Bye bye Family Party

The Family Party has made a request to be deregistered as a political party, and for its logo to be cancelled. The Party is a spin-off of Destiny Church,( it used to be called the Destiny Party) is headed by Richard Lewis and former United Future MP Paul Adams, and got just 0.33% of the vote at the 2008 election, the same as the Pacific Party, headed by Taito Philip FIeld.

So now, three Christian parties have departed from the political scene - two of their leaders are in prison, and the third is associated with a man who claims he is the physical manifestation of God. Time to deregister the Pacific Party now, perhaps.

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Concept ship animated turntable render by Peter Saga

Based on a design by Lee Crystal... Model by Peter Saga. I've added a little background color:)



Keywords: spaceship model flash animated turntable render modeling by peter saga done in newtek lightwave package based on a design by lee crystal

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The Waihopai Trial

This morning, three men – one of whom is a friend of mine - went on trial in the District Court in Wellington charged with damaging the Waihopai spy base in Blenheim in May 2008. They damaged its operation by deflating one of the mammoth domes, causing $800,000 damage.

The Waihopai spybase is essentially a foreign spybase on New Zealand soil, and submits raw data directly to the US without checks by our government.

Sam Land, Adi Leason and Peter Murnane [profiled here] broke into the spy base using bolt-cutters and used two ten dollar sickles from Bunnings to slice into one of the domes that covered the satellite dishes. The men, from a group called Ploughshares, aimed to draw attention to New Zealand's involvement in the U.S. war in Iraq through the presence of this base. The dome took 15 minutes to deflate, and the men prayed while it was deflating – then were arrested.

About 200 peace activists from New Zealand and Australia (including Cairns activist Bryan Law who has come over to blog the trial) have gathered in Wellington to support the three men. There are events, vigils, demonstrations and concerts on all week including a public meeting on Wednesday night in which Keith Locke will speak. No doubt this song will be sung a few times.

There will be a Ploughshares interview 7:10am on Breakfast tomorrow.[ Update you can watch it here ]. The defendants will open their case tomorrow. One is representing himself.

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