The two faced hag collins just blamed Ardern for parliament sitting yesterday, reckoned its because Ardern didnt use her power to suspend parliament till level 3!!
Careful now, wags. Puckish Rogue gets let out of his cage next month and he'll want revenge on all those that have been sacrilegious to his chosen one.
Anker I agree with you. Collins seemed to display some underlying anger issues this morning. She is becoming disturbingly edgy. Despite the nonsensical, aggressive responses from Collins, Indira Stewart did a great job.
What an hilarious interview on TVNZ Breakfast (sorry don't know how to link) Indira wasn't taking any of Karen Collins's BS and the true angry, self serving and deranged Leader of the National Party came shining through. You just know each time she smiles another woodland animal dies.
Now if only Hedges could extricate himself from the 80's.
Empire is driven by one underlying consideration – the necessity to control sunshine and resources. The US was never short of these things, and it's military projection was much less about the control of territory, but the control of the political agenda during the Cold War. Well that purpose is long over and they never replaced it with anything. An insular and inward looking US public have elected one President after another who promised the least in terms of engagement with the wider world. Biden's precipitate and bungled exit from Afghanistan being merely the most recent nadir in this process.
Hedges article is of course deeply selective in his targets – he omits the immense expansion of trade and human welfare that is also the direct result of this same post-WW2 period US led period of relative security and stability. His inability to tear himself away from gloating over the costs that were paid for this has a direct parallel with those fools who would 'defund the police' because every now and then they shoot someone in egregious circumstances.
Just to be very clear on this – my argument has never been that the US were any good at being 'world policeman', but even their incompetent efforts at the task have on the whole delivered far more benefit than cost. On this basis my next proposition is – if the principle of global security is so beneficial even on such a flawed basis – what would it take to do the job properly?
You know that 'defunding the police' was about removing from them jobs for which they were demonstrably unsuited, eg mental healthcare by firearm, and paying better people to do those things?
Please, don’t accuse another Author and Moderator of this site of being a paid tool of anybody or anything. I’ve handed out long bans for this kind of shit and I don’t make exceptions. It doesn’t make for a strong debating point unless the identity of the commenter is publicallyknown and they are publicallyknown to be on a pay-list and even then it is almost always (!) just taking pot-shots at the person and not addressing the gist of their comment.
While it is possible to ban an author from commenting, it's rare and not over something like this. It also creates problems for them putting up posts and being able to comment on their own posts.
My view is that authors get to say what they like (within reason), but I agree that it would be good if KJT could dial back the ad hom stuff. Probably RL too (haven't been following closely, but there's obvious aggro between the two of them).
It sets a bad example that others who are not Authors are likely to follow, as does happen here and as such, it spoils the vibe and kills constructive debate.
It was a plea and a general warning to all, not a Moderation note. If necessary, we can take this to the back-end, yes? I might just get something off my chest there, anyway.
And very quickly poor communities at the pointy end of this demand to 'defund the police' realised that the very real reduction in security it entailed came at a cost to them.
By all means train and manage the police better to weed out those incapable of doing the job properly. and provide for far better mental health care. But it fairly quickly became obvious these good intentions were being used by radicals as a fig-leaf to dismantle policing altogether.
And while you and I can both imagine an ideal world of perfect people in which security is not required, absent that utopia ordinary people, usually the most vulnerable, are those who depend on the police most of all.
And by extension the same argument applies to nations.
Several unpleasant direct interactions with police in my youth in both NZ and AUS, gave me a very dim view of them to say the least. That doesn't change the fact that society needs and always will need them.
Calls for defunding are 'baby with the bathwater'. Select your police men/women better. Train and support them better. Hell, even pay them better.
IMHO – Defunding arguments are technically similar to those used by the right to justify the offloading of state assets. The argument went that these publicly owned companies were run badly (often true). This morphed into public ownership causes mismanagement (not true), therefore they must be sold.
Agree also with the nation level angle. A void will always be filled by one of the global swinging dicks.
Have you managed to miss the point AGAIN? There are jobs the police should not be doing, and no amount of 'weeding out' will change that. It's almost as if you counter an argument by pretending it's something else. I'm sure that's not the case though.
That's why it's so much easier for Hedges' to take yet another hit at the United States, rather than do hard work.
Compared to any other major power the United States has an exceedingly open society and a heavily analysed military making it comparatively easy to examine the United States forever … which they obviously do … while criminal states in much more controlled societies just keep expanding underneath much scrutiny.
Check out Al Jazeera's critical stories of itself or its neighbours. Not.
The World Press Freedom Index shows which states tolerate any public dissent at all let alone serious book-length scrutiny.
Of those who are least free, China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Vietnam have massive militaries and will hunt any reporter down to death no problem.
Writing actual investigative journalism on nasty non-US states probably doesn't garner anywhere near as many lucrative clicks from convergence moonbats with a very blinkered worldview that just want the same old recycled polemic that strokes their confirmation bias.
A fair point for the selfish, but not much use for a rapidly darkening world in which the last proponents of an open society have zero supporters on either the left or the right.
@RedLogix "my argument has never been that the US were any good at being 'world policeman', but even their incompetent efforts at the task have on the whole delivered far more benefit than cost"…..
I wonder how many times throughout the last 250 years a line just like that has been used to justify all the abuses of power, misery, death and suffering imposed by the unbridled greed, corruption and ego in the name of white western imperialism?….
But then if history has taught us nothing else about man, it has taught us that powerful men and nations will find the most creative, often outrageous cover and along with their willing enablers, use them to justify any and all acts of hubris, atrocity, villainy conducted in the name of their project…..which is why the saying (and title of a classic Killdozer LP)…’Intellectuals Are the Shoeshine Boys of the Ruling Elite ‘is as much a fact today as it has been throughout history, as they have always been one of the powers greatest enablers.
You demand the world should be full of perfect people like noble rescuers such as yourself, act outraged when it isn't, and turn me into the evil persecutor. Thus setting up a distracting drama and totally failing to address the actual comment.
@RedLogix No, what is childish is your unwavering, dear I say it, fundementalist adherence to defending a pernicious regime that has inflicted pain and misery around the world to millions of humans…but because it isn’t in your backyard you tell us it is all but benign (the world's police force!)…a regime I will remind you, that has along with the UK been the primary reason why the gift of free energy has been completely thrown away, and they fucked the planet for future generations while they were at it, in 150 short years…don’t you get it Red Logix? The ideology you defend has blown it, completely and utterly….for all of us, and more importantly all our future generations ..so no, it is you who needs to grow up, grow some balls and take a look in the mirror.
Even just one of US Imperialism’s very long list of unwarranted, illegal and unwanted (apart from the applicable ruling classes and toadies) interventions in other nations, is enough reason to put them in the naughty corner forever.
Lets take Chile in 1973…the ‘Chicago Boys’ dream, and in retrospect a demo version of neo liberalism to the extreme. A CIA assisted violent overthrow of an elected social democratic Govt. Horrific. No excuse. All boats were not floated.
Pinochet divided the long narrow country into 15 “economic zones”, and tortured and murdered thousands of decent people. I worked with the NZ Chilean exile community in 70s and had first hand accounts.
Is Kissinger too old to be waterboarded? nah…such crims should be pursued till the end.
Why is it that it's only ever the 'crimes' of US that concern you?
In 1973 the Cold War was still in full swing. You can only be incredibly grateful it remained 'cold' and never escalated to a direct confrontation with the Soviets. Yet on the peripheries it was as intense and brutal as any war.
The main answer I can think of to my rhetorical question above is that closet marxists such as yourself still haven't gotten over the fact that the US won.
The USA has not “won” a war since 1945! And it was a justifiable anti fascist war–now neo fascists walk the streets of America and stormed the Capitol on January 6. How the mighty have fallen.
US Imperialism and the US arms industry get involved in asymmetrical contests and end up getting their arse kicked again and again.
Interesting you mention Grenada, I just looked it up yesterday for some reason and it all came back–New Jewel movement factions, Cuban construction workers fighting US marines on beaches–what a debacle.
Except that as we now see, the US hasn't "won" and as with the horrendous waste of time, effort, human life, environmental and social destruction in Afghanistan, all US interventions can now be truly seen as waste and a brake on human and environmental growth and potential. How can any sane person when confronted by the climate disaster that is now in front us talk up the type of US blindness of rape and pillage that produced this mess? Driven only by the profit on the bottom line or gdp? Well, now, if there is still time we may get a chance to see how much faster and equitably human potential can be delivered when the god given right to hoard multiple billions of capital for personal use is removed and returned to the productive base. This is the model that China offers. We can try it with NZ characteristics. The wonder is that their is still a world after being subjected to US imperial greed. Thankyou Joe Biden for admitting defeat and giving us some extra time to find a new direction.
I have noticed a significant effort among trumpetistas to lay blame for the Afghan fiasco on Biden – as if the fellow left to wind up a failed invasion can bear more responsibility than the clown who started a war with no exit strategy – W for worthless Bush. It was always going to end like this.
I guess they figure that, absent Biden, der schlumpenfurher is a shoe-in.
I don't know who the best candidate for US president might be, but Trump is almost certainly the worst one.
Thanks Ad.. you have to admire Hedges, immovable on his principles and fearless in his critiques of the powerful…which is why he is no longer New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief I guess.
I had always been under the impression one of the major reasons he was no longer Middle East Bureau chief for the Times was that he failed to apply the simplest journalistic skepticism and fact checking when he passed on the Iraq WMD lies from the likes of Chalabi. Thereby helping the Shrub administration manufacture consent for the 2003 Iraq war under false pretences.
"Collaborator" is your word, not mine, and it's probably a bit harsh.
But Hedges was one of the few people actually in a position to have made a difference, had he applied even a modicum of skepticism and critical thinking and fact-checking. But he didn't. Not even a smidgen of those basic journalistic skills.
You'd think in the interim he might have recognised his failings and made an effort to sharpen his independent and critical thinking skills. But nah, it seems he's found it much easier to grift a living by continually recycling the same slightly reworked tired rants at the same tired uncritical audience that craves familiar repetition above all.
"The overall conclusion reached is that the United States most likely has been responsible since WWII for the deaths of between 20 and 30 million people in wars and conflicts scattered over the world".
A pretty Good attempt at beating the Nazi’s record.
Before we even get into the current deaths due to US saunctions, blockades and bombings, happening right now,
You are so predictable. You keep repeating the same idiotically selective claims over and over.
The irrefutable data shows that in the period since the end of WW2 due to an immense expansion of trade – only made possible because the US created and paid for the security and commercial infrastructure that enabled it – human populations have increased, life expectancy has lengthened and the quality of life for billions has expanded dramatically. Before WW2 most of the human race lived in absolute poverty – now its around 15% or less. Erasing that benefit to literally billions of the poorest people in the world as "bullshit" betrays your professed claim to care for them as very hollow indeed.
If the US decides that it really doesn't care about the expansion of totalitarian regimes outside of the Western Hemisphere – and this is the direction it's heading in – then expect this experiment to get a run this decade.
Unlike the compilers of those lists, the US had more pragmatic choices to make. As I said above – the intent of the Cold War was to control the politics and contain the Soviets.
If they ever had a longer term goal it was the not unreasonable hope that by engagement they could hope to influence these nations away from totalitarianism and toward more open, liberal societies. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn't. And even today of the 200 odd nations on earth, the number you'd actually want to live in if you had a choice barely exceeds 50 or so.
If they ever had a longer term goal it was the not unreasonable hope that by engagement they could hope to influence these nations away from totalitarianism and toward more open, liberal societies. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn't
I'm not going to ask you if a 'pragmatic' 'engagement' like Albright made, one that caused the death of 500,000 children, was a price they had to pay to 'influence a nation away from totalitarianism and toward a more open, liberal society'. I think the answer might scare me. Be real. Everything the USA does, and has done is purely in the interest of money and power. To suggest the underlying reasons are out of the concern for the happiness of other humans beings, altruism … well, each to his own.
Lesley Stahl asking Madeleine Albright about the sanctions against Iraq in May 1996.
“We have heard that a half million children have died,” stated Stahl. “I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”
“I think this is a very hard choice,” replied Albright, “but the price – we think the price is worth it.”
"hope that by engagement they (The USA) could hope to influence these nations away from totalitarianism and toward more open, liberal societies."
So even though no actual facts support in any way your white man triumphalist fantasy story, in-fact the actual facts tells us your story is the opposite, and is nothing but pure fantasy…(some would say propaganda, but for propaganda to work it has to have a element of truth in it, which is why everyone knows the notion of the USA spreading democracy is bullshit)…but yet here you are, back yet again, straight faced telling us yet again to believe up is down, black is white.
Unfortunately we seldom get to choose our overlords as they tend to impose themselves upon us. With the British Empire gone and the US hegemony fading one wonders who the next oppressor nation will be that steps into the vacuum ….
I suggest you listen to the old Tom Lehrer song about the rocket scientist Wernher von Braun.
In particular take note of the last line of the last verse.
"You too may be a big hero,
Once you've learned to count backwards to zero.
"In German oder English I know how to count down,
Und I'm learning Chinese!" says Wernher von Braun."
A multi polar world may be where we head to next , where there is no singular all powerful oppressor.Have we become so habituated to the neighbourhood bully we can no longer imagine a world without him?
Personally, I'm more worried by western oligarchs like Bezos, Branson, and Musk (Boggis ,Bunce and Bean) add Thiel,who with their immense wealth and power can drive, unchecked, technology and human aided evolution in ways that continue their power but are not in the best interests of humanity and the life humanity depends on
Must be the threads with significant input from a contributor who I'm not allowed to reply to for fear of doom. No point in reading such threads. If there happens to be any accurate medical information or insightful geopolitical commentary, I'll have to pick it up from elsewhere.
I'm interested in Judith's insistence on vaccination targets. She wants a specific number – yesterday (I think) she was saying to Corin Dann that 70-75% will "give us options". She didn't say what those options might be, nor did she have any targets for what those options might produce, e.g. less than x excess deaths and less than y excess hospitalisations annually. She was not pressed on where she got the 70-75% number from. Was it from the Doherty Institute, a faithful echo of Scomo's 'plan', or simply an imitation of what the UK has actually done? Or based on something else?
This insistence on a hard number, yet total vagueness on what it might lead to, looks methodologically inconsistent. So it seems that what she's really after is an arbitrary target (preferably one that's not very high) because it will provide a justification for doing what National have always wanted to do – open up.
The insistence on hard numbers is so further down the line she might have the possibility of being deep and meaningful in the House.
"To the Prime Minister: Why did she say on the 14th of June there would 3,128,716 people vaccinated by November 21st and yet there are only 3,128,402 vaccinated? Did she deliberately mislead the House?"
….throwing in the towel...might be more of a case of accepting the inevitable.
UK and Europe looking at only testing people with symptoms. The vaccines offer 50% efficacy for Delta, although they do seem to prevent 90% hospitalisations. Vaccinated people still carry similar viral load as unvaccinated. Vaccinated will be offered booster shots. Herd immunity and elimination no longer feasible. Calls for greater emphasis on immune support and therapeutics.
And vaccinating children?
Dr Ruchi Sinha, consultant paediatrician, Imperial College Choosing not to vaccinate children would be unlikely to cause problems in the health service What matters is the burden of patient hospitalisation and actually there hasn't been as much with this delta variant They tend to be the children who have got their comorbidities, obesity, or severe neurological problems and those children are already considered for vaccination. Covid on its own in paediatrics is not the problem
So children under 12 are expendable Rosemary? You have to be kidding.
I think NZ should aim to vaccinate 95% of the population including children. Then we might contemplate gradually opening borders with strict conditions.
Are you going to do the mahi or take the ban? You are not in Pre-Moderation because I have no time to monitor it, so please don’t do anything stupid – Incognito]
Bearded Git…"So children under 12 are expendable Rosemary? "
My response to that was, appropriately, "Who said "children under 12 are expendable"?
…and answering my own question… "Nowhere (in the article clip linked to)does anyone say that."
Perhaps Bearded Git could answer my question?
[In no way did this address your Moderation. You are now in Pre-Moderation, so that I can deal with all your problematic existing and future comments. You’re taking way too much Moderation time by ignoring Moderation notes and keep adding more to it – Incognito]
He can, but you need to respond to Incog's moderation in the other thread or you will be banned. It's not a hard one to sort out, I've commented in the other convo that I think it's a matter of semantics and nuance in language.
A young friend visited shortly before Lockdown, and horrified that I had obviously not attended to basic laptop housekeeping, "cleared my cookies". I am sure he did me a good turn, but one consequence of this "cookie clearing" is that I no longer see the "Replies" button to the right of the page. (There are other inconveniences, but they;re not pertinent here.)
Gone it is, and has resisted all attempts to restore it.
This means that I have no idea if someone has replied to a comment of mine or not…unless I actively go looking.
I did spot the Mod note yesterday in passing and thought I had explained myself…but clearly not. I really don't have the time or inclination to go back and have another go. I don't think anything I write now would make any difference.
I don't 'make shit up'. I don't spread 'misinformation'. I do obviously have a different way of looking at things from the norm…and I refuse to blindly accept without question all that either the government or mainstream media decide is the 'truth'. I read very widely from news sources from all over the world.
With regards to Covid …TS has become largely an echo chamber and Bearded Git's "'So children under 12 are are expendable Rosemary?" is typical of the sort of response I seem to elicit. Responses that are clearly unwarranted and simply wrong…but that largely go unchallenged. I have come to expect these kind of responses now, and see The Standard as being an almost hostile place for any type of discussion about the issue that has dominated the past eighteen months of all of our lives. I guess the 'keep to your bubble' message has been taken a little too far.
Thanks for letting me know about the Replies tab, that's pretty important.
I also don't believe you make shit up or spread misinformation and I disagree with Incognito's characterisation of your comments. I've had other stuff going on lately so haven't been following the debate on TS, but I understand what you are saying here. There's a lot of tension around the pandemic stuff because it's so close to home (as opposed say to arguing about the US election).
I"m tending to let comments slide except where they're going to cause immediate problems or tip over into flaming. I did say something to BG, but the comment wasn't bad enough to get out the bold pen. I can see how this is a problem when there's a lot of active moderation happening elsewhere. Not sure what can be done about that atm.
If you get a ban, I will look forward to seeing you back in due course, I think your presence here is good for the community and your comments are often thought provoking. Maybe consider writing a post for TS? That would change the echo chamber a bit. Not sure if you have been writing elsewhere lately?
(If you reply here but are banned I will see your reply in the back end)
I reckons it is of huge importance that you continue to encourage and facilitate 'robust discussion' on sex self ID and the misrepresentation of 'gender conversion therapy'. There's an awful lot of rabbit hole stuff going on at the moment that demands we all suspend fact and reality and pass around the teacups at the party. Left unchallenged the long term effects are going to be considerable. Let not future generations ask why the fuck we didn't speak up.
Please keep up this work. I'll be lurking and checking.
I have a proposal for you, Rosemary, and I sincerely hope you’ll take it.
You are a valued contributor on this site and I acknowledge and respect that.
I intend to ban you for a while for your series of comments on Covid vaccination and wasting Moderator time. I also intend to reply to at least some of them, for the record only, no further response from you is desirable. However, if you agree to stay off this topic of Covid vaccination, for two months, you are free to continue commenting here, as far as I am concerned. That will reset the current Moderation of your comments.
After clearing cookies, my experience has been that the Replies tab is automatically restored after the next time I make a comment. I guess logging in would have the same effect. @lprent can clarify.
Please stop your virtue signalling, playing the victim, and blaming others such as Bearded Git for your predicament, which is entirely of your own making. You are setting up a ‘nice’ drama triangle here [HT to RedLogix].
Discussion of Covid with you is an exercise in futility because of this and your strong negative bias.
If you really intend to not bother with the Moderation notes then I will go through your recent comments, for the record and clarification, and just ban you. It is up to you.
Claiming that "By definition it [the Pfizer vaccine] is not a vaccine." is clearly spreading misinformation. If the "Pfizer so-called vaccine" is "not a vaccine", then how to explain that "they do seem to prevent 90% hospitalisations" @7.1 [12:36 pm today] – that's some placebo effect!
If Rosemary genuinely believes the Pfizer vaccine is not a vaccine, then claiming such might not be disinformation, but it's certainly misinformation.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, we are all desperate for information. Where did the virus come from? Is there a cure? How can we keep staying safe? Will life get back to normal?
In the case of COVID-19, information can be a literal life-saver—when it’s true. Wrong information doesn’t help anyone and can even make things worse. And like a virus, wrong information can spread, causing what’s been called an infodemic.
And now more than ever, we are seeing the spread of two forms of wrong information: misinformation and disinformation. These two words, so often used interchangeably, are merely one letter apart. But behind that one letter hides the critical distinction between these confusable words: intent.
I think Rosemary misinterpreted the comment by Bearded Git. She’s a master at twisting other people’s words to feed her own bias and narrative.
If they throw the towel in only vaccinated people will enjoy some level of protection against the worst effects of Covid-19, as it stands. The vaccine has been approved in NZ for people of 12+, which means that children under 12 would be more likely to catch the virus, as indeed seems to be happening overseas in relatively highly vaccinated populations.
Bearded Git also said that he thinks that “NZ should aim to vaccinate 95% of the population including children.” [my emphasis]
IMO, Rosemary got the wrong end of the stick again and was barking up the wrong tree again. In fact, she did bring up “vaccinating children” in this thread @ 7.1 and stated her position on this again.
I think Rosemary misinterpreted the comment by Bearded Git. She’s a master at twisting other people’s words to feed her own bias and narrative.
That doesn't explain anything though, other than your view.
Rosemary brought up the under 12 thing, didn't say much, dropped a quote and linked a video. I can't see how BG got from that that she thinks kids are expendable. Rosemary can't see it either. Where did she say or even imply that?
She's allowed to express a differing opinion, even if people don't like it. That's robust debate.
Covid-19 is not just a flu and there is still much we do not know about it and its future variants. We have six babies aged under one who have Covid-19 in Aotearoa-New Zealand. Maybe that focusses the mind?
Lastly,
She's allowed to express a differing opinion, even if people don't like it. That's robust debate.
Sure, she is, but she was under Moderation and simply ignored it, consistently. She’s trying to weasel her way out of it, IMO, and I’m not having a bar of it. Let’s see what she says next, shall we?
Children under 12 are not being vaccinated, so they go without the protection when we “throw in the towel”.
Rosemary seems to think this is fine. Bearded Git seems to think this is not fine and phrased this as “expendable”, like it or not.
Sometimes, incopnito, you slide from simple interference- running to outright fucking lying aggression.
Nowhere did I imply that kids under 12 years old were expendable.
I quoted a doctor. A paediatrician no less, and a consultant to the Imperial College. Who after looking at all the available information, and no doubt conferring with his peers arrived at the following…which I will provide again…because I try to be helpful like that.
Dr Ruchi Sinha, consultant paediatrician, Imperial College Choosing not to vaccinate children would be unlikely to cause problems in the health service What matters is the burden of patient hospitalisation and actually there hasn't been as much with this delta variant They tend to be the children who have got their comorbidities, obesity, or severe neurological problems and those children are already considered for vaccination. Covid on its own in paediatrics is not the problem.
I suggest you take it up with the doctor. After all…what would he know about it…the UK being so far behind NZ?
I get that moderating on a site like this has challenges, and I am also beginning to realise that these days it there is a very fine line between what weka calls 'robust debate' and what you and others here (and MSM and the government) call 'misinformation' or 'disinformation'. What was considered a valid opinion or even 'truth' two years ago can now find itself slapped with a label and a ban hammer.
Last year, when it was obvious that there was increasing control over what could and what could not be said about Covid…and I think perhaps it was about the hypothesis that Sars-CoV-2 was a product of a laboratory experiment…I remarked that free speech and the truth might be the most significant victims of this shit show in the long term. I fear I was right.
I'll bother you no more incognito. I'll enjoy casting an eye over TS from well outside the tent.
I clearly stated that Bearded Git used the word “expendable”, not you!?
There was no “fucking lying aggression” in that at all; it is all in your mind and all yours, as usual.
If you’re not fine with not vaccinating children under 12 then you have a really funny way of expressing that.
Don’t hide behind a doctor, and why would I have to take it up with the doctor, as they didn’t comment even here, but you did. Own your own words, say what you mean and mean what you say.
It is now clear that vitamin D has important roles in addition to its classic effects on calcium and bone homeostasis. As the vitamin D receptor is expressed on immune cells (B cells, T cells and antigen presenting cells) and these immunologic cells are all are capable of synthesizing the active vitamin D metabolite, vitamin D has the capability of acting in an autocrine manner in a local immunologic milieu. Vitamin D can modulate the innate and adaptive immune responses. Deficiency in vitamin D is associated with increased autoimmunity as well as an increased susceptibility to infection.
From what I can see..the Consensus Statement from the MOH page I linked to has failed to recognise the link between lower vitamin D levels and immune response. With specific reference to Maori and Pasifica peoples the Ministry's stance is/was that because the bone density in these populations is fine, and they are at no greater risk of fractures, then low Vitamin D or the ability to manufacture Vit D from sunlight (due to darker skin) is not an issue.
Perhaps its time to look at which populations in NZ are at most risk from Covid…and maybe offer them some extra support.
[You’re going around here accusing others of making up shit and not listening and reading and here you are spinning your own BS narrative again.
In the factcheck.org link, it didn’t say at all what you asserted it said. In fact, it was almost the exact opposite!!! WTF!!! SSDD!!!
It could be a genuine misinterpretation on your behalf, but your claim is not true. All this would be less of a problem if weren’t for your confirmation bias and the seriousness of the topic.
I’m growing really tired of battling your false misguided narratives on all things Covid-19 and it has to end, one way or another – Incognito]
I don't know enough to say it gives better immunity as such (beyond lowering malnourishment rates in general), but I'd be interested to see transmission rates in more crowded homes vs UMC 2 rooms (not just bedrooms) per person homes.
yeah, the crowded housing seems a no brainer given what we know about overcrowding and other diseases, and delta's spread in households.
Even for people that want to ignore the role of nutrition and poverty in infectious diseases, there's still the issue of poverty and food poverty in how one might do things like socially distance, afford masks, afford to take time off work, afford to go to a doctor, afford to drive rather than take public transport and so on.
I used that particular article to demonstrate how mainstream media has addressed the issue of Vitamin D in relation to Covid.
A clue to the slant is the author choosing to use the "crackpot" quote from Frieden, knowing damn well that most folks read little other than the header and the opening paragraph. The author is setting the tone. They are a "factchecker" when all is said and done.
Yes, the author refers to studies that suggest Vitamin D might have uses beyond bone health and acknowledges there Vitamin D supports the immune system and might… tamp down overactive immune responses by tilting those responses toward less inflammatory ones, including by reducing the production of certain pro-inflammatory cytokines, or signaling proteins. (which would be of use with Covid) …then proceeds to cast doubt on any claim that Vitamin D supplementation just might be of use.
Lack of Evidence for Vitamin D and COVID-19
Because the coronavirus is so new, little rigorous research has been done specifically on vitamin D and COVID-19.
Now why on earth did the "factchecking" author feel it necessary to make such a statement?
Coronaviruses are not new. Coronaviruses require a response from our immune systems and Vitamin D has been found to be immune supportive.
Especially in immune modulation. (Which the author has already told us) Which, with this particular coronavirus, could be of considerable help.
And returning to New Zealand and our vulnerable Maori and Pasifika populations (with regard to vitamin D levels)…readers may be interested in this…
"Burden of Disease Associated with low Vitamin D status in New Zealand"
Scragg, Grey, Stewart et al" which specifically references Pasifika peoples.
They say that the 'sun safe' policies should not necessarily apply to Pasifka peoples due to their low rates of skin cancer and low levels of Vitamin D and high disease burden that could be related in part to said low Vitamin D levels. There are graphs and projections and the usual, and they close with a recommendation for clinical trials and perhaps revising sun exposure advice, vitamin D supplementation or fortification of foods to assist with reduction of all cause mortality.
A pity that this paper was apparently ignored by our own Ministry of Health, who seem to still be fixated on Vitamin D's sole use in the human body being for bone health.
Me? I'd immediately advise and fund Vitamin D supplements for all at risk groups in NZ…or at least carry out widespread Vitamin D levels testing. Immediately.
Vaccinating Auckland first, which is where Pacifica are concentrated, covers all those bases. Thankfully the government agrees and is prioritising vaccine accordingly.
From Rosemary's 'debunked' as being "crackpot" link [8 June 2021]:
“There are many crackpot claims about miracle cures floating around,” he [Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr Tom Frieden] wrote, “but the science supports the possibility – although not the proof – that Vitamin D may strengthen the immune system, particularly of people whose Vitamin D levels are low.”
… Thus, while it’s a good idea to get enough vitamin D — pandemic or not — it’s too early to say that a lack of vitamin D makes COVID-19 worse, or that supplementing with vitamin D provides any protection against the disease.
Covid-19: Here's why Jacinda Ardern's British critics are wrong[1 Sept] Once the population is fully vaccinated by late 2021, and we know more about the implications of various policy options, New Zealand will be well placed to make an informed choice about continuing with an elimination strategy or switching to a looser suppression approach if that appears optimal. Until then, we hope the country can continue to keep its options open.
To be clear, once some NZers turn their backs on the Covid-19 elimination strategy that has undoubtedly saved many Kiwi lives, there's no going back. Since ‘Freedum Day’ in the UK there have been thousands of Covid-19 deaths.
NZ will get around to "living with covid-19" (straight out of the Plan B playbook) eventually – still, no hurry eh. I hope our govt will wait at least until the tragic global Covid death toll on Worldometers exceeds NZ's population, which with any luck won't be until November.
As I said above Jimmy, they have caved in. This from today's SMH:
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews says the state’s public health team changed its COVID-19 advice to the government in the past two days, making it clear “that we are not going to drive these numbers down, they are going to increase”.
“Now it’s up to us to make sure that they don’t increase too fast, and that they don’t increase too much relative to the number of people who are getting vaccinated every single day, every single week,” he said during Wednesday’s COVID-19 update.
Great cartoon. Judith Collins seemingly has a tantrum or tendency to bully whenever she is challenged, whether it be from her own caucus or Breakfast tv. Fair enough to put her case, but she should be able to handle questioning with more composure. Not a person to respect at all.
When you think how our PM has handled Hosking over the last few years when he has harangued her, what a difference. I never listen to him, but pick up comments from people, so am interested if he gives Collins an easy time in comparison when he interviews her.
When Jacinda got the hard questions from Hosking that she couldn't answer, she decided not to go on the show any more. I guess that is one way to handle it. At least Hipkins and Robertson still turn up although they do get a grilling.
He threw a hissy-fit nearly every time she came on his dog of a programme. Her composure, and her constant cheerfulness, obviously rattled him; he never had the wit or the knowledge to challenge her.
Even Paul Henry seemed gracious and adroit compared to Hosking.
Yes.. Remember earlier on when Hosking tried to tell Jacinda that our frontier controls needed more 'subtleties and nuances' like the Australian controls? As I remember, she smiled and replied, "Mike, if you have become a person of subtleties and nuances – Bless!" Hilarious.
And I have yet to hear Hoskings defend his argument, given what has since transpired in NSW and Victoria. If we do beat Delta Covid in this round, surely Hosking has to offer an apology? (But does he have a memory capable of recording anything unfavourable to his current obsession? No evidence of that to date.)
"Berejiklian is Australia's most successful premier. Her state is the best economic performer, she is popular, and she has led far and away Australia's most successful COVID response."
With Algeria finally running out of the last of its supplies, the scourge of leaded petrol for road transport has finally been eliminated from the world, in a significant victory for public health.
But this barbaric substance is still widely and legally used in New Zealand, as far as I can tell. In piston engine airplanes. It doesn't need to be, lead-free avgas is completely technically feasible.
Does anyone else have concerns about the person inside the Ministry of Health, who is leaking daily case numbers to the NZ Herald? Is it just a National party supporter or is it corruption? Is the NZ Herald paying an insider for information? The right wing influence of Australian owned news media can be seen around the world. Anybody?
Since the State Sector Act and Reserve Bank Act etc. the public service top echelon seems loaded to the gunwales with fifth columnists by design–well paid neo libs happy to receive bloated salaries courtesy of the tax payer–while frustrating any minuscule move away from monetarist managerialism.
No? Well even the Deputy Prime Minister is frustrated enough to have set up an Implementation Unit. The informants seem all over Govt. Depts, Immigration being a classic leak source among many others.
Is it actually a "leak", or simple liaison with the ministry?
Yes Minister used the line that "leaking" was an irregular verb: "I give confidential press briefings, you leak, they have been charged under S2A of the Official Secrets Act", but it's public information that isn't necessarily embargoed until a formal relase time.
Anyone here following the Canadian election? Trudeau who had a minority govt but could pass any legislation he wanted with help of labours sister party the NDP , the center left BQ or on rare occasions the Canadian conservative party. No party wanted to go to election and all parties especially the NDP had bent over backwards to pass legislation (and made some huge left wing amendments to liberal legislation) Trudeau who came second in the popular vote in the 2019 election but had a plurality of seats was polling well but only about 5% higher than the tory's called a snap election noone wanted in the middle of the fourth wave of a pandemic and with no platform other than attacking the other parties as boogie men is now consistent 2-6 % behind in the polls and it his party may not even be able to form a minority govt now.
The public are quite furious that he forced an election. His opponents all released platforms he hasn't, and the tory's have interesting policies like putting workers on the boards of companies and banning companies that receive govt money from laying off staff or giving executives bonuses. Trudeau is trying to make this pro choice moderate out to be a knuckle dragging fascist and it's not working, the guy doesn't seem to have a mean bone in his body
The NDP labours sister party are the most liked and trusted. Their green party is in a state if shambles that makes national look functional.
What's most interesting is they are all seriously debating and coming up with housing policies that make nz parties look like right wing free market zealots in comparison. Though interestingly they all seem to be wanting to ban foreign ownership which is fascinating because nzlp got hell for wanting to do that…
This election is keeping me occupied 🤣 I find it fascinating how often nz politics mirrors nz politics for the last two decades of they elect a Tory we elect a Tory in our next election 2006 can 2008 nz) if they elect a young progressive we elect a young progressive in our next election 2015, 2017)
The interesting thing is regardless of whether Trudeau wins a minority, majority or loses this seems to be his last election campaign he's distrusted by the left the right and the center , he's less popular than his party which he brought from the dead and they won't want him to run again if he wins a majority, if he wins a minority he'll have put the covid outbreak at risk and wasted billions on an election noone wanted for nothing and will likely be rolled and if the conservatives win well he'll be gone.
He may go down as the Theresa May of Canadian politics all because of his cynical arrogance to throw an election two years earlier, funnily enough I and many others thought he was once the template all center left leaders should run on but his charisma hasn't led to policy reforms or the transformation people wanted and expected and hoped for…
And while much has been made about the similarities between Ardern and Trudeau (and we borrowed quite a bit of their ideas especially messaging and social media for 2017) I believe apart from being young excellent media managers that's about where it ends. Trudeau is a trust fund baby who lacks substance and is a cringe machine with comments like "people-kind" "she-lection" "she-cession" who bombards the public with so social virtues he doesn't believe in and while his organization has run a good covid response his governing has been marred in quite serious corruption allegations and he isn't let's say a brain box the way his father or Ardern are he recently said "I don't think about monetary policy" , imagine the hell an nz candidate would get for that, Ardern is an afept administrator and while I have issues with policies and the pace of transformation she is not style over substance, she has both , Trudeau junior is all style and no substance.
He did however save his party's fortunes when it looked like the NDP had finally replaced the liberals as the main party of the opposition he was able to increase his party's seats from 34 to 184 in two years but governing is a hard job. He also has broken a million promises , he promised 2015 would be the last campaign under first passed the post and then won a landslide, ironically much like the UK if they had proportion the center left would always be in power.
Here's hoping for an NDP win or at the very least a strong NDP that can bargain or gain concessions from the liberals I hope proportional rep is one of them.
There's no point looking for anything redemptive for the left in the Canadian election.
The Conservatives will get the greatest share, the centre left will decline, and the wee minorities like the Greens will continue to consign themselves to the 1-2% dustbin of history.
The Liberals would need to team up with the New Democratic Party to have a shot at power. Not likely so far.
This fool needs to be thrown out of the Party, schnell.
It hardly matters, now that the Labour Party has been burned to the ground by its Blairite rump, but surely this fellow should be automatically excluded for being stupid enough to speak up for untermenschen six years ago. It's verboten for any British Labour Party member to speak up for them now…
Uk labour is dead in the water unless it can form some kind of progressive electorate seat alliance with the lib Dems and greens to not split the center to center left vote.
The agreement could be any labour govt institutes proportional rep but weirdly the labour party who would have governed in every election since the 70s with PR is dead against it they'd rather be a large opposition than a coalition govt.
Also the party that most wants PR the liberals are dead set against deals, coalitions and negations so I don't understand what they think they'll do in a PR system if they don't like compromise or coalitions or working with other parties
After 2 massive electoral losses, Keir Starmer can figure out what his predecessors didn't.
More foolish Middle Eastern donkeys like George Galloway will continue to seek to split the vote and turn Labour to rubble. Galloway came very close to killing Labour off in the Batley and Spen by-election just a month ago. Corbyn just made it worse in 2019 and worse until he let Boris Johnson in, such was his ineptitude.
Corbyn and Galloway have just ruined much of Labour's traditional vote in the north. Corbyn should just retire. Galloway is just a perpetual loser.
Personally i find much to admire about Corbyn AND Galloway .I enjoy Corbyns quiet dogged pursuit of his principles and Galloways steely resolve to right wrongs and injustices .To tell the truth im in the habit of going to bed and watching MOATS but i seldom last the whole three hours !
Evn Tony MOATS is the mother of all talk shows avail apparently on multiple platforms i watch it on you tube.Its up to episode 115 i think atm is broadcast every sun night from london so we get it the following day
One of the most important things Corbyn did while leader of the UK Labour, was to unwittingly expose without question which individuals and institutions who were/are actually Left Progressives and those who are (left leaning?) Liberal Centrists…two quite different things…I find the results of that unveiling very helpful indeed.
And btw, who is another last high profile politician you can name who has been regularly on the front line in food banks, marching in solidarity for Palestinian Human rights raise his voice over the treatment of Julian Assange?
What Corbyn exposed was simply nothing more than himself. You either show you have the capacity to achieve and hold power, or you just don't. Hell even Milliband got closer to power than Corbyn.
Considering the forces of power amassed against him making damn sure he didnt come to power how could corbyn have brought about a different outcome ?Round the clock media attacks were only a part of the strategy .He was deliberately brought down imo by concerted effort on many fronts .Perhaps some of us can remember the antics of a certain pr company called Cosby and Texter and what they managed to achieve both in nz and aus fairly recently ?Add in an intelligence service or two maybe and his chances became slim indeed .
" Hell even Milliband got closer to power than Corbyn."…no he didn't, and he only got as far as he did because he was no threat to the status quo and power..
Critics must accept Jeremy Corbyn has created largest political party in Europe – and work with him
Corbyn is an unfortunate historical blip of – as you point out – incoherent ideological noise – and has bequeathed to Keir Starmer a party in pretty average shape. They are still in the polls about where they were when Corbyn finished the election.
Jeremy Corbyn rattled the ruling class cage–no mistake there. Senior British Military figures openly threatened a coup if he was ever installed in 10 Downing St! His social democratic model and international solidarity outlook was way too much for the generals and British capital and finance capital.
Jeremy’s two key mistakes imo were…
1. not playing hardball with the underminers–he should have vigorously deselected right wing candidates, and made most of head office reapply for their jobs.
2. waffling on Brexit–all that was needed was to say…we will respect the vote of the people whichever way it goes AND implement “For the many not the few” policy of re-nationalisations etc.
What Corbyn exposed quite clearly in the UK (and to some extent, here) is that half the people we hear who identify as 'Left' of 'Progressive' etc, shit their pants when a actual live Left wing politician comes along and looks like they might actually get into a position to make the radical changes they thought they believed in…turns out most of them are not now and never will be on the side of radical progressive change, and when push comes to shove will actively work against it, as we have seen…Lenin got that one right!
A career portfolio manager's climate change predictions.
“Climate change is the next major mega-trend, and we believe it represents the biggest investment opportunity since the internet,” says portfolio manager at Munro Partners James Tsinidis.
“We’re just at the beginning of the next big S-curve, a massive and sustainable decades-long growth trend.”
Corbyns quiet dogged pursuit of his principles and Galloways steely resolve to right wrongs and injustices
Agreed. Principled individuals in politics are rare. Craig Murray is another person whose current predicament hasn't caught the attention of many here.
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
Right now, in Aotearoa-NZ, our ‘animal spirits’ are darkening towards a winter of discontent, thanks at least partly to a chorus of negative comments and actions from the Government Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on ...
You make people evil to punish the paststuck inside a sequel with a rotating castThe following photos haven’t been generated with AI, or modified in any way. They are flesh and blood, human beings. On the left is Galatea Young, a young mum, and her daughter Fiadh who has Angelman ...
April has been a quiet month at A Phuulish Fellow. I have had an exceptionally good reading month, and a decently productive writing month – for original fiction, anyway – but not much has caught my eye that suggested a blog article. It has been vaguely frustrating, to be honest. ...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 21, 2024 thru Sat, April 27, 2024. Story of the week Anthropogenic climate change may be the ultimate shaggy dog story— but with a twist, because here ...
Hi,I spent about a year on Webworm reporting on an abusive megachurch called Arise, and it made me want to stab my eyes out with a fork.I don’t regret that reporting in 2022 and 2023 — I am proud of it — but it made me angry.Over three main stories ...
The new Victoria University Vice-Chancellor decided to have a forum at the university about free speech and academic freedom as it is obviously a topical issue, and the Government is looking at legislating some carrots or sticks for universities to uphold their obligations under the Education and Training Act. They ...
Do you remember when Melania Trump got caught out using a speech that sounded awfully like one Michelle Obama had given? Uncannily so.Well it turns out that Abraham Lincoln is to Winston Peters as Michelle was to Melania. With the ANZAC speech Uncle Winston gave at Gallipoli having much in ...
She was born 25 years ago today in North Shore hospital. Her eyes were closed tightly shut, her mouth was silently moving. The whole theatre was all quiet intensity as they marked her a 2 on the APGAR test. A one-minute eternity later, she was an 8. The universe was ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is Antarctica gaining land ice? ...
Images of US students (and others) protesting and setting up tent cities on US university campuses have been broadcast world wide and clearly demonstrate the growing rifts in US society caused by US policy toward Israel and Israel’s prosecution of … Continue reading → ...
Barrie Saunders writes – Dear Paul As the new Minister of Media and Communications, you will be inundated with heaps of free advice and special pleading, all in the national interest of course. For what it’s worth here is my assessment: Traditional broadcasting free to air content through ...
Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its arguments for such a bold reform. ...
Peter Dunne writes – The great nineteenth British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, once observed that “the first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.” When a later British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, sacked a third of his Cabinet in July 1962, in what became ...
Ele Ludemann writes – New Zealanders had the OECD’s second highest tax increase last year: New Zealanders faced the second-biggest tax raises in the developed world last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says. The intergovernmental agency said the average change in personal income tax ...
We all know something’s not right with our elections. The spread of misinformation, people being targeted with soundbites and emotional triggers that ignore the facts, even the truth, and influence their votes.The use of technology to produce deep fakes. How can you tell if something is real or not? Can ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Simon Clark. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). This year you will be lied to! Simon Clark helps prebunk some misleading statements you'll hear about climate. The video includes ...
It is all very well cutting the backrooms of public agencies but it may compromise the frontlines. One of the frustrations of the Productivity Commission’s 2017 review of universities is that while it observed that their non-academic staff were increasing faster than their academic staff, it did not bother to ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two speeches delivered by Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters at Anzac Day ceremonies in Turkey are the only new posts on the government’s official website since the PM announced his Cabinet shake-up. In one of the speeches, Peters stated the obvious: we live in a troubled ...
1. Which of these would you not expect to read in The Waikato Invader?a. Luxon is here to do business, don’t you worry about thatb. Mr KPI expects results, and you better believe itc. This decisive man of action is getting me all hot and excitedd. Melissa Lee is how ...
…it has a restricted jurisdiction which must not be abused: it is not an inquisitionNOTE – this article was published before the High Court ruled that Karen Chhour does not have to appear before the Waitangi Tribunal Gary Judd writes – The High Court ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – One of reasons Oranga Tamariki exists is to prevent child neglect. But could the organisation itself be guilty of the same?Oranga Tamariki’s statistics show a decrease in the number and age of children in care. “There are less children ...
David Farrar writes: Graeme Edgeler wrote in 2017: In the first five years after three strikes came into effect 5248 offenders received a ‘first strike’ (that is, a “stage-1 conviction” under the three strikes sentencing regime), and 68 offenders received a ‘second strike’. In the five years prior to ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in politics. That’s refreshing and will be extremely ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the two days to 6:06am on Thursday, April 25:Politics: PM Christopher Luxon has set up a dual standard for ministerial competence by demoting two National Cabinet ministers while leaving also-struggling ...
Hi,Today I mainly want to share some of your thoughts about the recent piece I wrote about success and failure, and the forces that seemingly guide our lives. But first, a quick bit of housekeeping: I am doing a Webworm popup in Los Angeles on Saturday May 11 at 2pm. ...
It is hard to see what Melissa Lee might have done to “save” the media. National went into the election with no public media policy and appears not to have developed one subsequently. Lee claimed that she had prepared a policy paper before the election but it had been decided ...
Open access notablesIce acceleration and rotation in the Greenland Ice Sheet interior in recent decades, Løkkegaard et al., Communications Earth & Environment:In the past two decades, mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet has accelerated, partly due to the speedup of glaciers. However, uncertainty in speed derived from satellite products ...
Buzz from the Beehive A statement from Children’s Minister Karen Chhour – yet to be posted on the Government’s official website – arrived in Point of Order’s email in-tray last night. It welcomes the High Court ruling on whether the Waitangi Tribunal can demand she appear before it. It does ...
Mr Bombastic:Ironically, the media the academic experts wanted is, in many ways, the media they got. In place of the tyrannical editors of yesteryear, advancing without fear or favour the interests of the ruling class; the New Zealand news media of today boasts a troop of enlightened journalists dedicated to ...
It's hard times try to make a livingYou wake up every morning in the unforgivingOut there somewhere in the cityThere's people living lives without mercy or pityI feel good, yeah I'm feeling fineI feel better then I have for the longest timeI think these pills have been good for meI ...
In 1974, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Nixon, finding that the President was not a King, but was subject to the law and was required to turn over the evidence of his wrongdoing to the courts. It was a landmark decision for the rule ...
Every day now just seems to bring in more fresh meat for the grinder.In their relentlessly ideological drive to cut back on the “excessive bloat” (as they see it) of the previous Labour-led government, on the mountains of evidence accumulated in such a short period of time do not ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Megan Valére SosouMarket gardening site of the Itchèléré de Itagui agricultural cooperative in Dassa-Zoumè (Image credit: Megan Valère Sossou) For the residents of Dassa-Zoumè, a city in the West African country of Benin, choosing between drinking water and having enough ...
Buzz from the Beehive Melissa Lee – as may be discerned from the screenshot above – has not been demoted for doing something seriously wrong as Minister of ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
Rongotai MP Julie Anne Genter has apologised in Parliament after National accused her of intimidating and attacking one of its ministers in the House. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Prime Minister and state and territory leaders met on Wednesday as the national cabinet to discuss a crisis gripping Australia – the horrific number of women murdered this year. The killings have shocked ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Radhika Raghav, Teaching Fellow, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Otago Netflix Indian director Sanjay Leela Bhansali is known for his big-budget Bollywood production, featuring grand sets, star casts, meticulously choreographed dance sequences and lavish costumes, jewellery and furnishings. ...
Sir Robert devoted his life to disability rights after living in institutions in his younger years, says Kaihautū Tika Hauātanga | Disability Rights Commissioner Prudence Walker. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Powell, Professor, Family and Sexual Violence, RMIT University Violence against women is not a women’s problem to solve, it is a whole of society problem to solve; and men in particular have to take responsibility. Those were the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Allen, Senior Lecturer in Chemical and Renewable Energy Engineering, University of Newcastle Snapshot freddy/ShutterstockPlans to revive an old coal-fired power station using bioenergy are being considered in the Hunter region of New South Wales. Similar plans for the station ...
Responding to the long-awaited release of judges’ special allowances, including free air travel and hotels for spouses, generous sabbaticals, and access to limousines, Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Alex Murphy said: “In what world does your employer ...
Analysis - The United States has unveiled plans to boost the weapons trade with Australia and the UK, on the same day that Winston Peters is expected to sketch NZ's position on AUKUS. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Carson, Professor of Political Communication, Department of Politics, Media and Philosophy, La Trobe University Since Australia’s First Nations Voice to Parliament referendum in October 2023, diverse commentaries have sought to explain why it failed. But what does an analysis of media ...
Lawyers representing two iwi as well as the Māori Women’s Welfare League on Wednesday asked the Court of Appeal to overturn last week’s High Court decision on the Waitangi Tribunal’s decision to summons Children’s Minister Karen Chhour. The Tribunal is currently investigating the Government’s decision to repeal section 7AA of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Albanese government will introduce legislation to ban deepfake pornography and provide more funding for the eSafety Commission to pilot age-assurance technologies. The contribution of internet sites to gender-based violence was one major issue ...
Average ordinary time hourly earnings, as measured by the Quarterly Employment Survey (QES), increased 5.2 percent in the year to the March 2024 quarter, according to figures released by Stats NZ today. Annual wage cost inflation, as measured by the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dimitrios Salampasis, FinTech Capability Lead | Senior Lecturer, Emerging Technologies and FinTech, Swinburne University of Technology Clem Onojeghuo/Unsplash In the digital era, the job market is increasingly becoming a minefield – demanding and difficult to navigate. According to the Australian Bureau ...
As of the March 2024 quarter, we can now look back on 20 years of data related to youth not in employment, education, or training (NEET), as collected by the Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS), according to figures released by Stats NZ today. "The ...
Thousands of workers attended public events in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch today to celebrate International Workers’ Day (May Day), but union representatives are urging caution and vigilance over the Government’s blatantly "anti-worker" ...
The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 4.3 percent in the March 2024 quarter, compared with 4.0 percent in the previous quarter, according to figures released by Stats NZ today. ...
The PSA is warning the Government that the sensitive information of New Zealanders held by various agencies will fall into the wrong hands if the latest round of proposed cuts goes ahead. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Talitha Best, Professor of Psychology, CQUniversity Australia Victoria Rodriguez/Unsplash How do sugar rushes work? – W.H, age nine, from Canberra What a terrific question W.H! Let’s explore this, starting with some of the basics. What is sugar? ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karinna Saxby, Research Fellow, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne MART PRODUCTION/Pexels Increasing income support could help keep women and children safe according to new work demonstrating strong links between financial insecurity and domestic violence. ...
ANALYSIS:By Olli Hellmann, University of Waikato When New Zealanders commemorate Anzac Day today on April 25, it’s not only to honour the soldiers who lost their lives in World War I and subsequent conflicts, but also to mark a defining event for national identity. The battle of Gallipoli against ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark A Gregory, Associate Professor, School of Engineering, RMIT University The telecommunications industry faces a major shakeup following the release of the post-incident report on last November’s 12-hour Optus outage. Telecommunications companies will have to share more information with customers during future ...
Welcome to The Spinoff Bookseller Confessional, in which we get to know Aotearoa’s booksellers. This week: Eden Denyer, bookseller at Unity Books Auckland.Weirdest question/request you’ve had on the shop floorA mother came in looking for anything we might have on Alaskan bison as that was her little boy’s ...
NZCTU Economist Craig Renney said new data released by Statistics New Zealand shows the need for Government to act now, with unemployment rising from 3.4% to 4.3%. ...
The outpouring of anger over Maiki Sherman’s hyperbolic presentation of this week’s ‘nightmare’ poll is itself an overreaction, argues Stewart Sowman-Lund. Politicians love nothing more than to pretend they don’t care about polls. This week, deputy prime minister Winston Peters said he didn’t give a “rat’s derriere” about a TVNZ ...
Asia Pacific Report Ngāti Kahungunu in Aotearoa New Zealand’s Hawkes Bay region has become the first indigenous Māori iwi (tribe) to sign a resolution calling for a “ceasefire in Palestine”, reports Te Ao Māori News. Reporter Te Aniwaniwa Paterson talked to Te Otāne Huata, who has been organising peace rallies ...
By Dale Luma in Port Moresby “We want grants and not concessional loans,” is the crisp message from Papua New Guinea businesses directly affected by the Black Wednesday looting four months ago. The businesses, which lost millions after the January 10 rioting and looting, say they need grants as part ...
Happy May Day. Join a union. Q: What’s worse than a staff break room where the only place to sit and have a cup of tea is on a teetering stack of old pornography magazines? A: Your boss replacing the magazine stacks with chairs that are “heartily encrusted with ...
By Koroi Hawkins, RNZ Pacific editor Former opposition leader Matthew Wale has been announced as the second prime ministerial candidate ahead of the election in Solomon Islands tomorrow. He will face off against former foreign affairs minister Jeremiah Manele, who was announced by the Coalition for National Unity and Transformation ...
We get but one birthday a year – why not make it last as long as possible by scheduling as many meals with friends and family as you can? This is an excerpt from our weekly food newsletter, The Boil Up. How do you celebrate your birthday? Do you celebrate at ...
A Koi Tū discussion paper released today proposes sweeping changes to New Zealand’s media industry. The principal’s key author, Gavin Ellis, explains how journalists have a key role to play in making others value their role in society. This is an abridged version of a piece first published on knightlyviews.com ...
The Government’s spending cuts are again targeting support for Māori with proposed reform of the agency charged with advising on Māori wellbeing and development. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Douglas, Honorary Senior Lecturer, UNSW Aviation., UNSW Sydney The history of budget jet airlines in Australia is a long road littered with broken dreams. New entrants have consistently struggled to get a foothold. Low-cost carrier Bonza has just become the industry’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rosalind Dixon, Director, Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law, UNSW Sydney Australia is finally having a sustained conversation about violence against women and what we can do about it. It is more than time. Australian women and girls continue to experience ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne stockfour/Shutterstock Preliminary bulk billing data released this week shows a 2.1% rise in bulk billing up to March. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Schulz, Senior Lecturer, University of Adelaide Australia is once again grappling with how we can stop gendered violence in our country. Protests over the weekend show there is enormous community anger over the number of women who are dying and National ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University AnastasiaDudka/Shutterstock What if the government was doing everything it could to stop thieves making off with our money, except the one thing that could really work? That’s how it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Erin Harrington, Senior Lecturer in English and Cultural Studies, University of Canterbury The Conversation It seems to be a time of old favourites. This month our experts have recommended two new seasons – the second season of Alone Australia (although ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland A bright Eta Aquariid meteor photobombed this photo of comet C/2020 F8 (SWAN) in May 2020.Jonti Horner Meteors – commonly known as shooting stars – can be seen on any night of the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Flannery, Honorary fellow, The University of Melbourne Shutterstock Current concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in Earth’s atmosphere are unprecedented in human history. But CO₂ levels today, and those that might occur in coming decades, did occur millions of years ago. ...
Winston Peters has been keen to dismiss speculation on our involvement in Aukus but will give a speech tonight on the direction of our foreign policy, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick Usmar, Lecturer in Critical Media Literacies, Auckland University of Technology Getty Images With the coalition government’s ban of student mobile phones in New Zealand schools coming into effect this week, reaction has ranged from the sceptical (kids will just get ...
Hospitals around the country are not allowed to make a single hiring decision without the approval of Te Whatu Ora's head office, including for cleaners and administration staff. ...
A new report on protecting journalism and democracy in New Zealand recommends a levy be charged on global platforms like Facebook and Google to fund media firms undertaking public interest reporting. It also calls for the reinstatement of a powerful Broadcasting Commission to distribute public funding for journalism and other ...
On International Workers' Day, also known as May Day, the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimahi and the wider union movement are celebrating the proud history of the labour movement during a tough time for working people. ...
From bills to beards, a walk through the former Green co-leader’s time in politics. After close to a decade in politics, James Shaw is preparing to bid farewell to parliament. Tonight will see the former minister deliver his valedictory address, certain to be a speech filled with Shaw’s trademark wit ...
Two months ago, MPs unanimously voted to give themselves a week off in Efeso Collins’ honour. On Tuesday, most were too busy to give even an hour of their time. The day Fa’anānā Efeso Collins died, parliament felt different. In a building that operates at a breakneck pace, everyone stopped ...
India’s election involves hundreds of millions of people and is a months-long affair. Here’s how voting works and what’s at stake.The biggest-ever election in world history started on April 19, with more than 10% of the world’s population eligible to vote. Elections in India, the world’s most populous country ...
Comment: Journalists are very good at telling other people’s stories, but they fall well short when writing about their own profession. Perhaps that is why it is so undervalued. Every successive poll on the public’s attitude toward journalism is more alarming than the last. In the last month we have ...
Opinion: A young Māori woman and her Pacific partner arrive at their local hospital by ambulance. She has gone into labour at just under 24 weeks, but the couple haven’t recognised the symptoms – and don’t know the risks of premature birth for their baby. By the time they arrive, ...
Behind closed doors, NZ First will be arguing fiercely against any watering down of the ministerial decision-making powers in the Bill The post Bishop backtracks after fast-track backlash appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Emotional scenes played out in the Invercargill courthouse on the first two days of the coronial inquest into the death of Gore toddler Lachlan Jones, in which the boy’s mother was accused of disposing of her son’s body. The second season of Newsroom’s award-nominated podcast The Boy in the Water ...
Opinion: The impression from the carpark is very inviting. The area is well fenced but barred so there is easy visibility of loved ones. Inside, the spaces are welcoming and clean and staff are friendly and clearly comfortable. I am greeted by ‘Kim’. She has worked here for three years, ...
After the Christchurch earthquake, the then-national civil defence boss compared his experience to “putting a team on the rugby field who have never ever played together before”. Now, eight years later – and following a damning inquiry into the emergency response of cyclones Gabrielle, Hale and the Auckland anniversary weekend floods – ...
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The two faced hag collins just blamed Ardern for parliament sitting yesterday, reckoned its because Ardern didnt use her power to suspend parliament till level 3!!
Unfuckingbelievable,
On the am show.
Collins is doing just fine for the Labour/Greens/MP. With her still there the next election will be a doddle.
… two faced hag …
Careful now, wags. Puckish Rogue gets let out of his cage next month and he'll want revenge on all those that have been sacrilegious to his chosen one.
Poor PR. Things have changed so much since he was cast out. He must be feeling so let down by JC.
Missed PR.
not too long now.
I miss P R too!
I am absolutley no fan of Judith C, but I watched a tiny bit of the interview and I seriously wonder if she might need some help…….I geniunely do.
Anker I agree with you. Collins seemed to display some underlying anger issues this morning. She is becoming disturbingly edgy. Despite the nonsensical, aggressive responses from Collins, Indira Stewart did a great job.
Need help??
collins is happy being a nasty piece of work, never forget dirty politics, and paying back double.
And what did Ryan Bridge have to say about that?
Still on the fence about Bridge, he called out richardson for being angry winger ho has it made the other day .
I'm going to be generous and say hes giving collins enough rope.
And in Wellington today it is level 3. What a difference a day makes. I will tune in again today to question time in parliament.
What an hilarious interview on TVNZ Breakfast (sorry don't know how to link) Indira wasn't taking any of Karen Collins's BS and the true angry, self serving and deranged Leader of the National Party came shining through. You just know each time she smiles another woodland animal dies.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/covid-19-delta-outbreak-judith-collins-blasts-ridiculous-tvnz-breakfast-interview-with-indira-stewart/O3DJ22PVZCMOOPLJLDZGU4VKTM/
Wow, it's so long since I've seen Breakfast, that interviewer is great! Kim Hill level of unflappability.
Chris Hedges has a good old fashioned rage against the United States in its withdrawal from Afghanistan:
https://www.salon.com/2021/08/31/the-graveyard-of-empires-strikes-back-but-the-rage-of-a-dying-power-can-be-dreadful/
I particularly liked the quotes from the Carter era.
Now if only Hedges could extricate himself from the 80's.
Empire is driven by one underlying consideration – the necessity to control sunshine and resources. The US was never short of these things, and it's military projection was much less about the control of territory, but the control of the political agenda during the Cold War. Well that purpose is long over and they never replaced it with anything. An insular and inward looking US public have elected one President after another who promised the least in terms of engagement with the wider world. Biden's precipitate and bungled exit from Afghanistan being merely the most recent nadir in this process.
Hedges article is of course deeply selective in his targets – he omits the immense expansion of trade and human welfare that is also the direct result of this same post-WW2 period US led period of relative security and stability. His inability to tear himself away from gloating over the costs that were paid for this has a direct parallel with those fools who would 'defund the police' because every now and then they shoot someone in egregious circumstances.
Just to be very clear on this – my argument has never been that the US were any good at being 'world policeman', but even their incompetent efforts at the task have on the whole delivered far more benefit than cost. On this basis my next proposition is – if the principle of global security is so beneficial even on such a flawed basis – what would it take to do the job properly?
You know that 'defunding the police' was about removing from them jobs for which they were demonstrably unsuited, eg mental healthcare by firearm, and paying better people to do those things?
Redlogix so reliably repeats the US "exceptionalist," line these days.
You wonder if his paycheck comes from the CIA?
Please, don’t accuse another Author and Moderator of this site of being a paid tool of anybody or anything. I’ve handed out long bans for this kind of shit and I don’t make exceptions. It doesn’t make for a strong debating point unless the identity of the commenter is publically known and they are publically known to be on a pay-list and even then it is almost always (!) just taking pot-shots at the person and not addressing the gist of their comment.
While it is possible to ban an author from commenting, it's rare and not over something like this. It also creates problems for them putting up posts and being able to comment on their own posts.
My view is that authors get to say what they like (within reason), but I agree that it would be good if KJT could dial back the ad hom stuff. Probably RL too (haven't been following closely, but there's obvious aggro between the two of them).
It sets a bad example that others who are not Authors are likely to follow, as does happen here and as such, it spoils the vibe and kills constructive debate.
It was a plea and a general warning to all, not a Moderation note. If necessary, we can take this to the back-end, yes? I might just get something off my chest there, anyway.
yes, I think back end is a good idea 👍
I chose to ignore this comment because I could not see anything constructive coming from responding to it.
It's one of those silly things we all say when commenting in the heat of the moment.
And very quickly poor communities at the pointy end of this demand to 'defund the police' realised that the very real reduction in security it entailed came at a cost to them.
By all means train and manage the police better to weed out those incapable of doing the job properly. and provide for far better mental health care. But it fairly quickly became obvious these good intentions were being used by radicals as a fig-leaf to dismantle policing altogether.
And while you and I can both imagine an ideal world of perfect people in which security is not required, absent that utopia ordinary people, usually the most vulnerable, are those who depend on the police most of all.
And by extension the same argument applies to nations.
Well said.
Several unpleasant direct interactions with police in my youth in both NZ and AUS, gave me a very dim view of them to say the least. That doesn't change the fact that society needs and always will need them.
Calls for defunding are 'baby with the bathwater'. Select your police men/women better. Train and support them better. Hell, even pay them better.
IMHO – Defunding arguments are technically similar to those used by the right to justify the offloading of state assets. The argument went that these publicly owned companies were run badly (often true). This morphed into public ownership causes mismanagement (not true), therefore they must be sold.
Agree also with the nation level angle. A void will always be filled by one of the global swinging dicks.
Have you managed to miss the point AGAIN? There are jobs the police should not be doing, and no amount of 'weeding out' will change that. It's almost as if you counter an argument by pretending it's something else. I'm sure that's not the case though.
He knows, he's been told, willful ignorance.
Just imagine if Hedges' turned his eyes to Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi royal family survives only because of their fealty to the USA and western interests, so why would he bother?
Because it's time to stop analysing easy targets.
The Saudi royal family is not an "easy target", going by what happened to Jamal Khashoggi.
Obviously.
That's why it's so much easier for Hedges' to take yet another hit at the United States, rather than do hard work.
Compared to any other major power the United States has an exceedingly open society and a heavily analysed military making it comparatively easy to examine the United States forever … which they obviously do … while criminal states in much more controlled societies just keep expanding underneath much scrutiny.
Check out Al Jazeera's critical stories of itself or its neighbours. Not.
The World Press Freedom Index shows which states tolerate any public dissent at all let alone serious book-length scrutiny.
https://rsf.org/en/ranking
Of those who are least free, China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Vietnam have massive militaries and will hunt any reporter down to death no problem.
Writing actual investigative journalism on nasty non-US states probably doesn't garner anywhere near as many lucrative clicks from convergence moonbats with a very blinkered worldview that just want the same old recycled polemic that strokes their confirmation bias.
More work, less reward, why bother?
A fair point for the selfish, but not much use for a rapidly darkening world in which the last proponents of an open society have zero supporters on either the left or the right.
@RedLogix
"my argument has never been that the US were any good at being 'world policeman', but even their incompetent efforts at the task have on the whole delivered far more benefit than cost"…..
I wonder how many times throughout the last 250 years a line just like that has been used to justify all the abuses of power, misery, death and suffering imposed by the unbridled greed, corruption and ego in the name of white western imperialism?….
But then if history has taught us nothing else about man, it has taught us that powerful men and nations will find the most creative, often outrageous cover and along with their willing enablers, use them to justify any and all acts of hubris, atrocity, villainy conducted in the name of their project…..which is why the saying (and title of a classic Killdozer LP)…’Intellectuals Are the Shoeshine Boys of the Ruling Elite ‘is as much a fact today as it has been throughout history, as they have always been one of the powers greatest enablers.
You demand the world should be full of perfect people like noble rescuers such as yourself, act outraged when it isn't, and turn me into the evil persecutor. Thus setting up a distracting drama and totally failing to address the actual comment.
It's a childish game,
@RedLogix
No, what is childish is your unwavering, dear I say it, fundementalist adherence to defending a pernicious regime that has inflicted pain and misery around the world to millions of humans…but because it isn’t in your backyard you tell us it is all but benign (the world's police force!)…a regime I will remind you, that has along with the UK been the primary reason why the gift of free energy has been completely thrown away, and they fucked the planet for future generations while they were at it, in 150 short years…don’t you get it Red Logix? The ideology you defend has blown it, completely and utterly….for all of us, and more importantly all our future generations ..so no, it is you who needs to grow up, grow some balls and take a look in the mirror.
Double down on the drama eh?
if this turns into a flame war, it's you who will end up banned. Maybe consider not taking the bait.
Even just one of US Imperialism’s very long list of unwarranted, illegal and unwanted (apart from the applicable ruling classes and toadies) interventions in other nations, is enough reason to put them in the naughty corner forever.
Lets take Chile in 1973…the ‘Chicago Boys’ dream, and in retrospect a demo version of neo liberalism to the extreme. A CIA assisted violent overthrow of an elected social democratic Govt. Horrific. No excuse. All boats were not floated.
Pinochet divided the long narrow country into 15 “economic zones”, and tortured and murdered thousands of decent people. I worked with the NZ Chilean exile community in 70s and had first hand accounts.
Is Kissinger too old to be waterboarded? nah…such crims should be pursued till the end.
Why is it that it's only ever the 'crimes' of US that concern you?
In 1973 the Cold War was still in full swing. You can only be incredibly grateful it remained 'cold' and never escalated to a direct confrontation with the Soviets. Yet on the peripheries it was as intense and brutal as any war.
The main answer I can think of to my rhetorical question above is that closet marxists such as yourself still haven't gotten over the fact that the US won.
The USA has not “won” a war since 1945! And it was a justifiable anti fascist war–now neo fascists walk the streets of America and stormed the Capitol on January 6. How the mighty have fallen.
US Imperialism and the US arms industry get involved in asymmetrical contests and end up getting their arse kicked again and again.
Wrong, Tiger. I have it on pretty reliable (American) authority, that they 'won' the war against Grenada in 1983.
Interesting you mention Grenada, I just looked it up yesterday for some reason and it all came back–New Jewel movement factions, Cuban construction workers fighting US marines on beaches–what a debacle.
Except that as we now see, the US hasn't "won" and as with the horrendous waste of time, effort, human life, environmental and social destruction in Afghanistan, all US interventions can now be truly seen as waste and a brake on human and environmental growth and potential. How can any sane person when confronted by the climate disaster that is now in front us talk up the type of US blindness of rape and pillage that produced this mess? Driven only by the profit on the bottom line or gdp? Well, now, if there is still time we may get a chance to see how much faster and equitably human potential can be delivered when the god given right to hoard multiple billions of capital for personal use is removed and returned to the productive base. This is the model that China offers. We can try it with NZ characteristics. The wonder is that their is still a world after being subjected to US imperial greed. Thankyou Joe Biden for admitting defeat and giving us some extra time to find a new direction.
I have noticed a significant effort among trumpetistas to lay blame for the Afghan fiasco on Biden – as if the fellow left to wind up a failed invasion can bear more responsibility than the clown who started a war with no exit strategy – W for worthless Bush. It was always going to end like this.
I guess they figure that, absent Biden, der schlumpenfurher is a shoe-in.
I don't know who the best candidate for US president might be, but Trump is almost certainly the worst one.
Thanks Ad.. you have to admire Hedges, immovable on his principles and fearless in his critiques of the powerful…which is why he is no longer New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief I guess.
Huh, is that why?
I had always been under the impression one of the major reasons he was no longer Middle East Bureau chief for the Times was that he failed to apply the simplest journalistic skepticism and fact checking when he passed on the Iraq WMD lies from the likes of Chalabi. Thereby helping the Shrub administration manufacture consent for the 2003 Iraq war under false pretences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hedges
Not to mention his long term intimate relationship with plagiarism.
https://newrepublic.com/article/118114/chris-hedges-pulitzer-winner-lefty-hero-plagiarist
Learn something every day.
So Hedges was a collaborator with the Bush regime, was he? That's almost as funny as your Russiagate posts over the last four years.
"Collaborator" is your word, not mine, and it's probably a bit harsh.
But Hedges was one of the few people actually in a position to have made a difference, had he applied even a modicum of skepticism and critical thinking and fact-checking. But he didn't. Not even a smidgen of those basic journalistic skills.
You'd think in the interim he might have recognised his failings and made an effort to sharpen his independent and critical thinking skills. But nah, it seems he's found it much easier to grift a living by continually recycling the same slightly reworked tired rants at the same tired uncritical audience that craves familiar repetition above all.
Deaths In Other Nations Since WW II Due To Us Interventions By James A. Lucas (countercurrents.org)
"The overall conclusion reached is that the United States most likely has been responsible since WWII for the deaths of between 20 and 30 million people in wars and conflicts scattered over the world".
A pretty Good attempt at beating the Nazi’s record.
Before we even get into the current deaths due to US saunctions, blockades and bombings, happening right now,
“Benefits were more than costs”.
Bullshit.
You are so predictable. You keep repeating the same idiotically selective claims over and over.
The irrefutable data shows that in the period since the end of WW2 due to an immense expansion of trade – only made possible because the US created and paid for the security and commercial infrastructure that enabled it – human populations have increased, life expectancy has lengthened and the quality of life for billions has expanded dramatically. Before WW2 most of the human race lived in absolute poverty – now its around 15% or less. Erasing that benefit to literally billions of the poorest people in the world as "bullshit" betrays your professed claim to care for them as very hollow indeed.
Easy to predict the long winded tirade of US exceptionalist BS from you.
At least you made it a bit shorter this time
At some point someone will run the alternative history of Europe and the developed world post WW2 as if the US hadn't stepped in.
If the US decides that it really doesn't care about the expansion of totalitarian regimes outside of the Western Hemisphere – and this is the direction it's heading in – then expect this experiment to get a run this decade.
"If the US decides that it really doesn't care about the expansion of totalitarian regimes outside of the Western Hemisphere "
Really, that is a bit childish….
List of authoritarian regimes supported by the United States
https://en.everybodywiki.com/List_of_authoritarian_regimes_supported_by_the_United_States
America’s 25 Most Awkward Allies
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/02/americas-most-awkward-allies-103889/
etc etc…got to go to work now…but you know as well as everyone here, that that list is long and sordid.
Unlike the compilers of those lists, the US had more pragmatic choices to make. As I said above – the intent of the Cold War was to control the politics and contain the Soviets.
If they ever had a longer term goal it was the not unreasonable hope that by engagement they could hope to influence these nations away from totalitarianism and toward more open, liberal societies. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn't. And even today of the 200 odd nations on earth, the number you'd actually want to live in if you had a choice barely exceeds 50 or so.
I'm not going to ask you if a 'pragmatic' 'engagement' like Albright made, one that caused the death of 500,000 children, was a price they had to pay to 'influence a nation away from totalitarianism and toward a more open, liberal society'. I think the answer might scare me. Be real. Everything the USA does, and has done is purely in the interest of money and power. To suggest the underlying reasons are out of the concern for the happiness of other humans beings, altruism … well, each to his own.
That is laughable.
The USA has replaced at least 40 and counting, progressive and democratic regimes with totalitarian ones.
Over 83 and counting deliberate ,"destabilisations.
The idea that the USA is a force for peace and stability is, on the evidence, comic
Sadly as far as the USA goes a few commentors here have adopted a '4 Legs good 2 Legs Bad' mentality waste of time engaging…
Some , "commentators on here" don't go around making excuses for murderous baby killing regimes, just because they are ," on our side".
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58380791
@RedLogix
"hope that by engagement they (The USA) could hope to influence these nations away from totalitarianism and toward more open, liberal societies."
So even though no actual facts support in any way your white man triumphalist fantasy story, in-fact the actual facts tells us your story is the opposite, and is nothing but pure fantasy…(some would say propaganda, but for propaganda to work it has to have a element of truth in it, which is why everyone knows the notion of the USA spreading democracy is bullshit)…but yet here you are, back yet again, straight faced telling us yet again to believe up is down, black is white.
[RL: Blatant race baiting. Take a week off.]
See moderation note above.
Geopolitics as cabaret.
But darlin' it's cold outside.
I really must go.
lol. Same here.
Unfortunately we seldom get to choose our overlords as they tend to impose themselves upon us. With the British Empire gone and the US hegemony fading one wonders who the next oppressor nation will be that steps into the vacuum ….
I suggest you listen to the old Tom Lehrer song about the rocket scientist Wernher von Braun.
In particular take note of the last line of the last verse.
"You too may be a big hero,
Once you've learned to count backwards to zero.
"In German oder English I know how to count down,
Und I'm learning Chinese!" says Wernher von Braun."
A multi polar world may be where we head to next , where there is no singular all powerful oppressor.Have we become so habituated to the neighbourhood bully we can no longer imagine a world without him?
Personally, I'm more worried by western oligarchs like Bezos, Branson, and Musk (Boggis ,Bunce and Bean) add Thiel,who with their immense wealth and power can drive, unchecked, technology and human aided evolution in ways that continue their power but are not in the best interests of humanity and the life humanity depends on
When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.
Not sure four or five bullies beating the weak to assert their dominance is better than one.
I thought for a moment, McFlock. that you were commenting upon the 'discussions' above at #4.
What happens when flicking through interminable squabbles trying to find the end.
Still the elephants have trumpeted, and the ants rejoice……….
Must be the threads with significant input from a contributor who I'm not allowed to reply to for fear of doom. No point in reading such threads. If there happens to be any accurate medical information or insightful geopolitical commentary, I'll have to pick it up from elsewhere.
I'm interested in Judith's insistence on vaccination targets. She wants a specific number – yesterday (I think) she was saying to Corin Dann that 70-75% will "give us options". She didn't say what those options might be, nor did she have any targets for what those options might produce, e.g. less than x excess deaths and less than y excess hospitalisations annually. She was not pressed on where she got the 70-75% number from. Was it from the Doherty Institute, a faithful echo of Scomo's 'plan', or simply an imitation of what the UK has actually done? Or based on something else?
This insistence on a hard number, yet total vagueness on what it might lead to, looks methodologically inconsistent. So it seems that what she's really after is an arbitrary target (preferably one that's not very high) because it will provide a justification for doing what National have always wanted to do – open up.
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10229022787053264&set=gm.3106590699573622
Cool cartoon
The insistence on hard numbers is so further down the line she might have the possibility of being deep and meaningful in the House.
"To the Prime Minister: Why did she say on the 14th of June there would 3,128,716 people vaccinated by November 21st and yet there are only 3,128,402 vaccinated? Did she deliberately mislead the House?"
The arbitrary target is the PM.
Collins needs to consider what the efficacy (effectiveness) is in the Pfizer vaccine before she counts her chickens.
120 cases in Victoria today. My guess is that Victoria will now throw in the towel like NSW.There goes the Oz bubble.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-news-live-nsw-victoria-and-act-covid-19-cases-continue-to-grow-more-pfizer-jabs-on-the-way-20210831-p58nku.html
….throwing in the towel...might be more of a case of accepting the inevitable.
UK and Europe looking at only testing people with symptoms. The vaccines offer 50% efficacy for Delta, although they do seem to prevent 90% hospitalisations. Vaccinated people still carry similar viral load as unvaccinated. Vaccinated will be offered booster shots. Herd immunity and elimination no longer feasible. Calls for greater emphasis on immune support and therapeutics.
And vaccinating children?
Dr Ruchi Sinha, consultant paediatrician, Imperial College Choosing not to vaccinate children would be unlikely to cause problems in the health service What matters is the burden of patient hospitalisation and actually there hasn't been as much with this delta variant They tend to be the children who have got their comorbidities, obesity, or severe neurological problems and those children are already considered for vaccination. Covid on its own in paediatrics is not the problem
So children under 12 are expendable Rosemary? You have to be kidding.
I think NZ should aim to vaccinate 95% of the population including children. Then we might contemplate gradually opening borders with strict conditions.
Who said children under 12 are expendable ?
Nowhere does anyone say that.
You're making shit up.
What would they know in the UK about this? You did listen and read, didn't you?
[Before you start accusing others of making up shit you must attend to the Moderation note for you here: https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-30-08-2021/#comment-1812340.
In addition, I have another Moderation note ready for you to your response to another Moderation note, which was lacking and mostly avoiding the note: https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-30-08-2021/#comment-1812409.
Are you going to do the mahi or take the ban? You are not in Pre-Moderation because I have no time to monitor it, so please don’t do anything stupid – Incognito]
See my Moderation note @ 2:06 pm.
Bearded Git…"So children under 12 are expendable Rosemary? "
My response to that was, appropriately, "Who said "children under 12 are expendable"?
…and answering my own question… "Nowhere (in the article clip linked to)does anyone say that."
Perhaps Bearded Git could answer my question?
[In no way did this address your Moderation. You are now in Pre-Moderation, so that I can deal with all your problematic existing and future comments. You’re taking way too much Moderation time by ignoring Moderation notes and keep adding more to it – Incognito]
He can, but you need to respond to Incog's moderation in the other thread or you will be banned. It's not a hard one to sort out, I've commented in the other convo that I think it's a matter of semantics and nuance in language.
A young friend visited shortly before Lockdown, and horrified that I had obviously not attended to basic laptop housekeeping, "cleared my cookies". I am sure he did me a good turn, but one consequence of this "cookie clearing" is that I no longer see the "Replies" button to the right of the page. (There are other inconveniences, but they;re not pertinent here.)
Gone it is, and has resisted all attempts to restore it.
This means that I have no idea if someone has replied to a comment of mine or not…unless I actively go looking.
I did spot the Mod note yesterday in passing and thought I had explained myself…but clearly not. I really don't have the time or inclination to go back and have another go. I don't think anything I write now would make any difference.
I don't 'make shit up'. I don't spread 'misinformation'. I do obviously have a different way of looking at things from the norm…and I refuse to blindly accept without question all that either the government or mainstream media decide is the 'truth'. I read very widely from news sources from all over the world.
With regards to Covid …TS has become largely an echo chamber and Bearded Git's "'So children under 12 are are expendable Rosemary?" is typical of the sort of response I seem to elicit. Responses that are clearly unwarranted and simply wrong…but that largely go unchallenged. I have come to expect these kind of responses now, and see The Standard as being an almost hostile place for any type of discussion about the issue that has dominated the past eighteen months of all of our lives. I guess the 'keep to your bubble' message has been taken a little too far.
[Letting this last one go through – Incognito]
Thanks for letting me know about the Replies tab, that's pretty important.
I also don't believe you make shit up or spread misinformation and I disagree with Incognito's characterisation of your comments. I've had other stuff going on lately so haven't been following the debate on TS, but I understand what you are saying here. There's a lot of tension around the pandemic stuff because it's so close to home (as opposed say to arguing about the US election).
I"m tending to let comments slide except where they're going to cause immediate problems or tip over into flaming. I did say something to BG, but the comment wasn't bad enough to get out the bold pen. I can see how this is a problem when there's a lot of active moderation happening elsewhere. Not sure what can be done about that atm.
If you get a ban, I will look forward to seeing you back in due course, I think your presence here is good for the community and your comments are often thought provoking. Maybe consider writing a post for TS? That would change the echo chamber a bit. Not sure if you have been writing elsewhere lately?
(If you reply here but are banned I will see your reply in the back end)
Thanks weka.
I reckons it is of huge importance that you continue to encourage and facilitate 'robust discussion' on sex self ID and the misrepresentation of 'gender conversion therapy'. There's an awful lot of rabbit hole stuff going on at the moment that demands we all suspend fact and reality and pass around the teacups at the party. Left unchallenged the long term effects are going to be considerable. Let not future generations ask why the fuck we didn't speak up.
Please keep up this work. I'll be lurking and checking.
I have a proposal for you, Rosemary, and I sincerely hope you’ll take it.
You are a valued contributor on this site and I acknowledge and respect that.
I intend to ban you for a while for your series of comments on Covid vaccination and wasting Moderator time. I also intend to reply to at least some of them, for the record only, no further response from you is desirable. However, if you agree to stay off this topic of Covid vaccination, for two months, you are free to continue commenting here, as far as I am concerned. That will reset the current Moderation of your comments.
It’ll require mutual trust.
Deal?
After clearing cookies, my experience has been that the Replies tab is automatically restored after the next time I make a comment. I guess logging in would have the same effect. @lprent can clarify.
That’s exactly what I said here: https://thestandard.org.nz/how-to-use-the-replies-and-search-tabs-on-this-site/#comment-1814184.
What utter bollocks!
Please stop your virtue signalling, playing the victim, and blaming others such as Bearded Git for your predicament, which is entirely of your own making. You are setting up a ‘nice’ drama triangle here [HT to RedLogix].
You are misinterpreting and misrepresenting a lot of things about Covid-19, particularly about vaccination. For example, see this from Brigid: https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-01-09-2021/#comment-1812893.
Discussion of Covid with you is an exercise in futility because of this and your strong negative bias.
If you really intend to not bother with the Moderation notes then I will go through your recent comments, for the record and clarification, and just ban you. It is up to you.
On 1 August, in Open Mike, Rosemary wrote [@12:25 pm]:
Claiming that "By definition it [the Pfizer vaccine] is not a vaccine." is clearly spreading misinformation. If the "Pfizer so-called vaccine" is "not a vaccine", then how to explain that "they do seem to prevent 90% hospitalisations" @7.1 [12:36 pm today] – that's some placebo effect!
If Rosemary genuinely believes the Pfizer vaccine is not a vaccine, then claiming such might not be disinformation, but it's certainly misinformation.
See My Moderation note @ 4:27 pm.
I also can't see where Rosemary said that, so please be more careful in how you frame your argument BG.
I think Rosemary misinterpreted the comment by Bearded Git. She’s a master at twisting other people’s words to feed her own bias and narrative.
If they throw the towel in only vaccinated people will enjoy some level of protection against the worst effects of Covid-19, as it stands. The vaccine has been approved in NZ for people of 12+, which means that children under 12 would be more likely to catch the virus, as indeed seems to be happening overseas in relatively highly vaccinated populations.
Bearded Git also said that he thinks that “NZ should aim to vaccinate 95% of the population including children.” [my emphasis]
IMO, Rosemary got the wrong end of the stick again and was barking up the wrong tree again. In fact, she did bring up “vaccinating children” in this thread @ 7.1 and stated her position on this again.
That doesn't explain anything though, other than your view.
Rosemary brought up the under 12 thing, didn't say much, dropped a quote and linked a video. I can't see how BG got from that that she thinks kids are expendable. Rosemary can't see it either. Where did she say or even imply that?
She's allowed to express a differing opinion, even if people don't like it. That's robust debate.
sigh
Children under 12 are not being vaccinated, so they go without the protection when we “throw in the towel”.
Rosemary seems to think this is fine. Bearded Git seems to think this is not fine and phrased this as “expendable”, like it or not.
I have already provided loads of examples of Rosemary twisting words and conclusions, so I don’t quite follow why you paint it as just my view!?
If we were are going to have a genuine debate about vaccinating children, here are some recent links from NZ to kick it off:
https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2021/07/28/dont-underestimate-covid-in-children.html
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/six-children-aged-under-one-have-covid-19-in-nz-bloomfield
Covid-19 is not just a flu and there is still much we do not know about it and its future variants. We have six babies aged under one who have Covid-19 in Aotearoa-New Zealand. Maybe that focusses the mind?
Lastly,
Sure, she is, but she was under Moderation and simply ignored it, consistently. She’s trying to weasel her way out of it, IMO, and I’m not having a bar of it. Let’s see what she says next, shall we?
@ Incognito
Children under 12 are not being vaccinated, so they go without the protection when we “throw in the towel”.
Rosemary seems to think this is fine. Bearded Git seems to think this is not fine and phrased this as “expendable”, like it or not.
Sometimes, incopnito, you slide from simple interference- running to outright fucking lying aggression.
Nowhere did I imply that kids under 12 years old were expendable.
I quoted a doctor. A paediatrician no less, and a consultant to the Imperial College. Who after looking at all the available information, and no doubt conferring with his peers arrived at the following…which I will provide again…because I try to be helpful like that.
Dr Ruchi Sinha, consultant paediatrician, Imperial College Choosing not to vaccinate children would be unlikely to cause problems in the health service What matters is the burden of patient hospitalisation and actually there hasn't been as much with this delta variant They tend to be the children who have got their comorbidities, obesity, or severe neurological problems and those children are already considered for vaccination. Covid on its own in paediatrics is not the problem.
I suggest you take it up with the doctor. After all…what would he know about it…the UK being so far behind NZ?
I get that moderating on a site like this has challenges, and I am also beginning to realise that these days it there is a very fine line between what weka calls 'robust debate' and what you and others here (and MSM and the government) call 'misinformation' or 'disinformation'. What was considered a valid opinion or even 'truth' two years ago can now find itself slapped with a label and a ban hammer.
Last year, when it was obvious that there was increasing control over what could and what could not be said about Covid…and I think perhaps it was about the hypothesis that Sars-CoV-2 was a product of a laboratory experiment…I remarked that free speech and the truth might be the most significant victims of this shit show in the long term. I fear I was right.
I'll bother you no more incognito. I'll enjoy casting an eye over TS from well outside the tent.
What is wrong with your reading comprehension?
I clearly stated that Bearded Git used the word “expendable”, not you!?
There was no “fucking lying aggression” in that at all; it is all in your mind and all yours, as usual.
If you’re not fine with not vaccinating children under 12 then you have a really funny way of expressing that.
Don’t hide behind a doctor, and why would I have to take it up with the doctor, as they didn’t comment even here, but you did. Own your own words, say what you mean and mean what you say.
You’re always so evasive when challenged.
'immune support' aka vaccination
There we go again with the 'all the eggs in the vaccine basket' theme.
Such a pity that our own Ministry of Health seems to have failed to keep up with the science. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166406/
Abstract
It is now clear that vitamin D has important roles in addition to its classic effects on calcium and bone homeostasis. As the vitamin D receptor is expressed on immune cells (B cells, T cells and antigen presenting cells) and these immunologic cells are all are capable of synthesizing the active vitamin D metabolite, vitamin D has the capability of acting in an autocrine manner in a local immunologic milieu. Vitamin D can modulate the innate and adaptive immune responses. Deficiency in vitamin D is associated with increased autoimmunity as well as an increased susceptibility to infection.
From what I can see..the Consensus Statement from the MOH page I linked to has failed to recognise the link between lower vitamin D levels and immune response. With specific reference to Maori and Pasifica peoples the Ministry's stance is/was that because the bone density in these populations is fine, and they are at no greater risk of fractures, then low Vitamin D or the ability to manufacture Vit D from sunlight (due to darker skin) is not an issue.
There has been numerous studies looking at the Vitamin D levels of Covid patients and suggestions that Vitamin D supplementation might be a useful tool in the box have been 'debunked' as being "crackpot". A pity.
Perhaps its time to look at which populations in NZ are at most risk from Covid…and maybe offer them some extra support.
[You’re going around here accusing others of making up shit and not listening and reading and here you are spinning your own BS narrative again.
In the factcheck.org link, it didn’t say at all what you asserted it said. In fact, it was almost the exact opposite!!! WTF!!! SSDD!!!
It could be a genuine misinterpretation on your behalf, but your claim is not true. All this would be less of a problem if weren’t for your confirmation bias and the seriousness of the topic.
I’m growing really tired of battling your false misguided narratives on all things Covid-19 and it has to end, one way or another – Incognito]
An airdrop of 2,000 tonnes of oranges over South Auckland.
raise benefit levels and minimum wage and take the GST off fresh produce.
(ignoring housing crisis elephant in the living room).
Not sure how that raises vaccine or COVID19 protection.
But hey more income to the poor is sure to help generally.
Raising living standards naturally gives one better immunity to viruses, bacteria, or any other greebly.
That's been known for ..oh about 120 years
You are saying that's been proven on a COVID19 population?
Would you like to join the band with Rosemary and the Reckons?
I don't know enough to say it gives better immunity as such (beyond lowering malnourishment rates in general), but I'd be interested to see transmission rates in more crowded homes vs UMC 2 rooms (not just bedrooms) per person homes.
Rosemary and the Reckons, and the WHO.
http://www.emro.who.int/nutrition/news/nutrition-advice-for-adults-during-the-covid-19-outbreak.html
yeah, the crowded housing seems a no brainer given what we know about overcrowding and other diseases, and delta's spread in households.
Even for people that want to ignore the role of nutrition and poverty in infectious diseases, there's still the issue of poverty and food poverty in how one might do things like socially distance, afford masks, afford to take time off work, afford to go to a doctor, afford to drive rather than take public transport and so on.
Edit
Gah!!
You’re not worth replying to.
"Not sure how that raises vaccine or COVID19 protection."
Why would it be an either or? Obviously it should be a both/and.
See my Moderation note @ 2:34 pm.
I used that particular article to demonstrate how mainstream media has addressed the issue of Vitamin D in relation to Covid.
A clue to the slant is the author choosing to use the "crackpot" quote from Frieden, knowing damn well that most folks read little other than the header and the opening paragraph. The author is setting the tone. They are a "factchecker" when all is said and done.
Yes, the author refers to studies that suggest Vitamin D might have uses beyond bone health and acknowledges there Vitamin D supports the immune system and might… tamp down overactive immune responses by tilting those responses toward less inflammatory ones, including by reducing the production of certain pro-inflammatory cytokines, or signaling proteins. (which would be of use with Covid) …then proceeds to cast doubt on any claim that Vitamin D supplementation just might be of use.
Lack of Evidence for Vitamin D and COVID-19
Because the coronavirus is so new, little rigorous research has been done specifically on vitamin D and COVID-19.
Now why on earth did the "factchecking" author feel it necessary to make such a statement?
Coronaviruses are not new. Coronaviruses require a response from our immune systems and Vitamin D has been found to be immune supportive.
Especially in immune modulation. (Which the author has already told us) Which, with this particular coronavirus, could be of considerable help.
And returning to New Zealand and our vulnerable Maori and Pasifika populations (with regard to vitamin D levels)…readers may be interested in this…
"Burden of Disease Associated with low Vitamin D status in New Zealand"
Scragg, Grey, Stewart et al" which specifically references Pasifika peoples.
They say that the 'sun safe' policies should not necessarily apply to Pasifka peoples due to their low rates of skin cancer and low levels of Vitamin D and high disease burden that could be related in part to said low Vitamin D levels. There are graphs and projections and the usual, and they close with a recommendation for clinical trials and perhaps revising sun exposure advice, vitamin D supplementation or fortification of foods to assist with reduction of all cause mortality.
A pity that this paper was apparently ignored by our own Ministry of Health, who seem to still be fixated on Vitamin D's sole use in the human body being for bone health.
Me? I'd immediately advise and fund Vitamin D supplements for all at risk groups in NZ…or at least carry out widespread Vitamin D levels testing. Immediately.
Vaccinating Auckland first, which is where Pacifica are concentrated, covers all those bases. Thankfully the government agrees and is prioritising vaccine accordingly.
From Rosemary's 'debunked' as being "crackpot" link [8 June 2021]:
"Pity" eh.
"There we go again with the 'all the eggs in the vaccine basket' theme."
I'd rather you didn't mis-interpret what I've written.
The vaccine offers immunity support. That is actually a fact.
I've not implied it is the only way to increase immunity.
Noted.
Vaccines prevent 90% of hospitalisations from Covid-19 infections? Sign me up!
Just kidding Rosemary – I'm already vaccinated.
Unite against COVID-19
https://covid19.govt.nz/
To be clear, once some NZers turn their backs on the Covid-19 elimination strategy that has undoubtedly saved many Kiwi lives, there's no going back. Since ‘Freedum Day’ in the UK there have been thousands of Covid-19 deaths.
NZ will get around to "living with covid-19" (straight out of the Plan B playbook) eventually – still, no hurry eh. I hope our govt will wait at least until the tragic global Covid death toll on Worldometers exceeds NZ's population, which with any luck won't be until November.
I believe Victoria are no longer pursuing an elimination strategy.
As I said above Jimmy, they have caved in. This from today's SMH:
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews says the state’s public health team changed its COVID-19 advice to the government in the past two days, making it clear “that we are not going to drive these numbers down, they are going to increase”.
“Now it’s up to us to make sure that they don’t increase too fast, and that they don’t increase too much relative to the number of people who are getting vaccinated every single day, every single week,” he said during Wednesday’s COVID-19 update.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-news-live-nsw-victoria-and-act-covid-19-cases-continue-to-grow-more-pfizer-jabs-on-the-way-20210831-p58nku.html
That is grim given the increased death and injury that will occur there.
Couldn't agree more Ad.
Great cartoon. Judith Collins seemingly has a tantrum or tendency to bully whenever she is challenged, whether it be from her own caucus or Breakfast tv. Fair enough to put her case, but she should be able to handle questioning with more composure. Not a person to respect at all.
When you think how our PM has handled Hosking over the last few years when he has harangued her, what a difference. I never listen to him, but pick up comments from people, so am interested if he gives Collins an easy time in comparison when he interviews her.
When Jacinda got the hard questions from Hosking that she couldn't answer, she decided not to go on the show any more. I guess that is one way to handle it. At least Hipkins and Robertson still turn up although they do get a grilling.
"When you think how our PM has handled Hosking over the last few years when he has harangued her, what a difference."
I suppose so. Are you suggesting that Judith should behave like Jacinda? Throw a hissy-fit and refuse to appear for an interview again?
The hissy-fits were entirely those thrown by Hosking. He was clearly incensed by Jacinda Ardern's seemingly effortless ascendancy over him.
Hosking was hissy fitting for weeks after it, I doubt Adern spared him a second thought.
I'm hearing Collins is having a blinder in the house today!
He threw a hissy-fit nearly every time she came on his dog of a programme. Her composure, and her constant cheerfulness, obviously rattled him; he never had the wit or the knowledge to challenge her.
Even Paul Henry seemed gracious and adroit compared to Hosking.
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-16092015/#comment-1071308
Yes.. Remember earlier on when Hosking tried to tell Jacinda that our frontier controls needed more 'subtleties and nuances' like the Australian controls? As I remember, she smiled and replied, "Mike, if you have become a person of subtleties and nuances – Bless!" Hilarious.
And I have yet to hear Hoskings defend his argument, given what has since transpired in NSW and Victoria. If we do beat Delta Covid in this round, surely Hosking has to offer an apology? (But does he have a memory capable of recording anything unfavourable to his current obsession? No evidence of that to date.)
God yes please.
Clearly Indira Stewart rattled the Judith this morning. Caught out in another lie.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/126249973/covid19-talofa-judith–collins-hasnt-been-in-touch-says-pasifika-church-community
With Algeria finally running out of the last of its supplies, the scourge of leaded petrol for road transport has finally been eliminated from the world, in a significant victory for public health.
https://grist.org/regulation/leaded-gasoline-lead-poisoning-united-nations/
But this barbaric substance is still widely and legally used in New Zealand, as far as I can tell. In piston engine airplanes. It doesn't need to be, lead-free avgas is completely technically feasible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avgas
The dates given in your link seem to be very old. Was this product really successful and is it in use today?
Z avgas low lead, available in NZ, still has some lead.
https://z.co.nz/keeping-business-on-the-move/fuels/aviation-fuel-2/
Gotta say, my old K75 goes better on the red petrol.
There are good reasons for not wanting the octane level raised with aromatics, instead of lead, when an engine failure means falling out of the sky.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-news-live-nsw-victoria-and-act-covid-19-cases-continue-to-grow-more-pfizer-jabs-on-the-way-20210831-p58nku.html
This from a letter in Oz found on the above link:
"Renewable power generation hit a record in August – 31.6% of all power generated in Australia was from wind, solar and hydro. Coal was down to 62%."
Such a triumph when coal-generated power is down to 62%-scary stuff. Still good to see renewables are increasing rapidly in Oz.
Does anyone else have concerns about the person inside the Ministry of Health, who is leaking daily case numbers to the NZ Herald? Is it just a National party supporter or is it corruption? Is the NZ Herald paying an insider for information? The right wing influence of Australian owned news media can be seen around the world. Anybody?
Just looks like good old fashioned daily back-channelling to me.
Beehive staff do it all the time: When the story is this repetetive and dull, you've got to keep the media sweet with fresh stuff.
Yes Nic I share your concern. If these numbers are being leaked for political purposes what else is being leaked? It stinks.
Since the State Sector Act and Reserve Bank Act etc. the public service top echelon seems loaded to the gunwales with fifth columnists by design–well paid neo libs happy to receive bloated salaries courtesy of the tax payer–while frustrating any minuscule move away from monetarist managerialism.
No? Well even the Deputy Prime Minister is frustrated enough to have set up an Implementation Unit. The informants seem all over Govt. Depts, Immigration being a classic leak source among many others.
MoH though is a special worry during a pandemic.
Implementation Unit has to do with policy implementation, not whether infection figures are released.
Hipkins' lead of the information flow is better than you would find anywhere else.
Is it actually a "leak", or simple liaison with the ministry?
Yes Minister used the line that "leaking" was an irregular verb: "I give confidential press briefings, you leak, they have been charged under S2A of the Official Secrets Act", but it's public information that isn't necessarily embargoed until a formal relase time.
Anyone here following the Canadian election? Trudeau who had a minority govt but could pass any legislation he wanted with help of labours sister party the NDP , the center left BQ or on rare occasions the Canadian conservative party. No party wanted to go to election and all parties especially the NDP had bent over backwards to pass legislation (and made some huge left wing amendments to liberal legislation) Trudeau who came second in the popular vote in the 2019 election but had a plurality of seats was polling well but only about 5% higher than the tory's called a snap election noone wanted in the middle of the fourth wave of a pandemic and with no platform other than attacking the other parties as boogie men is now consistent 2-6 % behind in the polls and it his party may not even be able to form a minority govt now.
The public are quite furious that he forced an election. His opponents all released platforms he hasn't, and the tory's have interesting policies like putting workers on the boards of companies and banning companies that receive govt money from laying off staff or giving executives bonuses. Trudeau is trying to make this pro choice moderate out to be a knuckle dragging fascist and it's not working, the guy doesn't seem to have a mean bone in his body
The NDP labours sister party are the most liked and trusted. Their green party is in a state if shambles that makes national look functional.
What's most interesting is they are all seriously debating and coming up with housing policies that make nz parties look like right wing free market zealots in comparison. Though interestingly they all seem to be wanting to ban foreign ownership which is fascinating because nzlp got hell for wanting to do that…
This election is keeping me occupied 🤣 I find it fascinating how often nz politics mirrors nz politics for the last two decades of they elect a Tory we elect a Tory in our next election 2006 can 2008 nz) if they elect a young progressive we elect a young progressive in our next election 2015, 2017)
The interesting thing is regardless of whether Trudeau wins a minority, majority or loses this seems to be his last election campaign he's distrusted by the left the right and the center , he's less popular than his party which he brought from the dead and they won't want him to run again if he wins a majority, if he wins a minority he'll have put the covid outbreak at risk and wasted billions on an election noone wanted for nothing and will likely be rolled and if the conservatives win well he'll be gone.
He may go down as the Theresa May of Canadian politics all because of his cynical arrogance to throw an election two years earlier, funnily enough I and many others thought he was once the template all center left leaders should run on but his charisma hasn't led to policy reforms or the transformation people wanted and expected and hoped for…
Stormy days are on the horizon eh
And while much has been made about the similarities between Ardern and Trudeau (and we borrowed quite a bit of their ideas especially messaging and social media for 2017) I believe apart from being young excellent media managers that's about where it ends. Trudeau is a trust fund baby who lacks substance and is a cringe machine with comments like "people-kind" "she-lection" "she-cession" who bombards the public with so social virtues he doesn't believe in and while his organization has run a good covid response his governing has been marred in quite serious corruption allegations and he isn't let's say a brain box the way his father or Ardern are he recently said "I don't think about monetary policy" , imagine the hell an nz candidate would get for that, Ardern is an afept administrator and while I have issues with policies and the pace of transformation she is not style over substance, she has both , Trudeau junior is all style and no substance.
He did however save his party's fortunes when it looked like the NDP had finally replaced the liberals as the main party of the opposition he was able to increase his party's seats from 34 to 184 in two years but governing is a hard job. He also has broken a million promises , he promised 2015 would be the last campaign under first passed the post and then won a landslide, ironically much like the UK if they had proportion the center left would always be in power.
Here's hoping for an NDP win or at the very least a strong NDP that can bargain or gain concessions from the liberals I hope proportional rep is one of them.
There's no point looking for anything redemptive for the left in the Canadian election.
The Conservatives will get the greatest share, the centre left will decline, and the wee minorities like the Greens will continue to consign themselves to the 1-2% dustbin of history.
The Liberals would need to team up with the New Democratic Party to have a shot at power. Not likely so far.
This fool needs to be thrown out of the Party, schnell.
It hardly matters, now that the Labour Party has been burned to the ground by its Blairite rump, but surely this fellow should be automatically excluded for being stupid enough to speak up for untermenschen six years ago. It's verboten for any British Labour Party member to speak up for them now…
https://twitter.com/trendylefty/status/1432705834925105157
Uk labour is dead in the water unless it can form some kind of progressive electorate seat alliance with the lib Dems and greens to not split the center to center left vote.
The agreement could be any labour govt institutes proportional rep but weirdly the labour party who would have governed in every election since the 70s with PR is dead against it they'd rather be a large opposition than a coalition govt.
Also the party that most wants PR the liberals are dead set against deals, coalitions and negations so I don't understand what they think they'll do in a PR system if they don't like compromise or coalitions or working with other parties
No need for any formal tie before election date.
Plenty of scope afterwards.
After 2 massive electoral losses, Keir Starmer can figure out what his predecessors didn't.
More foolish Middle Eastern donkeys like George Galloway will continue to seek to split the vote and turn Labour to rubble. Galloway came very close to killing Labour off in the Batley and Spen by-election just a month ago. Corbyn just made it worse in 2019 and worse until he let Boris Johnson in, such was his ineptitude.
Corbyn and Galloway have just ruined much of Labour's traditional vote in the north. Corbyn should just retire. Galloway is just a perpetual loser.
Personally i find much to admire about Corbyn AND Galloway .I enjoy Corbyns quiet dogged pursuit of his principles and Galloways steely resolve to right wrongs and injustices .To tell the truth im in the habit of going to bed and watching MOATS but i seldom last the whole three hours !
Hi Weston, I also hold both Corbyn and Galloway in high regard, what is MOATS please?
Evn Tony MOATS is the mother of all talk shows avail apparently on multiple platforms i watch it on you tube.Its up to episode 115 i think atm is broadcast every sun night from london so we get it the following day
Cheers Weston, I see it also plays on Sputnik News ..
One of the most important things Corbyn did while leader of the UK Labour, was to unwittingly expose without question which individuals and institutions who were/are actually Left Progressives and those who are (left leaning?) Liberal Centrists…two quite different things…I find the results of that unveiling very helpful indeed.
And btw, who is another last high profile politician you can name who has been regularly on the front line in food banks, marching in solidarity for Palestinian Human rights raise his voice over the treatment of Julian Assange?
When Corbyn was LOTO, this was just one of his and his team’s contributions delivered to food banks for Christmas
https://skwawkbox.org/2020/12/21/when-corbyn-was-loto-this-was-just-one-of-his-and-his-teams-contributions-delivered-to-food-banks-for-christmas/
Politics isn't therapy, witting or unwitting.
What Corbyn exposed was simply nothing more than himself. You either show you have the capacity to achieve and hold power, or you just don't. Hell even Milliband got closer to power than Corbyn.
Considering the forces of power amassed against him making damn sure he didnt come to power how could corbyn have brought about a different outcome ?Round the clock media attacks were only a part of the strategy .He was deliberately brought down imo by concerted effort on many fronts .Perhaps some of us can remember the antics of a certain pr company called Cosby and Texter and what they managed to achieve both in nz and aus fairly recently ?Add in an intelligence service or two maybe and his chances became slim indeed .
" Hell even Milliband got closer to power than Corbyn."…no he didn't, and he only got as far as he did because he was no threat to the status quo and power..
Critics must accept Jeremy Corbyn has created largest political party in Europe – and work with him
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/john-prescott-critics-must-accept-8626296
This is why he didn't get into power…..it's a simple as that.
Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn: Redistribute UK wealth, tax the rich
https://apnews.com/article/elections-london-international-news-jeremy-corbyn-general-elections-72b180c44ca67f73ce5d5ebe21269790
Backed by Corbyn, over 3,000 march for ‘free Palestine’ in London
https://www.timesofisrael.com/backed-by-corbyn-hundreds-march-for-free-palestine-in-london/
In the UK 2017 election, Corbyn led Labour to 262 seats. Against Theresa May.
In the UK 2019 election, Corbyn led Labour to 202 seats. A drop of 60. Against Boris Johnson.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Kingdom_general_elections#/media/File:UK_popular_vote.svg
Corbyn is an unfortunate historical blip of – as you point out – incoherent ideological noise – and has bequeathed to Keir Starmer a party in pretty average shape. They are still in the polls about where they were when Corbyn finished the election.
Nothing to do with the unrelenting white anting from within, of course!
Theresa May had worse from within and still won.
It really is Corbyn who lost for Labour.
Sure.
Jeremy Corbyn rattled the ruling class cage–no mistake there. Senior British Military figures openly threatened a coup if he was ever installed in 10 Downing St! His social democratic model and international solidarity outlook was way too much for the generals and British capital and finance capital.
Jeremy’s two key mistakes imo were…
1. not playing hardball with the underminers–he should have vigorously deselected right wing candidates, and made most of head office reapply for their jobs.
2. waffling on Brexit–all that was needed was to say…we will respect the vote of the people whichever way it goes AND implement “For the many not the few” policy of re-nationalisations etc.
Yes that would have helped in 2019.
What Corbyn exposed quite clearly in the UK (and to some extent, here) is that half the people we hear who identify as 'Left' of 'Progressive' etc, shit their pants when a actual live Left wing politician comes along and looks like they might actually get into a position to make the radical changes they thought they believed in…turns out most of them are not now and never will be on the side of radical progressive change, and when push comes to shove will actively work against it, as we have seen…Lenin got that one right!
A career portfolio manager's climate change predictions.
“Climate change is the next major mega-trend, and we believe it represents the biggest investment opportunity since the internet,” says portfolio manager at Munro Partners James Tsinidis.
“We’re just at the beginning of the next big S-curve, a massive and sustainable decades-long growth trend.”
https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/climate-change-biggest-investment-opportunity-since-the-internet-20210826-p58m4w
Agreed. Principled individuals in politics are rare. Craig Murray is another person whose current predicament hasn't caught the attention of many here.
https://twitter.com/craigmurrayorg
My open letter to Dr Ayesha Verrall on why the conversion practices prohibition legislation bill is such a terrible idea. It really is.
https://www.publicgood.org.nz/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Letter-to-Dr-Ayesha-Verrall.pdf