No doubt you would have heard of the furore over Mike Smith posting up the chainsaw he used to attack the One Tree Hill Tree with, on behalf of the owner. Bomber has a good rant over at Tumeke about the racist hypocrisy of Trade Me as a background.
So Trade Me have pulled the item after conducting a poll on their website to see if it was offensive enough. So even though there was absolutely nothing criminal about the sale, the profits weren’t going to the person who committed the crime which gave the chainsaw its notoriety and there is precedent for Trade Me allowing auctions of a similar political nature, they canned this one.
They claimed that since the community was divided they would put it to a poll. But of course given the racist furor that was drummed up on talk back and opinion pages by this stage of course the vote was going to go the way it did.
Although go to their website to see how the discussion happened and the best you’ll find is this:
i see the thread about the chainsaw has
misteriously vanished …seems to be a bit of that lattley
I recommend that anyone else who finds this whole saga rather sickening do what one Indymedia kid did and send Trade Me the following letter:
Kia ora,
I am unimpressed with the apparent hypocrisy of trademe, withdrawing the auction of the One Tree Hill chainsaw, but allowing the auction of Ross Muerant’s “Minto Bar”, which was used violently against people. I no longer wish to use your service.
Could you please explain how I can close me trademe account and have my unused ‘traders dollars’ returned to me?
I hope they put it on ebay.
While still playing around with 
