[pima.nius] Re: Fakalofa lahi atu

. . .

 

onya peni,

 

your personal references are more oblique, if consistently inaccurate, but we are, thank you, getting back a little closer to issues and facts.

 

For the record: I dropped out of high school in 1981, and have no history of tertiary achievement. I was raised on the island of Rarotonga since I was 12, and spent the vast bulk of my career on simple, island issues, like offshore banking, environmental degradation, human rights issues and corruption.

 

As well as being inaccurate, your reversal of my earlier comment about university trained minds assumed I'm that brainy. I'm not. But I've had a quarter century of luxuriating in  bullshit spun by masters of the trade, and that experience allows me to see you have successfully reduced a vastly complex story to a yes-she-did, no-she-didn't argument.

 

Is that all you fullus got?

 

Okay, how about this, then? Why did the Commissioner of Police refuse to respond to One News questions about drugs and guns in Samoa? Or this: why did the cabinet block a full  investigation into allegations of gun smuggling by the Commissioner of Police? Why were media blocked from reporting the court inquiry? Why did a daily newspaper boycott the inquiry rather than extract the information for their own records and, possibly, publish in more media friendly jurisdictions?

 

Mere details. How are journalists supposed to get "the facts" when the REAL problem is a government that actively suppresses the facts?

 

A consistent theme throughout has been that the reporter should have gone to the PM for comment. Why? This is not a political matter, it's a crime matter, and the man at the centre of the web is being protected by his cronies in cabiet. At least that's how it looks, unless you've got a weblink that gives us another perspective, Peni.

 

As for your little mumble about looking in the backyard, Peni, define "backyard." Does that include island journalists who have written more island stories than you've had hot umu? Or are island journalists banned from entering the mainstream media and presenting a Pacific perspective to regional issues? In fact, before this reporter, when can you remember Pacific perspectives and issues getting any coverage at all, outside of cyclones and Fiji coups - oops used the F word.

 

Instead of whining and moaning about a promo, for goodness sake, Peni stop playing the innocent native and man up to our shared histories, written in blood, through two world wars, and, yes, New Zealand slaughter of innocents, for which Helen Clark made formal apology, something you might know as ifoga. If that's not enough, take pride in a culture that begins in Savaii, wends its way through Havaii, Hawaii, Hawaiki and Avaiki. Is that "backyard" enough for you?

 

Or would you prefer to remain a colonised mind and believe that there are no links between us in Polynesia, that we are not neighbours, and that we are not our brothers' keeper? You can have it either way, but you can't have both.

 

emanticipate yourself from mental slavery,

 

jas

. . .

2009/5/30 Peni <peniamina89@gmail.com>

Your "University trained mind" may be too sophisticate for this simple
islander. But with all your training should they have taught you to
base allegations on fact. As in the item, you state this thing, "fast
becoming a conduit" but like in the item you don't back it up with any
numbers or even instances where this has been discovered to be the
case.
People have guns in Samoa to shoot cows and pigs and wild dogs (I saw
this written somewhere else). But there are hardly any murders or
instances when guns get used besides killing animals. The situation in
New Zealand is much much worse and like they say, sort out the
backyard before you go to someone elses. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
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