Daily review 18/12/2020

Written By: - Date published: 5:30 pm, December 18th, 2020 - 28 comments
Categories: Daily review - Tags:

Daily review is also your post.

This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Don’t forget to be kind to each other …

28 comments on “Daily review 18/12/2020 ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Ad 1
    18 December 2020 at 5:52 pm

    We've just had a credible terrorist threat greater than that of March 15.

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/123751610/otago-uni-graduation-threat-surpassed-magnitude-of-christchurch-terror-attack

    Quote:

    An attack threatened against Otago university graduation ceremonies would have “surpassed” the March 15 terror massacres, court documents reveal.

    A 22-year-old woman has been charged with threatening to carry out a firearms and explosives attack against students in Dunedin on December 7 and 8.

    The threat was of a “magnitude surpassing the March 15 Christchurch mosque massacres”, charge sheets show.

    I am truly looking forward to Prime Minister Ardern doing more than emoting her way out of this specific named threat greater than the Christchurch attack. New Zealand's security apparatus just got their failures handed to them, again.

    [Reformatted quote for clarity]

    • weka 1.1
      18 December 2020 at 6:53 pm

      Doesn't the fact that it was stopped before it happened suggest our security worked this time?

      Interesting that she got bail. The article is kind of light on detail.

      • Ad 1.1.1
        18 December 2020 at 7:08 pm

        It indicates that we are a sustained target and Christchurch was a pattern.

        The threat successfully hit the lives of thousands of graduands and their families who had flown down.

        So a successful intervention would have stopped the threat and stopped the disruption to our lives.

        There will be some more detail to follow in the Court proceedings. But only some.

        • SPC 1.1.1.1
          18 December 2020 at 8:17 pm

          It indicates that we are a sustained target

          She was charged with threatening an attack, not planning one. Says it all.

          • Ad 1.1.1.1.1
            18 December 2020 at 9:01 pm

            She threatened to commit an attack using firearms and explosives targeting graduation ceremonies.

            So with Police evaluating the threat, Otago university shut down all its graduations, and they found out who she was, she was arrested and charged.

            Thankfully you don't evaluate terror threats to New Zealanders.

            • weka 1.1.1.1.1.1
              18 December 2020 at 9:53 pm

              and then she was given bail. If she had been planning an attack I doubt that would have happened.

              "It indicates that we are a sustained target and Christchurch was a pattern."

              We are a sustained target from what? We don't even know what her motivations were.

              • SPC …
                18 December 2020 at 9:56 pm

                My guess, given her age, is a failure to complete a course successfully and not graduating. Presumably someone with common sense assessed that as part of identifying who made the threat.

                • McFlock …
                  18 December 2020 at 10:51 pm

                  That's all up in the air.

                  It could be like the guy who left a fake bomb in the foyer as he walked into an exam he really hoped would get cancelled so he could get an aegrotate pass (true story). Or it could be the other end of the intent scale (likely short on competence, though).

                  The courts will do their thing. If it was just someone looking to not tell the parents they dropped out… that escalated a bit on them, lol

            • SPC 1.1.1.1.1.2
              18 December 2020 at 9:54 pm

              Likewise

              I am truly looking forward to Prime Minister Ardern doing more than emoting her way out of this specific named threat greater than the Christchurch attack. New Zealand's security apparatus just got their failures handed to them, again.

              The emotional and psychological issues of an individual, and their criminal charge consequences have little to do with our security apparatus or the PM, but the courts and medical professionals.

              • Ad …
                18 December 2020 at 11:07 pm

                It is precisely because her intent was discovered that she was arrested and charged. Note also she didn't act alone:

                https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/123751610/otago-uni-graduation-threat-surpassed-magnitude-of-christchurch-terror-attack

                "Another person who the defendant met on an internet dating site is alleged to have also taken part in the offending. That person has not been arrested, police said."

                If this was a mere therapeutic lapse she would be being sectioned under the Health Act. This is a threatened terror attach greater than that of Christchurch 15th, so it is a Police matter.

                It's important to New Zealand because of that terror threat. Clearly enough for Police to require all graduations be stopped in Dunedin this December.

                • McFlock …
                  18 December 2020 at 11:34 pm

                  If they arrested someone for actually planning anything close to chch, I strongly doubt bail would be much of a possibility.

                  There was some jerk a few years before chch who did the anonymous threat thing at the same university. It's not necessarily related to any medical issues, some people are just morons. Maybe they want to avoid an event, maybe they just like making everyone jump.

                  But as soon as you assume it's just some jerk before you know who is behind it, the paper bag explodes in your face.

                • SPC …
                  18 December 2020 at 11:53 pm

                  Intent and act. Your words. And not alone, but the other person is not being charged …

                  There is no charge of planning any act.

                  It appears someone made a threat, and to those at an event/events involving more people than gather at a mosque. And because of that the events were called off and someone is being charged for threatening violent action. End of.

    • SPC 1.2
      18 December 2020 at 8:06 pm

      We’ve known we were a target since

      1. 2007 (Tuhoe)
      2. 9/11
      3. 1992 (CTO)
      4. March 1942 (German)
      5. 1885 (Russia)
      • Ad 1.2.1
        18 December 2020 at 8:08 pm

        Are you saying that the execution of the New Zealanders on March 15th is the same as the Tuhoe raids?

        Please, for the widows and widowers, spell it all out.

        • SPC 1.2.1.1
          18 December 2020 at 8:11 pm

          We've just had a credible terrorist threat greater than that of March 15.

          Hardly. More likely she has never owned a gun.

          • Ad 1.2.1.1.1
            18 December 2020 at 8:58 pm

            Details won't come out until hearing in February.

            What was the message you wanted us to understand from your list above?

          • Stuart Munro 1.2.1.1.2
            18 December 2020 at 9:53 pm

            Yup – although the knowledge and logistics are relatively simple, most folk are not up to killing large numbers of their fellow citizens on their first go. Plenty of folk get angry enough to threaten to kill – but talk is cheap.

            The Christchurch shooter was unusual in being well equipped, with a thought out plan, and considerable redundancy in the form of extra weapons and ammo. Absent Abdul Aziz he might have gone on to kill another 50.

      • Incognito 1.2.2
        18 December 2020 at 8:34 pm

        You forgot 10 July 1985.

  2. Gabby 2
    18 December 2020 at 5:57 pm

    I am truly looking forward to finding out if the 22yo had access to firearms and explosives.

    • McFlock 2.1
      18 December 2020 at 7:07 pm

      Kind of irrelevant whether someone making such a threat actually has the means to carry it out. Until you know for sure they're a fantasist, it has to be treated as credible.

      I mean, most personnel might treat it as a drill rather than getting amped up for their portrayal in the latest NZ homegrown ghoulsploitation miniseries or movie, but you still follow procedure and go through the process.

      Because the penalty for ignoring a committed offender is pretty bad.

  3. Anker 3
    18 December 2020 at 7:41 pm
    • Ad something worked that the attack was averted. Thank god. Don’t know enough to know if it’s a pattern. Allowed to attend medical appointments could suggest someone with a mental illness. Very different from Chechnya terrorist
    • Anne 3.1
      18 December 2020 at 8:10 pm

      Allowed to attend medical appointments could suggest someone with a mental illness.

      Yes. And the fact the person appeared "shaken" at the court hearing today and has been allowed bail provided one or both of her parents are with her at all times.

  4. arkie 4
    18 December 2020 at 8:16 pm

    This is a good move:

    The prime minister and other politicians will not get a pay increase for the next three years.

    …

    Earlier this year, an amendment was enacted to temporarily reduce MPs' salaries by up to 20 percent, which will continue until 6 January 2021.

    In June, Ardern expressed frustration over how long it took for that change to take effect.

    When it expires, salaries will revert to what the authority has stated in its latest determination (as above) which set MPs' pay at the same level as was set on 1 July 2017.

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/433200/prime-minister-and-mp-salaries-capped-for-three-years

  5. Robert Guyton 5
    18 December 2020 at 9:18 pm

    For RedLogix:

    "What if scarcity is just a cultural construct, a fiction that fences us off from gift economies? When I examine Serviceberry economics, I don’t see scarcity, I see abundance shared: photosynthate is usually not in short supply, since sun and air are perpetually renewable resources."

    https://emergencemagazine.org/story/the-serviceberry/

    • Stuart Munro 5.1
      18 December 2020 at 10:06 pm

      A great read Robert, thanks.

      This idea of the gift economy is deeply culturally bound in Asia, where at least twice a year families gather, and gifts, usually of money are exchanged. The head of the family (usually a grandmother) gets the bulk of the serious giving, and status is attached to generosity to her. Children also receive gifts, for which they bow to the responsible relative. One need not give gifts, but if not you lose the opportunity to gain status, and the children will not bow to you. Grandmothers often recycle some of their gifts to the grandchildren or single adolescents. Governments also understand that they are expected to deliver, and a lack of delivery is accompanied by a corresponding lack of respect.

    • RedLogix 5.2
      19 December 2020 at 12:18 am

      Without any sense of trying to disparage the underlying idea of that essay, which I would suggest speaks to a profound spiritual idea (that essentially we all exist to be of service to each other), there is a mistaken conflation between the spiritual and the material going on here.

      photosynthate is usually not in short supply, since sun and air are perpetually renewable resources

      They may be perpetually renewable, yet they are also fundamentally diffuse and intermittent. This means that at any given moment there are strict constraints on what is available. The author does sort of recognise this:

      Of course, sometimes there’s not enough rain, and then the scarcity ripples through the web of relationships, for sure. That is real scarcity: when the rains don’t come. A physical limitation with repercussions that are shared, just as abundance is shared. That kind of scarcity is not what troubles me.

      Well it damn well should trouble him because this is exactly the constraint our pre-industrial ancestors lived with … and the result was a grinding material poverty stretching endlessly from one generation to the next with few exceptions.

      Still I'm pleased you raised this; it's directly related to the next post I'm writing at the moment. There's a certain synchronicity going on here cool