We own the water

[Rooboy 1]

The fine print : Drinking Water From Air Humidity

ScienceDaily (June 5, 2009) — Not a plant to be seen, the desert ground is too dry. But the air contains water, and research scientists have found a way of obtaining drinking water from air humidity. The system is based completely on renewable energy and is therefore autonomous.

My post on the air referred to a current claim lodged with the Waitangi Tribunal, which makes a claim on the air. The basis being that if you are claiming the land, nothing on the land can survive without the air.

If you "own" the air, you then have control over things such as airwaves, aeroplanes and, as you mention, air humidity.

[Te Toka 2]

My post on the air referred to a current claim lodged with the Waitangi Tribunal, which makes a claim on the air. The basis being that if you are claiming the land, nothing on the land can survive without the air.

If you "own" the air, you then have control over things such as airwaves, aeroplanes and, as you mention, air humidity.

Just giving a different perspective. I have posted WAI 909 on here previously - here is the preamble :

Waitangi Tribunal Claim for the Atmosphere

NOTES:

How important is this claim?

Some basic facts:

Human life may be sustained for weeks without food, days without water, but only a few minutes without air. Land is generally regarded as fundamental to human survival but without the atmosphere it is barren and uninhabitable. The current global concern with atmospheric degradation and climate change further underlines its importance. It is too valuable a resource to be left to Pakeha government to control, exploit or pollute.

The implications of this submission are potentially more important than any other resource claim. Ranging from control and management of air space (including air-water resources) to construction projects at and above ground-sea level, etc. In fact, any activity conducted in the atmosphere above ground-sea level is affected.

Although land provides a platform for human habitation it is clear that most, if not all, human activity takes place in the atmosphere. To understand how vital it is to survival, imagine what life would be like without it. Earth's Moon is a constant daily reminder of that prospect.

The atmosphere is also permeated by various energy fields including the zero-point field. This means that the "sale" of the electro-magnetic spectrum by Pakeha government will need to be revisited at some future date. Maori have greater entitlement to ownership and management of EM and other energy fields in Aotearoa NZ than has been acknowledged so far.

[faye 0]

Those in the queue, will be those that have to pay for the use of it!

If you own the water` can you kindly come and remove it from my acre` so my ponies can come home and graze

[ziggy09 384]

If you own the water` can you kindly come and remove it from my acre` so my ponies can come home and graze

Nice 1 Faye!!!

Was talking about this last night...ownership "flows" into potential liability then??? (flood damage..stock loss...loss of earnings etc etc)

[Opo 182]

https://www.box.com/s/2830e737d48b8d36421b

[globederby 8]

Well, ownership in some degree means responsibility.

I drink 1.5 litres of water a day, so taking the percentages into account I should reasonably be allowed to PISS some of it back into their ears.

Mind you ,thats after I have used up the cartridge in my AK47.

[Opo 182]

Stephen Franks

July 13th, 2012

Regular readers of this blog would not be just waking up to the political and constitutional importance of the Waitangi Tribunal hearings over water ownership. You had a heads-up in February, followed by an insight into what a previous government thought it was doing when it found an expedient solution for a dispute with Maori. The Crown, as the governor and representative of us all ended up in a judicially invented "partnership" with 10% of us, determined on blood descent lines.

Dr Michael Bassett mentions this in today's NBR, for those who can get behind the paywall. Dr Bassett was on the Waitangi Tribunal for 10 years but rarely allowed by it to sit. His attitude to judicial and historical integrity did not serve the political objectives of that body.

Mai Chen has published in the Herald and the DomPost on the water rights claim but no-one has addressed what should be the core issue – is there legal merit in the claim?

For a good start to understanding see Joshua Hitchcock's excellent survey . That is the Iwi Forum or non-NZMC view of this matter.

Mr Hitchcock omits one vital aspect. Tikanga entitlements to customary rights or ‘ownership’, like similar rights under English common law, depended on a continuous practical interest in the subject property, with effective control of at least the exercise of the right claimed. So both the common law and maori custom tested for extended (or unbroken) exercise, control of contiguous land (from which the rights would be exercised) and the ability to exclude others in some respect material to the governance and management of the property.

In other words the common law and maori custom tests were practical. They looked at the things that influence us all into feeling proprietary about resources that are otherwise common or genuinely owned by no-one. When you live next to a park and have started mowing part of it, or looking after things you have planted there, and watering and stopping vandalism, you will feel proprietary. Customary laws commonly respect and uphold those rights acquired over time and lost by disuse.

In Maori custom this was expressed as ‘ahi kaa’ – the right to land depended on keeping one’s fire burning on the land, as the exhibition of both the practical power to do so and the continued interest. In Maori custom ahi kaa was clearly extinguished by conquest. It was also extinguished by almost all other circumstances that resulted in ahi kaa not being exercised. Being tricked out of your entitlement, or having it claimed by others with some colour of right who then excluded you was enough to lose it.

Pakeha law and later the Torrens system gave assurance of permanent title from survey and registration. The British Crown's soveriegnty claimed exclusive right to determine when violence would be used in property disputes, and Article 2 promised that it would be exercised to protect the weak from the strong, including the pakeha who were arriving with possibly endless access to muskets.

The Treaty promised ownership irrespective of the owner’s waxing and waning alliances or family size etc. Article 2 property rights were (and were so described by Maori who bought the Treaty package) a dramatic improvement on custom. Maori valued exactly that change, both in speeches in favour of the Treaty, and by choosing to have their lands surveyed and registered. Among other things the vagueness of customary law was a serious problem in selling to pakeha they wanted to come and live with them, and fraudulent or contested claims were causing whanau and hapu v hapu strife, when they were all trying to recover from the musket war devastation.

So Maori today claiming ownership absurdities like the right to radio waves and language and the much more credible claim for water would run a major risk if they faced a serious analysis of the common law tests for property rights. A genuinely scholarly property rights analysis of both tikanga and the 1840 English common law would show that there are almost no areas where Maori (or anyone else because Article 2 is a promise to all New Zealanders) could own water rights adverse to the Crown. They could not establish continuous exercise of the right kind of power.

Clearly iwi and hapu control has been superseded in all practical respects for decades by the Crown, local authorities and the neighbouring landowners both pakeha and maori, who have used water in their non-blood determined capacities.

So why is this so threatening?

Because as far as I know there is no one putting before the Tribunal an expert view on the underpinning of the common law on customary claims and rights. That was what an NZMC lawyer told me a few weeks ago. They were astonished by the Crown omission to attack the substance.

I knew the Crown would probably pull its punches. I tried to encourage some of those with vital interests in the outcome (like generators) to pay for a world expert to come and give evidence. I’d have liked to help indigenise such evidence. It seems there is too much fear of being seen on the wrong side of fashion in these matters. So they could all be just watching another seabed and foreshore train wreck develop

I think there is a simple explanation if the Crown is still not arguing the substantive current emptiness of customary law. It could be because it would highlight the falsehoods legislated in this government's replacement of Sir Michael Cullen's legally masterful Seabed and Foreshore Act.

A proper defence against baseless customary rights claims would not fit the ridiculous Crown theory that no one owns things like the seabed and foreshore. The Prime Minister's retailing of that nonsense last week would chime with a view that Crown Law has not been allowed a convincing theory of the case, because it would not fit with the 'no ownership' nonsense. .

The Key government sacrificed intellectual integrity to Eddie Durie J's slippery inventions in the report the preceded their replacement of the Seabed and Foreshore Act That was apparently (like the unbelievable decision to support the draft Declaration of Indigenous Rights) in the hope that gratitude or even friendship can be bought from Maori leaders.

Instead it has marked our government as a shill for the mulcting. As I explained also in February this year Maori leaders are shrewder and tougher opportunists than the politicians who think they are their patrons.

http://www.stephenfranks.co.nz/?p=4560

[nicole1 0]

Well, ownership in some degree means responsibility.

I drink 1.5 litres of water a day, so taking the percentages into account I should reasonably be allowed to PISS some of it back into their ears.

Mind you ,thats after I have used up the cartridge in my AK47.

Oh god you're right, soon we'll have to be peeing in cups so they can claim back the water included in that

[Rooboy 1]

Stephen Franks

July 13th, 2012

I knew the Crown would probably pull its punches. I tried to encourage some of those with vital interests in the outcome (like generators) to pay for a world expert to come and give evidence. I’d have liked to help indigenise such evidence. It seems there is too much fear of being seen on the wrong side of fashion in these matters. So they could all be just watching another seabed and foreshore train wreck develop

I think there is a simple explanation if the Crown is still not arguing the substantive current emptiness of customary law. It could be because it would highlight the falsehoods legislated in this government's replacement of Sir Michael Cullen's legally masterful Seabed and Foreshore Act.

A proper defence against baseless customary rights claims would not fit the ridiculous Crown theory that no one owns things like the seabed and foreshore. The Prime Minister's retailing of that nonsense last week would chime with a view that Crown Law has not been allowed a convincing theory of the case, because it would not fit with the 'no ownership' nonsense. .

The Key government sacrificed intellectual integrity to Eddie Durie J's slippery inventions in the report the preceded their replacement of the Seabed and Foreshore Act That was apparently (like the unbelievable decision to support the draft Declaration of Indigenous Rights) in the hope that gratitude or even friendship can be bought from Maori leaders.

http://www.stephenfranks.co.nz/?p=4560

Herein lies the problem. It is not in this Governments and John Key's short term interests to actively oppose Maori claims.

The question is "Are they putting their parties short term interests ahead of the nations long term best interests?"

[Opo 182]

Taniwha proof of Maori water rights

By Claire Trevett

10:35 AM Thursday Jul 19, 2012

The Maori Council has asked the Waitangi Tribunal for a ruling that the relationship of Maori to the water was one of full-blown ownership, saying although Pakeha did not understand the concept of taniwha as guardian spirits of waterways, there was strong evidence of Maori belief that they 'owned' the water.

Maori Council's counsel Felix Geiringer is giving his closing submission today at the Waitangi Tribunal's urgent hearing into a claim to try to halt partial asset sales until Maori rights to water are resolved.

Mr Geiringer said hapu and iwi which spoke at the hearing had clearly shown that the relationship they had with their water in 1840 and since was akin to the modern English concept of ownership.

"Hapu have had in 1840 a relationship for which the closest cultural equivalent within modern English concepts is one of ownership - of full-blown property rights. What I'm going to ask you to find is that one at least it seems highly likely that the same could be said of every hapu and every water resource throughout Aotearoa.''

He said Pakeha scoffed at the concept of taniwha because they did not understand it.

However, the Maori belief that taniwha were the guardians of their waterways giving them exclusive use of that water was evidence that Maori believed they 'owned' the water in modern English terms.

"People say 'in this resource is my taniwha, my guardian spirit. He protects me, he protects my water resource. He's not your taniwha so if you are going to use that resource without my permission, he will do terrible things to you'.

"It's not a joke, it's a very strong indication that hapu was telling the world that this was their water resource and it couldn't be used by anyone else without their permission. That is the very essence of a proprietary relationship.''

Mr Geiringer said ownership of the river bed had already been accepted, and Maori saw waterways as indivisible. Hapu had shown their interests in water were strong.

"It shows a relationship that, were it land, we would not pause for a moment to recognise it as title.''

Mr Geiringer and some of the hapu claimants in the case will deliver their closing submissions today before the Crown delivers its tomorrow.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10820686

[Rooboy 1]

Gee, the old Taniwha card. That's clever. What this bloke says is essentially correct. Iwi did have a taniwha lurking in every river and stream.

However the basic argument remains, where is the line on compensation and ownership to be drawn. Many non Maori feel Maori have already been granted too much. Many Maori feel they have claim to much more and that they will get it.

One thing that can't be denied is that the Maori are very canny wheelers and dealers. Not to be underestimated.

[eljay 1,719]

What a load of crap - is there a Taniwha living in the sewers too?? Plenty of water there!!

[trakdap 390]

Gee, the old Taniwha card. That's clever. What this bloke says is essentially correct. Iwi did have a taniwha lurking in every river and stream.

However the basic argument remains, where is the line on compensation and ownership to be drawn. Many non Maori feel Maori have already been granted too much. Many Maori feel they have claim to much more and that they will get it.

One thing that can't be denied is that the Maori are very canny wheelers and dealers. Not to be underestimated.

As I see it, all the money given will eventually find its way back into the "POOL".

[Blue 1,095]

If you're referring to power generation the bloody water is still there. It's being used to generate power but it goes through the neccessary motions then gets spewed back into the river. The Taniwha probably gets dealt to at the same time so everyone's a winner.What's the problem?

[globederby 8]

The real issue here is not ownership,thats just a backdoor way into getting a slice of the action.

Maori see water being used in many ways without them gaining any benefit from it. They want their slice of the pie,in fact they want a slice of any and all pies.

In fact the word Maori is anathema to my thinking, and I am sure to many others because most if not all modern day Maori have white blood in them.

Funny how colour dictates ones mind set when pursuing perceived entitlements.

No wonder some Maori are embarrased by these shenanigans.

[Opo 182]

TradeMe Poll

Should Maori Tribes be able to claim ownership of water?

As at Thursday 19/7/12 6.56am

2445 votes

Yes 7.9%

No 92.1%

[Blue 1,095]

Couple of days ago on National Radio I heard a female Maori lawyer saying the difference is Maori are making a "claim" - conveniently not mentioning the word 'ownership' - "claim" as interpreted as 'guardianship' wheras the Pakeha are specifically referring to it as "ownership."

Pretty heavy stuff as if it makes any bloody difference anyway.

I wonder how the Maoris in Kaeo will feel in a few months when they get flooded out again.

[DC7 1]

I wonder how the Maoris in Kaeo will feel in a few months when they get flooded out again.

They'd better not aggravate the taniwha, then. That would be what causes floods, wouldn't it? I'm just a dumb Pakeha, I don't understand the concept.

[ziggy09 384]

anathema to my thinking.

You never learnt that one from Coutts St:D

[globederby 8]

You never learnt that one from Coutts St:D

my Polish brother :D

[myk 4]

Back in 1997,prior to floods,maoris were claiming water ownerships.When Waikato river flooded and caused damage to roads an properties,the good old maori didnt any longer accept their ownership of water when asked for compensation by river damage.Who ever called them dumb.

[Opo 182]

According to the NZ Herald, "The Maori Council has asked the Waitangi Tribunal for a ruling that the relationship of Maori to the water was one of full-blown ownership, saying although Pakeha did not understand the concept of taniwha as guardian spirits of waterways, there was strong evidence of Maori belief that they 'owned' the water.

"Maori Council's counsel Felix Geiringer is giving his closing submission today at the Waitangi Tribunal's urgent hearing into a claim to try to halt partial asset sales until Maori rights to water are resolved.

"Mr Geiringer said hapu and iwi which spoke at the hearing had clearly shown that the relationship they had with their water in 1840 and since was akin to the modern English concept of ownership. ...

"He said Pakeha scoffed at the concept of taniwha because they did not understand it.

"However, the Maori belief that taniwha were the guardians of their waterways giving them exclusive use of that water was evidence that Maori believed they 'owned' the water in modern English terms.

"'People say, in this resource is my taniwha, my guardian spirit. He protects me, he protects my water resource. He's not your taniwha so if you are going to use that resource without my permission, he will do terrible things to you.'"

It is eloquently symptomatic of what I have often called "The Age of Crap" that erudite counsel could utter the above words with a straight face. It is equally symptomatic of The Age of Crap that learned eminences could listen to them with a straight face, and will probably uphold them.

Take time to absorb the import of those words: because a bunch of career Mordi, most of them white, have chosen to resurrect an ancient superstition that non-existent ghosts guard the waters, it necessarily follows that the people who believed this owned the waters ... and that their descendants do now! Logical incoherence piled on voodooism.

John Key has anticipated a pro-superstition verdict by reminding the public that Waitangi Tribunal findings are not binding. This will not stop White Career Mordi from continuing to try it on at every turn. They will continue to try to get their way by threats of riots in the streets. They will continue to get their way much of the time, often as a result of Tribunal findings. Martin Luther King's ideal of a colour-blind society where character trumps colour will fade further from our grasp. What John Ansell called "Apartheid Aotearoa" will fully come to pass. A prime casualty of Brown Supremacy will be individual freedom—a concept as alien to tribalism as taniwha is compatible with it.

http://www.solopassion.com/node/9234

[closet 0]

Loch Ness monster is a taniwha..so I do know what they are.

[Opo 182]

Loch Ness monster is a taniwha..so I do know what they are.

Can Nessie pop up all over Scotland or is he/she confined to one lake?

[closet 0]

Can Nessie pop up all over Scotland or is he/she confined to one lake?

course Nessie can, because Nessie is not real like a Taniwha:)