Another day, another Ode to Our Glorious Leader in the N̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶a̶l̶ ̶P̶a̶r̶t̶y̶ ̶B̶u̶l̶l̶e̶t̶i̶n̶s̶ NZ Herald and Stuff. Doig a dirty job for Obama and Big Corpo isn’t praiseworthy.
Yep, why pay to read National party propaganda – there are plenty of other news sources to get real opinion. I think he Herald purge of left wing commentators is not something I want to support in a main stream news paper. Pretty Nazi.
““What was TV3? First of all it was the underdog battler that went into receivership twice and somehow survived. It had a news programme that no one watched, but it just kept trying, and it put comedy on television, it put Westies on television in Outrageous Fortune, it put Polynesians on television in bro’Town, it did great comedy, and there were brilliant people taking great risks… It gave a professional platform for people to earn a living, and to show us ourselves, and to be good.
“And then along come some business people who think, ‘We’re going to stamp a template on it.’ But actually they’ve missed what TV3 stood for. TV3 had a connection with New Zealand that wasn’t simple, that did celebrate our ability to battle and get on with life, all of those good things we believe about ourselves, the can-do, the number-eight wire, all of that shit, with a lovely sprinkling of parody, of not taking ourselves too seriously.”
In my view the Herald has done a similar thing to TV3 management, they missed the readership of Herald and purged any slightly left leaning commentary to make it into a very right wing anti intellectual frivolous political party newspaper that is written around the whims of the 1% and can not be considered news anymore.
Why don’t you just read the Editorial. I’m sure it will make your little chest swell up with pride. All hail the Labour Party.
A plea to donate to the party that no-one apart from The Herald appears to want. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11548120
It’s a shame there isn’t a great deal of reality in the editorial but this is the Herald after all.
In Syria I learned that Islamic State longs to provoke retaliation. We should not fall into the trap.
As a proud Frenchman I am as distressed as anyone about the events in Paris. But I am not shocked or incredulous. I know Islamic State. I spent 10 months as an Isis hostage, and I know for sure that our pain, our grief, our hopes, our lives do not touch them. Theirs is a world apart…..
[lprent: The word here is “comment”. Posts refer to what authors say, comments are what commenters say. If you read the policy you will find that I and the other moderators tend to be rather direct about criticising our valuable authors.
While we make vague attempts to avoid accidentally inflicting fratricide on unwitting critics, we don’t go far out of our way to look at who they are criticising if it sounds like you are dissing an author. It is up to you to be precise enough to avoid accidentally getting banned. Since we read the comments backwards through time and without the context of a thread, I’d suggest that you provide the precise context inside your comment rather than referring to the post.
None of the flag designs proposed in this referendum reference our polynesian heritage, or wars which led to raupatu, dispossession, and consequences today.
All of them are ahistorical, products of PR committee compromise.
None are worth dying for.
The process is advertised as ‘binding’. By whom ? By what moral or legal right ?
Will there be a knock on the door by someone at 3 AM saying “you didn’t vote, mate” ?
John Key has invested a lot in this referendum.
Don’t do it.
Remember Wairau, Taranaki, Waitara, and the Waikato ..
Absolutely, I’m most dubious about Red Peak, that apparently looks like a tekoteko panel or the front of a meeting house. Both those things seem to have happened by accident, is there really any meaning there or is it just marketing. I would still prefer the current nz flag, it has a meaning although compromised, school kids get the meaning and it has some history.
Ditto Draco. Further helped in that decision by there not being any worthy designs, and because this referendum exists purely to support Key’s legacy project. All good reasons not vote. Would love to see the current flag gone, at the right time.
Wonder what the turn out will be part one of the referendum?
“Both those things seem to have happened by accident”
Cmon, it’s carefully designed and they have even explained the references. Not that I really care much until we see associated constitutional reforms discussed.
I strongly suspect that in many cases colours and shapes are chosen arbitrarily, and the “symbolism” is then bullshitted over the top according to whomever the audience of the sales pitch is going to be.
Personally I’m voting for the monkey butt flag first and then the current one. The first vote is because the flag most often represents the NZ govt (like at APEC or the UN), and the govt is full of arseholes, the second because I reckon that before we change the flag we should make the current flag less relevant by changing our head of state.
Interesting article in Stuff today about an Auckland University study that found that: “Children who were exposed to marijuana were almost 50 per cent better at a “global motion task” than those who had no exposure.”
It found alcohol has the opposite (negative) effect but that exposure to marijuana appears to cancel this out. One implication seems to be that people who drink while pregnant should also smoke marijuana.
The test involved a set of signal dots moving in one direction and another set of dots moving in random directions. An observer needed to be able to say which way the signal dots were moving.
The test involves specific brain areas which are most susceptible to development risk factors.
Also the scientist published their results and were subjected to peer review, which would suggest their research was able to be backed up and wasn’t pseudo anything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Reports
hmmm, i always thought that it was the drunks that shit or pissed themselves.
At least the drunks passed out in the gutters of Auckland after thrusday/friday/saturday beersies, look like they shit, pissed and vomited on themselves.
Never seen that on a stoner, they usually just have chocolate all over their face.
Public Citizen have posted their analysis on the TPP Investment Chapter.
Key points:
no new conflict interest rules
no cap on tribunal costs
only improvement- partial carve out of tobacco control
partial carve out indicates weakness of health/environmental clauses http://www.citizen.org/documents/analysis-tpp-investment-chapter-november-2015.pdf
Ther you go Tautoko Mangō Mata. Upset me.
A terrifying thing that TPPA. Safeguards in earlier leaked documents have been dropped. For example even if a Government won a dispute, it would still be liable for costs of the Tribunal. About $US8million.
A big document with very very worrying details even though it is written from the point of view of USA.
I’m going to do the full 3 hours from Glen Innes (in Auckland) but you can just join it in Orakei for the last hour. There are also marches in Christchurch and Wellington.
Thank God I Wasn’t There
No. 1: With Peta Mathias in Morocco
In part eight of ‘Sirocco’, Hicham (pron. Ee’-sham) and Latifa (La’ tee far’) take Peta Mathias and her photographer friend Anna up the coast towards Tangier, where eventually they will be staying.
We drove off toward Tangier, singing…”
I decided I would have some henna painting done on my legs, so immediately a girl was called in to do it.”
Those two extracts were about all I heard of it. I actually prefer her to some other celebrity cooks, such as Nigella Lawson, the execrable Ramsay and the preternaturally dull Peter Gordon.
Prof Lynnette Fergussen from Auckland Uni publicising recent worldwide research into cancer treatment.
” “In particular, many newer targeted therapies are extremely expensive, highly toxic and not effective for rare types of cancer and advanced cancers.”
“Even when they appear to work, a significant percentage of patients will experience a relapse after only a few months,” she says. “Typically advanced cancers are untreatable and relapses occur when small sub-populations of mutated cells become resistant to therapy. Doctors who try to address this problem with combinations of therapies find that therapeutic toxicity typically limits their ability to stop many cancers.”
“The taskforce also wanted to produce an approach to therapy that would have the potential to be very low cost, because many of the latest cancer therapies are deemed unaffordable in low-to-middle income countries.”
“Accordingly, the task force has laid the groundwork for a solution that should be both inexpensive and effective in making this novel approach available to people who are suffering from cancer throughout the world.”
The research is supposed to be available fro Elsevier as an open download…but I can’t find at present.
Putting on my tinfoil hat….this research and it’s overarching premise that cancers can be treated and managed inexpensively will make the Big Pharmaceutical Companies collectively shit themselves.
I am wondering if this research is being rightly promoted now….before the TPP is set in concrete.
The “Free full text” button isn’t working for me at the moment but might become available later.
Edit: nope, that looks like an older paper, though related. If you click on the first author’s name you also get a list of her other related papers. Interesting topic.
Many thanks for that. Can be a bit tricky for a mere interested person (rather than an academic attached to an institution) to download full texts of serious scientific research papers. Elsevier is a reputable publisher, yes(?), I have many papers published there on my hard drive…mostly to do with pesticide and cancer research.
Not all publishers provide open access papers but PubMed is the place to look first. PubMed essentially catalogues most published scientific papers in the biology sphere (open access and not), though judging by this paper they lag behind other outlets.
One possible way to get papers is to contact the authors directly – an email address for correspondence is often attached to each paper. Once upon a time authors would order reprints of papers that they would manually post out. Whether they would be willing or allowed to send out a PDF now for a pay-walled paper I don’t know. And hopefully they would be receptive to a non-expert who was showing interest.
Elsevier is one of the biggest scientific publishers, but beyond that my comments should be limited given that I do some work for them. They are also an overall company for a vast range of journals, each with their own editorial staff who make decisions on what is published. I’m pretty sure all their primary research papers will be peer-reviewed though, so it’s probably best to judge a paper on its own merits rather than on who published it.
I thought he’d said yesterday he wasn’t really comfortable with the idea but that he”didn’t know”, when asked if he’d accept a knighthood. Has he definitely said no now?
On this matter you can’t blame the police. They are duty bound to investigate such reports. Personally I think they should threaten to name and shame the clots. It might save them future embarrassment.
Moronic Pussy Riot-inspired Kool-Aid drinkers
manhandled after disrupting Islamic conference in France
by Justin Wm. Moyer, Washington Post, September 15, 2015
Members of a feminist protest group known for storming events topless has disrupted an Islamic conference in France and caught what appears to be a bit of a beating in the process.
Femen, founded in Ukraine, doesn’t have a huge reputation stateside. The group, the subject of a 2014 documentary, is known for its advocacy on behalf of Ukranian rape victims and ambushing Russian President Vladimir Putin — news that isn’t always news on the other side of the Atlantic. But the group’s provocative tactic — as the group’s Facebook page puts it: “Our God is a Woman! Our Mission is Protest! Our Weapon are bare breasts!” — keeps the group in the headlines from time to time.
Even right-wing media sites like Breitbart were impressed when two young women, sans shirts, took the stage last weekend at what was billed as a “Muslim salon” in Pontoise, France, a town just outside of Paris. The salon, as Buzzfeed reported, included a conversation about “Women’s valuation in Islam.”
In dramatic video that’s not exactly safe for work, the women take the lectern and start shouting in French: “Nobody enslaves me, nobody owns me, I’m my own prophet.” Messages written on their chests — a Femen trademark — offered similar messages.
“The two activists (both coming from Muslim families) [gave voice to] hundreds of women, feminists, and associations, all disgusted by this public hate speeches,” the group wrote on Facebook. “It was our duty to interrupt this enslavement event, and to let a scream of freedom be heard in the middle of their submission lessons.”
The women were quickly escorted offstage. But the escorting seemed to turn into a scuffle as a number of men began kicking the women once they were down.
A reporter for Buzzfeed France present at the event told the Washington Post that, at the time the women took the stage, the imams they interrupted were actually taking a moderate tone.
Yet, Perrotin said the protest fit into Femen’s anti-religious, anti-authoritarian message. Perrotin pointed out that they staged a similar protest at Notre Dame last year.
“It’s the logical fight of Femen,” Perrotin said. “They protest against all forms of misogyny … although some opponents accuse them of Islamophobia.”
Perrotin also said the use of force was unquestionable.
“Yes, it was pretty violent,” he said. “… I saw a Femen beaten by a man who did not belong to security.”
How credible is it that Obama and Turnbell have ‘accidentally’ been recorded having a conversation about Key describing him as a ‘role model’ and ‘ wonderful guy’ in the full glare of the media. This really stinks…
“It’s never appropriate to call cops ‘murderers’, particularly
when they risk their lives to protect us.”—Fox News pundit
Admittedly you do hear discussions of this calibre on NewstalkZB, especially when Blubberguts Slater and Larry “Lackwit” Williams are involved, but for sheer moronic intensity, Fox News is still the stupidest, the most offensive, the downright worst media outlet in the world….
Fox hosts slam Quentin Tarantino for protesting police violence
WTF is going on?
Besides the headline calling the aussie deportees’ flight “con air”, now the deportees were handcuffed by the NZ cops?
In a country where they had committed no crime, just to get off a fucking plane?
And this is after the minister reckoned the cuffs had been an aussy decision – so were they handcuffed by the aussies on the plane, and then the nz cops decided to handcuff innocent citizens, or was it just the nz police who made the call and the minister lied outright?
‘In the fight against ISIS, Russia ain’t taking no prisoners’
by Pepe Escobar
Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia.
Negative yesterday, negative today. Negative all year, according to one departing reader telling me I’ve grown strident and predictable. Fair enough. If it’s any help, every time I go to write about a certain topic that begins with C and ends with arrrrs, I do brace myself and ask: Again? Are ...
Bryce Edwards writes – It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support ...
Inspirational: The Family of Man is a glorious hymn to human equality, but, more than that, it is a clarion call to human freedom. Because equality, unleavened by liberty, is a broken piano, an unstrung harp; upon which the songs of fraternity will never be played.“Somebody must have been telling lies about ...
Tax Lawyer Barbara Edmonds vs Emperor Justinian I- Nolo Contendere: False historical explanations of pivotal events are very far from being inconsequential.WHEN BARBARA EDMONDS made reference to the Roman Empire, my ears pricked up. It is, lamentably, very rare to hear a politician admit to any kind of familiarity ...
It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support for the various parties in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Housing Minister Chris Bishop delivered news – packed with the ingredients to enflame political passions – worthy of supplanting Winston Peters in headline writers’ priorities. He popped up at the post-Cabinet press conference to promise a crackdown on unruly and antisocial state housing tenants. His ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The Reserve Bank is advertising for a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion advisor. The Bank has one mandate – to keep inflation between one and three percent. It has failed in that and is only slowly getting inflation back down to the upper limit. Will it ...
Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency Waka KotahiThe fact that a ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: Gavin Jacobson talks to Thomas Piketty 10 years on from Capital in the 21st CenturyThe SalvoLocal scoop: Green MP’s business being investigated over migrant exploitation claims StuffSteve KilgallonLocal deep-dive: The commercial contractors making money from School ...
It’s a home - but Kāinga Ora tenants accused of “abusing the privilege” may lose it. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Government announced a crackdown on Kāinga Ora tenants who were unruly and/or behind on their rent, with Housing Minister Chris Bishop saying a place in a state ...
This is a guest post by Connor Sharp of Surface Light Rail Light rail in Auckland: A way forward sooner than you think With the coup de grâce of Auckland Light Rail (ALR) earlier this year, and the shift of the government’s priorities to roads, roads, and more roads, it ...
Note: As a paid-up Webworm member, I’ve recorded this Webworm as a mini-podcast for you as well. Some of you said you liked this option - so I aim to provide it when I get a chance to record! Read more ...
TL;DR: In my ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Monday, March 18:IKEA is accused of planting big forests in New Zealand to green-wash; REDD-MonitorA City for People takes a well-deserved victory lap over Wellington’s pro-YIMBY District Plan votes; A City for PeopleSteven Anastasiou takes a close look at the sticky ...
Buzz from the Beehive Here’s hoping for a lively post-cabinet press conference when the PM and – perhaps – some of his ministers tell us what was discussed at their meeting today. Until then, Point of Order has precious little Beehive news to report after its latest monitoring of the ...
David Farrar writes – We now have almost all 2023 data in, which has allowed me to update my annual table of how labour went against its promises. This is basically their final report card. The promiseThe result Build 100,000 affordable homes over 10 ...
I’m a bit worried that I’ve started a previous newsletter with the words “just when you think they couldn’t get any worse…” Seems lately that I could begin pretty much every issue with that opening. Such is the nature of our coalition government that they seem to be outdoing each ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. ...
Depictions of Islam in Western popular culture have rarely been positive, even before 9/11. Five years on from the mosque shootings, this is one of the cultural headwinds that the Muslim community has to battle against. Whatever messages of tolerance and inclusion are offered in daylight, much of our culture ...
Last week Transport Minster Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre. The new train control centre will see teams from KiwiRail, Auckland Transport and Auckland One Rail working more closely together to improve train services across the city. The Auckland Rail Operations Centre in ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson said in an exit interview with Q+A yesterday the Government can and should sustain more debt to invest in infrastructure for future generations. Elsewhere in the news in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 6:36am: Read more ...
Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. It is more than just a happy ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to March 18 include:China’s Foreign Minister visiting Wellington today;A post-cabinet news conference this afternoon; the resumption of Parliament on Tuesday for two weeks before Easter;retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson gives his valedictory speech in Parliament; ...
New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters’s state-of-the-nation speech on Sunday was really a state-of-Winston-First speech. He barely mentioned any of the Government’s key policies and could not even wholly endorse its signature income tax cuts. Instead, he rehearsed all of his complaints about the Ardern Government, including an extraordinary claim ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
“I’ve been internalising a really complicated situation in my head.”When they kept telling us we should wait until we get to know him, were they taking the piss? Was it a case of, if you think this is bad, wait till you get to know the real Christopher, after the ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
.“$10 and a target that bleeds” - Bleeding Targets for Under $10!.Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.This government appears hell-bent on either scrapping life-saving legislation or reintroducing things that - frustrated critics insist - will be dangerous and likely ...
“It hardly strikes me as fair to criticise a government for doing exactly what it said it was going to do. For actually keeping its promises.”THUNDER WAS PLAYING TAG with lightning flashes amongst the distant peaks. Its rolling cadences interrupted by the here-I-come-here-I-go Doppler effect of the occasional passing car. ...
Subversive & Disruptive Technologies: Just as happened with that other great regulator of the masses, the Medieval Church, the advent of a new and hard-to-control technology – the Internet – is weakening the ties that bind. Then, and now, those who enjoy a monopoly on the dissemination of lies, cannot and will ...
Been Here Before: To find the precedents for what this Coalition Government is proposing, it is necessary to return to the “glory days” of Muldoonism.THE COALITION GOVERNMENT has celebrated its first 100 days in office by checking-off the last of its listed commitments. It remains, however, an angry government. It ...
Bob Edlin writes – And what is the world watching today…? The email newsletter from Associated Press which landed in our mailbox early this morning advised: In the news today: The father of a school shooter has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter; prosecutors in Trump’s hush-money case ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is another Green MP on their way out? And are the Greens severely tarnished by another integrity scandal? For the second time in three months, the Green Party has secretly suspended an MP over integrity issues. Mystery is surrounding the party’s decision to ...
For the last few years, the Green Party has been the party that has managed to avoid the plague of multiple scandals that have beleaguered other political parties. It appears that their luck has run out with a second scandal which, unfortunately for them, coincided with Golraz Ghahraman, the focus ...
TL;DR: The six newsey things that stood out to me as of 6:46am on Saturday, March 16.Andy Foster has accidentally allowed a Labour/Green amendment to cut road user chargers for plug-in hybrid vehicles, which the Government might accept; NZ HeraldThomas CoughlanSimeon Brown has rejected a plea from Westport ...
What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions.I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on the financial system as a whole. Fortunately there was barely a ripple, probably because it ...
Anybody following the situation in Ukraine and Russia would probably have been amused by a recent Tweet on X NATO seems to be putting in an awful lot of effort to influence what is, at least according to them, a sham election in an autocracy.When do the Ukrainians go to ...
TL;DR:Shaun Baker on Wynyard Quarter's transformation. Magdalene Taylor on the problem with smart phones. How private equity are now all over reinsurance. Dylan Cleaver on rugby and CTE. Emily Atkin on ‘Big Meat’ looking like ‘Big Oil’.Bernard’s six-stack of substacks at 6pm on March 15Photo by Jeppe Hove Jensen ...
Buzz from the Beehive Finance Minister Nicola Willis had plenty to say when addressing the Auckland Business Chamber on the economic growth that (she tells us) is flagging more than we thought. But the government intends to put new life into it: We want our country to be a ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee has reported back on the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill, basicly rubberstamping it. While there was widespread support among submitters for the principle that EV and PHEV drivers should pay their fair share for the roads, they also overwhelmingly disagreed with ...
Peter Dunne writes – This week’s government bailout – the fifth in the last eighteen months – of the financially troubled Ruapehu Alpine Lifts company would have pleased many in the central North Island ski industry. The government’s stated rationale for the $7 million funding was that it ...
See if you can spot the difference. An Iranian born female MP from a progressive party is accused of serial shoplifting. Her name is leaked to the media, which goes into a pack frenzy even before the Police launch an … Continue reading → ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The government is omitting general Treaty references from legislation : The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last Government in a bid to get greater coherence in the public service on Treaty ...
What was that judge thinking?Peter Williams writes – That Golriz Ghahraman and District Court Judge Maria Pecotic were once lawyer colleagues is incontrovertible. There is published evidence that they took at least one case to the Court of Appeal together. There was a report on ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Climate Scorpion – the sting is in the tail. Introducing planetary solvency. A paper via the University of Exeter’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.Local scoop:Kāinga Ora starts pulling out of its Auckland projects and selling land RNZ ...
Wellington’s massively upzoned District Plan adds the opportunity for tens of thousands of new homes not just in the central city (such as these Webb St new builds) but also close to the CBD and public transport links. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Wellington gave itself the chance of ...
It’s Friday and we’re halfway through March Madness. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday Matt asked how we can get better event trains and an option for grade separating Morningside Dr. On Tuesday Matt looked into ...
Something you might not know about me is that I’m quite a stubborn person. No, really. I don’t much care for criticism I think’s unfair or that I disagree with. Few of us do I suppose.Back when I was a drinker I’d sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. There are things ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:PM Christopher Luxon said the reversal of interest deductibility for landlords was done to help renters, who ...
It was not so much the Labour Party but really the Chris Hipkins party yesterday at Labour’s caucus retreat in Martinborough. The former Prime Minister was more or less consistent on wealth tax, which he was at best equivocal about, and social insurance, which he was not willing to revisit. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveThe text reproduced above appears on a page which records all the media statements and speeches posted on the government’s official website by Melissa Lee as Minister of Media and Communications and/or by Jenny Marcroft, her Parliamentary Under-secretary. It can be quickly analysed ...
For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is the new government reducing tax on rental properties to benefit landlords or to cut the cost of rents? That’s the big question this week, after Associate Finance Minister David Seymour announced on Sunday that the Government would be reversing the Labour Government’s removal ...
Saudi Arabia is rarely far from the international spotlight. The war in Gaza has brought new scrutiny to Saudi plans to normalise relations with Israel, while the fifth anniversary of the controversial killing of Jamal Khashoggi was marked shortly before the war began on October 7. And as the home ...
Questions need to be asked on both sides of the worldPeter Williams writes – The NRL Judiciary hands down an eight week suspension to Sydney Roosters forward Spencer Leniu , an Auckland-born Samoan, after he calls Ezra Mam, Sydney-orn but of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
Ele Ludemann writes – Contrary to what many headlines and news stories are saying, residential landlords are not getting a tax break. The government is simply restoring to them the tax deductibility of interest they had until the previous government removed it. There is no logical reason ...
I can't remember when it was goodMoments of happiness in bloomMaybe I just misunderstoodAll of the love we left behindWatching our flashbacks intertwineMemories I will never findIn spite of whatever you becomeForget that reckless thing turned onI think our lives have just begunI think our lives have just begunDoes anyone ...
Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
Every year, in the Budget, Parliament forks out money to government agencies to do certain things. And every year, as part of the annual review cycle, those agencies are meant to report on whether they have done the things Parliament gave them that money for. Agencies which consistently fail to ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – Recent events in American universities point to an underlying crisis of coherent thinking, an issue that increasingly affects the progressive left across the Western world. This of course is nothing new as anyone who can either remember or has read of the late ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
The government’s attack on Māori health this week is committing tangata-whenua to a premature death, says Te Pāti Māori. “The government have begun their onslaught on Māori health with the abolishment of the Māori Health Authority and smokefree laws in the same day” said health spokesperson and co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
This year’s Pacific Language Weeks celebrate regional unity and the contribution of Pacific communities to New Zealand culture, says Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti. Dr Reti announced dates for the 2024 Pacific Language Weeks during a visit to the Pasifika festival in Auckland today and says there’s so ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Curran, Associate Professor of Ecology, Lincoln University, New Zealand Getty Images/Gerald Corsi In the latest move to reform environmental laws in New Zealand, the coalition government has introduced a bill to fast-track consenting processes for projects deemed to ...
Uber has argued it does not have as much control over drivers as the unions suggest, and wants a judgment ruling that drivers are employees and not contractors set aside and sent back to the Employment Court. The 2022 ruling followed a three-week hearing in which four drivers sought to ...
What can and can’t be purchased by disabled people or their carers has been slashed in an effort by the Ministry of Disabled People Whaikaha to save money. The purchasing guidelines, a set of rules that sets out what can be purchased using the various streams of Government disability funding, ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Tod Wright and Hien Nguyen, Fiscal incidence in New Zealand: The effects of taxes and benefits on household incomes in tax year 2018/19 . Analyses of the distributional impact of taxation and government ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Cory Davis, Boston Hart and Benjamin Stubbing, Household cost-of-living impacts from the Emissions Trading Scheme and using transfers to mitigate regressive outcomes . This Analytical Note ...
A coalition of public transport and climate organisations, united as ‘Transport for All’, is actively opposing the government’s transport proposals. The draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) includes plans for higher fares for public transport, ...
Greater Wellington is inviting feedback on proposed changes to its Revenue and Financing Policy. The Revenue and Financing Policy covers the Council’s various sources of funding, and how the cost of services is shared across the region. This includes ...
Labour has conceded it could have done more to deal with disruptive state housing tenants while in government but says the current coalition is going too far. ...
The band has asked their record label to issue a cease and desist to stop the NZ First leader using their 1997 hit to support his ‘misguided political views’. “I get knocked down, but I get up again,” blared through the speakers on Sunday as Winston Peters took the stage ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Food rationing is underway in remote areas in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands following torrential rain and flash flooding. More than 20 people have been reported dead in Chimbu Province. In nearby Enga Province, the centre of last month’s massacre, a 15-year-old boy has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Hughes, Lecturer, Research School of Management, Australian National University After months of debate and intrigue, the AFL’s 19th and newest team, the Tasmania Devils, finally launched its jumper, logo and colours in Devonport this week. The Devils will wear green, ...
Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the debut novel by Saraid de Silva.One of the most baffling things for children who move to a new country is what their parents’ (or grandparents’) lives were like prior to moving – for kids in particular, they’re too busy trying to fit in in their ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Gaunson, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, RMIT University Narelle Portanier/Binge “If you don’t know who your mob are, you don’t know who you are,” Detective Andrea “Andie” Whitford (played by Leah Purcell) is told early into the new crime ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Klein, Associate professor, Australian National University It’s commonly accepted that women do the vast majority of caregiving in Australian society. But less appreciated is that Indigenous women do larger amounts of unpaid care than any other group. Working with the Aboriginal ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both secured their parties’ nominations for the November 5 United States general election by winning a ...
Comment: There has been a striking contrast in trans-Tasman interest about Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Zealand and Australia. While the Australian press has been full of articles about the visit – including his curious decision to meet with former prime minister and China booster Paul Keating ...
After years of pressuring banks and other institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels, climate campaigners are making some progress. So how does divestment work?For years, climate activists have been pushing banks and other big institutions to divest from fossil fuels. New research from climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. The three young Polynesians are part of a K-pop fan community in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s one of many that have sprung up worldwide as K-pop has gone ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. This one-off documentary presents three intimate portraits of young Polynesians who are pulled into a Korean cultural phenomenon. K-POLYS is directed by Litia Tuiburelevu, Produced by Hex ...
There’s ample evidence demonstrating free school lunch programmes provide wide benefits across schools, households and communities according to public health researchers. ACT Minister David Seymour wants to reduce the spending on Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
By Wata Shaw in Suva Fiji is facing an exodus of Fijians as many are leaving for overseas seeking employment and education and others are migrating, says Opposition MP Viliame Naupoto. Speaking in Parliament, he said: “His Excellency’s speech (Ratu Wiliame Katonivere) comes after a little over one year of ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming comments from Christopher Luxon this morning recommitting to ‘no new taxes’ as part of Budget 2024. “Mr Luxon’s refusal at the Post-Cabinet press conference yesterday to repeat the ‘no new taxes’ promise ...
SAFE is urgently calling on the Environment Committee to reject the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill, and is urging New Zealanders to rally behind the call. The proposed Bill, currently under consideration with the Environment select committee, ...
Teammates who spend all their time picking fights with spectators are only helpful for the other team, writes Madeleine Chapman. Anyone who has ever played a team sport competitively, particularly as a child and particularly, for some reason, basketball, will know that there’s a lot of politics involved. While there ...
The long-running Wellington music festival is too focused on the Jim Beam-ness and not enough on the Homegrown-ness.There is something about Homegrown that’s difficult to place. A barely perceptible-ness. Like feeling a ghost is watching you from the corner of the room but when you look, there’s nothing there. ...
The latest Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor reveals that fewer New Zealanders believe crime / law and order is one of the top issues facing our country. In 2018, Ipsos New Zealand started tracking the key issues facing New Zealand. In this wave ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Deputy Program Director, Budgets and Government, Grattan Institute Australia’s political donations rules are woefully inadequate, but donations reform is finally on the agenda. The federal government has signalled its interest in reform and will soon begin briefing MPs on its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University Naiyana Somchitkaeo/Shutterstock A recent study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has linked microplastics with risk to human health. The study ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University Global climate records were shattered in 2023, from air and sea temperatures to sea-level rise and sea-ice extent. Scores of countries recorded their hottest year ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a teacher explains why he and his partner are in frugal mode – and how they’re making it work. Gender: Male Age: 35Ethnicity: Pākehā Role: I am an intermediate school teacher and my partner is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Bendall, Senior Lecturer, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University Binge Mary & George, the new British television drama series, depicts the real-life story of Mary Villiers and her son George, and their social climbing at the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Nassios, Associate Professor, Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University This article is part of The Conversation’s series examining the housing crisis. Read the other articles in the series here. Australian state and federal governments spend money in many ways to ...
The finance minister is denying that there’s a $5.6b shortfall in paying for the government’s campaign promises, including tax cuts. At his post-cabinet press conference yesterday, the PM refused to rule out new taxes to pay for the cuts, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s ...
Kāinga Ora tenants abused by their neighbours are doubting the government's crackdown on disruptive tenants will make a difference on their behaviour. ...
Kāinga Ora is New Zealand’s biggest residential landlord, housing more than 180,000 vulnerable people in more than 67,000 properties. Yesterday the government announced a crackdown on its tenants who fall behind on rent. One longtime Kāinga Ora tenant shares her experience.For 18 years I lived in a 1960s standalone ...
Why does this myth persist, and what’s the real reason our skin is suffering?It’s one of the biggest international grievances New Zealanders hold, up there with the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and 1981’s underarm incident. We’re quick to tell international travellers that the world’s pollution led to the ...
Opinion: In a move that has shocked road safety advocates across the country, the new Minister of Transport, Simeon Brown, is poised to abandon the previous government’s speed limit reduction policy, particularly around schools. Even more alarmingly, he wants school speed limits to be variable rather than full-time, arguing ...
Auckland Council is opposing a fast-track development backed by Sir John Kirwan and Spark NZ, because it doesn’t meet stringent new climate adaptation requirements The post Surf-data centre faces new 3.8C climate warming rules appeared first on Newsroom. ...
When the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act was introduced in 2009 it was firmly targeted at gangs and drugs. The legislation means police no longer need a conviction to seize assets that criminals can’t prove were paid for legitimately, as long as their alleged offences are punishable by more than a ...
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Bob’s relationship with certain members of Lincoln’s academic staff continued to deteriorate in the 1990s. Others supported him publicly, though articles such as Roland Clark’s 1993 piece in Growing Today cannot have pleased the university management. Clark wrote that Bob was selling onions from the Biological Husbandry Unit to a ...
SailGP’s races feature in-your-face action, with agile, hydro-foiling catamarans tacking and jibing for the title over several days. However, public comments ahead of the global series’ return to New Zealand have left this past year’s controversy in the shadows, as a key appointment attracts criticism from dolphin advocates. A year ...
Opinion: We are fast approaching a fundamental change in prisons. As the number of people on custodial remand looks set to overtake the number of sentenced prisoners, the main function of prisons in New Zealand may become incarcerating un-sentenced people who may not be guilty of offending. We have already ...
A huge seven months lies in store for the White Ferns, beginning this week with the visit of England and culminating with the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh in September and October. Starting on Tuesday in Dunedin, the world ranked No. 2 visitors will play five T20s and three ODIs, ...
The letters, which were published last week, were addressed to Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) Chairperson Megawati Sukarnoputri, National Democrat Party (NasDem) Chairperson Surya Paloh, National Awakening Party (PKB) Chairperson Muhaimin Iskandar, Justice and Prosperity Party (PKS) President Ahmad Syaikhu and United Development Party (PPP) Chairperson Muhammad Mardiono. In ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
The government says it still intends to deliver tax cuts by July, but will not lock them in until they have got them past their coalition partners. ...
Kiingi Tuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII has hosted members of the Green Party Caucus at Tuurangawaewae Marae in Ngaaruawahia. The audience follows the King’s Hui-aa-Motu on 20 January, where more than 10,000 people gathered to discuss national ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr Rachael Potter, Research Associate and Lecturer in Work and Organisational Psychology, University of South Australia Ground Picture/Shutterstock Pregnant women and workers with children are often unfairly treated by their bosses and colleagues, despite laws to protect against workplace discrimination ...
Reacting to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s refusal to rule out introducing new taxes at the budget, Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns Manager, Connor Molloy, said: “Today’s refusal to rule out new taxes suggests the Government is nothing more ...
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 Aila Images/Shutterstock Aged-care workers will receive a significant pay increase after the Fair Work Commission ruled they ...
He’s bringing ‘Sophie’ back, yeah. Goodshirt’s ‘Sophie’ music video is one of the most instantly recognisable New Zealand music videos of all time. Featuring a woman listening to the song on headphones while her entire house is burgled behind her, the video won the New Zealand music award for Best ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Blaxland, Professor, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University A year ago, the AUKUS agreement was formally announced between Australian and UK Prime Ministers Anthony Albanese and Rishi Sunak and US President Joe Biden. The agreement mapped out the “optimal ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andreas Helwig, Associate Professor, Electro-Mechanical Engineering, University of Southern Queensland SmartS/Shutterstock Steam locomotives clattering along railway tracks. Paddle steamers churning down the Murray. Dreadnought battleships powered by steam engines. Many of us think the age of steam has ended. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carrie Leonetti, Associate Professor of Law, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau Victims who experience family violence in Aotearoa New Zealand are treated differently, depending on which part of the justice system they turn to for help. But a new member’s bill ...
Another day, another Ode to Our Glorious Leader in the N̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶a̶l̶ ̶P̶a̶r̶t̶y̶ ̶B̶u̶l̶l̶e̶t̶i̶n̶s̶ NZ Herald and Stuff. Doig a dirty job for Obama and Big Corpo isn’t praiseworthy.
Don’t read that crap. The Guardian, Scoop, https://dimpost.wordpress.com, https://dimpost.wordpress.com, http://thedailyblog.co.nz… others might know other sites to read instead of Herald and Stuff…
Indeed – best to only read news and commentary that you agree with huh?
Yep, why pay to read National party propaganda – there are plenty of other news sources to get real opinion. I think he Herald purge of left wing commentators is not something I want to support in a main stream news paper. Pretty Nazi.
In fact it reminds me of what new management at TV3 did.
This is a quote from John Campbell/Metro interview
http://www.metromag.co.nz/current-affairs/john-campbell-after-the-fall/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=John%20Campbell
““What was TV3? First of all it was the underdog battler that went into receivership twice and somehow survived. It had a news programme that no one watched, but it just kept trying, and it put comedy on television, it put Westies on television in Outrageous Fortune, it put Polynesians on television in bro’Town, it did great comedy, and there were brilliant people taking great risks… It gave a professional platform for people to earn a living, and to show us ourselves, and to be good.
“And then along come some business people who think, ‘We’re going to stamp a template on it.’ But actually they’ve missed what TV3 stood for. TV3 had a connection with New Zealand that wasn’t simple, that did celebrate our ability to battle and get on with life, all of those good things we believe about ourselves, the can-do, the number-eight wire, all of that shit, with a lovely sprinkling of parody, of not taking ourselves too seriously.”
In my view the Herald has done a similar thing to TV3 management, they missed the readership of Herald and purged any slightly left leaning commentary to make it into a very right wing anti intellectual frivolous political party newspaper that is written around the whims of the 1% and can not be considered news anymore.
Why don’t you just read the Editorial. I’m sure it will make your little chest swell up with pride. All hail the Labour Party.
A plea to donate to the party that no-one apart from The Herald appears to want.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11548120
It’s a shame there isn’t a great deal of reality in the editorial but this is the Herald after all.
What job is he doing for Obama and this big corpo chap you speak of ?
Running around trying to push TPP all over the Pacific rim and down our throats?
In Syria I learned that Islamic State longs to provoke retaliation. We should not fall into the trap.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/16/isis-bombs-hostage-syria-islamic-state-paris-attacks
[lprent: as the caustic replies to your comment say, You should learn to quote to separate what you say from what some else said ]
You should put quotes around something you lift from the internet. For a moment I thought you had something interesting to say.
[lprent: agreed. Thanks for the heads up. ]
Agreed. Mods should edit that post.
[lprent: The word here is “comment”. Posts refer to what authors say, comments are what commenters say. If you read the policy you will find that I and the other moderators tend to be rather direct about criticising our valuable authors.
While we make vague attempts to avoid accidentally inflicting fratricide on unwitting critics, we don’t go far out of our way to look at who they are criticising if it sounds like you are dissing an author. It is up to you to be precise enough to avoid accidentally getting banned. Since we read the comments backwards through time and without the context of a thread, I’d suggest that you provide the precise context inside your comment rather than referring to the post.
Be safe, be precise.
But thanks for the heads up. ]
None of the flag designs proposed in this referendum reference our polynesian heritage, or wars which led to raupatu, dispossession, and consequences today.
All of them are ahistorical, products of PR committee compromise.
None are worth dying for.
The process is advertised as ‘binding’. By whom ? By what moral or legal right ?
Will there be a knock on the door by someone at 3 AM saying “you didn’t vote, mate” ?
John Key has invested a lot in this referendum.
Don’t do it.
Remember Wairau, Taranaki, Waitara, and the Waikato ..
Remember Titokowaru, remember Te Kooti ..
Absolutely, I’m most dubious about Red Peak, that apparently looks like a tekoteko panel or the front of a meeting house. Both those things seem to have happened by accident, is there really any meaning there or is it just marketing. I would still prefer the current nz flag, it has a meaning although compromised, school kids get the meaning and it has some history.
The only meaning our present flag has is that it shows that we’re still a colony of Britain rather than an independent nation.
No, I won’t be voting to change the flag but that’s because we haven’t yet made the transition to being a republic.
Good point. And even if we had become a republic I’d rather have the current flag than one of these logos as our new national flag.
Ditto Draco. Further helped in that decision by there not being any worthy designs, and because this referendum exists purely to support Key’s legacy project. All good reasons not vote. Would love to see the current flag gone, at the right time.
Wonder what the turn out will be part one of the referendum?
Under 40%
*tukutuku
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tukutuku
Thanks, that’s what I mean.
“Both those things seem to have happened by accident”
Cmon, it’s carefully designed and they have even explained the references. Not that I really care much until we see associated constitutional reforms discussed.
So the symbolism in a flag has to be blindingly obvious to you maui?
It’s all there in the colours and the shapes.
lol flags are a bit like art or architecture.
I strongly suspect that in many cases colours and shapes are chosen arbitrarily, and the “symbolism” is then bullshitted over the top according to whomever the audience of the sales pitch is going to be.
Personally I’m voting for the monkey butt flag first and then the current one. The first vote is because the flag most often represents the NZ govt (like at APEC or the UN), and the govt is full of arseholes, the second because I reckon that before we change the flag we should make the current flag less relevant by changing our head of state.
Interesting article in Stuff today about an Auckland University study that found that: “Children who were exposed to marijuana were almost 50 per cent better at a “global motion task” than those who had no exposure.”
It found alcohol has the opposite (negative) effect but that exposure to marijuana appears to cancel this out. One implication seems to be that people who drink while pregnant should also smoke marijuana.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/74226745/stoner-mums-babies-excel-in-one-aspect-of-brain-study
What exactly is a “global motion task” ? Policy should not be based on pseudoscience.
From the article
The test involved a set of signal dots moving in one direction and another set of dots moving in random directions. An observer needed to be able to say which way the signal dots were moving.
The test involves specific brain areas which are most susceptible to development risk factors.
Also the scientist published their results and were subjected to peer review, which would suggest their research was able to be backed up and wasn’t pseudo anything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Reports
stoners would make good air traffic controllers? posssssibly….
Interesting. Saw a news story months ago about a study saying aspies are also better at the same test. Can’t recall where (thanks, Twitter).
What exactly is a “global motion task” ?
Being so stoned, you shit your pants in front of everyone.
hmmm, i always thought that it was the drunks that shit or pissed themselves.
At least the drunks passed out in the gutters of Auckland after thrusday/friday/saturday beersies, look like they shit, pissed and vomited on themselves.
Never seen that on a stoner, they usually just have chocolate all over their face.
It’s one thing to fall in love with your own research, another to work out what it means in terms of public health policy.
Is ‘esoteric pineapples’ working for the marijuana industry ? He or she states that “people who drink while pregnant should also smoke marijuana”.
Further, “The test involves specific brain areas which are most susceptible to development risk factors.” Which risk factors ? Why ? Please explain.
Relating specific brain morphology to development involves hugely different levels of analysis.
It can be read as meaning almost anything.
Smiling at your last sentence Sabine.
The first two, are sadly true. Could be any city centre around NZ.
Public Citizen have posted their analysis on the TPP Investment Chapter.
Key points:
no new conflict interest rules
no cap on tribunal costs
only improvement- partial carve out of tobacco control
partial carve out indicates weakness of health/environmental clauses
http://www.citizen.org/documents/analysis-tpp-investment-chapter-november-2015.pdf
Ther you go Tautoko Mangō Mata. Upset me.
A terrifying thing that TPPA. Safeguards in earlier leaked documents have been dropped. For example even if a Government won a dispute, it would still be liable for costs of the Tribunal. About $US8million.
A big document with very very worrying details even though it is written from the point of view of USA.
Call to moderators.
Could the Standard help publicise the Hikoi for Homes tomorrow? Details here:
http://www.cpag.org.nz/the-latest/hikoi-for-homes-everyone-deserves-a-home/
I’m going to do the full 3 hours from Glen Innes (in Auckland) but you can just join it in Orakei for the last hour. There are also marches in Christchurch and Wellington.
Someone must have heard you. There is a post up 45 minutes later.
Or it could just be a fortuitous coincidence.
Thank God I Wasn’t There
No. 1: With Peta Mathias in Morocco
In part eight of ‘Sirocco’, Hicham (pron. Ee’-sham) and Latifa (La’ tee far’) take Peta Mathias and her photographer friend Anna up the coast towards Tangier, where eventually they will be staying.
Peta Mathias Sirocco (Vintage, 2002)
I am amazed you managed to suffer through something with Peta Mathias in it.
Those two extracts were about all I heard of it. I actually prefer her to some other celebrity cooks, such as Nigella Lawson, the execrable Ramsay and the preternaturally dull Peter Gordon.
Seriously interesting interview on Natrad this morning…YES you read right.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/201779566/cancer-treatments-using-nutrient-and-plant-based-chemicals
Prof Lynnette Fergussen from Auckland Uni publicising recent worldwide research into cancer treatment.
” “In particular, many newer targeted therapies are extremely expensive, highly toxic and not effective for rare types of cancer and advanced cancers.”
“Even when they appear to work, a significant percentage of patients will experience a relapse after only a few months,” she says. “Typically advanced cancers are untreatable and relapses occur when small sub-populations of mutated cells become resistant to therapy. Doctors who try to address this problem with combinations of therapies find that therapeutic toxicity typically limits their ability to stop many cancers.”
https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/about/news-events-and-notices/news/news-2015/11/plant-and-food-chemicals-may-help-treat-cancers.html
“The taskforce also wanted to produce an approach to therapy that would have the potential to be very low cost, because many of the latest cancer therapies are deemed unaffordable in low-to-middle income countries.”
“Accordingly, the task force has laid the groundwork for a solution that should be both inexpensive and effective in making this novel approach available to people who are suffering from cancer throughout the world.”
The research is supposed to be available fro Elsevier as an open download…but I can’t find at present.
Putting on my tinfoil hat….this research and it’s overarching premise that cancers can be treated and managed inexpensively will make the Big Pharmaceutical Companies collectively shit themselves.
I am wondering if this research is being rightly promoted now….before the TPP is set in concrete.
I think this is the abstract – http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Seminars+in+Cancer+Biology+Ferguson
The “Free full text” button isn’t working for me at the moment but might become available later.
Edit: nope, that looks like an older paper, though related. If you click on the first author’s name you also get a list of her other related papers. Interesting topic.
Edit 2: This is the one, with downloadable PDF – http://www.researchgate.net/publication/274318440_Designing_a_Broad-Spectrum_Integrative_Approach_for_Cancer_Prevention_and_Treatment
@Editractor
Many thanks for that. Can be a bit tricky for a mere interested person (rather than an academic attached to an institution) to download full texts of serious scientific research papers. Elsevier is a reputable publisher, yes(?), I have many papers published there on my hard drive…mostly to do with pesticide and cancer research.
I have added this one…my reading for later!
Again…thanks.
Not all publishers provide open access papers but PubMed is the place to look first. PubMed essentially catalogues most published scientific papers in the biology sphere (open access and not), though judging by this paper they lag behind other outlets.
One possible way to get papers is to contact the authors directly – an email address for correspondence is often attached to each paper. Once upon a time authors would order reprints of papers that they would manually post out. Whether they would be willing or allowed to send out a PDF now for a pay-walled paper I don’t know. And hopefully they would be receptive to a non-expert who was showing interest.
Elsevier is one of the biggest scientific publishers, but beyond that my comments should be limited given that I do some work for them. They are also an overall company for a vast range of journals, each with their own editorial staff who make decisions on what is published. I’m pretty sure all their primary research papers will be peer-reviewed though, so it’s probably best to judge a paper on its own merits rather than on who published it.
Richie McCaw (peace be upon him) declines knighthood…in the meantime. Good lad.
Watch JK drop him like a hot potato, or gradually as the fame euphoria decreases and the potential for vicarious glory diminishes.
Where’d you hear/see that?
I thought he’d said yesterday he wasn’t really comfortable with the idea but that he”didn’t know”, when asked if he’d accept a knighthood. Has he definitely said no now?
Ritchie needs no knighthood…he has his future WELL in hand.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11203208
…earning top dollar from the Aged care Industry….
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11548410
who pay their CEOs “ridiculous” salaries.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU1506/S00547/ridiculous-ceo-salaries-in-aged-care.htm
and yet what do they pay the people who actually do the work?
Economists Recommend Setting Aside Part Of Every Paycheck In Case Of Dire Straits Reunion Tour
/opens third account, puts in 5% each week
Wasn’t sure of her at first, but Andrea Vance is rapidly becoming one of our best MSM journalists. Puts some of the old girls and boys to shame.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/andrea-vance-chris-finlayson-stop-fear-mongering-and-go-dark-yourself
And it’s started:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/290161/nz-student-mistaken-for-terrorist
Racism in all it’s glory.
On this matter you can’t blame the police. They are duty bound to investigate such reports. Personally I think they should threaten to name and shame the clots. It might save them future embarrassment.
Yes. She seems to be able to tell it facts and all but without the bias of some other so-called journalists. Hope yet.
Moronic Pussy Riot-inspired Kool-Aid drinkers
manhandled after disrupting Islamic conference in France
by Justin Wm. Moyer, Washington Post, September 15, 2015
Members of a feminist protest group known for storming events topless has disrupted an Islamic conference in France and caught what appears to be a bit of a beating in the process.
Femen, founded in Ukraine, doesn’t have a huge reputation stateside. The group, the subject of a 2014 documentary, is known for its advocacy on behalf of Ukranian rape victims and ambushing Russian President Vladimir Putin — news that isn’t always news on the other side of the Atlantic. But the group’s provocative tactic — as the group’s Facebook page puts it: “Our God is a Woman! Our Mission is Protest! Our Weapon are bare breasts!” — keeps the group in the headlines from time to time.
Even right-wing media sites like Breitbart were impressed when two young women, sans shirts, took the stage last weekend at what was billed as a “Muslim salon” in Pontoise, France, a town just outside of Paris. The salon, as Buzzfeed reported, included a conversation about “Women’s valuation in Islam.”
In dramatic video that’s not exactly safe for work, the women take the lectern and start shouting in French: “Nobody enslaves me, nobody owns me, I’m my own prophet.” Messages written on their chests — a Femen trademark — offered similar messages.
“The two activists (both coming from Muslim families) [gave voice to] hundreds of women, feminists, and associations, all disgusted by this public hate speeches,” the group wrote on Facebook. “It was our duty to interrupt this enslavement event, and to let a scream of freedom be heard in the middle of their submission lessons.”
The women were quickly escorted offstage. But the escorting seemed to turn into a scuffle as a number of men began kicking the women once they were down.
A reporter for Buzzfeed France present at the event told the Washington Post that, at the time the women took the stage, the imams they interrupted were actually taking a moderate tone.
Yet, Perrotin said the protest fit into Femen’s anti-religious, anti-authoritarian message. Perrotin pointed out that they staged a similar protest at Notre Dame last year.
“It’s the logical fight of Femen,” Perrotin said. “They protest against all forms of misogyny … although some opponents accuse them of Islamophobia.”
Perrotin also said the use of force was unquestionable.
“Yes, it was pretty violent,” he said. “… I saw a Femen beaten by a man who did not belong to security.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/09/15/topless-female-protesters-manhandled-after-disrupting-islamic-conference-in-france/?tid=hybrid_experimentrandom_1_na
How credible is it that Obama and Turnbell have ‘accidentally’ been recorded having a conversation about Key describing him as a ‘role model’ and ‘ wonderful guy’ in the full glare of the media. This really stinks…
When you’ve paid you’re dues the club will look after you.
That’s three “yous” in one sentence are they all refer to different people.
Us sheep farmers love our ewes
“It’s never appropriate to call cops ‘murderers’, particularly
when they risk their lives to protect us.”—Fox News pundit
Admittedly you do hear discussions of this calibre on NewstalkZB, especially when Blubberguts Slater and Larry “Lackwit” Williams are involved, but for sheer moronic intensity, Fox News is still the stupidest, the most offensive, the downright worst media outlet in the world….
Fox hosts slam Quentin Tarantino for protesting police violence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP9xes1RMFA
my god fox news retards all
WTF is going on?
Besides the headline calling the aussie deportees’ flight “con air”, now the deportees were handcuffed by the NZ cops?
In a country where they had committed no crime, just to get off a fucking plane?
And this is after the minister reckoned the cuffs had been an aussy decision – so were they handcuffed by the aussies on the plane, and then the nz cops decided to handcuff innocent citizens, or was it just the nz police who made the call and the minister lied outright?
Too many different stories. Something stinks.
I just thought this one was worth sharing, a response to over-privileged tory twats like Hosking and his pontificating on student loan debt;
https://millennialposse.wordpress.com/2015/11/20/burn-all-student-debt/
‘In the fight against ISIS, Russia ain’t taking no prisoners’
by Pepe Escobar
Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia.
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/322613-russia-isis-anti-terrorism-operation-syria/