Stuff reports:

Auckland mayor Phil Goff’s office has been stripped of its ability to influence the release of information following an investigation by the Chief Ombudsman.

Ombudsman Peter Boshier found the council had acted unreasonably, and in some respects unlawfully, in withholding for five months a report sought by RNZ. …

The council’s governance director said three changes had already been made as a result of the Ombudsman’s investigation, one affecting the mayor’s office where senior staff had been involved.

“They will still have an opportunity to comment on, and see decisions that are made, but they previously had the ability to take part in the process,” said Phil Wilson.

Hopefully this means Auckland Council will stop refusing information requests unlawfully.

2018 Israel archaeological excavation at biblical Gath (home of Goliath)

by John Stringer, Tell es-Safi, west of Jerusalem.

In Area M there are also lots of bones emerging as well and a staff member runs a special machine that sorts bones into grades and sizes as well as cleaning them.  They are often hard to discern from stones or lumps of clay when being excavated.

Below: early on in Area M, this unusual curricular structure appeared (left below) and at first we thought it was some sort of olive press. But it turns out to be some kind of storage container, perhaps for pots before they were fired?  Or after firing, as we find pots within as we dig down inside.  Or perhaps these pots fell inside when the room was burned and the vat contained liquid washes as part of a pottery process? Only more archaeology will tell on the Tell.

We find a lot of these broken handles, that would have been attached to a large storage vessel like this one.  Ropes would play through these holes as it was lifted from a ship or onto a cart, or carried about on poles.

The excavation at Tell es-safi is led by Bar-Ilan university in tel Aviv, but a variety of international universities participate, from Kansas, Australia, and Colorado and the team is truly international.  Here are the Diggers from Australia.

And the team from Colorado Christian University.

It’s been a great experience and I hope you’ve enjoyed the journey through this series of snippets on Kiwiblog capturing something of the process of a modern archaeological dig. Gath is a fascinating and intriguing historical site. I look forward to seeing our working finds written up in academic journals in the months and years to come as we add to the understanding of the history of the Levant.

Jim Rose writes in Stuff:

Before we decide if a zero-carbon economy by 2050 is worth the cost, we must know what the damage to our economy from global warming will be if we do nothing. …

Estimates of the cost of global warming as a percentage of GDP to New Zealand are elusive. I drew a nil response when I asked for that information from James Shaw, the Minister for Climate Change, and from the Ministry for the Environment. Both said such an estimate was too hard to calculate.

So the Government is saying it wants taxpayers to spend tens of billions of dollars on climate change mitigation yet it has no idea what the costs of the impact of climate change will be!

It is time for the Government to fund an estimate of the cost of global warming to New Zealand.

If it is as small as the OECD suggests, a zero-carbon economy is simply not worth the cost. I cannot see how the Government can do a benefit-cost analysis of the zero-carbon economy without calculating the cost of doing nothing and the global warming avoided by us having a zero-carbon economy in 2050.

This should be absolutely mandatory – the benefits and costs of actions vs the benefits and costs of the status quo.

Barry Soper writes:

Greens co-leader Marama Davidson put out a statement about their changed position on the bill saying they’re supporting it “because the confidence and supply agreement holds us to it”.

That’s simply not true. There’s no mention of it in the agreement, so her explanation’s more of an excuse than reality.

It is very clear that the Greens are not obliged to vote for the waka jumping bill. They have decided to do so, because they place a greater priority on placating Winston than on their own principles.

This is a bill that would have probably prevented the Green Party from ever being in Parliament in their own right. Yet they are backing it to please Winston.

Imagine what they’ll do in the future to keep Winston happy.

15 years ago I launched Kiwiblog with my first post on 27 July 2003.

Since then Kiwiblog has had:

• Over 40,000 posts
• Over 2.09 million comments
• Over 75 million visits
• Over 7,100 photos

Not bad for a non-commercial endeavour.

Newsroom reports:

Mediaworks staff have been told by their CEO that television is an “uneven playing field” and that the company’s position is challenged by TVNZ’s position in the market.

CEO Michael Anderson told staff in an email leaked to Newsroom that “now is the time to get this message out”.

Anderson’s email was sent to MediaWorks staff after a Stuff.co.nz story published remarks Anderson made to a ministerial advisory group on public media.

He told the advisory group “there is a genuine risk that the Government, through its owned media channels, may become the only broadcaster in New Zealand”.

In his email, Anderson reassured staff that the company was not about to pull out of television broadcasting, but said that now was “the time to get the message out” and implied they might want to raise the role of TVNZ in the market when discussing their company’s position with other people.

“This will no doubt be something you are asked about externally whether that be by clients, suppliers or even friends,” he wrote.

“And the truth is that we are going to continue to fight for our future and for a level playing field, which we think is in the best interests of advertisers, agencies and the viewing public.”

Seems unremarkable. A company sharing its view of whether Government policy is good for the company, and encouraging staff to know that when talking with clients, suppliers or even friends.

Curran said the email was evidence of a campaign to influence and change Government policy.

“I am concerned that MediaWorks appears to be running a campaign to influence the Government,” Curran said.

Wow this comes across as so intolerant. Why is a campaign to influence the Government a bad thing that should cause concern? Thousands of organisations every day are campaigning to influence the Government.

The Guardian reports:

A government led by Jeremy Corbyn would pose an existential threat to Jewish life in the UK, a joint editorial published by the country’s three most prominent Jewish newspapers has claimed.

The Jewish Chronicle, Jewish News and Jewish Telegraph each produced similar front pages for their Thursday editions attacking the Labour party’s decision not to fully absorb an internationally accepted definition of antisemitism into its code of conduct, and its wider record on the issue since Corbyn became leader in 2015.

UK Labour is trying to use its own definition of antisemitism.

The papers said: “The stain and shame of antisemitism has coursed through her majesty’s opposition since Jeremy Corbyn became leader in 2015.” They produced the joint editorial “because of the existential threat to Jewish life in this country that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government.

“With the government in Brexit disarray, there is a clear and present danger that a man with a default blindness to the Jewish community’s fears, a man who has a problem seeing that hateful rhetoric aimed at Israel can easily step into antisemitism, could be our next prime minister.”

Corbyn has of course shared many platforms with Hamas and Hezbollah.

The three papers’ editorial said Labour faced a “binary choice: implement IHRA in full or be seen by all decent people as an institutionally racist, antisemitic party”.

The Labour peer Melvyn Bragg said in a letter to the Times that Corbyn had failed to tackle antisemitism within Labour effectively. “The virus of antisemitism is growing in the UK and Corbyn is in a strong position to stamp it out without any equivocation,” the former South Bank Show presenter said.

“Jeremy Corbyn’s feebleness on this matter is a disgrace to the Labour party and shames its traditional creed of tolerance, as well as grossly insulting some of our fellow citizens.”

I shudder to think of a Corbyn led UK Government.

Several by-elections in Australia this weekend, and the major topic seems to be Labor MP Emma Husar.

Former staff (she went through 20 in two years) have alleged:

• bullying
• harrassment
• verbal abuse including calling them f***wits and c**ts
• having to walk her dog and pick up its poos
• having to babysit her kids
• one staffer lives with her and does household and nanny chores
• she used government funded cars to meet with her divorce lawyer
• spent parliamentary funds on toilet paper for her home

The defence of her by Bill Shorten has been terrible – basically that she is a solo mum so you need to be sympathetic.

2018 Israel archaeological excavation at biblical Gath (home of Goliath)

by John Stringer, Tell es-Safi, west of Jerusalem.

Area D2 is complete and has been cleaned and photographed as a whole.  Here is a final image.  Dr Jeff Chadwick the site supervisor is pictured and you can clearly see the northern side ‘E’ structure that forms part of the Philistine reinforced ‘Nixon Water Gate’ (more understood after excavation on 4 July) that they built over Canaanite earl structures. And below that, some extrapolation.

Shifting to Area M

As my colleagues and I in 82C-D finished ahead of schedule, I moved to another site, Area M, which was newly opened elsewhere on the Tell in 2018.  This site was chosen as we detected anomalies using remote sensing in late 2017 and hoped to find evidence of oil press or brick kilning production. (“Gath” means “il press” so we thought perhaps it was a major activity of the city). The squares were laid out and first sods turned.  Almost immediately we hit pay dirt –fallen vessels laying only 5cm under the surface and where they had laid since 830BC.  This was obviously the Hazael of Aram-Damascus destruction layer when he laid siege to Gath and completely destroyed it.  I joined my colleague Olga Primakova from Russia who lives in Israel and is completing her PhD on a private collection of ancient artefacts otherwise unknown or published.

After only a few minutes in the square with Olga, I strike this, which at first I thought was a skull.  Right size, right texture and fragility.  Human remains are actually a pain, as they slow up an entire excavation in a square.  But what a find if so!

But then this delicate bottom edging appears, and it is obviously a vessel of some description.  Here is a series of pics as this pot emerges from the ground and Olga and I lower the floor of square M to uncover this beautiful vase.

Prof. Aren with the same pot (top left directly beneath the black bucket) and some others emerging around it.  My speculation is that this is probably a storage room full of pots on shelves, as Area Y across the way has almost no pots, but unusual features that may be evidence of chalk working/plaster making and perhaps brick making. When the city was attacked, this room was set on fire and the shelves burned.  The smallest pots would have been up high, and have fallen in onto of much larger vessels which I expect we will find below as we probe deeper. We might also find weaponry and perhaps Philistine victims of Hazael.  We have excavated perhaps 1/2 metre already.

Below: The ‘skull pot’ top right.  Now note the longer elongated pot in foreground and its spot decoration.  This is a type of Philistine pot we know from elsewhere (see below from a museum).  Unfortunately the earlier examples were all cleaned, but this time –speculating it may be something to do with making cheese– we whisked this away to the lab for organic analysis.  Perhaps we’ll find remains of cheese or some other substance inside the holes. Susan in archaeo-biology maybe able to tell us what it was used for to make.  It could be a smoker, or some sort of container to boil something in, that is dipped into a wider vessel of hot oil or water.

A general view of our Area M square.

Eitan joins us, and late in the dig finds this remarkable sculpted lizard crawling across the lid of a jar.  I mentioned earlier that

the Philistines were quirky when it came to art and liked animal and floral motifs.  This is a really good example.

On the last day of the dig this intact pot emerges. Aren Maeir reports…“As in the books, regarding Murphy’s Law in archaeology, today, as we finished final photographs and were about to cover over the areas, an intact jar was found in Area M. Due to the fact that it stuck out quite clearly from the balk, we had to quickly excavate it and remove it – along with a large amount of broken pottery from other vessels from its vicinity.”

Stuff reports:

The Green Party will “reluctantly” vote for the Waka Jumping Bill to become law.

So-called “waka jumping” legislation allows party leaders to expel MPs of Parliament if they have serious and public disagreements with the wider party.

Labour promised to support the waka jumping legislation in its coalition agreement with NZ First, but the legislation is not covered in its agreement with the Green Party.

Yep. The Greens are not contractually obliged to vote for this bill. They are choosing to do so because they value keeping Winston happy more than they value their own principles.

However, a clause in the agreement seemingly holds the Greens to supporting any legislation not specifically flagged in the coalition talks, meaning the Greens MPs feel they have to vote for for the waka jumping bill. 

No it doesn’t. That would suggest they have to vote for all legislation at all readings regardless of how repugnant it is. They are not obliged to vote for it, only to act in good faith. Good faith doesn’t mean changing our laws to allow party leaders and their caucuses to expel MPs from Parliament.

“We are doing this because the confidence and supply agreement holds us to it,” Davidson said

No it does not. It is a lie.

What if the bill said that party leaders can expel at whim any MP in their party, without even needing caucus support. Is Davidson saying they would be bound to support that also?

“We continue to oppose the idea that a party caucus should have the power to expel MPs from Parliament.

“After lengthy discussion and Party consultation, we reluctantly agreed to support the coalition to enact the bill.

So the party that preaches human rights to everyone else, will vote for a bill that breaches our Bill of Rights Act.

Former Green co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons, who was part of the negotiating team, said earlier this year the agreement did not in fact force the Greens into supporting the bill.

Jeanette is right.

Claire Trevett reports:

Jones presumably sees himself as Bond in this scenario for the fund has had the unfortunate side-effect of further inflating Jones’ ego.

Those who believed it had already reached its maximum loading were sorely mistaken.

He is already known to refer to himself as the Three Billion Dollar Man and Billion Tree Man.

When he returned from the West Coast he went into Parliament to deliver a Homeric ode about the travels and great deeds of Jones.

He told his fellow MPs he had returned “something of a hero.”

“I am a lion in the regions, I am a lion in the House,” he told Goldsmith.

He went even further a bit later: “In Hokitika, Westport, Greymouth, busts are being created of my good self.”

That’s a giant sized ego.

Karl du Fresne at Stuff writes:

Hate speech. It’s a phrase you hear increasingly often.

I’ve used it myself as a label of journalistic convenience, but I’m not comfortable with it and never have been.

My first concern is that much of what is emotively described as hate speech isn’t hateful at all. Too often it simply means opinions and ideas that some people find distasteful or offensive. But merely being offended is no justification for stifling expressions of opinion in a liberal, open democracy that depends on the contest of ideas.

More worryingly, accusations of “hate speech” can be used to intimidate people into silence and put discussion of certain issues and ideas off-limits. In fact, I believe that’s the over-arching aim.

That is indeed the intent. It is used to shut down debate. If you want to debate whether or not separate Maori seats are a good idea, you get hit with the hate speech label. Against same sex marriage, and that’s also hate speech.

The mounting clamour for tougher laws against so-called hate speech is an outgrowth of identity politics, in which minority groups are encouraged to see themselves as oppressed or disadvantaged because of their colour, ethnicity, gender, religious belief or sexual orientation.

This has generated a demand for protection from comments that might be seen as critical or belittling – hence the frequency with which we hear people being accused of xenophobia, racism, Islamophobia, homophobia and misogyny.

No-one likes to have these labels pinned on them, so people keep their heads down. Accusing someone of hate speech has the same effect. It’s a quick way to shut down debate.

He missed transphobia.

Other code words commonly used in an attempt to de-legitimise valid opinions include “far-Right” and “alt-Right”. These labels are likely to be attached to anyone whose opinions are to the Right of the political Centre. You can even be labelled far-Right for making statements that most people would regard as utterly unremarkable – for example, saying there are only two genders, as the Canadian commentator Lauren Southern did.

How often do you hear a speaker labelled as far-left? Does one of our many Marxist academics ever get labelled as far-left? Why not?

But the most illiberal pronouncement I have read on the supposed dangers of free speech came from a university vice-chancellor who clearly thought that ordinary New Zealanders can’t be trusted to form their own sensible conclusions about contentious issues.

This pompous academic thought we needed guidance to keep us on the right path. And where from? Why, from universities. We can infer from this that universities see themselves as having taken over the role once filled by churches. God help us all.

It was a terrible column by the Vice-Chancellor.

Stuff reports:

The Chief Ombudsman has found Auckland Council’s delay in releasing a requested report was partly unlawful, and unreasonable.

In a 22-page finding released on Wednesday, Peter Boshier asked the council to apologise for its handling over five months of a request by RNZ for a report looking at the future of the imported vehicle trade in the city’s port.

So who was responsible for this flouting of the law?

The findings include that while the Mayor Phil Goff was not involved, his Principal Advisor took part in discussion over the report’s release.

And I am sure he never ever talks to his Principal Advisor.

Boshier said the deficiencies found during the investigation were worrying, given it was now 30 years since the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act, governing local bodies’ handling of information requests, came into force.

“Auckland Council is the largest council in the country. It should set the standard for the other 77 local authorities in New Zealand.”

It should.

Stuff reports:

When the International Monetary Fund predicted earlier this year that hyperinflation in Venezuela could top 13,000 per cent, it seemed as if the South American country’s economic outlook could not get any worse.

It just did.

With the situation in the country deteriorating faster than expected, the IMF has unveiled a new and far more severe prognosis, saying that Venezuela’s hyperinflation is poised to shoot for the stars by year’s end, reaching an annualised rate of 1 million per cent.

This is taking the former Green Party policy of quantitative easing to new levels of success! Everyone in Venezuela is now a millionaire!

Venezuela’s inflation is soaring as the economy has been broken by extreme corruption, failed socialist policies and a collapsing oil industry where a lack of spare parts and expertise has seen output fall to levels not seen since the 1950s.

The word “failed” is unnecessary. There’s never been a country where they have worked long-term.

The country may be running out of options, however. The inflation rate is so bad that Venezuelans are abandoning their nation in droves. An estimated 2 million will exit this year, bringing to 3.8 million the total who have left since 2016. 

Migration and socialism often go together.

A week ago, dishwasher soap cost 3,800,000 bolivares; today, it’s 4,900,000. A kilogram of chicken cost 3,300,000 last week; today it’s, 4,200,000.

The chicken seems better value.

Yaimy Flores, a 30-year-old Caracas housewife whose husband, a janitor, earns the minimum wage of 5,196,000 bolivares a month

The highest minimum wage in the world!

For a country that was once South America’s richest per capita, “it means a brutal cycle of impoverishment,” said Asdrúbal Oliveros, director of Ecoanalitica. “For a majority of Venezuelans that depend on their jobs and don’t have dollar savings or receive help from their family members abroad, an inflation like this one, that reaches more than 1 million, condemns them to poverty in a drastic way.”

What makes Venezuela so interesting is it was a relatively wealthy country. Most socialist countries start off poor and remain poor. Venezuela is a stunning example of how you can go from the richest country in a continent to the poorest – all due to government policy.

They have the largest oil reserves in the world. They should be a first world country, but instead the Government’s socialist policies have plunged the population into poverty and starvation.

Stuff reports:

National’s medicinal cannabis bill would allow anyone with a doctor-issued ID card to purchase medicinal cannabis, but not smoke it.

It goes further than the Government bill in setting up a regulatory regime but is more harsh on the method of consumption that most people envision – smoking.

It would make medicinal cannabis products a pharmacist-only medicine which could be quasi-prescribed by doctors, who would authorise a photo ID medicinal cannabis card that would then allow patients to buy cannabis products from pharmacists. This means doctors would not need to prescribe the cannabis over and over again.

This would contrast with the Government bill, which provides a legal defence for cannabis possession and consumption for those with terminal conditions, but does not provide a legal path to selling or obtaining it.

The Government bill was crap. It merely provided a defence for possession, but still forced people to break the law to get hold of cannabis if terminally ill. It was a typical Ardern Government Bill – nice sentiment and no substance.

National’s bill looks far better, and that’s not just my view. Here’s Russell Brown:

The medicinal cannabis bill filed today in the name of National’s Whangarei MP Shane Reti is vastly better-conceived than the government bill it seeks to supplant. But it’s not perfect, writes Russell Brown. 

Brown goes on to analyse the bill in detail.

He concludes:

Nonetheless, the party that governed for years on the promise of never, ever changing the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 has, in Opposition, proposed easily the most consequential amendment to the act in its overlong history. It’s significant that the MP with his name on it, Shane Reti, is a doctor. It’s also significant that Reti had made time to talk to advocates.

But could this have been done differently? Could at least some of the ideas here have been added into the government bill? Apparently not. The Labour members of the committee – after hearing all those submissions – wanted to recommend that no changes be made. But National members had effectively cast their lot by that point and, frustrated by the lack of regulatory detail in the government bill, begun working on their own.

Today the Health Committee announced that its members “have been unable to reach agreement and therefore cannot recommend that the bill proceed” – which was understandably received as saying that the bill would not proceed. But committee chair Louisa Wall has confirmed that it will indeed go back to Parliament.

So perhaps it is possible that some of the elements of Reti’s bill could be incorporated in a Supplementary Order Paper. Labour could and should explore that option, swallow its pride and talk to Shane Reti.

Labour’s bill is a silly lightweight bill. They should either abandon it or see if it can be amended at committee of the whole stage to take on the substance of Reti’s bill.

Even if Labour won’t do this, National and Greens might be able to. But there is a risk that the changes needed to Labour’s bill would be too great to do as amendments, in which case we need to get Reti’s bill drawn from the ballot.

NewstalkZB reports:

Former Maori Party Leader Dame Tariana Turia has voiced concern a target to make New Zealand smoke-free was set in the first place.

This comes after Acting Prime Minister, Winston Peters described the Smoke-free 2025 target as an unachievable PR exercise.

Dame Tariana Turia told Larry Williams she wants to get rid of cigarettes all together.

“I think if we’re being really honest, I didn’t want a target. I wanted cigarettes to be taken off the shelves, and for us to stop selling a substance that kills 5,000 people a year.”

So Dame Tariana wanted a ban. Prohibition worked so well for alcohol in the 1930s didn’t it. Imagine the black market a ban would create.

But we don’t have to imagine it. Bhutan effectively banned the sale of tobacco in 2004. The smoking rate in Bhutan has gone from 1% to 25%.

Bhutan even sends people to prison for possessing tobacco, yet the black market is everywhere.

One News reports:

The Defence Minister, Ron Mark, made the statement in Parliament before Question Time this afternoon.

Sir Toby Curtis has reported:

Education Minister has “foot on our throats,” say partnership school leaders

Minister of Education Chris Hipkins has forcibly silenced partnership school leaders from speaking out against the shutting down of their schools, according to Sir Toby Curtis who is leading a Treaty of Waitangi claim against the Crown over its failure to consult on the closures.

Despite achieving outstanding results for students, all eleven partnership schools have received termination notices from the Minister and are being shut down by the government on 31 December.

Sir Toby says that in the past few days he has personally undertaken “more consultation with the affected schools than Minister Hipkins has done during his entire term in Parliament”.

“What I discovered shocked me. School leaders have been given clear signals from government that they are to keep quiet now or risk being cut out of consideration for starting an alternative state-controlled school for their students next year,” he says.

And perhaps no coincidence we learn:

Decisions will be made as soon as possible about the two remaining sponsors’ applications to establish three designated character schools, when more information is available. The schools are Rise UP Academy in Auckland, Middle School West Auckland and South Auckland Middle School.

“I expect to make final decisions on the two state integrated and three designated character schools in September, but have asked the Ministry to try and ensure this happens earlier if possible. This is still enough time for the new schools to open in 2019.

It’s appalling to delay the decision on those schools until September. Students need to know if they will have a school to attend next year.

But I suspect it is worse than that. The Villa schools sponsor has been very critical of the Government’s decision to close down the charter school model. I suspect the Government has delayed the decision so they can minimise protests when they close them down by declining their applications. So their pupils will be thrown back into the mainstream schools that failed them, because the Government doesn’t like criticism.

2018 Israel archaeological excavation at biblical Gath (home of Goliath)

by John Stringer, Tell es-Safi, west of Jerusalem.

Cleaning and ‘Reading’ Pottery

After a full days excavation (5am – 1pm) we gather up the pottery buckets and nurse them home on the bus.  Each bucket has two tags attached that record vital data about where and in which layer the finds came from. The buckets are filled with water and left to soak overnight.

The following day a soaked bucket is taken and paired with a bucket of clean water, and each sherd is carefully rinsed and cleaned with a small nail brush.  One has to be careful with this, as valuable painting can be scrubbed off, so thumbs are often used to extract stubborn clay.  Amazing wonders emerge and the washed pieces are carefully laid in a tray to dry.

The second bucket tag is carefully attached to the tray at the beginning, and when the bucket is finished, the second tag is removed and laid in the tray as well, weighed down by the largest artefact.  These are then laid out to dry as shown for a further 24 hours and the buckets removed for reuse next day.

24 hours later, the chief archaeologists take each dried tray and ‘read’ it with its square supervisor.  I tag along to learn as much I can about ‘reading’. There are many many trays to read through and document and it takes hours.

What we are looking for in each tray, are: lips, rims, handles, decoration, unusual forms. The chief archaeologists grade each selected piece which is documented on a detailed chart by the respective square supersaver:  “three Iron Age 1;” “one late Bronze-Age;” “four Iron Age 2;” “6 Ottoman,”etc.  These items are totalled and bagged with the two bucket/tray tags for later photography.  Much of the tray is then discarded if the pottery sherds have little to contribute. For example, late Ottoman or Hellensitic pieces from the fill are of little value, and are added to our pottery graveyard, re-interred later back in to the Gath site.

The team have a specialist reconstructor who is an expert at reconstruction, where we can find enough pieces of a vessel to rebuild it in whole or largely in part. This is done in the off-excavation season outside June-July.  It takes about ten months to process all the data of a 4-week excavation season. So, it’s not about discovering as much as you can, but processing material in an ordered and disciplined way.

Below: My colleague in Area M Olga Primakov from Russia and Tel Aviv, with a particularly nice indicative Philistine bi-chrome bowl rim after cleaning. Note the red and black patterning.  This is classic Philistine art.

As we settle into late-Week 2, we are directed by Dr Chadwick to remove the west side balk as well, and work this down to our current floor level (below). This will eventually join 82C East and 82 D and 82C West together as one long rectangle of exposed data.

Here too as with the east balk we discover a clear termination of a clay brick wall in the back (right of the blue bucket).  In the image (below, left, above the two floor stones) you can see the clear vertical demarcation of the grey fill (left) and the brown clay brick (right). I remove this carefully with a trowel using a plum bob to get a correct vertical line. This is then carefully photographed.  At the bottom are large foundation stones from something else that carry through under the balk behind us where Caleb and Justin are doing some heavy pick work.

Note how we’ve sandbagged the very bottom of the extracted west side balk.  This is to protect this layer. You can also see clearly the stairway emerging as we’ve lowered the floor (centre, between the two big stones).  I discover a series of stones and pebbles in this floor in the middle of 82D this side of the stair, and Jeff examines this and concludes this is the Iron Age ground level of the gate; a compacted clay path, so we stop. Around the edge we discover some protruding rocks that delineate the curving edge around this stairway path.

After two weeks, we have determined the following – the goal of the 2018 season.  That immediately opposite the ‘E’ foundational structure is a snaking pathway that is flat with intervening triple steps.  It leads uphill and turns south into the lower city towards the Tell in line with the human trail up onto the Tell (probably the same trail used for thousands of years following the easiest contours of the terrain).  Heavy work in the square behind us uphill, by Caleb and Justin, has determined finally there is no mirrored ‘E’ structure opposite, as theorised. Rather, the intact Canaanite domestic buildings (likely two stories high) formed the south side of the ‘gate.’  This recalls the biblical story of Rahab at Jericho who had a house in the wall by the gate.  She was less likely a prostitute, more a Bed & Breakfast custodian (see Joshua 2).

It is likely the Philistines found that they did not need a second gatehouse bastion and simply used the Canaanite housing on one side, and erected their defensive ‘E’ bulwark on the more vulnerable north side.  There is also a rounded tower next to it (below left, extending off the ‘E’).  Here’s a summary drawing of what we have uncovered in the first two weeks. And some images of D2 after it has been cleaned and cleared in Week 3. Immediately below, after Alice’s balk has been reduced, the stairway becomes very clear. David, Goliath, Achish and Saladin would all have walked this pathway.  I discovered and excavated the large rock to the right (pic 2 below), inside the east-side balk, that frames the right hand side of the stairway.

As we excavated the west-side balk, again many finds.  But like in the east balk, we discover this fab. brick clay wall. Balk Photographed in the right light, you can clearly make out the clay bricks in the back wall of 82D above the west balk. We were able to carefully extract some of these after 3500 years from the surrounding debris. It is valuable architectural data.

By Thursday of Week 2 our work in 82D is largely done and I move over to Area M elsewhere on the Tell.  This is a new site.  At ground level and is only pegged out and the surface broken this season.  Within 5cm we start making archaeological discoveries and it becomes clear, Aren maker’s strategy dig this season in the lower city not up high on the Tell has struck pay dirt.  We’ve uncovered the 830BC Hazael of Aram destruction layer indicated by anomalies on the 2017 remote sensing survey and drone work.

And below is Dr Seth Rodriquez (right) and some of his team of Coloradans, and displaying several of the sedimentary floor layers inside their square, where successive centuries of people have lived and died.

Within minutes of excavating with my colleague Olga Primakova, we have uncovered several vessels just below the surface, exactly where they fell in 830 BC and have remained undisturbed ever since.  This later becomes as good as archaeology gets.  82D is now done, and next post I’ll do a quick survey of my brief work in Area M and show you some of the incredible finds.

Next Post: Wonders from Area M.

A guest post by Jordan Williams from The Free Speech Coalition:

Earlier in the month, a group of New Zealanders from across the political spectrum, concerned about the direction of free speech rights, decided to raise money to judicially review Auckland Council and Phil Goff over their decision to restrict Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux from using Council owned venues. I was one of them.

The grassroot support from across the country shows Kiwis care about free speech – even if they don’t like the views of these speakers.

People from all walks of life and political views donated to ensure free speech both in Auckland and as a matter of precedent going into the future. We received emails from some donors apologising that they could only give a very small sum – say $2 – because they were on sickness benefits or were struggling to make ends meet.

The largest donation was $5,000. 75 percent of the $89,000 raised was from donations less than $300.

It was insulting for Stuff’s Glenn McConnell to assert that our donors just didn’t need the money. Many of our donors cut back last week to ensure the point of principle, of human rights, could be made in court.

That brings us to the principle at stake. Why is free speech so important that people made a personal financial sacrifice to ensure it was protected?

The right of free speech primarily governs the relationship between the citizen and the state.

The Government has the power to tax you, and if you refuse to pay, imprison you. If you own property in Auckland, you are forced to pay rates for common property and services provided by the Council.

As a ratepayer, if you are forced to pay for the provision of public spaces and buildings, should the Mayor be able to restrict their use for political reasons? That’s the principle at stake.

Critics of the Free Speech Coalition have laughed at this principle and argued that we should have used the money to pay for a private venue.

This is a pathetic argument. 

Firstly, from a practical perspective, there are very few suitable private venues available at short notice in Auckland – the Council owns most large spaces.

But more importantly, paying for a private venue would do nothing to protect the principle of free speech.

Yes, Southern and Molyneux, would be able to speak on August 3, but the ability of a Mayor to restrict the use of public venues to speakers they find politically dangerous would go unchallenged. I suspect many of those defending Mr Goff would not be if it were Judith Collins in the Mayoral chair, banning, say, a radical anti-Israel group.

Almost all the organisers of the Free Speech Coalition disagree with the views of Southern and Molyneux. The principle at stake is far more important.

While Phil Goff initially claimed his position was motivated by opposition to hate speech, the Council is now backtracking on his behalf. The Council argues, in a similar fashion to colleges in the United States when they have restricted certain speakers, that protests would cause ‘health and safety’ issues.

That’s a dangerous position to hold. It would effectively allow the Mayor to ban speakers whenever there are potential protests. It gives a ‘heckler’s veto’.

So, we’re not simply going to court to fight for the rights of these two Canadians. We’re fighting to set a precedent that your right to free speech isn’t chipped away, no matter what your views are. That means defending speakers you might find personally repulsive. But that’s what standing up for freedom of speech means – otherwise it’s not free speech at all.

Jordan Williams is a public lawyer and member of the Free Speech Coalition. www.freespeechcoalition.nz