Written By: - Date published: 9:21 pm, October 11th, 2012 - 144 comments
“So what?” says Key as allegations emerge from within GCSB that Key cracked jokes about the spooks’ (illegal) involvement in the Dotcom raid when he was briefed by them on February 29th. It either means you realised their spying and are incompetent for not questioning its legality or that you knew all about the illegal spying and didn’t care – that’s what.
Written By: - Date published: 6:39 pm, October 11th, 2012 - 103 comments
Apparently there’s a tape of Key mentioning Dotcom on February 29th. Another bit of Key’s story collapses? Watch Campbell Live at 7 for more…
Written By: - Date published: 10:15 am, October 10th, 2012 - 29 comments
My old man, a casual observer of politics, said the other day: “John boy doesn’t look like he wants to be there anymore”. I reckon he’s right. Except when he’s doing photo-ops, Key looks ever more grumpy and aloof. No wonder he’s spending so much time overseas. No wonder he’s making such bad decisions like betraying his promise to the Pike River families.
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, October 10th, 2012 - 29 comments
People don’t just vote for politicians because they like their policies. Just as important are trust and perceived competence. Key’s policies were never popular. He won on the other two – particularly trust. That’s why the Dotcom saga is so ruining for him. As more details of what Key knew or should have known come out day by day, perceptions of Key’s competence and trust in him plummet.
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, October 6th, 2012 - 49 comments
The narrative that the Government has tried to sell, and which has been largely accepted to date, is that the GCSB’s illegal spying on Dotcom was a cock-up. They claimed that Key wasn’t briefed, when he was. The Nats also claimed only a change in immigration law in 2009 protected Dotcom. Now, we know that’s rubbish. Cover-up it is.
Written By: - Date published: 10:19 am, October 4th, 2012 - 23 comments
Call me cynical but I just don’t think it’s credible that it took over two weeks after Key supposedly learned of the GCSB’s involvement in the Dotcom raid before they realised he given a presentation featuring Dotcom by GCSB a month after the raid. They’re amateur, they’re not that amateur. No, I think the ‘presentation on a laptop screen’ is a red herring.
Written By: - Date published: 7:35 am, October 4th, 2012 - 115 comments
Watch this video of John Key being interviewed by the media on January 24th. 1: Key is clearly well-briefed on Dotcom. 2: he knows that Dotcom is a resident, so why didn’t he raise that a month later with GCSB? 3: How did Key know that Dotcom was a resident and GCSB didn’t? 4: Banks has told media he had dined at the mansion with Dotcom – months before denying remembering that meeting.
Written By: - Date published: 1:00 pm, October 3rd, 2012 - 115 comments
What can one say to the latest. No Right Turn says…..
“So, having told everyone that he wasn’t briefed about the Kim Dotcom spying fiasco until September, it now turns out that John Key was told about it back in February. ” … “That whistling noise is the PM’s credibility shrinking even further. His amnesia is just too convenient here to be believed”
Updated: Added links to his next two posts.
Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, October 2nd, 2012 - 71 comments
Last week, Key tried to tell us that the illegal spying on Kim Dotcom – which he, the minister, we’re supposed to believe wasn’t told about for 8 months – was down to one agent’s ‘brain fade’. Uh huh. So, why has he now appointed a senior public servant to review and reform GCSB? You don’t do that when the problem was one person’s human error.
[Update: Lol at Key. Police are launching a high powered inquiry after he said there was no need for one]
Written By: - Date published: 10:12 am, September 30th, 2012 - 87 comments
John Key refuses to accept any responsibility for what his spies get up to. The only point of democratic responsibility for our spies doesn’t monitor them and won’t take the blame for failing to do so. He won’t fire a corrupt, lying minister, either. The rot is spreading to the public service. There has been not one resignation, not a single one, due to the Dotcom debacle.
Written By: - Date published: 9:23 am, September 29th, 2012 - 83 comments
Labour has written to Key calling for a much wider-ranging investigation into the Dotcom spying affair than Neazor’s narrow, tell-us-nothing-we-don’t-already-know report. They would have been better to go straight to the Auditor-General. The Greens have gone for the established illegality and called in the cops on the GCSB – cleverly citing the same offence Key claimed in the teapot tapes.
Written By: - Date published: 8:41 pm, September 27th, 2012 - 87 comments
Our government’s spies are overseen by two people – the Prime Minister and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. The former asked the latter to investigate he found out the GCSB had been illegally spying on two Kiwis. And, guess what, the report blamed underlings. It didn’t even investigate the question of oversight.
Written By: - Date published: 8:52 am, September 27th, 2012 - 138 comments
John Key put on a display of incompetence in the House yesterday over the Dotcom spying affair. He claimed not to know a laundry list of basic facts that, if he didn’t know them before, he bloody well ought to have been briefed on by now. In some instances, his memory failed him over Dotcom. Yet he then showed he could recall exchange rates from 20 years ago. I think he’s lying. The alternative is too scary.
Written By: - Date published: 7:06 am, September 26th, 2012 - 75 comments
Key has said we all have to wait and see what is in the Neazor Report on the GCSB spies’ illegal spying on Kim Dotcom.* He won’t even answer basic questions like: ‘what section of the law did the GCSB breach?’ Funny that Key’s so keen for us to wait to read this report. But will he read it? Or will it be like the Banks Police Report, which he won’t read? And when will anyone get to read Banks’ statement?
Written By: - Date published: 1:50 pm, September 25th, 2012 - 51 comments
Key has failed to uphold high ethical standards for himself, his Ministers, or his government. The GCSB illegal spying fiasco is just the latest example.
Written By: - Date published: 11:40 am, September 25th, 2012 - 19 comments
A couple of days before it was surely all going to come out – very messily and very publicly – in the Dotcom court case, Key has revealed that his spies illegally spied on Kim Dotcom. But, beyond that, Key won’t tell us anything apart from that he signed no warrant for spying on Dotcom (such a warrant would have been illegal anyway). Key has chosen not to find out more so that he wouldn’t have to answer questions.
Written By: - Date published: 11:31 pm, September 24th, 2012 - 134 comments
So Key knew about the GCSB’s ‘unlawful’ actions for a week before he bothered to tell us. He happened to know that this Monday state owned companies would be announcing they were causing the loss of 500-600 jobs. Only one story would get its full due of airtime.
Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, September 20th, 2012 - 52 comments
I think that Kim Dotcom is actually a very savy operator. Turning up to Parliament on the second day of questions (not today, when Key won’t be in the House) was inspired. It ensured another day of coverage. Then, his words: “I think the Prime Minister has had to make a choice, am I going to uphold high ethical standards or do I want to remain in power?”
Written By: - Date published: 10:41 am, August 19th, 2012 - 183 comments
Ecuador is giving us lessons in sovereign independence.
Written By: - Date published: 7:52 am, May 16th, 2012 - 102 comments
John Key might be regretting his moan about the media yesterday. His reward has been to be shown to be lying in the banks.com affair. Key has previously claimed he first heard of Dotcom the day before he was arrested. A new email, however, shows Dotcom’s staff met with Key personally months earlier over his attempt to purchase the Crisco mansion.
Written By: - Date published: 9:09 am, May 7th, 2012 - 48 comments
Amnesia is a song about the John Banks donation saga in New Zealand – from “MrKimDotcom” on YouTube. Help it go viral…
Written By: - Date published: 6:53 am, May 1st, 2012 - 139 comments
John Key has refused to sack John Banks saying “The test is, did he breach the law or not? If he hasn’t, then he’s not guilty”. That has never been the standard ministers are held to. Ministers are required to uphold “the highest ethical standards“. It looks like Banks traded an ‘anonymous’ donation from Kim Dotcom for his political influence. Is that Key’s idea of the “highest ethical standards”?
Written By: - Date published: 11:40 am, April 28th, 2012 - 208 comments
It’s been revealed that Banks took fifty thousand dollars for his campaign from Kim Dotcom. Given the subsequent furore around Dotcom, the would be slightly embarrassing in its own right but it’s been considerably exacerbated by the fact it came in two separate payments – as requested by Banks so he could keep the donation anonymous.
Written By: - Date published: 1:51 pm, February 9th, 2012 - 82 comments
There’s a few interesting threads to the Kim Dotcom saga. Should merely providing a tool that can be used for piracy be a crime? Did the alleged offences justify a 70-strong armed police raid or was this more heavy-handed showing off by the cops? And, if Dotcom really is such a bad guy, why did National let him come to live in New Zealand in the first place?
Written By: - Date published: 11:31 am, January 24th, 2012 - 39 comments
There are a couple of nice pieces in the Herald today on upstanding ACT MP John Banks – on his advising arrested Kim Dotcom on residency and the Overseas Investment Commission, and on his “National” billboards…
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