Kiwiblog

Stuff reports:

A Labour MP drew parallels between the National Party and Adolf Hitler as controversial legislation allowing partial asset sales passed by a single vote.

The Opposition benches cried “Shame!” yesterday as National’s junior whip Louise Upston cast the decisive proxy vote of UnitedFuture MP Peter Dunne, which saw the legislation pass by 61 votes to 60.

Mr Dunne was not at Parliament for the vote because he was attending the funeral of his son’s girlfriend’s mother.

In a statement, he said he had intended to speak in favour of the bill at its final reading, which was in the “best long-term interests of the country”.

Opposition MPs continued to insist Mr Dunne had misled voters over his views on the partial asset sales plan.

Labour’s state-owned enterprises spokesman Clayton Cosgrove said Mr Dunne’s vote was “a travesty of democracy” because he had said he was against the sale of water resources before last year’s election.

Labour are trying to rewrite history. Not a single voter in Ohariu thought a vote for Peter Dunne was a vote to stop asset sales. Dunne’s reference to water resources was about water supply companies, not about power companies that use water.

Check  this thread out from May, where you have quotes from leftie activists before the election about how they need to stop Dunne as he is a vote for asset sales, plus this explicit quote from Peter Dunne:

in the event National puts up its mixed ownership model for the electricity companies and Air New Zealand we would be prepared to support that, provided the maximum was 49%, with a cap of 15% on any indivudual’s holdings

So Labour is clearly lying when they say Dunne misled voters. In fact that is exactly what they are doing, and are masters of.

Some believe the Government has no mandate for the sales because several polls have shown a majority of voters are against the policy.

Labour’s Wigram MP, Megan Woods, said yesterday: “Hitler had a pretty clear manifesto that he campaigned and won on … does this make what he did OK?”

Oh dear, where do we start with Dr Godwin.

Let’s even put aside the implicit comparison of partial asset sales (a policy scores of left wing governments around the world has also implemented) to the Nazis, Hitler and the Holocaust. Frankly if Dr Woods want to make such stupid comparisons, I urge her to carry on doing so. They reflect far more on her and Labour, than anyone else.

But what really annoys me is her woeful knowledge of history. Only those with a superficial scraping of history repeat the line that Hitler was democratically elected, as if he won a majority of seats. He was and did not.

In July 1932 the Nazis got 37.3% of the vote and just 230 out of 608 seats. In November 1932 the Nazis got fewer votes at 33.1% and 196 seats only. They made up only three of the 12 Cabinet members. He then seized power through various ways.

Also the assertion that Hitler had a clear manifesto he implemented is also woefully ignorant of history. Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party campaigned as an anti-big business and anti-capitalist party, with a later focus on anti-semitism and anti-marxism. Their 25 point plan did say Jews can not be citizens, and would be foreign guests who could be expelled. But that is a long way from saying “Oh yeah, we will exterminate them also”. People may be interested in some of their other policies:

• We demand the nationalisation of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).
• We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.
• We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.
• We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or municipality.

UPDATE: Dr Woods has apologised.

NewstalkZB at 8 am reported Len Brown saying supportive things about Andrew William’s bid to be on the new Auckland Council. The item said:

Len Brown is showing his support for Andrew Williams intention to stand for election onto the new Council.  …

Manukau City Mayor Len Brown says he has worked well with Mr Williams in the past through the Mayoral Forum, and knows he has his community’s concerns at heart.

They also reported John Banks refused to comment – a much wiser strategy.

So far then, Len Brown has endorsed or said supportive things about both Sue Bradford and Andrew Williams being on Council.Is there anyone he won’t endorse?

I mean this is just after Williams puts up on his Facebook page a photo of Rodney Hide as Hitler (H/T: Whale).

Yes this image really is on the Mayor of North Shore City’s Facebook page – placed there by him.

Do I really need to even mention how offensive this is to actual survivors of the Holocaust. You might expect this behaviour from an anonymous troll on the Internet, but not from the Mayor of a major city.

And this is who Len Brown is supporting for Council – because he didn’t want to risk having Williams attack him, if he refused to say nice things about him.

This is one of the criticisms I hear about Brown. From all accounts he is a very nice guy, and quite personable. Someone you would find hard to dislike. Many people I know, from both National and Labour, say Len is a really nice guy.

But the criticism is whether he is tough enough to handle the job of being the inaugural Mayor of the Auckland Super City. You have to be able to sometimes call a spade a spade.

The job will involved both standing for 1.3 million Aucklanders to the national Government, but also being able to run a Council focused on regional issues and not be captured by the parochialism of the past.

And this is why Andrew Williams is unsuitable, in my opinion, for the Auckland Council. Even if you put aside his abusive and ranting style, he is also unsuitable because he seems only concerned with his local area – not Auckland as a whole. Of course you want ward Councillors to represent their communities, but you most of all want them focused on decisions that are good for Auckland as a whole.

It is almost impossible to see how anyone can think Williams would be a constructive member of the Auckland Council, and it does call into question Len Brown’s judgement, that he is effectively endorsing Andrew Williams.

I tend to crack jokes a lot, even at fairly inappropriate times. Luckily I’ve never been sacked for it. Unlike Fritz Darges. He has just died aged 96, and was one of Hitler’s closest aides. But look at what got him sacked:

But Darges misjudged the “warm-hearted” Führer deeply during one conference at Rastenburg on July 18 1944 – two days before a bomb plot nearly succeeded in killing him.

During a strategy conference a fly began buzzing around the room, landing on Hitler’s shoulder and on the surface of a map several times.

Irritated, Hitler ordered Darges to “dispatch the nuisance”. Darges suggested whimsically that, as it was an “airborne pest” the job should go to the Luftwaffe adjutant, Nicolaus von Below.

Enraged, Hitler dismissed Darges on the spot. “You’re for the eastern front!” he yelled. And so he was sent into combat.

I thought the retort was very good. But what sort of grump was Adolf to not just sack him, but send him to the Eastern Front for whimsical retort!

Sadly Darges still worshipped him:

Darges died on Saturday still believing in the man who engineered the Jewish Holocaust as “the greatest who ever lived.” His memoirs will be published now in accordance with his will.

There will be a lot of interest in his memoirs.

It’s great to be reminded how fruit loopy the far left are. John Minto blogs:

It was dispiriting to see a group of secondary schoolboys hounded by media as they entered the Auckland War Memorial Museum to apologise for their behaviour at a school outing earlier this year when they paid mock homage to the swastika. …

They weren’t intending disrespect to the Jews, gypsies, communists and homosexuals who all faced Nazi extermination efforts. Surely we need to lighten up a bit here.

The same applies to the Lincoln University students who dressed up as Nazis and Nazi victims for a fancy dress party a few weeks back. There were howls of rage and profuse apologies all round and disciplinary action followed.

Was the same action taken against those who dressed up as Osama bin Laden, Idi Amin or George Bush? All of these figures could rightly be condemned for war crimes and genocide.

Yes of course dressing up as George Bush is the same as dressing up as Nazis. I mean, after all, they are all guilty of genocide.

I just love it that there really are people who equate Bush with Hitler. Even after Bush retired from office in accordance with the constitution. They spent years darkly warning of how Bush would become a military dictator supported by the industrial-military complex. Yet somehow we now have Obama as President and a Democratic House and Senate.

No this post is not going to see Godwin’s Law cited. It is about a fascinating article in the Manawatu Standard:

Though it has been commonly assumed that New Zealand vocally opposed the Nazi expansion and urged Britain to confront Hitler’s regime, two historians are arguing this is not true.

New Zealand continued to push for negotiations with Hitler even as Britain declared war, while still honouring a trade agreement made with Germany in 1937, they say.

We were still trading with Hitler? We signed a trade agreement with him in 1937?

Massey University head of history, philosophy and classics James Watson said he and New Zealand Defence Force historian John Crawford began their research after discovering discrepancies in the history books.

They stumbled across correspondence between key New Zealand ministers in 1939, pushing for continued negotiations. …

New Zealand was behind Britain initially, when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain went to negotiate with Hitler and signed the Munich peace agreement in 1938.

But after Hitler dishonoured the agreement and invaded Poland, Britain was talking war while New Zealand continued to push for peace negotiations.

Finally, in 1940, New Zealand and Australia sent telegrams to Britain saying they would follow her “to the end”, in whatever decision was made.

So even after Hitler invaded Poland, the Labour Government thought negotiations were the way to go – despite Hitler having broken every previous agreement?

Meanwhile, New Zealand was continuing trade with Germany under a special agreement they had signed in 1937, Dr Watson said.

“I often wondered whether any New Zealander who encountered a German soldier in Greece ever reflected that the uniforms worn by Germans were made from New Zealand wool.”

I wonder when trading stopped?

When Peter Fraser became Prime Minister in 1940, he took a staunch anti-Hitler position.

Dr Watson thinks this might be why the period beforehand has been glossed over by historians.

An historical bias towards Labour could also be the reason, he said.

The research will be published in the British Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History later this year.

I look forward to reading the full research. Thank God for historians.