Taking out the trash – Whaleoil site sold to Blomfield

Written By: - Date published: 2:29 pm, August 9th, 2019 - 67 comments
Categories: blogs, books, crime, David Farrar, dpf, Media, police, Social issues, uncategorized - Tags: , , , , , ,

Matt Blomfield has brought the Whaleoil site from the official assignee. 

This fulfills a long held wish of, not only Matt, but a whole pile of people that this arsehole-run paid-for defamation lying site have damaged over the years. Chapter 27 of the Margie Thompson’s Whale Oil book is now available…

Back in one of our early interviews I asked Matt what he wanted to achieve from his court action against Cameron Slater. Even then, it was obvious he couldn’t be doing it for financial compensation. Matt talked for a bit about recouping his reputation, about not letting Slater get away with spreading lies. Justice, in a word. But then he said something audacious. 

What he really wanted, he said, was to take control of whaleoil. ‘I want people to log on to whaleoil.co.nz and find themselves directed to this book.’ 

He reached for a cigarette, savouring what was then just a crazy idea. ‘That would feel really, really good,’ he said. We laughed, and the smoke danced. I didn’t really think such a thing was possible.

In August 2019, Matt Blomfield took control of the whaleoil blogsite. 

And that is where you will find Chapter 27, currently on a redirect, but eventually with the name of whaleoil.co.nz after the UDAI transfers.

I’d particularly encourage the habitual readers of Whaleoil to buy the Whale oil book to find out what the kinds of damage the site caused. After all those readers are those ‘skeptics’ who for years believed almost all of the utter garbage that Cameron Slater spewed out about others, often for payment, and they kept trying to tell me was ‘true’.

Of course there are still the fearless supporters of Cameron Slater who are pretty damn deluded. For instance the completely gormless statement by David Farrar a few weeks ago at the end of a David Fisher article. 

Slater’s 14-year run as a blogger was significant, said Farrar, as was winning a significant media award during its time and running the blog as a paying business. “As far as I know, Cameron was the only one … who has managed to make a living off blogs.”

Which really should make any investor in David Farrar’s business start to question both his business ethics and the safety of their investment. He appears to have a naive approach towards ethical business. Effectively he is saying that a owner and his business that is going down with at least 4.7 million dollars of claims against him and his company was a way of making a ‘living’.

Some of the recent events are traceable within the records of the Companies Register. There, the dry accumulation of company names, name changes, changes in shareholdings and directorships whispers of the sheer human drama and desperate planning that has gone on behind the scenes as Slater and his supporters seemed to do everything they could think of to rescue something from their sinking ship. Social Media Consultants, then-owner of the whaleoil blog, went into liquidation. A new company, Madas 114, was set up and then shortly after became WOBH; whaleoil.co.nz became whaleoil.net.nz before morphing, chameleon-like, into a completely new blogsite. Slater passed all his shareholdings and directorships to his wife, to his accountant, and then back to his wife. 

A liquidator, Victoria Toon of Corporate Restructuring Ltd, was appointed at the end of March, and it transpired that Social Media Consultants owed creditors around $670,000. 

Slater himself, now bankrupt, was shown in the insolvency report dated 15 June to have further total estimated claims against him of $4,032,167.14.  This amount comprised costs associated with the Colin Craig and Matt Blomfield defamation cases including the $2.5 million Matt will seek in damages (but excluded any damages that may be won by the three health professionals who are also suing Slater for defamation), and the Human Rights Review Tribunal award to Matt for breaches of his privacy. The lawyers who acted for Slater in the various defamation actions brought against him – Brian Henry, and David Beard’s Legal Street — were shown to be out of pocket to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In short, the estimated claims against Slater and his company so far total more than $4.7 million.

Unlike David Farrar with his questionable business ethics, to me this result was the inevitable result of an unsustainable business model. It reads more like a shameful and pretty deliberate scam eventually crashing to the ground under its own weight.

There was never a sustainable business model underlying Cameron Slaters operations. It relied on being able to avoid being pulled into court, usually by nefarious means of intimidation. That ranged from repeated defamation and lying at Whaleoil  and by closely associated websites like Kiwiblog, Lauda Finem, Keeping Stock, and many others; through to the simple harassment and stalking by operators and supporters of those sites.

It still goes on as the deluded nutbars still seem to think this is a good idea.

Since this book was published at the end of May he has been subjected to a daily stream of anonymous phone calls from blocked numbers – his phone rings, he answers but no-one speaks. There’s breathing, background rustling, then the click as someone hangs up. This happens around ten times a day, sometimes more. As he sits in my office one afternoon to catch me up on events, it happens three times in just over an hour.  

‘You might never be free of these people,’ I say, suddenly struck by the possible truth of that. 

The remaining whaleoil community were been directed to go to a new site. But of course that has started in the traditional fashion – founded on simple theft. 

The liquidator quickly took issue with what she identified as the illegal transfer of assets away from creditors and into new entities. Following a post written by Slater’s wife Juana Atkins at the beginning of August trumpeting a ‘new era’, directing subscribers to a new site to which all whaleoil content had been transferred, and promising to honour their subscriptions, Victoria Toon posted a warning on the original whaleoil site:

‘It is the liquidator’s opinion that the director of Social Media Consultants Limited, Juana Atkins or someone directed by her has illegally used the customer database for the benefit of another business entity.

‘This appears on the face of it to have been done for the purpose of misappropriating the company’s goodwill and causing the company loss, therefore breaching the duties as a director to preserve the assets of the company for the benefit of creditors.’

Juana Atkins did not reply to the liquidator; neither did she comply with demands to relinquish control of the assets. On August 5, the liquidator who, remember, is an officer of the Court, wrote to the police for assistance, citing six sections of the Crimes Act she believed Atkins may have breached. The police replied briefly, telling Toon she should take her complaint to the front desk of her nearest police station.

Personally I have absolutely no faith that the police will do anything effective. It isn’t something that they have been noticeable for when it comes to the many crimes that originated at Whaleoil.

And now for the ending on the whaleoil site. I’d advise Matt that as the new owner of the site:

  • He can request that Papers Past at the National Library put it on private – historians only.
  • Ask the Internet Archive to do much the same.
  • And at least put thieves of material filched from whaleoil on notice that they are in violation of copyright. If Atkins and co want to repeat their bankruptcy by civil litigation, then I’d be happy to start fundraising. 
  • This includes Regan Cunliffe who opportunistically registered several Whaleoil sites as Cameron Slater went into bankruptcy. As it stands at present, he is making advertising money from stolen intellectual property.
  • Make a request to the Domain Name Commission to claim those domains. After all they appear to fit into the rules about similar names as well as their illegal use for materials..
  • And of course support the official assignee in their quest to deal with the immediate theft by Atkins and others of the intellectual and business assets of the whaleoil site. 

The site will live on as a zombie for reasons that Margie Thompson writes (as usual) far better than I can.

And so we arrive back at this masterstroke – this takeover of the whaleoil blogsite. What’s in it for Matt? Why would he bother? The toxic stuff once written up here about him is long gone, thanks to Matt’s efforts through the courts. The whaleoil site itself is worth nothing now, but it’s also worth everything.

All those other people, the ones who like Matt were slandered, bullied and humiliated on that blog over all those years — the horrible stories about them are still out there, recurrent reminders of vicious attacks. People like the woman I interviewed who was still too shaky to tell me what had happened but who simply googled herself and silently showed me the result on her phone; people like Scott Poynting, who knows that anyone googling him runs immediately into the whaleoil accusations against him. There are many, many such people.

All of that will — after Matt’s won the required court orders — be gone. Because the internet never goes away they will never be completely destroyed, but they will be gone from casual searches.

All the nasty stories, the lies and the taunts, will be pulled down.

This site — whaleoil.co.nz — now serves as a perpetual memorial to the injustices inflicted on all those people, and to Matt’s long battle to curtail falsity, bullying and manipulation.

That is a very fine ending.

67 comments on “Taking out the trash – Whaleoil site sold to Blomfield ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. weka 1
    9 August 2019 at 2:46 pm

    I am so pleased for Matt, that despite the massive cost in other areas, gaining control of the website may give him a deep sense of satisfaction. NZ owes him a great debt.

  2. weka 2
    9 August 2019 at 2:46 pm

    Will old links to WO posts be dead now, or will they redirect?

    • lprent 2.1
      9 August 2019 at 2:58 pm

      Dead. People will have to go to the archives to find them, and I suspect that will probably go into the archive pile with limited access.

      • weka 2.1.1
        9 August 2019 at 3:57 pm

        I hope there is a good process of access for people who have been harmed. I'm guessing a fair amount of the harmful posts were shared across the internet and will still be a problem.

        • lprent 2.1.1.1
          9 August 2019 at 4:43 pm

          I'm guessing a fair amount of the harmful posts were shared across the internet and will still be a problem.

          There aren't that many extant sites that reproduced that trash. Most apart from Lauda Finem were more circumspect. It is hard to search mentions of the more egregious falsehoods from Whaleoil on most other sites.

          • weka 2.1.1.1.1
            9 August 2019 at 5:39 pm

            That's good. I had assume DPF was quoting and linking, but tbh I never read there either.

            • lprent 2.1.1.1.1.1
              9 August 2019 at 6:30 pm

              There were always quite a few comments that referenced and quoted whaleoil campaigns. For that matter there were some pretty determined attempts to do the same here. I got a pretty good reputation for ‘excessive’ moderation because I wouldn’t allow most of it on the site – there wasn’t enough backend substance to justify it.

              For me seeing a whaleoil link or quote was enough to test its veracity elsewhere very early on. Much of what came from there was clearly made up fools gold salted with just enough trace of out-of-context ‘fact’ to be plausible for morons. I started doing the same when I saw links to comments on kiwiblog

              But David Farrar was usually pretty careful to keep his own hands and writing clean about campaigns that weren’t political. In my view that was probably mostly a consequence of the Lange vs Atkinson decision which allowed a much wider ‘public interest’ discretion about politicians compared to non-politicians.

              He was pretty damn indiscriminately filthy in when and how he wrote about politicians. For instance when he was reflecting and enhancing the salacious campaigns against Len Brown or the SIS info on Phil Goff or any number of other politicians. We’ve generally tried to keep out of that level of dirt crawling – for instance our coverage of the Jamie Lee Ross / Sarah Downie and related fiascos was pretty restricted to the political issues. Can’t see how it has much to do with public interest apart from the way that Paula Bennett tried to use it.

              But what did used to irritate me with the WB / KB / KS/ LF / etc blog system was the way that you’d see a whisper campaign going on between them trying to raise rumours to the point that they’d get into the media or selection campaigns or individual reputations. I mean, sure I know that the average conservative is a more than a little stupid, but surely anyone could see those repeats as an obvious planned ‘where there is smoke there must be fire’ campaigns.

              Places like Kiwiblog or Keeping Stock were more than passively complicit, they were enablers who were actively involved in promoting the kinds of campaigns that are only of value to sly cowardly morally bereft barbarians masquerading as being civilised.

              • weka …
                10 August 2019 at 1:54 am

                That deserves a post of its own.

                Interesting that KB is the only still functional blog from that list. Have anything taken the place of the others?

        • Paul Campbell 2.1.1.2
          10 August 2019 at 5:28 pm

          One public service that Blomfield could do now would be to deanonymise those people on WO who made rape and death threats

          • weka 2.1.1.2.1
            10 August 2019 at 8:41 pm

            tempting but I'd rather that didn't happen. If that gets legitimised, then normalising general doxxing will follow.

  3. observer 3
    9 August 2019 at 3:07 pm

    Taking over the hate site and using it against the sewer is very funny, and the perfect revenge.

  4. A 4
    9 August 2019 at 3:23 pm

    I love it.

  5. bwaghorn 5
    9 August 2019 at 3:31 pm

    The only flaw is I doubt whale oils regularly visitors read books . Book readers tend to be intelligent enough to see what trash the oil was.

  6. mickysavage 6
    9 August 2019 at 3:43 pm

    Heh. Great burn.

    I presume it is the URL only. I wonder if the liquidator has access to the back end of the site and if Matt now has this too?

  7. NZJester 7
    9 August 2019 at 3:52 pm

    I hope there will be a follow up in the future to say that the police have done something about the illegal asset stripping of the company.

    Who knows maybe one day he will also be able to take over the .net.nz domain as well due to the illegal use of the user database. They likely just used a backup of the old server to install the new server.

    • lprent 7.1
      9 August 2019 at 4:45 pm

      The .net.nz site is an interesting one. I think that Regan Cunliffe, the registrant, is illegally using intellectual property material that is now meant to be in the possession of the OA.

      He is also easily subject to a complaint to the DNC about sitejacking the domain.

  8. Daveski 8
    9 August 2019 at 4:20 pm

    I deserve to be banned for pointing out the typo in the first sentence but pedants united will strongly suggest he didn't bring it but he bought it.

  9. infused 9
    9 August 2019 at 4:27 pm

    It's so good to see that dickhead get what he deserves. I'm not talking about the stroke.

  10. JohnSelway 10
    9 August 2019 at 4:35 pm

    Saw this in the bookstore the other day. Might have to get a copy.

    • Pete George 10.1
      9 August 2019 at 4:39 pm

      It's worth reading. It's horrendous what WO did. And alarming what the police didn't do.

      • lprent 10.1.1
        9 August 2019 at 4:48 pm

        Agreed on both counts.

        My partner was initially puzzled at the level of support I was willing to provide to Matt Blomfield. The book (and probably seeing Dermot Nottingham’s actions) changed her mind. Obviously I need to learn to communicate better.

        • Pete George 10.1.1.1
          9 August 2019 at 4:59 pm

          It's been a very difficult thing to communicate succinctly because there is so much too it all with so many complications and side stories, and it runs over many years – the origins go back a decade.

          The book does a very good job of explaining, in part because it focused on the most pertinent aspects of the story and left a lot out – important in themselves but not needed to get the most serious bits out into the public.

        • Lyn 10.1.1.2
          9 August 2019 at 5:32 pm

          Yes lprent@10.1.1. You do (sigh).

      • Anne 10.1.2
        9 August 2019 at 5:06 pm

        Pete Goerge @10.1
        Have long suspected what we got to hear about was only the tip of the iceberg.

        The police have history over these sorts of crimes. Over a period of seven years I went to them six times reporting harassment, intimidation, stalking, breaking and entering, nuisance phone calls, hoaxes and other crimes only to have them do nothing. By the time the identity of the principle culprit became known to me, I was too traumatised and frightened to go back to them. When I eventually plucked up the courage they had the perfect excuse to continue doing nothing:

        it's too late to do anything about it now

        they told me.

        It happened a long time ago but the police attitude towards these cases doesn't seem to have changed.

        And big ups to you Pete for standing up to W/O.

  11. observer 11
    9 August 2019 at 4:48 pm

    A reminder (which some current journos/pundits might need …):

    John Key and Cameron Slater

    The good old days, eh?

  12. Sanctuary 12
    9 August 2019 at 5:13 pm

    Dear Mr. Slater, all your bases belong to us.

  13. Patricia Bremner 13
    9 August 2019 at 5:14 pm

    Matt. Well done indeed. Poetic justice.

  14. ankerawshark 14
    9 August 2019 at 5:33 pm

    Now that's what I call justice!

  15. SPC 15
    9 August 2019 at 5:57 pm

    The practice of declaring bankruptcy to transfer assets to a close relative or trust is clearly too easy.

    Who would extend credit to such people?

  16. Nick 16
    9 August 2019 at 7:03 pm

    If only someone could nail Jkey in such a way, that would truly be justice.

    • Watcher 16.1
      10 August 2019 at 1:23 am

      Jkey "killed" himself ten years ago! He's so corrupt, he'd never be able to justify his loot to the watchers!

  17. mpledger 17
    9 August 2019 at 7:14 pm

    Although Whale Oil was a terrible person there were a lot of enablers who used Whale Oil for their own ends. Whale Oil seems to have copped all the fall-out while some of the despicable people in the background seem to have walked away scot-free. I guess they knew how to keep their hands clean enough to get away with it but it really does make them incredibly dangerous.

    • greywarshark 17.1
      9 August 2019 at 11:03 pm

      I was thinking of your noting the people in the background and then read this book that sounded on a similar theme. (Incidentally it gets a write up by Alistair Campbell)

      Trade me – Consiglieri: Leading from the Shadows, by Richard Hytner

      Listing #: 2258280099 Buy Now $6 Good reading, good price plus post.

      ‘Not everyone can be in charge but, more importantly, not everyone should want to be. Richard Hytner, deputy chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi, thinks it's time to celebrate the second-in-command, the consiglieri: Merlin to King Arthur, Al Gore to Bill Clinton, Rasputin to the Russian Royal Family. These are the deputies, Vice-Presidents, Chief Operating Officers, Chief Financial Officers, Department Heads, First Lieutenants and First Violins whose influence determines the fate of countries, companies and individual ventures all over the world.

      After all, supremacy comes with drawbacks (one of which is that everyone wants your job) and influence, authority and power can be found in much more interesting places than behind the CEO's desk. Consiglieri brings together historical examples from Thomas Cromwell to Cardinal Richelieu, conversations with the second-in-commands of Tony Blair and Sir Alex Ferguson, insights into Stalin, JFK, Winnie the Pooh and Eeyore, interviews with leaders in sport, business, politics and music and cutting-edge research from psychologists and academics to produce a fresh (and refreshing) approach to leadership in the mould of Obliquity or Thinking, Fast and Slow.

      If you fancy yourself as a contemporary Machiavelli or Bismarck, make this stylish, clever and entertaining guide to finding your ideal role in a company your first choice. This is the first (not second) funny business book for a long time.’

      (This seller has quite a few political etc books at good prices.)

  18. Pete 18
    9 August 2019 at 7:21 pm

    In the overall scheme of things with this article and the comments, David Farrar is sort of an aside, incidental. Past the judgement of him by his perspective, of having questionable business ethics, is a more substantial certainty.

    That is his questionable anything.

    He is and will remain the darling of the National party, the voice of some of their supporters with their limitations, their front for distorted propaganda and the go-to man for the media. He presents as a sort of normal person, a normalcy which allows credibility to be attributed to him. That acceptance should be shattered by the few bits on here but it won't be.

    His spouting about Slater reminds me of John Key's PR job for Hisco. Put aside the money thing, over years Slater displayed a malevolence, a destructive personal viciousness and was the opposite of what reasoned political and social debate should be like.

    Needless to say when David Farrar nominates Cameron Slater as New Zealander of the Year for his contribution to our society I won't be supporting it.

  19. Anne 19
    9 August 2019 at 7:24 pm

    Yes, it would be interesting to know where they all are now and what they are doing. Cathy Odgers for example. She was one of the most dangerous of all of them. I’ll google her and see what comes up. 😉

    Edit: Nah, nothing we don’t already know. Still based in Hong Kong according to wikipedia.

    • Anne 19.1
      9 August 2019 at 7:47 pm

      @19 was a reply to M Pledger @17.

      Here we go. The key "enablers"

      https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11308726

    • Hanswurst 19.2
      9 August 2019 at 9:02 pm

      According to bizdb.co.nz, a ‘Catherine Odgers’ is an active director of ‘Justitiae Trustee Company Ltd.’ which is registered in NZ and wholly owned from Hong Kong (by a Sum Muir-Fong, who also wholly or partly owns a couple of other ventures registered here), so if that’s the same person, she's not entirely out of the NZ picture – not that that in any way means that she has political dealings or influence in NZ, shady or otherwise. Given that other people also bear that name, it’s also not entirely to be ruled out that it’s a different person.

      • Anne 19.2.1
        9 August 2019 at 10:36 pm

        Thanks for the info Hanswurst.

        It will be the Cathy Odgers of DP fame. She has been living in Hong Kong for much of the past ten or more years. She was deeply involved in the ACT Party from its inception, and I expect she keeps in touch with some of her former ACT colleagues. Her politics are at the Far Right end of the political spectrum.

        Yes, I briefly knew her and be assured she is one very hard individual who is capable of almost anything. I doubt she's changed.

        • Hanswurst 19.2.1.1
          9 August 2019 at 11:38 pm

          I wouldn’t necessarily dispute any of that, but I like to be very careful about what I claim in public view online.

        • veutoviper 19.2.1.2
          10 August 2019 at 4:19 pm

          Hi Anne, some more re the lady at 19 below – all information within the public domain. And thanks to Hanswurst re the biznz information . Pretty much ties up with her comments re her work in her blog posts this year. The ties to Hong Kong are still there, and possibly the $$$$.

          • Anne 19.2.1.2.1
            10 August 2019 at 5:24 pm

            Yes, I saw that vv. Very interesting.

            If she has succeeded in rehabilitating herself – and that includes reviewing and revising her former behaviour – then I say good luck to her. She's still a relatively young woman so has time on her side.

            • lprent 19.2.1.2.1.1
              10 August 2019 at 7:11 pm

              I did a brief run through a reasonable selection of her posts. It was interesting reading. Probably worth disagreeing with rather than ignoring.

  20. beefmeat 20
    9 August 2019 at 8:07 pm

    Slater once left a message on my blog to say how much he hated me and wished I-d die soon! I told him he was too fat, unhealthy and evil, and I-d probably outlast him. So far, I-ve been proven right!

  21. Ad 21
    9 August 2019 at 9:49 pm

    +1000 Lprent and well done for being a strong and effective part of the fight yourself.

  22. xanthe 22
    10 August 2019 at 8:37 am

    So what might happen to the .net.nz fork? Which is still live ..sort of

    And now we have BFD which is live.

    looks like whackamole.

  23. Pete George 23
    10 August 2019 at 8:48 am

    Felix Geiringer @BarristerNZ

    I understand that changes are afoot. For now, (link: http://whaleoil.co.nz) whaleoil.co.nz is redirecting to Blomfield's own site with a free copy of a new additional chapter to Margie Thomson's book, Whale Oil.

    The whaleoil dot net bot nz URL is still in the hands of the old owners, but Matt hopes that will change in the next few days. He is also investigating what options he has for theBDF dot co dot nz.

    Given he hAs been Blomfield's lawyer I would expect him to more than understand.

    • veutoviper 23.1
      10 August 2019 at 9:14 am

      Snap! Thanks for putting up that tweet – I was just about to do the same, as one of the first places I went after hearing the news re Blomfield and Whaleoil was to check out Felix's twitter feed. As you note, Felix was Blomfield's barrister in the most recent rounds in court (and of course is also Nicky Hager's barrister etc). Felix's tweets are a good source of info as to what is happening on a lot of things, especially in respect of the life in and around the Wellington twitterati – LOL. Actually he is a really nice guy, well known in Wellington for a lot of things outside of politics etc.

      AND the other place I went was your blog of course. Despite your decision to cut out all the daily regular posts etc, I am still enjoying reading your 'subject' posts – which are much more regular than I thought they would be. LOL. I hope you are enjoying the freedom from the daily grind and are making the most of your new-found life.

  24. TheBlackKittenReturns 24
    10 August 2019 at 10:39 am

    THe is very lucky that he had the resources to fight Slater and gain his reputation back.A lot of people are not so fortunate and have had to live such unfairness. Perhaps it’s also a slight in our system that only those with financial resources are able to fight for their rights. Lawyers cost money and not a lot of people have money to use.

  25. veutoviper 25
    10 August 2019 at 11:48 am

    Cathy Odgers AKA Cactus Kate

    At 19 above, Anne and Hanswurst discussed the old crew who used to support Slater, including Cathy Odgers aka Cactus Kate. Rather than reply directly to Anne at 19, I thought I would start a new thread as the following may invoke further wider discussion. (Hope it is not considered off topic for this post, but happy for it to be moved if it is.)

    The Wikipedia entry for Cathy Odgers AKA Cactus Kate is well out of date. Cathy apparently returned to NZ in late 2018 or early 2019 – and began blogging again in Feb 2019.

    Her first post (9 Feb 2019) titled “Long Time No See”was initially on her old Cactus Kate blog which reappeared for a very short time and then disappeared. *. This post then reappeared on a new blog called "Asian Invasion 2019". From 9 Feb 2019 to her latest post on 24 July 2019, she has pushed out 100 posts on the new blogsite.

    I won’t put up a link to the new blog, but it can easily be found by googling its name or “Cactus Kate blog”.

    Her first new post on 9 February 2019 is a long, very detailed and forthright account of her last few years travelling the world in an inebriated state (or in her words as a “reasonably functioning alcoholic”) , followed by spending most of 2018 in rehab which she details in the post.

    I will probably get slated for saying this by some here who would NEVER read a Cactus Kate post (LOL) and much as I have no respect etc for her as a person, she does write well and this first post is actually well worth reading IMHO, for her frankness about herself and others, including her comments on the current MSM in NZ – and bloggers. (In fact some of it reminds me of some of lprent’s posts – or maybe, more accurately some of his moderation notes! LOL Just kidding.)

    Thereafter her posts are on a range of subjects most of which I have not yet read. I read her first few back in Feb/March and then forgot about her new blog. It was only Anne’s mention of Cathy’s name that sent me back to find it again at 2am this morning (insomnia).

    However, since June, as she is apparently a cricket fanatic, Cathy has been overseas following the Black Ferns on their tour and the Cricket World Cup, and blogging on each match. Her latest post on 24 July is short and reads:

    “It has been 10 days since I was sitting in the stands in London and I still cannot bring myself to write about it.

    I would be happier to call it the greatest cricket match ever, if we had actually won. But we did not.

    It may take some time to write about it.”

    Nothing since …

    * Looking at Cathy's return to blogging from a different angle, back on 12 May 2015, Mickysavage put up a post here on TS titled “The unusual case of the disappearing blog” which attracted 308 comments at the time. The post started with the intriguing first para that “Social media guru Giovanni Tiso has discovered something unusual. Cactus Kate’s blog is slowly disappearing from the internet”….. This old TS post can be found at https://thestandard.org.nz/the-unusual-case-of-the-disappearing-blog/#comment-1014081

    Cathy's original Cactus Kate blog did disappear for some years, but as I mentioned above, it did reappear for a short time back in Feb 2019 and then disappeared with the introduction of the new Asian Invasion 2019 blog.

    BUT at 2am this morning when I first googled Cactus Kate blog, it appeared in the Google list. I clicked; the old Cactus Kate blog came up with the 9 Feb 2019 post at the top of a list of previous posts, which I clicked on. This then actually took me to the Asian Invasion blog, but then when I retried the Google search, the link to the old Cactus Kate blog did not reappear and has not on several further attempts.
    Puzzling, but possibly indicates that those old Cactus Kate blog posts are still somewhere out there in the internet cloud ????

    • lprent 25.1
      10 August 2019 at 6:45 pm

      Worth reading (I'll provide the link)

      https://asianinvasion2019.blogspot.com/2019/02/happy-new-year-bitches.html

      As brutally honest as ever. It does amuse me that she seems to despise the unproductive parasites who she was working for about as much as I do.

      Of course she does read like she is one herself. I get the impression that she has never done anything that is actually creative. Just plays with rules for her and her ex-clients advantage – a classic null or negative-sum game in the wider world.

      The rest of the posts (outside of her strange obsession with fools playing with bat and ball) are of interest on the political and social commentary side. I find myself forming arguments that tend to start with – you really are an economic illiterate because…

      Which is a compliment. Usually when I read most on the right, most of them strike me as being self-satisfied idiots who are about as observant and thinking as much as their latest parroted slogan. CK isn't like that – just simply naive, inexperienced with real life, and evidently too lazy to think too hard. But at least she is observant.

      • weka 25.1.1
        10 August 2019 at 9:21 pm

        The old blog is back at the internet archive (pre- 2015 posts). Micky said in his post in 2015 that it wasn't there. How does she do that?

  26. roblogic 26
    10 August 2019 at 3:39 pm

    Fabulous book review on Newsroom

    https://twitter.com/newsroomnz/status/1134550713676124160?s=21

    “To believe in such a crude caricature … would require a suspension of disbelief only the pathologically credulous can muster.

    Alas, those are precisely the kind of intellectual invertebrates that inhabit the sweaty crevices of the Internet colonised by Whale Oil and far worse. And this is where Thomson’s story rises above the mere re-telling of an unfortunate period in one hapless soul’s life, and becomes a nuanced examination of the conditions required for Slater’s malignant brand to thrive.
    …
    The net effect of our voyeuristic impulses and the viral immediacy of digital media is, for the Matt Blomfields of this world, catastrophic. As Thomson writes, borrowing from Jonathan Swift, “Falsehood flies, and Truth comes limping after.” It was ever thus, but nowadays falsehood flies at the speed of light down fibre-optic cable.”

  27. TheBlackKittenReturns 27
    13 August 2019 at 7:42 pm

    I brought the book yesterday. It’s very good. Tells how vile Slater was to not just Blomfield, but others. I recommend it to you all.

  28. Calico Cats Meow More 28
    17 August 2019 at 5:23 am

    I read Thompson's book in a day – I was unable to put it down bar "necessities" – and it is an excellent account of this horrifying, prolonged destruction of Blomfield's reputation and nearly his life, and the torment of his innocent family, at the hands of the psychopath Slater, his sycophantic blog readers, and a shadowy group of persons clustered around the instigator, Blomfield's ex-business partner.

    I highly recommend people buy or otherwise borrow and read it – if you thought Slater's activities as exposed in "Dirty Politics" were reprehensible, you will need a shower after reading this, and you cannot fail to be outraged at what was done and the casual indifference of the Police to his plight. I can't even come up with adjectives that adequately describe my disgust at what transpired.

    I shudder to think what further details of the campaign of defamation were omitted for clarity, and sadly, this book could have been written many times over again, at least, the parts describing how Slater attacked and defamed people for money, and was completely vicious and unyielding about it, smug in his arrogance and conceit that no-one could touch him.

    Fortunately, as Thomson puts it, he underestimated Matt Blomfield, a man who had nothing left but the dogged determination to restore his reputation that Slater had unfairly destroyed.

    We all owe Matt and his family and all those who helped him beat Slater, an enormous debt of gratitude for fighting on, to the proof in court that Slater is a liar and defamer, with the eventual ending of Slater's "Smears For Cash" business.

    It will still take years to repair the psychological and financial harm done to the Blomfields and many others, but the spell Slater cast across the darker side of the internet has been broken, and a large body of Case Law has been established that will make it much harder for anyone like Slater to ever get away with such villainous slander in future.

    There now are a whole new list of names to be aware of, to avoid doing business with, as well as a few familiar ones to watch out for – names of people involved in perpetrating this sort of merciless psychopathic bullying;
    – Warren Powell (the ex business partner, who illegally withheld Blomfield's filing cabinet and hard drives)
    – Amanda Easterbrook (Powell's friend who organised the group of psychos to start the attacks on Blomfield, and was likely the one who trawled through his private files and handed them to Slater)
    – Marc Spring (another ex-business associate, and a man who is possibly worse than Slater for using false identities on blogs, more than 50, to post larger-than-life multi-identity "conversations" smearing people on WO and others including Lauda Finem)
    – Dermot Nottingham (deemed to be the main person behind Lauda Finem, even worse than Slater's blog, close friend of Slater)
    – and yes, Jordan Williams (a lawyer who one day surely should be disbarred).

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