On The Attempted Distraction Of George Floyd's Autopsy Toxicology Results

Saw some people posting about the (family) autopsy toxicology results for George Floyd. Specifically, 11ng/ml fentanyl, 5.6 ng/ml norfentanyl, 0.65 ng/ml 4-ANPP, and 19 ng/ml methamphetamine.

It's easy to take a look at those, and just make an auto-leap; in fact, a series of auto-leaps. Either to the obvious "so that's what killed him", if you're looking for an alternate causation that's not knee-on-neck prime; or, more insidiously, "no great loss, then", if you're suddenly less bothered a man's dead because that's what the tox-screen says was in him.

Except here's the thing. Those numbers are just that. Numbers. There's no context to them - and no real way of checking, in the absence of better data, what they actually tell us or hide from sight.

They don't necessarily support the conclusions some people are quite keen to jump to. And the fact that people citing them aren't taking a bit more of a critical look before speaking, is concerning.

For a start - unless I'm mistaken, levomethamphetamine containing decongestants are still over-the-counter available in the U.S.

If he was suffering from Covid-19, it's not unreasonable to presume he might have made use of just such a medication.

Even though it's the other isomer from dextroamphetamine, it'll still show up as meth in a lot of tox-screens.

Funnily enough, a few years back, an actress called Brittany Murphy had something like this happen. Died of pneumonia, and initially due to tox-screen results, it was also chalked up to polydrug intoxication .. with the usual "actress ODs" type inferences. Except that wasn't really what happened - everything that turned up in the tox-screen was legally there, including the (levo)methamphetamine. She'd had an illness, taken something over-the-counter for it [in addition, to be sure, to several other medications for other conditions she was also suffering from at the time] ... and yet if you just looked for the presence of methamphetamine in her system without understanding why it was there, you'd come away with the conclusion that she was a recreational practitioner of the glassware barbeque.

Back to George Floyd.

The level of meth stated to have been found in his blood - 19 nanograms per millilitre - is pretty low. However, in the absence of more and better data, we can't really determine much more about this, in terms of why it might have been in his system, whether it's a false positive, or simply an over-the-counter decongestant doing what it was supposed to do.

Although what I will say is that the lack of amphetamine (as opposed to methamphetamine) detected in his bloodstream, would support either a very low recent dose, or a somewhat larger dose some time ago (like, days); either because there's been insufficient time for the meth to metabolize to amphetamine in the former possibility, or because enough time has passed that the meth metabolized to amphetamine has been eliminated from his system to a point below a detectable level leaving only residual meth.

As applies the fentanyl ... there are further potential complications.

There are several legitimate psychiatric medications that can cause false-positives in tox-screens for fentanyl; although given the presence of norfentanyl and 4-ANPP, that's perhaps less likely (but still not impossible).

Assuming that it's not a false-positive, 11 nanograms fentanyl per millilitre of blood would be notably at the higher end of the therapeutic use spectrum (although significantly within the range wherein if it were to come up at an autopsy it would ordinarily be held to be 'incidental' to cause of death).

However, this is considerably complicated by a number of factors - including the way in which fentanyl (particularly if patch administered) stored in fat, muscle, skin etc. can start to leach into the bloodstream as tissue breaks down post-mortem. Which effectively means there's no definitive way to tell post-mortem how much fentanyl was actually in the deceased's bloodstream pre-mortem.

What's peculiar is the relatively low presence of norfentanyl. Now, the reason I mention this ... is because the vast majority of fentanyl in somebody's system is reasonably quickly metabolized to norfentanyl - so unless it had been significantly recently administered, you shouldn't be expecting to see, post-use about half the level of norfentanyl in somebody's system that there is fentanyl.

All up, it's a finding that probably doesn't indicate what either 'side' were hoping for; but which again - is too ambiguous in multiple senses to be heavily read into.

Now it should also be noted that there are some further issues with the precise reliability for quick-return post-mortem drug-screening. So if I was actually particularly interested in the contents of George Floyd's blood-stream, I'd be awaiting a more full and comprehensive workup using better assessment techniques.

But frankly, I'm not that bothered about it - because I think that regardless of whether or not there's a literally microscopic residue of an illicit drug in the man's system ... that wasn't the but-for causation for the death.

But-for a pretty bizarre extended knee-on-neck there wouldn't even have been a post-mortem tox-screen for us to pour over through the press.

And frankly (further), it feels kinda ghoulish for that to happen in the first place - the contents of a man's blood as a substitute for the man's being .. being sifted through by people looking to turn a sample-slide into a two-dimensional cut-out for an agenda.

There isn't much dignity to be had in dying, face into the pavement, on camera (although it can perhaps be argued that thousands chanting your name turning you into a symbol ... may or may not possess a dignitas all its own); and having total strangers on the internet idly prognosticate as to whether you might have been on several kinds of psych meds, or run through a half a dozen other potential explanations for your blood-stream contents (up to and including the dreaded and dehumanizing label of "addict") .. feels like a set of degradations further.

I wouldn't be indulging in it, except for the fact that - as I say - I've already seen a number of people do so, and far less critically (or, if you prefer, far less 'charitably' to other potential narratives, other potential explanations than the 'easy' and convenient one for some).

There may be (partial) answers to the underpinnings of George Floyd's death to be found in this autopsy report. Of course there are. It would be difficult to deny that possessing an already-impaired cardiovascular system ... would hardly improve one's odds of coming away unscathed from spending eight minutes plus with your neck weighed down under a full-grown man's knee.

But that's just precisely the point. Now that another autopsy's out, people looking to distract from that curious knee which now protrudes through our current affairs and future history books - people are going to latch on to various 'displacement narratives' which can be even semi-feasibly extrapolated out therefrom.

Because, I suppose, the idea is it's easier to feel less compassion for somebody who theoretically 'brought it upon themselves'. Except not by, say, having a high-fat diet like many Americans. There's still too much for much of the audience to empathize with there.

Instead, it's back to the 1980s by fitting the victim into a pre-designed bete-noir role in the story of the "man on drugs". Something that would have been (and was) said regardless of whether there was any proof of anything in his system to begin with.

Perhaps I'm a soft touch - but I still don't think anything contained in that autopsy report means that he should have died like that.

Against The Great Kiwi Firewall - Why I'm Concerned About Internal Affairs Proposal To Filter "Objectionable" Internet

A few days ago, Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin introduced a Bill into Parliament that would give our Government the power to block off portions of the internet. The official reasoning is to make it harder for Kiwis to come into contact with - or, for that matter, to share - "objectionable content" like the Christchurch Mosque massacre videos.

And while I absolutely do not have a problem with that stated object ... I'm a little concerned about the mechanism being used to go about it. Particularly the lack of independent oversight.

Why? Well, let me tell you two (brief) stories. For you see, I've been down this road before ...

A little under two years ago, I wrote an article. It was on India's geopolitical position/predicament in relation to Iran, Russia, and the United States. I thought it was pretty good, so I sent the link to a friend who was travelling abroad in the United Kingdom.

He couldn't read it. Why? Because in the UK, they have a porn-filter. And when he attempted to access my work ... he got a message saying it'd been blocked by order of Her Majesty's Government etcetera etcetera.

Now, it is well-known that I have a strong love for India ... but I don't think it's in quite the way that would usually trigger a porn-filter.

Rather, what the trouble was, appeared to be a combination of what I'd written, and the site that it appeared upon. Which is a fine international media outlet, but due to its critical stances on a fair swathe of American & NATO policy while occasionally saying not-unkind things about Bernie Sanders ... would probably be accused of attempting to hack US democracy for Putin or something. You get the idea.

So, to back the proverbial truck up - we had inadvertently stumbled across a situation wherein a pornography filter put in place to protect ordinary Britons from deplorable, objectionable content - had evidently 'decided' that journalism from a set of perspectives the Government of the day didn't like ... was deplorable, objectionable content - that you shouldn't be allowed to read in Britain.

Gosh, almost sounds like a compliment when you put it that way, doesn't it. Recalls the ancient journalistic maxim that “Whatever a patron desires to get published is advertising; whatever he wants to keep out of the paper is news.”

Except this is dangerous. Either because some computer algorithm somewhere has the power to autonomously decide to blot a news site from the UK's internet ... or because somebody deliberately told said algorithm to do so, because they weren't keen for people in the UK to come into contact with our views and perspective.

I'm almost not sure which is worse. That a computer program is this breathtakingly bad at deciding what objectionable pornography is that it blocks a news site (in which case, what does it say about the sort of people who chose blithely to trust in such a mechanism); or that somebody might have gone out of their way to censor media by having it declared (illegal) pornography.

Now I mention this, because Internal Affairs Minister Martin is on-record as being quite keen on the UK's model of porn-prevention. Which, as we can see, is also a pretty handy tool for a Government to prevent access to rather more than just porn - and nobody notices.

Martin has been pushing this "particular drive of [hers]" for some years now; and while on paper there is a theoretical distinction between the regulation of internet pornography, and the blockading of other "harmful and illegal content" - in practice, the mechanisms, as well as the motivation are functionally much the same thing. And, as we have just demonstrated via reference to my article on India's geopolitical predicament - this overlap is vulnerable to all sorts of pernicious (mis)use. Indeed, some might suggest that such a potentiality is less a 'bug' than it is a 'feature'.

Who can say. In the absence of serious oversight (which this Bill currently lacks), it's open to both interpretation - and to abuse.

And those are far from the only reasons I feel a bit concerned about where we're going with this legislative proposal.

A few years ago now, I penned a perhaps somewhat controversial article. About New Zealand politics this time, it attempted to chart the course of an MP's career. That MP was current Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin. One of the more curious outcomes of this, was Martin alleging that I was in breach of the Harmful Digital Communications Act for what I had written. And I say 'curious' for two reasons.

First, because I didn't think that articles critical of political figures were what the Act was supposed to cover (although at the time, Martin was quite definite that it was her experience working on the drafting of the Act that afforded her the insight to assert otherwise) - not least because, unlike with defamation, under the HDCA "Truth" is not actually a defence.

And second, because I really wasn't expecting ACT's David Seymour to leap to my defence. Even if he phrased it as "sticking up for people you wouldn’t really want to have over for dinner."

I've always had some time for David Seymour after that. Because as it turned out, sometimes a principled libertarian really is a useful sort to have around and actively engaged in our nation's politics. A sentence the younger, and decidedly more black-and-white [in multiple shades of the term] Curwen Ares Rolinson would no doubt have been aghast at typing.

Now, I'm not bringing all that up for the purposes of point-scoring or seeking to re-open an old feud. The past is the past. Yet it can provide a usefully instructive guide to the future. To her credit, Martin did not go through with laying an HCDA complaint against me (although she obliquely and unfavourably compared me to Cameron Slater, so you win some - you lose some).

But other MPs may not necessarily have shown as much restraint. It does not take too much of a political memory to recall various instances demonstrating that this isn't an entirely hypothetical situation. At several points, the previous National-led Government subjected journalists, and a certain errant TV cameraman, to various forms of legal pressure in pretty direct response to exposes inconvenient for them.

That, I feel, is a pretty interesting test for prospective legislation, as it happens - would we be comfortable with it in place if National were to be the one using it?

And, given it was only a few months ago that the then-Leader of the National Party was surreptitiously meeting with the head of China's secret police ... some might suggest that when it comes to this kind of legislation - the National Party may be a bit too comfortable with its prospect, already.

Nobody should be looking to build a Great Fire Wall of Aotearoa to replicate in miniature the Chinese one.

And, to be fair and sure - I'm not sure that this is what Minister Martin thinks she's doing, either. I would certainly hope not.

But, as the example of my work being rendered inaccessible in the UK for allegedly running afoul (somehow) of their pornography-filter shows ... it doesn't necessarily matter what the politician enacting a law actually means nor intends for it to cover. Whether intentionally (by somebody) or inadvertently, these things grow. And they don't always grow particularly rationally, either.

Best to be very sure that this is both the path, trajectory, and mechanism we want to go down before we start upon that road.

Because the risks inherent in doing this badly - are quite some "objectionable" content and conduct, indeed.

Is Matthew Hooton's Pro-PRC Positioning Rubbing Off On Muller?

So here's a curious thing. A few days ago, Matthew Hooton wrote what can only be described as an obsequiously pro-PRC column for the Herald [this was the 'Chinese Taipei' one comparing Taiwanese independence to the Chatham Islands attempting to secede from New Zealand and proclaiming itself the real government of the entire country].

Now, just prior  to Todd Muller's victory over Simon Bridges, Hooton put out a piece which appeared *Suspiciously* similar to Muller's remarks in his first speech as National's new Leader.

As it turned out, this was no accident, nor plagiarism - but rather a case of shared authorship. Hooton had been Muller's sotto-voce comms guy for much of his Leadership campaign. Not that I seem to recall this being openly disclosed by Hooton before he started going in to bat for Muller and/or against Bridges, but not my point. Which is, instead, to note that Hooton has a reasonable degree of influence over what the new National Party leader says in public.

Which may, perhaps, explain why Todd Muller started loudly pushing for New Zealand to re-open the border with the People's Republic of China, "concurrently" with our working to re-open the border with our closest neighbour, trading partner, and traditional ally of Australia.

Personally, if we were going to be doing this with anyone else other than Australia, I would have thought that it made more sense to be looking at resuming relatively normal-ish interactions with countries that've actually demonstrably got the virus completely under control ... like Taiwan ... but for obvious reasons, I doubt that Hooton would be keen upon pushing for that.

Anyway, to sum up - we can reasonably infer from Hooton's column that he's pretty pro-PRC. And seems to think that openly standing up for New Zealand's interests when the PRC pushes us to, say, *not* have a lockdown etc. ... is negative conduct to be castigated and eschewed.

He's got a point that there's a potential economic cost associated with such actions, and that Winston's exchanges with the Chinese Embassy here are, as I put it at the time, a case of playing bull-rush in a China-shop. [Which I don't necessarily disagree with doing either, but that is another story for another time]

But going out of his way to insistently denigrate Taiwan as "Chinese Taipei" and roll the PRC's preferred line upon that and other subjects - is going rather further than sensible, pragmatic 'realpolitik' considerations. It's repeating outright propaganda, to the interest of a state other than this one.

And then a few days later, Hooton's highest-profile local client, the new leader of the National Party, starts pushing a similar line around re-engaging with China by opening the border etc. as a top priority. [And certainly, this would help restore the situation the Chinese embassy was pushing for at the start of the crisis - wherein they vocally opposed our closing of the border to the PRC and other countries in the first place]

We have known for some time now that the PRC has made a considered and cogent effort to get its point of view into our politics, courtesy of Prof Brady's "Magic Weapons" paper and other such occurrences.

In light of this, I think it is a legitimate question to ask what degree of influence Hooton and his associates had over Muller's remarks and subsequent (geo)political positioning over the weekend.

On Matthew Hooton Against Winston Against China

There was something odd about Matthew Hooton's NZ Herald piece this morning castigating Winston for his remarks about the People's Republic of China. Namely, in a piece that was significantly about NZ's stance on Taiwan rejoining the WHO ... he did not use "Taiwan" once. Instead, it was "Chinese Taipei" all the way through - and in a manner that seemed almost calculated to emphasize that name. Which is, if you were unaware, the PRC's preferred way of talking about its "renegade province" on the international stage.

The only time Hooton came anywhere near saying "Taiwan", was when he was comparing ""Taiwanese Splitters"" [in scare-quotes, presumably because he's quite keen to kow-tow not only to the PRC's preferred proper nouns, but also to try and make out that Taiwan's divergence from the PRC isn't really a real thing, either, whatever the nomenclature under which it occurs] ... to the Chatham Islands pretending to break away from New Zealand in a bid to get the rest of us here in Kiwiland empathizing with Beijing upon the matter.

Now I know Hooton's no fan of Jacinda Ardern, but I somewhat suspect that obliquely insinuating she's Chairman Mao circa the late 1940s, is more than a few Bridges too far.

There's legitimate space to discuss Winston's remarks pertaining to the PRC recently - that's one of the benefits of a free and democratic society, we can have free and democratic conversations about what our elected representatives come out with upon all of our collective behalves.

And while I do think that Winston is, in effect, coasting towards mixing metaphors by playing bull-rush in a China shop by openly disclosing that the PRC attempted to get us not to enter Lockdown, or asserting that Beijing wouldn't impose significant trade-penalties upon us for supporting the Australian call for independent inquiry into the origins of Covid-19 etc. ...

... that doesn't mean I think he's in the wrong for doing so. He's standing up for New Zealand's interests and independence.

Hooton's perspective, by contrast, appears to be that letting China have its way - and at least as importantly, being seen to do so - is the best way to support New Zealand's interests. I'm not sure if he's to bothered about the "Independence" side of that equation.

Still, look on the bright-side. If Beijing chooses to make good on Hooton's implied threats to stop accepting our exports, etc. ...

... perhaps that means they'll also stop buying up our politicians and newspaper columnists.

On National On Labour On Human Rights In (A) Crisis

So let me get this straight. The National Party is objecting to the Government's recent Public Health Response bill ... because of its deeply held stances around the protection of human rights, opposition to warrantless searches, and scrupulously consistent abject horror at the concept of abrogation (or expedition) of democracy.

I believe the canonical response goes: pull the other one, for it hath bells on.

This is the self-same National Party that semi-regularly treated 'human rights', and the Human Rights Commission as a dirty word during its time in Government - indeed, which has continued to oppose the Human Rights Commission's stance on prisoners voting  from Opposition.

This is the self-same National Party that massively expanded Police and spy agencies' powers to engage in warrantless search and surveillance of ordinary Kiwis ... and, as it happens, sided against the Human Rights Commission AGAIN in the process.

This is the self-same National Party that imposed a SuperCity on Auckland against the will of its people (as in, quite literally erased eight democracies and then some at the stroke of a pen), suspended democracy for almost a decade at Environment Canterbury, and rushed HOW much legislation through under Urgency?

National's own track-record is abundantly clear. They didn't care about human rights, or the views of the Human Rights Commission, or protecting you from warrantless search etc., or upholding your democratic-constitutional system ...

... up until it became politically convenient to. In fact, they STILL don't care about these things. They're just far enough from power - and painfully aware that they're going to be that way for some time yet - that they can semi-safely pretend to be up in arms about these concerns, secure in the knowledge that by the time they're in a position to legislate in these areas again, all of this will be a distant memory.

The National Party was quite prepared to actively support the abrogation of human rights, sidelining of HRC, and the deliberate erosion of democratic systems here ... in an ordinary, peace-time situation. In fact, in what was - by  their own accounting of things - some of the best and most prosperous conditions in recent memory.

Who knows WHAT they'd have felt entirely entitled to hack away at were they in the driving seat right now instead of Labour. Hell, they'd probably be flogging off the other half of half a dozen energy companies in order to try and fund a few billion worth of tax-cuts ... and that'd be before they'd even realized there was a Covid-19 Crisis demanding their attention.

Now, I am not, strictly speaking, a huge fan of Labour ordinarily. And I do think that there is legitimate room for both criticism and conversation around this Bill. As well as, of course, congratulation in no small quantity for how they've handled this present Crisis all up.

But I find it exceedingly difficult to believe that the man who proudly boasts of being a "former Crown Prosecutor" who's presently leading the Opposition ... genuinely has an issue with warrentless searches by Police. It'd be interesting to know if this apparent deeply-seated principled belief meant that he'd ever turned down prosecuting a cannabis charge, for instance, because the warrantless search powers we've already got under various legislation (even prior to the legislation he voted for on this subject) were made use of to make the arrest.

I doubt it. I really do.

There's a lot of misinformation flying around about the Public Health Response bill at the moment.

Surely, the most egregious of it is that National has a leg to stand on.

Not least because that would imply that it hath been surgically removed from Simon's mouth.

On The Curious Un-Death Of Kim Jong Un - Schrodinger's Dictator

So for the past 48 hours, I've witnessed a lot of excited chatter about the alleged incapacitation of Kim Jong Un. First it was because he'd had surgery and was having a tough time of recovery; then it was because he was in a coma; then it was a vegetative state (which some wag imputed to mean he'd just sampled his first vegetable); and then it was a death, with his sister poised to take over and make totalitarian autocracy the equal-opportunity sport it had always longed to be.

Except here's the thing. There's no actual proof that this has occurred.

What there is, are a range of predominantly American news-sites, falling over themselves to report that he's dead, on the strength of what appear to be unconfirmed rumours.

Meanwhile, South Korea - who are both figuratively and literally closer to the situation than just about anyone - have expressed considerable skepticism, and believe everything's basically normal (or, at least, as normal as the DPRK-o-sphere ever really gets).

Now, in fairness, it is possible that Kim Jong Un is dead. It is possible that there's some sort of coup underway and the news he is dead has been put out for some intentionally aimed-for impact. It is possible that Kim Jong Un himself put out the news he is dead, because he saw how much "fun" the whole 'inject disinfectant' thing was, and wants to have a go at "JUST A PRANK, BRO - WORLD LEADER EDITION" himself.

All of these things are possible, although I am not sure how many, if any, are actually likely.
For now, he is Schrodinger's Dictator. The Man In The Box.

And until there is actually some sign one way or 'tuther from the DPRK, it would be entirely premature to actually believe that these "rumours" you're all suddenly placing massive credence in, have a solid ring of truth to them.

[And seriously, looking at the American right-wingers around the place - you people turn on a dime! You go inside 24 hours from claiming the media makes up anything and everything to make a leader you like look bad (potentially by playing unaltered clips of him speaking) ... through to just taking everything that's being said about a leader you don't like (but that your leader kinda likes) at face value because you like how it sounds!]

If one looks into it, it turns out that the DPRK appears to be run by a cabal of necromancers. Because on a reasonably regular basis, we hear a report of this or that general or senior official or music-star that's supposedly been executed in cartoonish supervillain style ways - only to have them turn up alive and well at some function in public view looking surprisingly healthy for a corpse. Particularly one that's supposedly been used as mortar or anti-aircraft gun target practice.

This has taught me to have a reasonable degree of skepticism whenever such claims are made. It doesn't mean that executions, disappearances, or dynastic transfers of power are all an illusion. Only that rumours of some deaths are greatly exaggerated, often by people with an agenda - whether that's to make the DPRK seem more relatably evil as a narrative antagonist, or simply to sell you something, or especially both at once as they both feed of each other. (the shifting stories o some DRPK defectors can also be viewed in this light)

But who cares. Many of you seem to want a "feel good" news story. Because if the death of one is a tragedy and a million a statistic .. the deaths of tens of thousands amidst the present pandemic can apparently be eclipsed by the admittedly rather large figure of one Hermit King in a missile-transporter hearse.

Have a bit of skepticism, and some care - we don't know that Kim is Dead. It's possible that his shade is chilling right now with Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction, instead.

Winston Wronged And HDPA Right - The Unexploded Truth Of The Pension Payment Settling Of Accounts

So earlier this week, two things happened. Winston got his lawsuit result back ... and the National Party started demanding that he pay for it.

Now, in a sense, you could be forgiven (by somebody else) for seeing National's point. The judgement was reasonably clear - the assertion that Paula Bennett and/or Anne Tolley (inter alia) had leaked Winston's pension overpayment details to the media as part of some sort of targeted political hit-job, was unproven. Indeed, would have been very difficult to actually prove in the first place.

So therefore, if Tolley & Bennett were not found guilty - and the taxpayer was footing the bill for the whole fruitless exercise, perhaps some recompense was in order?

Balderdash. There are three salient points to be made here. The first is that the judgement also quite clearly agrees that Winston's privacy was breached, in a highly unusual and improper manner. The only thing it disagrees with is that the culprit could be positively identified.

And that, as it happens, is not necessarily too terrible of a thing. Insofar as, if we cannot actually prove to a reasonable standard that somebody has done it ... then of course the law should not assert that they have.

The second, is that as Winston's privacy was breached in this way, it's good that somebody took both government apparatus and relevant Ministers notionally responsible to task over it. Bennett has a bit of a history of making improper disclosures about Ministry of Social Development payment recipients for political impact - and previously she has managed to get away much more easily than she did this time. Possibly because impoverished mothers dealing with WINZ are less able to afford High Court lawsuits than veteran pensioner politicians armed with the resources of state.

The utilization of taxpayer money in this way, in other words, while it might seem a vainglorious counter-charge in pursuit of political scalps as part of a personal vendetta ... is actually a safeguarding and upholding of our rights as taxpayers to be treated fairly by our state and government. It is, in short, that thing NZ First has so often claimed to be about - "Keeping The Bastards Honest".

But the third point ... is that I am not sure the judgement as it was, really lets National off the hook. At least, not enough for it to be pompously demanding that the victim - and for all his faults, in this he truly was - of malfeasance, pay back the entire sum total of his costs in pursuit of justice.

Now, I am going to astound everybody - not least of which, myself - by stating that Heather du Plessis-Allan got something right. Not recently, but a year ago, but of fresh saliency and relevance in light of this week's judicial findings.

To quote her - "The reason I say that is because in the weeks before the leak, I was told by the Nats that the nats had the information. 

They told me they were considering leaking it. They told me how they would leak it, the process they would follow to cover their tracks. Without going into details, I can tell you that’s exactly how it played out.

So the chances that the Nats leaked it are about 99 per cent."

That's from a piece upon the subject she wrote in late August of last year. A veritable lifetime ago in multiple senses of the term. But nonetheless, an interesting remark in light of what has just occurred.

For while this is not exactly the sort of evidence that one could viably take to court - partially because it is hearsay, and partially because I suspect a journalist's protections of sources would mean that it would be difficult to compel her to unveil more details that might actually lead to surety about the situation ...

... it nevertheless suggests rather strongly that Winston WAS right to point the finger toward National.

And that what has just happened this week, wherein the verdict has come in, and National are demanding that Winston pay up, apologize, and all the rest of it, is a case of a party who were probably actually guilty of wrongdoing having an incredibly lucky escape and then doubling down on their visage of tortured innocence. Certainly, they have had few strong blows against the Government in recent weeks (for entirely understandable reasons - blow-BACK on the other hand, being another matter), so the chance to actually salvage some shrinking vestige of moral high ground must have proven irresistible.

The fact that Tolley and Bennett have escaped direct and official censure for this gambit, should in no way detract from the fact that Winston has been partially vindicated. It should also not distract from the very real possibility that National remains secretly guilty of the offence that has been charged against it.

It is repugnant for it to be found that Winston was, indeed, the victim of such a breach - and then to expect him to have to pay for the proving that he has been wronged against.

It is also most curious that we can have senior figures of our political and journalistic sphere pretty sure that National as a party WAS actively involved in the leaking which ensued, and because we cannot decisively prove WHICH National high-up it came from, this therefore lets the party as a whole and as an entity off the hook.

National can and will spin this as some sort of grandiloquent vindication. It is nothing of the sort.