CYFSWatch Blog gone
The CYFSWatch blog appears to have been deleted, no doubt by Google for breach of its terms and conditions.
I’m in or on various media today discussing this. Prime News at 5.30 pm and TV3 News at 6.00 p.m. Plus been on Newstalk ZB and NZPA. Common themes are that it is rare for Google to actually delete a blog, and that it is not as hard to trace the blog owner/poster as people think.
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Tags: Blogosphere
February 22nd, 2007 at 5:03 pm
So much for free speech.
February 22nd, 2007 at 5:15 pm
While I do think CYFSWATCH have gone too far, what about all the US blogs screaming abuse at bushitlermcchimpyhalliburton? seems google gone all sensitive over a NZ blog.
February 22nd, 2007 at 5:15 pm
Its back up at
http://watchingcyfs.wordpress.com/
What politicians (and those who want to have to defend their actions) have to understand that with the internet they are unable to keep anything quite .
As the old saying goes, you can fool all the people some of the time, some of the people all the time, but never all the people all the time.
February 22nd, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Barry, are you knew to the interweb?
Saying you want to kill an MP because you don’t agree with a policy that has the majority support of the house (and, indeed, the country) is not some kind of public service.
CYFSWatch in it’s original form was questionable, but perhaps had substance. Now whatever value it had is gone.
February 22nd, 2007 at 5:25 pm
slightlyrighty – you can have all the free speech you want on your own server. Google were well within their rights. CYFSWatch expressly contravened the terms of use, so they went elsewhere. Hardly the orwellian nightmare.
February 22nd, 2007 at 5:28 pm
NCEA Hamish
“Barry, are you knew to the interweb?”
It is highly debatable that the policy in question has the majority support of ‘(and, indeed, the country.)’
Did you learn your grammar and skills of analysis at the feet of a Tapuna Grammar School history teacher?
February 22nd, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Freaken newbies – “the rules are for everyone else”.
Also niggle, quick look out the window… yep turns out we’re not IN America.
We don’t think threatening the shoot the HOS is the height of political discussion.
February 22nd, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Adolf… Tapuna? You mean ‘Takapuna’?
Gee – what’s the really freakin’ obvious comeback here?
February 22nd, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Now Sue can retreat to her moral high ground, safe from the jandal and wooden spoon wielding parents. And CYFS can breathe a sigh of relief. For now. Until they get busy chasing aforementioned parents.
February 22nd, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Barry, the blogsite you mention is not CUYFSWatch reincarnated, but a mirror site – and at the rate the foul language and mindless rot is being posted there it won’t be long before that blog vanishes also.
That, of course, is the point of the exercise but again we have a blog owner playing right into their hands in not controlling quality.
February 22nd, 2007 at 5:49 pm
our freedom of speach has finally gone,PC is here to stay, soon we will all have to be identified on blogsites,ill betcha.
What a sad state of affairs, no more speaking out on any govt/religion/gays/ or for that matter anything, what a dull boring world, might as well be an islamic then they can murder us for speaking.
February 22nd, 2007 at 6:51 pm
“what about all the US blogs screaming abuse at bushitlermcchimpyhalliburton?”
Perhaps it’s because, unlike the Malkin/Coulter crowd, they don’t publish fantasies of executing their political opponents.
February 22nd, 2007 at 6:56 pm
Stephen, actually that was my point. They do, regularly, and do not seem to get their sites taken down. In “liberal” US circles assassination fantasies against the “Rethuglicans” ™ are remarkably common. Isnt there a movie about assassinating a republican president being approvingly reviewed even as we speak?
Clearly you don’t get out enough, which is odd given you want to quote Malkin and Coulter.
February 22nd, 2007 at 7:07 pm
Mr Watch has clearly been courting martyrdom for some time with grandiose comments about being locked up or killed by the governement appearing on his sad site. The reality was that posts were drying up – the hit counter was dwindling and he had to up the ante to keep the attention he needs to brighten his sad and empty life. No doubt he will pop up again quickly elsewhere and the sad game of cat and mouse will continue. Having read the recent comments before Google applied the terms and conditions that Mr Watch had signed up to it was pretty clear that most readers thought he had gone too far. So unless he can come up with another way to get media coverage and the attention he craves he’ll disappear again to the anonymity of a website with few visitors apart from a few sad regular visitors. I do hope that the Police are following him up though. Watching him move from verbal abuse to stalking (stone a social worker) to delusions of martyrdom and then threats of violence its pretty clear that he was losing the plot rapidly. Actual violence is probably not far away. I would imagine this mirrors the behaviour that broke up his family and caused CYFs to become involved in his life. And to the surprisingly numerous posters who posit that Sue Bradford or her friends posted the threatening comments I would sugggest the more likely scenario that Mr Watch created that post as well as quite a few others.
February 22nd, 2007 at 7:12 pm
When did Michelle Malkin fantasize about killing her political opponents?
February 22nd, 2007 at 7:52 pm
So I was right on my “Them or us” prediction, then?
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:29 pm
It back up again. Just go searching under cyfswatch and it comes up.
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:36 pm
> Now whatever value it had is gone.
Nonsense. If it had value before, it still has value You are put off very easily – do you through out a dozen eggs because one is rotten? Apparently so.
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Anne Coulter:
“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.”
“We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too.”
“In [Clinton’s] recurring nightmare of a presidency, we have a national debate about whether he ‘did it,’ even though all sentient people know he did. Otherwise there would be debates only about whether to impeach or assassinate.”
Malkin, meanwhile, makes a practise of posting people’s contact details and disclaiming responsibility for death threats made by her readers.
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:03 pm
OK so we don’t actually want to go and hurt Ms B and her socialist PC stiking rabble.
Or do we?
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:07 pm
Snozzwaggler, freedom of speech comes with certain responsibilities. Inciting murder and political assassinations go FAR beyond free speech.
What a sad state of affairs, no more speaking out on any govt/religion/gays
Ooh, I hope we are still allowed to “speak out on” hetros.
Hawk, what is a “socialist PC stiking rabble”?
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:14 pm
I think that the power of the internet, is slowly beginning to dawn upon the Government. But perhaps more so in this country, since we have the highest ownership of computers/household, than any other country in the world. Interesting times.
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:21 pm
I understand that the owners of CYFSWatch did not make any threats, but someone who posted there made an observation that Bradford’s extremism might get her bumped off….. but stopped short of making any threats, a veiled or otherwise.
If I was to make an observation on this blog that any politician’s extremist actions were endangering his or her safety, then could this blog be closed down as well?
Don’t worry DPF, I will not do that to you.
However, I do note that Bradford has milked this for all she can, and I can not help but rememeber that it was Nero who set fire to Rome.
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:31 pm
24 October 1996
“Veteran protester Sue Bradford had her CHOGM assault charge against a constable dismissed. Her husband, Bill Bradford was convicted of obstruction and fined $250 with court costs of $95″.
Let’s hear it for Sue, heroine of the child protection movement, and her husband. What great role models they were for their kids, who were presumably left alone at home with a friend.
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:32 pm
24 October 1996
“Veteran protester Sue Bradford had her CHOGM assault charge against a constable dismissed. Her husband, Bill Bradford was convicted of obstruction and fined $250 with court costs of $95″.
Let’s hear it for Sue, heroine of the child protection movement, and her husband. What great role models they were for their kids, who were presumably left alone at home with a friend.
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:32 pm
Cyfswatch were quoted as blaming the deletion of their site as “sociakist censorship”. I’m sure Google would be amused at being called socialist! They’re probably in league with those bolsheviks at Microsoft, and the well known commies at Dell!
I guess it just shows that “socialist” is just the one size fits all insult du jour
February 22nd, 2007 at 10:20 pm
This is still freedom of speech.
Its a simple case of private property rights, Cyfswatch was hosted on Googles servers, therefore google are free to cancel service whenever they want – there is no contract to provide service.
Freedom of speech doesn’t include an obligation on others to publish what you say, just as there is no obligation for others to listen.
It would however be a freedom of speech issue of they were censored under threat of force.
February 22nd, 2007 at 10:49 pm
Darryl – the difference between here and CYFSWatch is they actually posted the comments themselves on their front page, and then went and directly threatened Bradford with releasing her home address if she does not withdraw the bill.
February 22nd, 2007 at 11:28 pm
So Ross, you actually stand for something. What!
February 22nd, 2007 at 11:43 pm
Hmmm…. I did not know about the threatening to release her home address part….but surely it wouldn’t be too hard to find taht out?
However, if it the threats were NOT orchestrated by Bradford, but by one of her opponents, it was not a very clever move.
February 22nd, 2007 at 11:44 pm
Hmmm…. I did not know about the threatening to release her home address part….but surely it wouldn’t be too hard to find taht out?
However, if it the threats were NOT orchestrated by Bradford, but by one of her opponents, it was not a very clever move.
February 22nd, 2007 at 11:47 pm
Hmmm…. I did not know about the threatening to release her home address part….but surely it wouldn’t be too hard to find taht out?
However, if it the threats were NOT orchestrated by Bradford, but by one of her opponents, it was not a very clever move.
February 23rd, 2007 at 7:15 am
Stephen you are being tiresome now. Yes Coulter uses strong rhetoric.
Do you really deny that left wing blogs in the States use strong and abusive rhetoric? In fact hasnt the Edwards campaign just had to throw a couple of bloggers over the side for their embarassing posting?
Have you ever READ any of the diaries on DailyKos?
Returning to the topic. Sue Bradford is a communist with a long history of trying to weasel the state into people’s lives. Why should we believe she has changed her spots now?
Communist ideology has a strong focus on interposing the state between parents and children so that the next generation of good little comrades can be properly indoctrinated. Hell, Sue studied her politics in China, the archetypal proponents of this system.
Will banning smacking stop the lamearse parents who beat their kids?
NO of course it won’t. Assaulting kids is already a criminal offense. Did the Statute on assault save the Kahuis?
So what is the real purpose of the legislation? It puts the state directly into families that aren’t bad or where children arent at the slightest risk, and mandates state intrusion and supervision.
The Children’s commissioner is actively salivating at the idea.
This is a deliberate attempt at social engineering, and in my view a misuse of the power of the State.
If the proponents mean to use the legislation, the police and CYFS will be distracted from their actual jobs, but hey, harassing middle class moms and dads is easier than catching actual criminals isnt it.
If everyone ignores the law, then the only casualty is the reputation of Parliament, and is that a good outcome?
What is going on with this country?
February 23rd, 2007 at 10:53 am
Ross, Ross Ross, dear oh dear.
Soundbites taken out of context might seem pretty nifty and clever, but it just shows that you are incapable of thinking.
Guess what, “assault” by protesters against the police is sometimes done in self defence or in defence of their friends. The police also use bogus assault charges to remove people they find difficult from protest groups. People like Bradford were targeted for this. Why don’t you find out what actually happened.
As for their kids, who were presumably left alone at home with a friend.. If they were with a friend they were not alone and presumably is a euphemism for “I just made this up on the spot”.
But yes, what a crime. Surely it would have been better to lock them in the car with a bottle of raspberry and coke and a bag of twisties.
Did your parents ever leave you with friends?
February 23rd, 2007 at 1:06 pm
I’m guessing you have had too many coffees today, Andrew.
“People like Bradford”…yes, I’m sure Sue was a model parent. But seriously, what I find interesting is that dear Sue was not always too keen on obeying the law. However, she expects parents to do just that and not smack their kids. Why is it that those who speak out loudly on moral issues (eg, Graham Capill) are usually the worst examples? Feelings of guilt or inadequacy, perhaps?
February 23rd, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Ross. I stand to be corrected, but I believe Andrew Bannister maybe a member of the legal profession. As with all laws, the legal fraternity have a ‘vested’, commercial interest in ensuring this Bill proceeds as is.
February 23rd, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Andrew said “Snozzwaggler, freedom of speech comes with certain responsibilities. Inciting murder and political assassinations go FAR beyond free speech.”
Andrew, why the hell should we all suffer because some asshole abuses the site with treats,
Yes there is a degree of reponsibility with freedom of speech, and how the dickens are we gonna stop idiots who do threaten on any blogsite, its really the blog owners responsibility to remove such posts, or suffer the consequences of the law.
February 23rd, 2007 at 5:10 pm
Ross, Capill molested a child.
Bradford stood up for her beliefs by pretesting. You might not agree with her beliefs, or think protesting is for losers, but protesting and child-molestation are very different.
See child molesting is both illegal and morally repugnant. Protesting carries a risk of arrest, but is neither illegal, nor morally repugnant. If you can’t tell the difference, you are a scary scary man.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t necessarily like Sue Bradford, but some of you go way to far in the way you paint her.
Mmmmm coffee.
but I believe Andrew Bannister maybe a member of the legal profession
And that is just another good example of the presumptuous nonsense from yet another poster. Paul, you should be able to figure out what I do for a living from several of my comments here. Hint: it’s nothing to do with the legal profession. Good luck.
its really the blog owners responsibility to remove such posts, or suffer the consequences of the law.
uh…yeah. In fact the blog owner didn’t remove the post and did suffer the consequences. Your point?
I am pretty sure that if I start threating to kill people on this site, DPF will remove those threats PDQ and ban me from his blog.
February 23rd, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Andrew,,that is my point, he didnt remove it, so it was shut down
February 23rd, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Andrew. Nobody threatened to kill anybody. If they had, the police would have acted. Your statement is just another example ‘of presumptuous nonsense’. Andrew, I have considered you to be one of the more balanced and intelligent commentators here. Perhaps you are succumbing to this emotive issue also? It is my view that the Govt is venturing into uncharted waters at their peril and that they are pitting their collective egos and pack mentality on this issue, against the entire nation.
February 24th, 2007 at 11:18 am
Over on Salient someone has blogged that Sue Bradford did actually hit her children …
“When Sue was starting her life, working at the Auckland People’s Center (1992ish), she would often bring her kids into work. When they ran wild (as they often did) she would smack them really hard where-ever her hand would make contact, not just the smacking but yell at them (even though they were less than one foot from her mouth).”
Now whether this is true or not remains to be verified. In the mean time, the front page article on the Dom Post a few days ago highlighted the fact (from a direct quote from her daughter) that Sue, whilst not using physical violence frequently resorted to yelling which appears to corroborate half the above assertion at least.
A small question for Sue – do you not consider that verbal abuse including ferocity, volume, tone,language, reinforced negative messages contributes to emotional abuse of children just as you purport that mild smacking does? If you don’t is this because you practised frequent verbal abuse on your own children?
Perhaps this is why the proposed anti-smacking law doesn’t cover other forms of child abuse. Its ok for Sue Bradford to criminalise the rest of the ordinary parents out there doing their best to raise responsible citizens, but its best to leave out those actions that might criminalise her.
So much for sticking up for the children Sue. You have no credibility at all. If you were really concerned about the kids instead of pushing your own reprehensible socialist agenda in the name of blind ideology you’d take a holistic and responsible approach to real child abuse – by defining the difference and seriously targeting only those people who really DO abuse children.
February 24th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Andrew. Nobody threatened to kill anybody.
Unfortunately I don’t have the original comment, but from memory it was something like encouraging or suggesting that someone assassinate Bradford (or was it the PM?). That along with publishing (or rather threatening to publish) addresses, it gets very close to inciting violence, if not murder. Legally it might be a bit of a grey area (I suspect that the police have difficulty finding the line here), but I think you are arguing semantics.
However, if you are going to argue semantics:
Bradford’s bill isn’t about banning smacking. It is about using “reasonable force” as a defence if a parent (or other guardian) is brought before the court for assault. That means, the same parents as before (and not more parents, as lots of people seem to think) will still be brought before the court for serious assaults, but it is less likely that they will get off on a technicality. Like many others, I personally doubt that it will actually make a difference, but who knows. However, the hysteria about good parents being made into criminals is just not true.
Also, when I read things like the abuse of CYFS and their employees, I have serious difficulty believing that these people are good balanced parents. It makes me think that there might be good reasons why CYFS intervened.
The problem here is that there are probably some (I imagine that there are in fact only a few) cases where CYFS were wrong. Subsequently CYFSwatch starts up and every nutbar who has had CYFS involvement starts venting their spleen. I imagine the majority (but not all) of the people posting their experience about CYFS on CYFSwatch are probably in the wrong and it was in fact reasonable for CYFS to step in. Of course I don’t know that for certain, but when you only hear one side of the story, you have to wonder.
Ultimately the people who really were wronged by CYFS will suffer because of the rest. Rather that one rotten apple spoiling the whole batch, I think what we have here is an entire batch of rotten apples with an occasional good one. And the effect of CYFSwatch is like piling more and more rotten apples on top, giving the few good ones even less chance of at least a hearing.
February 25th, 2007 at 10:22 am
> The problem here is that there are probably some (I imagine that there are in fact only a few) cases where CYFS were wrong.
So you admit that there are some cases where CYFS have got it wrong. Maybe you’d like to discuss the implications of those errors, and what needs to be done to put them right.
February 25th, 2007 at 10:45 am
Children’s Commissioner Cindy Kiro has employed a full-time staff member to handle the 400 complaints a year it receives about the Child, Youth and Family service.
What an incredible coincidence, so soon after the CYSWATCH site was set up. Isn’t it amazing what a little pressure can do? And doesn’t it suggest that such complaints weren’t previously treated with the seriousness that they deserved?
February 25th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Ross, of course I admit that it is possible that errors were made. You would have to be pretty bloody closed-minded to not see that possibility. Have I ever said anywhere that I didn’t? My comments were about the problem with the blog. Reactionary, one-sided and over-the-top.
Children’s Commissioner Cindy Kiro has employed a full-time staff member to handle the 400 complaints a year it receives about the Child, Youth and Family service.
Do you admit that of those 400 complaints a year, a number of them will not be valid? See, when people behave badly and they get caught, they get angry. And when people get angry, they lay complaints. That doesn’t mean they are right. That also doesn’t give them the right to start threatening and abusing people.
April 21st, 2007 at 11:53 am
Hey,
I love what you’e doing!
Don’t ever change and best of luck.
Raymon W.
April 26th, 2007 at 6:01 am
Looks Like Dallas is in trouble!
Phoenix might end up blowing them all away.
PHX vs. Det. Hmmm..Could be interesting?
April 27th, 2007 at 5:33 am
Hello,
I like this place! You’ve done a great job.
I’ll be back soon for sure. Take care
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:28 am
Hey,
Really nice site you got here.
I’ll come back more often and check it out.
Peace!
May 15th, 2007 at 10:43 am
The quote posted on this thread by “not That Girl | February 24, 2007 11:18 AM” (originally published by someone calling himself or herself “Grant” on the Salient blog) is an outright lie and is defamatory. I have never hit my children.
I challenge “Grant” to identify himself or herself to me in order that I might at least request a retraction and an apology. I would also like to point out to those who repeat defamatory comments made by others that this too is defamatory and potentially subject to legal action.
Kind regards
Sue Bradford
August 29th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
Hi,
Can anyone tell me CYFs are allowed to interview your child while they are at school with out the parents knowledge, until they call you to let you know they have done so and this is the outcome?
Would be very interested in the legal case if they can do that.
Thanks