Death by Fire, the untold story

This is election day Saturday the 23rd of September so I can't blog about political matters as such, so I won't.

But I can publish a piece from a guest blogger Karl Pearce. What he says is important in a humanistic and social sense. You may have read about the event or watched it on TV. Public servants are meant to be just that, servants, but are they?

This is a sobering story most suitable for an election day read, because it tells it as it is, no PR bull shit, no excuse and backside covering up. Just a sad but all too frequent story that normally goes under the radar. Here is Karl's blog.


Kia Ora Peter, I hope you are well.

A guest piece for your blog Pete.

nga mihi,

Karl Pearce.

"When I found out what happened to him I wanted to tell his story. Not only because I had met him just the day before. Not only because of the shocking nature of his death, But because we wondered what drove him to such a lengths to set oneself alight on parliament grounds in protest and pure frustration. And that his story is the story of so many others in a broken Family Court System.

Sid, the man who would set himself alight on Parliament front lawns. His Story.

I had been filming at a Anti-Meth rally on Parliament Grounds on Wednesday when I saw this man with a placard standing outside High Court on Molesworth Street. I thought I would go over and see what it was about. The sign he was holding is the first one in the series of photos. I asked him what his sign was about? He told me his story, how he was separated from his wife and teen children, and was going through family court. How he felt frustrated at the system and didn’t feel listened to. He had been lone protesting for several days before I met him and he felt this was the only way he could get heard. I asked to take a photo of him with his sign. He then wanted me to take photos of him with other signs which I did. I shook his hand and told him I wished him the best of luck with his family, then I carried on, to be honest I wondered how I would use those photos.

When I saw the news of the man who set fire to himself, and I saw the sign he had, looking the same, I was surprised and shocked and knew it was the man I met the day before. 

I posted the pictures I had taken of the man on my Facebook Page asking If anyone knows him or of him can you please help us to tell his story, and got a massive response as his story resonated among many dealing with loss and family court. There is alot of anger and hurt out there. Several people private messaged me as they only found out where he had gone and what happened after the pictures posted on Facebook, they wanted his story told. 

One person who knew of him said, "he was a lovely guy who had his own workshop on Sunset Rd, Rotorua. He packed up his workshop and closed his accounts just over a week ago and wouldn't tell anyone where he was going"
Another who saw him often said, "I never saw him as a man who would ever be pushed so far to reach breaking point, he was not one to be pushed around he fought for what he believed in and its heart breaking to know he died the way he did because that is the only way he thought people would listen."

He is Czech-born mechanic Zdenek (Sid) Hanzlik, confirmed by both ladies who knew him and privately contacted me. He owned F.H. Autoservice Ltd, Sunset Rd, Rotorua which he closed up a little over a week ago and set his affairs and accounts in order. In 2009, His Japanese wife and their two children moved to Japan and left him to sell the business and join them later. Things didn’t go to plan and years later he was in a custody battle over access with his now teenage children, most recently having a S133 report done on him by CYFS, these reports are notorious for its drawn out process.

He was lonely, frustrated at the Family Court System and didn’t feel listened to. Lets not make this about a mum or a dad story, but focus instead on levels accountability, how heresy in family court is an acceptable bar for evidence. You certainly wouldn’t expect it in criminal court. There is a mental health aspect to this story and people will question his stability, and understandably so. By all accounts Sid was a sane, if not stoic individual who deeply suffered loss of contact with his children in a system that would make anybody go mad, and does. When you take away everything from a person they will do one of two things, Kill others or Kill Themselves.

Sid emigrated to Britain in 1987, was a qualified marine engineer and mechanic, and gained New Zealand residency in 1991. He bought the garage in 2000, after having worked there briefly in 1992. He wasnt very well known, but those who did know him respected him and today are in shock. 

The person who sent me this link said that, "This was Sid to a T".
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3301807/The-car-the-garage-and-the-25-900-repair-bill 

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/97119812/Man-who-died-after-setting-himself-alight-had-been-protesting-Family-Court-issues?cid=edm:stuff:dailyheadlines&bid=358370064 

Guest Blog: The US a failing empire

Peter Grove guest blog

I have recently been thinking about the past few years of what has been befalling Stateside.

Go back to Katrina and the devastation of New Orleans. Fast forward to present day with Harvey, Irma and Jose.

Then look a little further in the past to the ascendance of the lunatic Trump. Go back further to the days of Iraq.

Both for the George Bush war and the earlier episode in Iraq lead by his father. If you recall in that war the yanks bulldozed sand into trenches where Iraqui defenders were sheltering, killing hundreds, merely trying to defend their country. 

 

Then fast forward to the resistance of Fallujah which was virtually razed by the military for its resistance to takeover.These are but a few of the examples of American intransigence and overwhelming exercise of military power. Then think about 9/11 and the fuss that erupted then, from the mere suspicion it was a group of middle eastern dissidents that orchestrated the twin towers episode. Everyone has been lead to believe that was the actual scenario. Never mind the strange outcome of the event. The destruction of the twin towers and the adjoining building that appeared to fall down of its own accord, with the hallmark appearance of it being a controlled demolition, as were the twin towers. The subsequent enquiry which, ever you look at it, gave all the appearance of a carefully orchestrated white wash. 

 

The anguish of the Yanks over that episode is still fresh in many peoples’ minds. Think back to that day and rack your mind to see just how much worse it was, in the American mind, than the unending death and destruction being dished out almost daily on other countries of the world on the false supposition that in some way they orchestrated 9/11 on their own. Take all of those events, put them all together, and wonder about them being in the form of Divine Retribution for the evil the yanks have visited around the world,in the period under consideration. 

 

Bear in mind the biblical admonition, as ye sow so shall ye reap, and the thought of Divine Retribution, appears to be more and more feasible. Have a think about the American Banking system’s lurch into derivatives and the oncoming world-wide financial crash looking more and more imminent day by day.We have already had a foretaste of it in the financial crash of 2008.  

 

Hit and Miss, the Hager book portrays how our military, was lead astray by American intervention that ended in what should have been more or less a normal patrol which ended so disastrously, and in which, 26 civilians, men women and children were killed by snipers firing from helicopters in the dead of night at the behest of our own SAS, on the authority of our very own dearly beloved, Sir Don Key Kreyp. Since when did he assume the role of a supreme military commander? It was very plain reading the book the raid was purely in retribution for the death of one of our soldiers some months prior. The subsequent denials by our own military indicate the event was something contrary to the normal rules of warfare as well as those of the Geneva Convention.

 

These are but a few of the horrendous episodes that can be laid fairly at the doorstep of the Yanks, with their overwhelming, Might is Right philosophy.

My opinion is that the sooner the evil empire comes crashing back down to earth and reverts to its former largely insignificant role in world affairs The better it is going to be for each and every country on earth.

 

There are too many unexplained episodes in recent American history, to suspect otherwise, from the whitewash of the Kennedy Assassination, to the same, surrounding 9/11. where tons of steel RSJ used in the construction of the towers were stacked neatly on site only to be shipped to India as scrap with none of the microscopic investigations the Yanks are famous for, having taken place. 

 

It was almost a case of the less said the better! The problem seems to be that for so long the Yanks have wallowed in their fantasy world of Hollywood they have completely lost all touch with reality. 

Reference:

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/41885-is-the-us-empire-s-reign-nearing-an-end

 

 

Military a changing role.

I have often tried to justify my time in the NZ Defence Forces. At the time of enlisting in 1959 I was a nineteen-year-old who joined to become independent while seeking adventure and excitement.

The army was for me at that time a peace keeping force playing its role in creating a climate of peace rather than war as such.

I had planned, if you could call it that, to serve a five year term, but in the end I did twenty years. I started at the bottom [Private] and progressed through the ranks, I retired as a WO 1 and was later commissioned and served with the Wellington West Coast Taranaki Regt.

During my RF service I served with the NZ Regiment in Malaysia based in Teradak.

While on operations I never once felt that I was asked or did go outside of the then operating procedures. Never did I feel that my commanding officers, at whatever level, needed to lie publicly or privately about our behaviour.

Yet it was with great regret that I read NRT blog.

  

Blogger No Right Turn published this blog on Wednesday, September 06, 2017 and I reprint in full here:

‘NZDF lied to us’

Stuff has a follow-up piece from The Valley, exposing the NZDF PR machine in action. Back in 2013, when they released the findings of their inquiry into the Battle of Baghak, they also released a video of NZ soldiers in the field. They said this was to show the public what the battle was like, and to show how NZDF troops acted calmly and professionally under fire. Except that was a lie: the sound was edited. While supposedly to remove swearing, that editing completely changed the impression of what was going on:

The manipulation of the video is far more than just the removal of swearing.

Whole chunks of dialogue taken out are conversations which indicate the level of confusion at the battle site. And of the deleted parts, most of it has no swearing at all.

But actually, it's worse than that. Removing other (non-swearing) parts of the audio disguised the extent to which soldiers were confused and did not know who was where. (It's also worth noting The Valley revealed radio communications were not working properly that day).
This was a major issue during the battle, and its censoring gives, at the very least, a disingenuous picture of how things played out.

There's a name for this: propaganda. And NZDF tried to do it to us, using our money. And that's simply not acceptable in a democracy. NZDF's refusal to admit this was wrong shows how badly they need to be cleaned out, their anti-democratic commanders sacked and replaced with officers who know who they serve: the people of New Zealand. [NRT Blog ends]

Once NZ moved down the American pathway into war, our whole military ethics changed and I saw that change come about. It ate its way into our standards and our goals. We become nothing more than a unit of the American Military Forces. Malaysia and Borneo were the last events where our forces were free [in part] of American contamination.

Vietnam was the stepping stone into the true era of fighting other people’s wars and we have gone downhill ever since.

Korea a supposed United Nations action was in reality a US war where other nations were sucked in. All the other nations that took part, including the UN consider the Korean War to be over but the Americans don’t. We’ve only got to watch the behaviour of the present US President Donald Trump to see what madness still exists deeply embedded in his nation.

Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel are all clear examples of American contamination and failure. It would seem that the US has no desire to see wars end, because their economic welfare depends on continuing wars.

The contradictions are clear, North Korea builds an atom bomb and they are evil terrorists, the US and Israel builds the bomb and they are heroic protectors of world peace. Our Government past and present have brought into this stupidity.

To get this false message across the US uses huge amounts of state controlled    ‘propaganda’ and today here in NZ our military forces march to that tune, our Officers and other ranks have all come under the influence of the US military dogma and have therefor lost there once independence in regard to military operational practice.

The kind of honesty expressed in the NRT blog needs to be supported by each of us individually and collectively.