A Childhood Where Maori Was Spoken
We really enjoyed doing one thing to annoy the local policeman. The opportunity to truly piss him off only presented itself maybe once, maybe twice a year. The wind had to be due west.
History
Government Needs Agreement of the People to Change the Name of Our Country
Don Brash hobsonspledge.nz Polls show that the great majority of New Zealanders don’t support a change in our country’s name. John Tamihere is correct that the Maori language became an official language in1987. And correct in asserting that people are entitled to assert the name Aotearoa. But
Has the Time Come to Regulate Social Media?
Karl D. Stephan mercatornet.com Karl D. Stephan received the B. S. in Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1976. Following a year of graduate study at Cornell, he received the Master of Engineering degree in 1977 and was employed by Motorola, Inc. and Scientific-Atlanta as an
Totalitarian Governments Didn’t Start off That Way
Grant Finch It’s difficult, impossible even, to objectively look back at the totalitarian governments of the last century. From our vantage, we only see the evil and inhuman systems they became and presume they always were. But were they intended to be as abusive as they became? In reference
Australia’s Astonishing Tyranny Keeps Growing
Simon Black sovereignman.com Simon Black, as James Hickman is more commonly known, is the Founder of Sovereign Man. He is an international investor, entrepreneur, and a free man. His daily e-letter, Notes from the Field, draws on his life, business and travel experiences to help readers gain more
A Few Thoughts on the Treaty
Grant Finch The ‘Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi as expressed by the Courts and the Waitangi Tribunal’ explains how the legal profession has arrived at its current position on the Treaty and invented ‘partnership’. This is too narrow an examination as it limits itself to the machinery of law
Reef ‘Science’ Ignores the Facts of History
The past is a great antidote to the panics of the present. Not just the fact that “the good old days” rarely were, but the lessons of a deeper time. Especially when it comes to the more lunatic pronouncements of the environmental lobby and climate alarmists. According to a completely
The BFD Food Column: Apple Streusel
Aside from sauerkraut, sausages, things made from minced up meat and beer, the Germanic people while conquering most of continental Europe in their day in the guise of Goths, Vandals and Franks have left quite a faint culinary footprint, or perhaps one that isn’t that discernible to us today.
The Importance of Taking Words for What They Mean
This week, I venture into two matters metaphysical, albeit with feelings of trepidation that they may be beyond my intellectual pay grade. But here goes: The two fields are: ancestry (especially as it relates to Maori tipuna/tupuna) and the importance of correctly interpreting words. ANCESTRY In trying to better
Flight of the Moon Tortoises!
We’re all familiar with Laika the dog and Ham the chimp as pioneering animal astronauts, but how many of us have heard of the Moon Tortoises? In fact, two Russian tortoises, imaginatively named “22” and “37”, were the first Earth creatures to orbit the Moon, four months before Apollo
The BFD Food Column: Arayes
In this part of the world, it seems that almost anything can be served up in a pita. Most people are familiar with falafel and shawarma. Other local foods are served on pita like lahme bajen, or the pita is used as a spoon to scoop and wipe hummus and
Was It Really ‘Blair’s War’?
History, it is said, is written by the victors. But which victors, of which war? The United States lost the Vietnam War militarily, for instance: but the American left emerged victorious on the home front. And they wrote a history which was every bit as false as the Soviets who
The BFD Food Column: Zuppa di Spinaci
This weeks post is tasty Spinach soup, a simple very quick delicate and visually attractive way to warm your cockles and sigh aahhh afterwards. There is not much you can write on the origins of spinach soup but I will give it a go. Spinach first appeared in the region
9/11 and the Age of Panic
It’s sobering to realise that my own children, now in their 20s, have lived with the “War on Terror” as the background to their entire lives. They can barely remember 9/11, of course; they were toddlers, playing, oblivious to the telly on which those shocking images transfixed the