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November 11, 2007 4:39pm by David Farrar

Trotter to Minto

Chris Trotter replies to John Minto’s open letter with one of his own.

I look forward to the next round.

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Comment24

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New Zealand

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Comments (24)

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burt

“Because it’s NOT OK, John. Political violence in a functioning democracy is NEVER OK. ”

Unless it’s defending a womans honour and the person who is throwing their fists around is a labour party MP.
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November 11, 2007 4:47pm
Lindsay Addie

Let’s get ready to rumble!

Two socialist stalwarts indulging in some feeble bitch slapping…………….
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November 11, 2007 4:49pm
Peak Oil Conspiracy

Chris Trotter on democracy in 2007:

Because it’s NOT OK, John. Political violence in a functioning democracy is NEVER OK.

DPF on Chris Trotter on democracy in 2006:

Chris Trotter in the SST basically admits that Labour has acted corruptly with its pledge cards. However as Sir H reports, he justifies it as the price of social peace.

This is an incredibly dangerous attitude. It is the view that so long as we think our side is better than the other side, we are above the law. It is in fact the same view that led to the downfall of Nixon.

http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2006/08/justified_corruption.html

Is Chris Trotter really an authoritative commentator on democracy?
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November 11, 2007 4:50pm
Inventory2

Is Christ Trotter really an authoritative commentator on anything? There’s certainly not a lot of objectivity in his columns. Also the SST gave Nicky Hager a full page for another anti-establishment rant today.
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November 11, 2007 5:13pm
Peak Oil Conspiracy

Inventory2:

“Christ Trotter” – as in the God of Democracy? 🙂
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November 11, 2007 5:15pm
dad4justice

“But I have not heard one word from you about the right of a democratic society, ”

Laughable Chris T , as Labour are in the process of the destruction of freedom of expression through the implementation of devious legislation of control the people ; obey helots or Hellenism will swallow you up ? Isn’t it so funny watching the loony left have a bitch fight . I wish the Minto Bar had done the job on John on the famous bok tour . The support the tour badges and flower bomb, ouch , my heads hurts , they bred them tough then . Now look at the lazy layabout molly cowboys blasting shotguns and having a ball . Does WINZ pay for para -military courses ?
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November 11, 2007 5:20pm
Inventory2

POC – defintely NOT a Freudian slip – if anything, Trotter is the AntiChris! More like a Lazy Sunday typo!
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November 11, 2007 5:22pm
dad4justice

AntiChris and Minto Bar hard at it in the corner cubicle . No wonder I drink alone .
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November 11, 2007 5:25pm
Kevin

PC vs PC – this is far better than mud wrestling!
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November 11, 2007 5:29pm
Kevin

In all seriousness though can someone please tell me why it is not mass child abuse for small factions in Maoridom, labour, socialist workers and the like to shamelessly use kids for their own political gain? To destroy their lives by telling them that they are underprivileged, they can never and will never get anywhere and that therefore the country owes them a living? If we had chosen to do that to our children (who BTW are part Maori) where would they be – in the alcoholic, drug taking, unemployable, uneducated underclass perhaps? And if so, would we have to take some of the responsibility as to how their lives had gone?

I want my children to be proud of their Maori heritage but it will be the frosty Friday when I succeed now. And given that over half of all Maori are on the general role or have fled to Aussie I would say the silent majority agrees with my whanau.
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November 11, 2007 5:41pm
Peak Oil Conspiracy

Kevin:

I’ll probably be castigated for saying this, but you might want to address that question to James Sleep. This is not to single out Sleep unfairly, but at 16, he’s already committed himself to left-wing politics. At 16, I wasn’t into politics and didn’t really give a toss either way. Understandably, Sleep takes an active interest in youth minimum wage issues. But given his anti-business and anti-National rants, my suspicion is that his parents have played a key role in “developing” his worldview.

No doubt those of the rent-a-protest variety take a similar interest when it comes to “developing” their offspring.
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November 11, 2007 5:49pm
Kevin

While teaching our kids about justice, equal opportunity and equality of races/sexes, we took the classic liberal approach of letting our kids choose for themselves. Because of the negative publicity due to the ability to self-identify as Maori no matter what the proportion none of them feel proud of their Maori heritage. This is a major problem as it keeps the Iwi elite in power – the silent majority of successful law abiding Maori tend to self identify as European or Maori, but the minority of people who get in trouble with the law etc almost always self identify as Maori.

We need to get positive role models who are prepared to identify as Maori and show that you can have your pride and be successful to.
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November 11, 2007 6:25pm
Kevin

Same of course goes for inflating the “deprivation” statistics. If they had to be reported by % ethnicity they would tell a very different story – one that the estabilishment that insists on Maori/Non-Maori would rather not have us hear.
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November 11, 2007 7:39pm
kiwi in america

This is a fascinating cat fight on the left. Trotter, hardly known for understanding the niceties of democracy for his shameless support of Labour’s pledge card, has however landed some king hits on Minto. Minto personifies all that is wrong with the far left. He is NZ’s pleasant looking and sounding John Pilger or Noam Chomskey – an unashamed Marxist with the usual anti-capitalist anti-American world view that never abates with the wisdom of age. His anti-Springbok tour profile bestows upon him an aura of repectability particularly from wet-behind-the ears gallery journos who were probably in nappies when he sat on the field at Rugby Park in Hamilton that fateful day in June 1981.
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November 11, 2007 7:45pm
dad4justice

That day in Hamilton made my blood boil Minto creep !!
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November 11, 2007 7:47pm
GPT1

Gold. Nothing quite so fun as seeing the left fighting.

Minto must be disappointed that the terror charges aren’t going ahead – the end of his post fall of the wall comeback?
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November 11, 2007 8:18pm
boomtownprat

Bye Bye, Trotter,

you are nothing but a fat, bloated socialist, with clearly early onset Alzheimer’s . Looks like you’ve forgotten the basic principles of the left and have been intoxicated by the power slave Clarkist regime.

I remember when you were a radical Trotter, you know, fight for the underdog Trotter!

Now, you are another Clarkist apologist pastsy Trotter. Shame on you Trotter.
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November 11, 2007 8:57pm
Kevin

Yep KIA. I sttod outside the Big I in the rain all night with Minto shouting “one race, the human race”. What a pathetic twisted joke that Minto now drives separtism in NZ.
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November 11, 2007 10:42pm
side show bob

Hi Boomtownprat I love your writing and hate to say you are so right.Oh how mr trotter loves Dear Leaders crap. How can the man be a radical of the left and not listen to the union members, they recon what goes around comes around.
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November 11, 2007 11:09pm
kehua

Trotters go well in a boil up,just add salt & vinegar,mintos for desert.Bedtime -Yawn-
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November 11, 2007 11:11pm
sonic

Used to think you were a good guy Chris, but when the going got tough, you got going.

If you are reading this Chris I’ve got a question. You keep referring to the police evidence with a knowing wink. How do you know what it is Chris? who showed you it?

Your new police chums?
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November 12, 2007 3:52am
dad4justice

Hi sonic , I have worried about your whereabouts and total absence . Its absolutely marvelous that you survived the mass arrest of would be Rambo’s and twisted utopian parasitic leaches . Welcome back and I’m glad you have your tits in tangle with naughty Chris . John has always had a reliable police chum = it’s called a Baton , which can no longer be called the Minto Bar ,as it has been up dated to the new greased Louise bar, as it features extensively in her new book .

It makes sense for Chris to team up the keystone plods , because they’re as thick as each other .
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November 12, 2007 6:16am
tom hunter

Actually I found his previous article – “Dark memories of dynamite” – to be of great interest as well as an interesting insight into his mindset – and probably Minto’s as well.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sundaystartimes/4252906a25945.html

It’s also quite relevant to this discussion, in terms of the double think involved. What is the point of calling out a “far-left” radical and telling them that political violence is NOT OK, only to reveal his own violent fantasies of the past and recall disturbingly similar actual events.

As Trotter says of Pat McQuarrie – “what was he willing to do to stop the tour”. Well he was willing to threaten to crash a plane into a crowd of spectators for a bloody rugby game, and that threat was the key to achieving one of the objectives of the protest movement. In what way is the motivation different from the current crowd that Minto is running with? Presumably those people also have a cause that is going to make them, perhaps has made them, “do some very dangerous things”.

In twenty years time will a future Chris Trotter-type emerge from the current crop to talk of such things, absolve themselves as “good people” and “decent, caring New Zealanders” who were simply driven to desperate lengths by an oppressive state and the failure of their fellow citizens to heed the call?

It’s just the same old, ‘high-moral-ground’ bullshit that leftists cling to. Their civil rights were infringed by faceless men with batons and charges over ridiculous offences and it’s an outrage? Yes, it was. But now that it’s the police under a Labour government? Less outrage it would seem.

As for the idea that Trotter and co. trampled all over the civil rights of their fellow New Zealanders when they invaded that ground and relied upon a threat of massive violence to get a rugby game cancelled?

Naaaah – the idea that that might be ethically unacceptable and outside the bounds of democracy never occurred to any protest group – either then or later. On the contrary, most were and still are proud of that particular effort, and Trotters latter-day thoughts hardly seem like a distancing. The gap-toothed rednecks had been lectured and fully informed about the bad ethical decision they were making in attending the game and they still went ahead anyway: outrageous! As a result, their civil rights would just have to take a backseat to a higher morality – and if those people chose to fight back about such a loss of civil rights such violence could simply be called a pogrom to denigrate and deligitimise them still further – as opposed to the other sides pure and virtuous violence and threats of violence.

Perhaps what Trotter should have addressed is the frequency with which left-wing true believers in some cause used the same rationale in the past, and the likelihood that they will do so in the future. After all, aside from the current kerfuffle, we have a steadily growing drumbeat from environmentalists about ‘climate criminals’ who refuse to listen: at what stage will it become necessary to ‘stop’ them by appealing to a ‘higher morality’ than democratic ‘lawnorder’ – all for the common good of course.
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November 12, 2007 9:08am
PhilBest

Its the same phenomenon as “Castro good, Pinochet bad”. Violence, murder, corruption, are all O.K. as long as it’s in the cause of egalitarianism, even egalitarianism at the level of short, nasty, brutish, dark-ages era life. The stupid thing is that our democratic constitutions that allow people like Minto, Pilger, and Chomsky to operate, would be the first thing to go if these people actually got to the levers of power.

It would be a lot more moral, given the overwhelming victory of democratic (relative) capitalism in the Western world over the alternative systems, when it comes to human wellbeing, to require the curtailing of the activities of people like Minto, Pilger, and Chomsky. But because we’re not moral bottom-feeders like them, we don’t do it.
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November 12, 2007 11:48am

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