blogging it real

Following on from last week's deranged ramblings from the Farmers' Party Spokesperson on the Prohibition of Water and Protection of Babies, today we have Pita Sharples making absurd statements about race relations. On the one hand I realize that his shrill and ridiculous rhetoric will go down well with his party's target voters - aggrieved Maori who conceptualize the world in only two tones (brown and white), and believe the state is always out to get them. On the other, I use the word "ridiculous" in the literal sense - his claims are so over-stated and bereft of logic as to invite ridicule.

Sharples characterizes the police as engaging in "storm trooper" and "extreme" behaviour, having "lashed out" at Maori, in such a way "that negative history is repeating itself." And then the trump, headline-earning card: "This action has violated the trust that has been developing between Maori and Pakeha and sets our race relations back 100 years."

Honestly, man, pull yourself together. No land was confiscated. No war was fought. No one was shot, or even roughed up by the cops. The redcoats did not invade Maori land. A few Maori alleged to be involved in very serious illegal paramilitary activities were arrested. They are now being charged in an open and transparent legal process. A few other Maori in some shitty town were momentarily detailed while their vehicles were searched. Some other folks who were not Maori, but who might or might not have known the paramilitary wannabes, have also been arrested and charged. This is not a crisis in race relations you idiot.

What do you suggest the Police should have done? Ignored the information they had gathered? Politely knocked on the front doors of the alleged and asked: "I say mate, by any chance are you planning on doing anything bad with your arsenal of guns and home-made explosives? No? Didn't think so. Have a nice day." One might also hypothesize that a significant proportion of the Police executing the warrants, and making the arrests, were Maori themselves.

Such nuances are lost on the Maori Party I fear.

The critical point, though, is that if the self-styled Tuhoe warriors - consisting largely of the fat, the excessively tattooed, and the disaffected - had been left to follow through on their alleged plans (i.e., war against the state, or at least some aspect of it, probably killing a few innocent "whiteys" along the way) ... then we might have a real crisis of race relations.

Pita Sharples you are a tosser.

Labels: idiots, Parti Maori, politics, terrorism