"Welcome to the new world of intimidation"

Dark days are coming. How long now before police will be knocking on doors?

“If you don’t hear from me after midday Friday, I’m guessing it will be because I’m under arrest.

“Welcome to the new world of intimidation.”

BREAKING: The NZ Police would like to have a word with me

Martyn Bradbury

the Daily Blog,

13 August, 2015

In this media landscape where progressive voices challenging authority get strangled off on a near monthly basis, hearing that the NZ Police are suddenly looking for you gives one a slight cold shiver up your spine.

I’ve just been contacted by friends that the NZ Police are keen to speak to me. A Detective no less. I’ve been asked to meet with the Police tomorrow at midday to discuss this blog by John Minto.

Mr Talley and his rich friends certainly seem to have a lot of pull to be able to get Detective’s to contact blogs wanting a chat about negative coverage.

I will state here so there is no confusion, I will not censor or remove John’s blog from this site.

I won’t be intimidated or threatened or pushed around by monied industries who make workers lives a misery.

I will explain that in polite language to the Police tomorrow.

If you don’t hear from me after midday Friday, I’m guessing it will be because I’m under arrest.

Welcome to the new world of intimidation.

Here is John Minto's article

Take your car keys shopping with you

John Minto

Peter Talley – butcher of meat and workers

the Daily Blog,

13 August, 2015

Back in the 1980s I was involved in the campaign to isolate South Africa because of its racist apartheid system. Appeals for boycotts were made as the best way for those outside the country to fight what the United Nations called a “crime against humanity”.

The sports boycott was the focus because that was where New Zealand had its most important links with South Africa. However the economic and investment boycott increased in importance on the back of the sports boycott.

Consumer products from South Africa were targeted. Companies importing South African wine were picketed and normal business disrupted while people were urged to boycott the likes of South African guavas and dried apricots.

Consumer boycotts themselves are difficult to make economically effective but coupled with a little bit of creative shopping their effect can be dramatically multiplied.

People would go into supermarkets with their car key and quietly puncture the bags of dried apricots and scratch the labels on the wine bottles to make them unsaleable. People would also take packets of dried apricots from the shelf into their supermarket trollies and deposit them at the bottom of the deep freeze under the frozen peas.

Small acts of civil disobedience like this are an appropriate response to the vicious attacks on workers’ rights mounted by the infamous Talley brothers described in this excellent blog post by Mike Treen.

Treen describes them as “reactionary corporate murderers” and who could disagree?

And their attitudes to women? Treen’s article reports this:

The company also lost a landmark case about equal pay for women. They had refused to allow a woman to become a filleter at their plant. The response of Andrew Talley was to dismiss the decision as a joke. “In any job there are attributes that suggest it will be more likely to be done by either a man or a woman – that doesn’t mean you discriminate,” he said. “There are jobs – pole dancing being one and fish filleting being another – that have a higher predominance of either men or women. The decision is a joke.”  

What a Neanderthal! Andrew Talley is the Donald Trump of New Zealand business.

If you buy Talley’s products now – STOP – and tell your friends and family to stop too.

And if you feel as outraged as you should at this company with workers’ blood all over its hands then take your car keys shopping with you.

Products to Boycott

Marketed under

Talleys

Icecream (Crème de la Crème, Crème de la Crème Guilt free)

Peas, beans, corn, spinach, carrots, mixed vegetables

Mussels, Talleys retail bags, Ocean Royale retail bags, Oyster Bay, Scallops, Squid bait, Hoki portions AND By Products: Fish Meal, Fish Oil, Fish Fertiliser

Open Country

Milk Powders, Milk Proteins, Milk Fats and Cheese

AFFCO

Lamb, beef, veal, mutton, goat, leather, hides, pelts, calf skins, protein meals, tallow, casings, slipe wool, pharmaceutical blood serums

Auckland, NZ: the Destruction of a Community

Hone Harawira arrested in housing protest

Mana Party leader Hone Harawira was arrested at a protest over housing in Auckland last night

TVNZ,

12 October, 2012

Activists had occupied a state house that was being taken from the suburb of Glen Innes to Mt Wellington in preparation for redevelopment of the area.

Harawira had parked a car in the driveway, which police said obstructed the truck and trailer which was removing the house. Police said they made several appeals for Harawira to move, but had no option but to remove him from the vehicle.

He was charged with "failing to comply with a direction", and was one of seven protesters arrested during the action last night.

Three other protesters were also arrested at the same time for obstruction, while later on three others who had been on the roof of the house were charged with obstruction and wasting police time.

Mana Party Vice President John Minto has praised Harawira.

"Hone and the other protesters are heroes tonight. They have laid their bodies on the line against the might of the government who are determined

to evict people from their homes," he said.

"Shame on this government for yet again picking on the poor."

The protests have been going on for several months since Housing New Zealand began work to redevelop 156 properties in the Tamaki and Glen Innes area.

The Tamaki Housing Action Group says the work is "pulling apart their community for the purpose of privatizing houses owned by the public."

It says residents have been picketing the house removals for six months, getting arrested and then released with no charges.

Housing New Zealand said at the start of the development programme it understood that long term tenants would want to stay in their homes but housing shortages meant land had to be developed to accommodate a growing number of tenants.

For video GO HERE

From Radio New Zealand

NZ: Government wages war on working class

Derisory Budget wages war on working class

It's usual for any government to selectively release some of their Budget policies before it's dropped on Parliament. This year is no exception

By Matt McCarten

NZ Herald,

20 May, 2012

At present we have an $11 billion deficit. The Government claims it's going into the next election with a balanced budget. So I am surprised this week's pre-Budget policy releases save very little.

They can be called "wedge issues" that seem deliberately targeted at those on modest means. For example, does anyone believe spending a derisory $1 million on contraception for beneficiaries and their daughters is anything more than sending a message that women on the DPB need to stop breeding?

I wonder if they thought to offer castration to the sons of beneficiaries?

If we really want to reduce teenage pregnancy and abortion it would be more principled, and just as cost-effective, to offer it to all young women. Another policy, adding another couple of bucks on prescriptions, is just a way of grinding down the poor.

John Key's Government is even upbeat about sacking an average of one teacher from every school. The survivors get the extra kids in their classes. The savings are going to charter schools before they are sold to prospective buyers.

How cynical to cut a school's funding, lowering performance and thus encouraging frustrated parents to send their kid to a privatised charter school that got the money.

Tertiary students with poor parents can kiss away their equal opportunity, too. Increasing loan repayments is one thing. But a new policy of reducing placements at universities and stopping any loans after four years means those students can forget about professions in medicine and post-graduate studies.

Here's the point I'm making: none of these announcements target our wealthier citizens. What's more, these policies save less than $200 million.

This week has been about targeting the poor to detract from the Government's economic incompetence and the dodgy behaviour of National's coalition partner.

We have a smiling salesman intent on transforming our once egalitarian society into a corporate state where the rich get the privileges at the expense of the poor.

Don't believe me? On Monday night I was working late in my office. A couple of members of my union turned up at nearly midnight after an altercation with the police in Glen Innes.

This Government is waging a war on this working-class community at night.

Seventy-six state homes are being demolished or trucked out of the community to enable the sale of land to property developers to build McMansions for the wealthy.

The residents have lived there for generations and have paid for their homes, through rent, many times over.

They accepted they'd have to move, but in many consultation meetings by Housing NZ and various ministers they were led to believe that no one would be moved out of their neighbourhood.

As recently as last year Pita Sharples turned up at a public meeting and assured the residents it wouldn't happen.

Those promises have now been broken.

No minister has returned. Instead the Minister of Housing, from the safety of Wellington, insults these long-term residents saying: "We no longer house criminal gangs in old, cold, mouldy state houses on half-acre sections."

He should visit this area to get his facts right rather than smearing the locals.

Who do turn up are the cops, to bust up the local protests and make sure the houses are removed. Our own form of cleansing. It's not ethnic, but rather class.

In the past three weeks 10 people have been arrested. Two needed hospital treatment and several women told me they had been injured by police.

Protest stalwart John Minto, who has been helping the residents, has been targeted, arrested twice on trumped-up charges and even had his ribs broken. And before some of you start twittering that Minto deserves it, he has never advocated violence and hasn't had a conviction for 20 years.

One of his arrests was made within a minute of his arrival at a peaceful rally where he was a publicised speaker.

There is something nasty going on. Maybe the offer of free contraception could be extended to anyone the Government decides is too poor - or lives on land they'd like to give to someone richer.