Posts by Russell Brown
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Just tweeted by Tim Murphy:
Donghua Liu: more details in @nzherald tomorrow on the Labour minister and the chartered boat trip up the Yangtze River.
Barker again, presumably.
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Hard News: The Letter, in reply to Alex Coleman,
The ‘no dirty tricks who us?’ theory doesn’t explain how frequent WO flunkies were all up on the story before it broke though.
And David Farrar and Hamish Price. It seems to have been quite the gossip in National Party circles.
My guess: Woodhouse’s office requested and received the information as any minister’s office has a right to, but then failed to keep it confidential to the extent that lots of National Party activists had information about Cunliffe that had been obtained under ministerial auspices.
This still wouldn’t prove that it was a dirty tricks trap set by the government, but it’s disgraceful behaviour and an abuse of the powers of a ministerial office if that’s what happened.
Herald managing editor Tim Murphy seemed unimpressed on Twitter earlier. We may well hear more of this.
Otoh, if the same centre-right chatterers (the Prime Minister included) have it right, we may also hear of embarrassing large donations to Labour from Liu. We'll see.
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Hard News: The Letter, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Um, wait a minute Russell you’re saying there’s something somehow untoward about a department promptly responding to a ministerial request?
It's unclear to me exactly what happened, but if Woodhouse's office was notified about Savage's request, used the knowledge to file its own request and got the info inside 24 hours while Savage was made to wait nearly a month before being knocked back ... yeah, that's not great.
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Also, from the Herald this morning: "Mr English said he had no knowledge of the letter, and as far as he knew the National Party was not involved in making it public."
And that's how you do a denial.
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For those who haven’t been following it on Twitter.
Immigration minister Michael Woodhouse told Laura McQuillan today that he got the Cunliffe letter on May 9. That’s a day after Jared Savage filed his request – which was refused on June 16. Savage filed a more specific request on the day of the refusal and only then got what he was after.
All OIA requests are notified to the minister’s office. But Woodhouse seems to have said he made his own request. Confusing.
Woodhouse also told McQuillan he had not told Key and had no idea how Key knew – and then came back to her and said that his office had briefed Key.
It's all very … complicated.
But we seem to have a situation where the government gets the information immediately and can make use of it while a journalist is made to wait nearly a month before being refused.
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Hard News: The Letter, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Second is that it seems to me that Mr Liu is not someone who (in hindsight) should have been allowed to immigrate.
Which was the official advice regarding both his residency (granted by Labour) and his citizenship (granted by National).
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Hard News: Sectarian Bloodlust 2.0, in reply to Hamish N00nan,
Also interesting to read Scott Long’s piece on the fake viral photos not coming from ISIS.
That is an interesting piece.
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Hard News: Sectarian Bloodlust 2.0, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Sadly all this is bunk for the usual neo-con neo-Crusader crowd, who refuse to learn from history and continue to insist on getting a bigger and more explosive hammer. Just as they believed Vietnam was lost because they thought that not enough napalm was dropped, so too do they seem to think Iraq is being lost for the same reason.
Ironically, it could be argued that the precondition for intervention that was never filled before the 2003 invasion -- proximate catastrophe -- might be being filled now.
Otoh, it's no accident that that the people of Tikrit are welcoming the Sunni jihadis. They've presumably been treated even worse than most Sunnis have by the current Iraqi government.
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I received this email via the site from Greg McCreanor today:
Massive thanks to David for discovering the original documents and researching them and to everybody else for contributing to the discussion. Hilda Annie Webb became Eileen Winter Coleman after being adopted by George and Amelia Coleman, married my grandfather Fred McCreanor in 1931, they lived at 117 Memorial Ave ( still there, just been raised and lowered for new foundations ), he died 1939, and Eileen died 1963 at her house on the corner of Waiwetu and Fendalton.
The family folklore says that Eileen was presented with her adoption papers on her 21st birthday, read them, promptly threw them in the fire and the subject was never raised again. Two things intrigue me .... where exactly in the Avonside house were the documents found? And who owned the house back then? I guess it must have been the Alingtons as Winifred Alington was buried at Holy Trinity Avonside and the Colemans lived in Bristol Street. Incidentally, my grandmother always celebrated her birthday on Dec.3rd ... not the first time an adopted person has got it wrong !
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Hard News: Sectarian Bloodlust 2.0, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Unlike, say, breaching a suppression order to publish graphic evidence in a murder trail or child abuse case.
That hadn't occurred to me, Craig -- it's a very interesting point.