Criptic Critic Conscience and Known for it

Monday, January 26, 2015

A reasonably gentle New Zealand Sovereignty discussion, Jan 2015

Yet she lead the charge to entrench inequity and confiscate lands and rights of Maori !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ‪#‎takutaimoanaact‬ - Annette Sykes and so much more!!!


Alec Hogg talks to the head of the UNDP in Davos about how feelings of exclusion, not poverty, is the root cause of the volatile new global context
theguardian.com|By Alec Hogg
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  • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza it's not reasonable for one ethnic group to own the sea bed and foreshore
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    • Wells Tao especially since Maori never sold it
    • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza we live in a diverse nation state now ...the Maori didn't have the same sort of system.. but they now partake in it.. i'm all for compensating Maori as appropriate but i think it's a stretch to claim that present day Maori own this much land to the exclusion of the rest of the population
    • Wells Tao It's possible a stretch if you don't know or understand what is involved. How's your knowledge? As for fears of exclusion, those are your own. Anyone can learn Te Reo.
    • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza learning the language doesn't make u part of the ethnic group... my knowledge is modest but i get why a prime minister would take this move
    • Wells Tao Doesn't make you part of an ethnic group but does give you profound insight into that culture no?
    • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza yes but insight has nothing to do with land ownership
    • Wells Tao you speak of ownership, that is a word in a language, if we were speaking Te Reo, we would use different words, with very different meanings.
    • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza that is a good point.. their ideas of sovereignty and ownership differ.. yet they are now using English to claim the seabed and foreshore in the context of a diverse nation state ...they should be compensated about the misunderstanding or deception that took place involving ceding sovereignty to the Crown... but the facts on the ground simply prohibit that sovereignty be removed from the Crown now.. even Maori never ask for this...the Prime Minister made an understandable move in light of contemporary circumstances...where it was no longer reasonable to consider the seabed and foreshore as attached to one ethnicity among many that now live here
    • Quinn Wilkins The birds and lizards living in NZ never sold the land to humans, so we should give it all back. Foreshore, seabed, land and atmosphere all belong to the huhu beetle.
    • Luc Lignieres In my opinion the land rivers creeks shore lines and sea beds should belong to the nation not to the crown & not to the government how will just transfer exploitation rights to multinationals for profit , removing the people both Maori and the entire population from the equation ..
    • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza the Crown is just the traditional name ....something belonging to the Crown means it belongs to the nation as a whole
    • Quinn Wilkins The Crown is supposed to be the nation... Are you suggesting creating a non-governmental national body?
    • Wells Tao "but the facts on the ground simply prohibit that sovereignty be removed from the Crown now.. even Maori never ask for this.." I think you'll find that this is a rather large point of contention. Are you aware of the Waitangi Tribunals recent assertion around the myth of Maori ceding sovereignty? As for your assertion that "it was no longer reasonable to consider the seabed and foreshore as attached to one ethnicity among many" It might be suggested that from a Maori perspective, Pakeha are ONE ethnicity and they dominate ownership without the right to do so. Your logic is a tad screwed.
    • Wells Tao Quinn, exceptions to a rule, reinforce the rule. The logic is right, you apply it where you can.
    • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza I'm not Pakeha. but I'm a new zealand citizen. I'm one of the people that should share in the sea bed and foreshore. As far as I know it is fairly rare for Maori to question the sovereignty of the Crown despite the deception that took place with the treaty.. i suspect simply because it is not realistic
    • Wells Tao From a Treaty of Waitangi perspective, all immigrants to NZ post 1840 are Pakeha.
    • Quinn Wilkins "from a Maori perspective, Pakeha are ONE ethnicity and they dominate ownership without the right to do so" I would probably say cultural power/force rather than ethnic as really it is not just europeans but colonists and those who followed in their wake. But it doesn't seem to me that the ethnic bias is there so much as the benefits go to those who fall in line and rub the power's feet.
    • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza that's just absurd...meaningless semantics.. i'm clearly not of the same culture as what are commonly called Pakeha yet i have full citizenship and full rights
    • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza i agree that Maori didn't realize they were ceding sovereignty
    • Quinn Wilkins I think when people consider that NZ is made of only two ethnicities (Maori and non-Maori) it is the beginning of dangerous binomial thinking, so it is not meaningless semantics from my point of view.
    • Wells Tao This is a complicated issue/ area and deserves to be taken slowly and calmly. It is easy to get upset. I don't know everything, I am not an authority. I have an opinion. The ONE mentioned before was meant to be ironic, as in the ONE law for all supposedly we here in NZ love so much. But in my experience only exists for the rich.. etc etc.
    • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza well 'meaningless semantics' was probably a bad choice of phrasing given that semantics has to do with meaning lol i agree that the bicultural conception is out of date since there are now many more cultures here than Maori and Europeans
    • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza i know it's a complicated issue,.. highly complicated by historical circumstance and the contemporary situation on the ground..ideally no one would trick anyone into ceding sovereignty but that's what happened and now we have to deal with it in a reasonable way.. through compensation and acknowledgement of what happened... but not through going back to a state of affairs that existed 250 years earlier
    • Wells Tao As I understand it bi-culturalism was a Pakeha idea that relates specifically to the treaties of Waitangi's importance as a founding agreement of our present government. It undermines the true shift of power, as in a shared government that the Tiriti the crown signed, had indicated. Multi-culturalism, as practiced say in Australia, enables everything to default to English. Bi-culturalism at least empowers the equal legal standing of te reo.
    • Wells Tao This idea of a "trick" Ahmed, is not accurate in my understanding. Maori overwhelmingly voted. signed Te Tiriti (in te reo Maori), then waited for consultation to begin, for the steps to be co created, Maori took steps to protect the Tiriti and were systematically dis-empowerd by a thoroughly corrupt legal system that is still in place today (Maori are 7 times more likely to see prison for the same crime a Pakeha would not) etc etc
    • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza my understanding is that there was a problem in translation and the Maori version of the treaty used wording that doesn't imply sovereignty in the same sense the Europeans understood it
    • Wells Tao As for compensation, I read something like, South Island Iwi Ngāi Tahu were financially compensated for stolen land at .02% of what the land is currently worth. This is hardly compensation, or justice. And given that the crown in this case is the Thief, to ask the Thief to administer the justice, I can only imagine what that must feel like.
    • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza as for the social inequalities... these are analogous to the situation of many native peoples and minorities around the world ....they need to be dealt with but they have no bearing on the issue of the seabed and foreshore... as for the compensation not being appropriate.. well then we need to change that ..again no bearing on the idea that the seabed and foreshore has special status pertaining to Maori
    • Wells Tao The 'problem in translation' is mis direction myth/ spin / propaganda that serves to perpetuate an oppressive status quo. 500 signed Tiriti and imptly, so did the crown. Only 39 signed the treaty in English. A clear indication of what was supported. Only Tiriti traveled the country, the English version traveled just two places.
    • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza are u saying there was no issue in translation? because as far as i know there was in fact mistranslation
    • Wells Tao As for having "no bearing" that's not for you or I, generally to say, not being Maori.
    • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza i don't have to be Maori to express my opinion.. i'm a NZ citizen and can discuss any issue pertaining to NZ
    • Wells Tao The idea of mistranslation is simply not relevant, 39 signed the English Treaty, 500 and the Crown Signed Te Tiriti.
    • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza so ur trying to say that the maori version is more legit due to the number who signed it?
    • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza interesting....what are the consequences of that? what did the Maori version give away if anything?
    • Wells Tao The consequences as I understand it, are things like the Waitangi Tribunals ruling, that Maori never ceded sovereignty, and that this is a very much an alive and living thing, not going to disappear with money or denial. In fact the opposite, that the recognition and engagement in these issues, as you have said, are at the very core of what it means to be here, as a NZ citizen and inheritor of this relationship. As for what Maori gave away, as far as I understand it, the idea was that Pakeha would with Maori develop how to address each issue, land sales, law, etc together on a case by case basis, with Maori, and Maori culture being sovereign, i.e the last word. Somewhere I've read too that the idea was to enable Pakeha to administer control of their own and work with Maori to figure out how that would work, over all.
    • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza did they in the Maori version give the position of paramount chief to the Queen at the time?
    • Anna Marwick · Friends with Annette Sykes and 14 others
      the English version is irrelevant
    • Wells Tao Ahmed, no. Not that as I understand it, Chieftainship under the Tiriti stayed with Maori.
    • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza ok.. so what is the ruling of the Waitangi Tribunal over the issue of the current Queen being sovereign?
    • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza thanks just watched it... this is interesting.. because de facto and presumably de jure sovereignty lies with the current Queen...
    • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza what do you suggest as the right solution to the problem then?
    • Wells Tao Past this point, I don't understand what is going on. The government seems clearly to not have the legal grounds to operate in the way that it does, but instead of admitting this and facing the issue, (and the public panic that would be carefully created by sides wishing to profit) it seems they simply feel able to issue a declaration based on the same kind of delusions that saw a deputy major declare sovereignty over the whole of the South Island on the grounds that no body lived there.
    • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza as far as i know few Maori seek to remove sovereignty from the Crown.. am i correct?
    • Wells Tao Very difficult, if not impossible to say "Maori", I don't know what or how consensus is viewed on this subject as I said before, it is alive, it's up to individual engagement and positions to try and reveal themselves. I'm basically saying I haven't done any more research on this area yet.
    • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza i've never seen an example of demands to remove sovereignty from the Crown....despite what the Tribunal said... it seems to me most maori are willing to work with the Crown
    • Wells Tao I have heard of some ideas around removing sovereignty from the crown, of a separate state. This idea scares the bejesus into existing power, like the England, Scotland recent vote, the young, poor and unemployed saw a future in independence, where the establishment say no need to change.
    • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza but you must know that these views are not very common and most Maori do not go as far as demanding independence
    • Ahmed Tarek Bahgat Abaza Scotland's recent vote was not seeking to remove sovereignty from the Crown...they were gonna keep the Queen but become a separate state... similar to the position of NZ, Canada, Australia etc..
    • Sam Buchanan So far as the Seabed and Foreshore goes, even the English version of the Treaty says Maori retain "full exclusive and undisturbed possession of their Lands and Estates Forests Fisheries and other properties". Also worth noting that Maori are now quite a mix of ethnicities, legally they are simply a collective of people with ancestors from whom they have inherited certain property rights. If the state was to decide that, in the interests of everyone, land and other property should not be inherited in perpetuity, the state might have had a basis for confiscating the seabed and foreshore. But such confiscations only happen to one group of New Zealanders. The government never decides that its unfair that wealthy Canterbury farmers, for example, should own so much land, when most New Zealanders own very little.
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  • Jean E Loomis The seabed and foreshore act were passed by the government because they had plans to sell off O&G permits - they didnt want Maori having a say.

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