t expressed through the state.
The term social justice is an utterly bankrupt excuse for any form of state-enforced theft – the idea that someone who is more successful than someone else owes something to the less successful. This is nonsense. However, it is human to care for and the want to help others who you can relate to and empathise with. This is the natural benevolence that has helped communities through civil emergencies, wars and the like – it is how almost everyone acts with family and friends. It is how many do with neighbours, it is civilisation. It isn’t out of guilt or obligation or force, but humanity.
This case has little to do with that at all – it is about failed people. The men who did this deserve nothing, it is so unspeakably evil as to be beyond words – I’d happily pay for them to both be locked up in solitary confinement for life – I can have compassion for people who fail their own life because of abuse, but not those who are evil towards children. The child’s mother deserves to never receive state welfare at the very least and never to breed again – she has shown complete inability to act according to the basic instincts of a parent – to provide protection. It is no loss for her to not breed again. I would not enforce it medically, but ban her from having custody of children.
Yes I’d ultimately abolish state welfare, but for starters conviction of a violent/sexual offence should deny you ever receiving state welfare – why do people who ruin the lives of others deserve to be fed by them?
March 20th, 2006 at 8:28 am
Libertyscott says it all.
March 20th, 2006 at 8:48 am
Above I outlined very broadly what it takes for human societies to be prosperous, a four way nexus of both individual rights and responsibilities, (welfare and work) and collective rights and responsibilities (a functioning economy and social justice)…a model that demands all four elements to be in balance to deliver the a result. Implicit in this is the idea that welfare alone is an insufficient solution.
Yet your response is to eliminate “state welfare” and rely on “human benevolence” at the personal level. This is the natural benevolence that has helped communities through civil emergencies, wars and the like – it is how almost everyone acts with family and friends. It is how many do with neighbours, it is civilisation. It isn’t out of guilt or obligation or force, but humanity. Great idea…. I have no objection, this fine sentiment is clearly a desirable part of the solution. Now demonstrate to me how well this plan works with some solid historic examples, or better still, from your own life. How many ill, lonely, displaced or alienated people did you PERSONALLY reach out to yesterday? Or where you planning to do it today?
Yet the fact is that the kind of “golden age” you are visualising does not come for free. People will help each other IF they have both the resources and they have as you correctly state…the sense of social empathy and connection. Historically we know this can works well enough at the level of a village, but it breaks down when the social unit is a city, or a nation. Besides, traditionally is was the women upon whom the burden of “benevolence” fell….these days they are out working to pay the mortgage. Personal benevolence is only possible if the community is sufficiently developed and configured to sustain it.
Yes I’d ultimately abolish state welfare
This commits the classic absurdity along the lines ” this house does not keep the rain out very well, lets get rid of the floors”. Your proposals would “destroy the village in order to save it”.
but for starters conviction of a violent/sexual offence should deny you ever receiving state welfare – why do people who ruin the lives of others deserve to be fed by them?
Because this statement uses weasel words to disguise something else….you proposing they should die. No money = no shelter, no food = death. (Unless of course they resort to crime to feed themselves). Spot the fundamental contradiction….you proclaim human liberty, but in reality your position is built on death. In a modern nation such as New Zealand, if you cannot find work, and you are barred from welfare, and you have no family able to support you…then there is no other choice but homelessness. And given enough of them, some will die. What you are calling for is a kind of half-arsed gutless form of death penalty. As a society we have abandoned both the explicit death penalty (capital punishment) and it’s implicit cousin, starvation to death. You do not get to pick and choose who lives or dies, within the bounds of a normal human lifespan. Abandoning someone to starve, when you could feed them, is the same moral act as putting a bullet in their head. Worse actually….death by cold, hunger and exhaustion is slow and especially brutal.
Curious too is the limited moral horizon that your outrage functions in. I’ve refrained so far from extrapolating from this one child’s tragedy, to the 150,000 odd children who die every month in Africa from readily preventable causes. Now I’m not making this your fault….it isn’t. But what I have read from you, it is clear that your moral horizon has shrunk to not extend much past the end of your own nose….while in my world, I want to continue pushing at it’s boundaries so as it might ultimately encompass the whole of humanity.
“It is not about charity, it is about justice.” Bono
March 20th, 2006 at 9:14 am
Loqix – answer me one question, why do the NZ media only concentrate predominantly on the reporting of those abuse cases against Maori children?
The Maori population is listed at about 15% of the population, but the abuse reporting seem to be weighted quite clearly against Maori. Is this because the white man doesn’t report this sort of abuse about white children? Or is there another reason. I think the letter!
March 20th, 2006 at 9:30 am
James, I don’t know if your here for a wind up or not? Either you are, or you have been duped by ACT types?
Also James…Where would the poor fit into “your” NZ society. And how would you solve the above abuse problem?
March 20th, 2006 at 11:30 am
culma,
What answer are you looking for? I would think there are a number of possibilities to choose from. My initial reaction is that there are two forces at work.
1. I have no doubt that there exists an element of “Maori bashing” alive and well in our media. Not necessarily of malicious or personally racist intent, but mostly because European and Maori cultures are not the same, and tend to view things through different lenses, and place a different weight upon them.
2. This links into something very fundamentatal about the Maori and European cultures world views. A Pakeha thinks of himself as standing in the present, and looking forward to the future. By contrast the Maori imagines himself standing in the present, with the entire past looking over his shoulder.
This difference means for instance that Maori society place more weight and value on the ancestors and elders than we do, whereas Pakeha bind up much of their hopes and plans into their children. This of course should NOT be interpreted in a black and white fashion, of course Pakeha care for their retired elderly, and Maori care for their mokopuna….but the cultures are not indentical in this respect, and there are differences in priorities and nuances. It is sticking my neck out to say this, but a dispassionate observer might say as a result, that child abuse is somewhat more likely in Maori society, and elder abuse more prevalent in Pakeha.
By itself this information does not contribute much. Yet is does offer us a choice. As two cultures that are profoundly influencing each other, we can choose to accuse and blame each other for our mutual failings, or we could choose to confirm and adopt each other’s strengths. I pick the latter.
March 20th, 2006 at 12:25 pm
loqix – interesting, I appreciate that you’ve put a foot in the sand “BUT”, the relevance of culture seems strange to me and I would like to address this in blunt terms, “Animal terms” if you will.
1 – If an animal kills or doesn’t protect its young, the species dies off!
2 – can’t see any reason why a Maori could blame a European for the treatment of the Maori child at the hands of the child’s own parent!
3 – children are a gift and looking at the state of this child I believe the judge that posted the photo’s is a charlatan, he has the opportunity to “make an example” out of these scum, but chooses to give him 10 years, be out in 5, and 18 months for the mother, what a crock of shit.
4 – I wonder how much effort Maoridom put into the tools needed to protect their own children from themselves, the reason I have stated it as them and us is quite simple, Maori have always stated they don’t need to be directed by anyone other than Maori.
March 20th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
“Also James…Where would the poor fit into “your” NZ society. And how would you solve the above abuse problem?”
In my society Cadmus we have things called camps where the poor are sent to….and Im kidding!;-)
I want to live in a society that has as few poor people as possible ….how?…by making them richer,thats how! Welfare stops that process and makes it so hard for people to clamber out of the hole that they are in…and I have been there myself and its the closest thing I can imagine to drug addiction.
That is the Hide/Brash agenda Cadmus …to eliminate the poor by making them better off,prosperous and self sefficent..oh the horror!:-O
Capitalists,contrary to Lefty thinking, don’t want large numbers of poor people struggling to survive…why?…because poor people don’t have money to spend on the Capitalists goods to make them richer!
Capitalists want a society of prosperous, secure people wanting to improve their lifestyles because these people will make the Capitalists richer too…win win….just logical ain’t it?
Its actually the Left that need large numbers of poor people in society in order to have a voter base they can string along on dependancy.That is the Clark/Cullen/Winston agenda Cadmus…a nation of addicts all looking to them to get their fix…makes you proud to be a Socialist eh?
As to the abuse…for a start stop funding it by doleing out rewards for bad behavior! How obvious is that? If you create an incentive for people to have children they neither love nor really want why the suprise when they treat these kids as the pain in the arse that they truly see them as?
There will always be abuse…thats just reality Im afraid,but there is no need to activly encourage it amoungst people with welfare rewards for popping out babies that are not wanted.The States function is to protect rights….they should remove children from these monsters and create massive disencentives for these people to breed again…or until they are in a financial and mental state to be able to do so well.
March 20th, 2006 at 3:40 pm
Ok why not personalise this issue a bit…it might cast some light.I had a prem.baby at 41.She was good,but wouldn’t feed.I was manic and had frequent 3am episodes when I hung over the kitchen sink with 2 gins in hand and an ongoing fag.I propped her up on cushions and left the room.I was desperate but never allowed myself to hurt the baby.It was never an option. despite my desperation.YOU JUST DO NOT DO THIS.Do I feel morally superior?Yeah,probably
March 20th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
Mara – when I look at the face of this little guy, I see my own son in his face and the RAGE builds.
There is a difference between myself and these 3, it is called evolution, you wouldn’t expect this behavior from a “ROCK APE” and certainly not a human being. If these people act like this give them all sentences that fit the crime, mother as well.
March 20th, 2006 at 4:42 pm
James, you wrote Libertyscott says it all.
Why are you still ranting?
By the way, making people richer. How would you do that? Are you aware that we live in a closed system. Wealth and resources are finite, and generally speaking, every dollar I earn, is another dollar someone else has to give up. Fortunately we have most of Asia, Africa and South America to keep us in wealth for a wee while longer, but buddy, the shit will hit the fan. There are a billion ambitious Chinese out there, and once they start consuming, you’re going to have to go without.
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:39 am
James. Bang on mate. That is exactly what the state is here for. Somehow along the way Goverment lost the plot and people use it to prop up the kind of lifestyle that led to crimes like this.
Horrid, absolutely horrid. She should not be allowed out for many years.
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:55 am
“By the way, making people richer. How would you do that? Are you aware that we live in a closed system. Wealth and resources are finite, and generally speaking, every dollar I earn, is another dollar someone else has to give up. Fortunately we have most of Asia, Africa and South America to keep us in wealth for a wee while longer, but buddy, the shit will hit the fan. There are a billion ambitious Chinese out there, and once they start consuming, you’re going to have to go without.”
Oh bullshit Andrew….learn some basic economics before making a fool of yourself in public.I am stunned that there are people still pushing that “slice of a limited pie” crap.Wealth and resources are not finite…unless you consider the entire universe a finite resource.Wealth is created…there is no fixed pool and no one is disadvantaged because you earn a dollar…indeed that will lead to other people getting wealthier when you decide to enter into trade with them.And when those Chinese start to consume I and you are getting richer if we trade and supply them with goods and services.You have overlooked the fact that human beings don’t statnd still and wait to stagnant and die.They innovate and grow…thats what will happen to make us all richer and better off….unless Government gets in the way,which is the real threat.
March 23rd, 2006 at 9:06 am
“Wealth and resources are not finite…unless you consider the entire universe a finite resource.”
Well that’s a silly point.
1) The universe IS a finite resource, just a very big one.
2) How exactly are you planning to bring the resources of the entire universe into practical use here on earth, where all humans happen to live? There are some inconvenient laws of physics which tend to make this a little bit impractical at present.
March 23rd, 2006 at 10:52 am
Sigh! err…in case you missed it mankind has already left this planet more than once and will do so again some time.While we are out there we will be seeing what we can utilise for our own use and development….no?.Did I really need to state this to you…? The scale of the universe is infinite as far as we are concerned..its pretty big Im told and theres a lot in it, we should find enough to keep us going for a while!
March 23rd, 2006 at 11:25 am
James, I hope you’re talking about the extremely long term. While leaving the planet does happen now it happens to be one of those evil, communist, government-funded things that isn’t actually commercially viable in any way yet. And the obstacles to it becoming so are quite large, so I wouldn’t base your glorious hopes of economic growth on that any time soon. Let alone the fact that the universe (as a whole) is basically totally irrelevant to us at the moment given that we’re yet to figure out a way to even get around our own solar system effectively. Getting up into empty space on a regular basis is not particularly useful given that there’s nothing there.
Call me when we get something to the nearest star, then I’ll get interested. But as things stand that’s not going to be in my lifetime, so excuse me if I fail to share in your dreams of interplanetary trade.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:36 pm
James, wait and see. I predict you will start to eat your words in less than 20 years. Just because the “slice of a limited pie crap” isn’t too popular with economists any more, doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
Oh, and as for making a fool of myself in public, very large rock for a tiny little glasshouse.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:51 pm
… actually James, you’re quite right. I just re-read your comment and forgot about all that cheese on the moon.
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:10 pm
Small minds and all that….sigh!
April 5th, 2006 at 6:39 pm
How embarrassing having to explain to English friends here on holiday that our indigenous people are murdering their children in higher numbers than anywhere else in the world. Their response: “are these people educated or taught how to respect another human being’s life?”. My response to that could only be “obviously, no”. Their response to that and to the photo published in the Herald was: “they should not be allowed to have children” with which I agree.