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notices and features - Date published:
6:00 am, February 2nd, 2025 - 38 comments
Categories: open mike -
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Open mike is your post.
For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.
The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).
Step up to the mike …
In the 2004 film Downfall (Der Untergang), which portrays Hitler’s last days in a Berlin bunker, he says that if the German people are weak they deserve death. It is a view from philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who argued that conflicts are won by those with the strongest will. ...
Western imperialist reaches out to restless natives…
Just like Oz expelled kiwi gangsters a few years ago:
Hydro lakes full, water being spilt.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/537669/months-after-record-lows-south-island-hydro-lakes-full-to-overflowing
10% power price increases expected this year.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/540613/real-risk-of-double-digit-increases-in-power-prices
No surprise really. Shane Jones' "burning mountains of Indonesian coal" was always bollocks.
Coal has on average supplied 7 per cent of NZ'selectricity over the last 10 years Almost all of the rest is renewable.
With the mass of solar with storage attached already in the pipeline coal will become irrelevant in 10 years.
Jones is probably the worst poli in NZ because he is smart enough to know that he is telling porkies.
Yep. And the scumbags doing same from years back got caught and fined. (Meridian caught, Contact Energy dodged the bullet)
Many Links in the Greenpeace article….
And of course…Max Bradford.
All this should warn people of the danger of NAct1 and privatisation…..of anything.
Fake news apparently…
He did not admit the establishment is hiding behind privacy law – probably because it's obvious.
So genocide-perpetrators are officially suitable tourists according to our govt, which makes Minto seem to be operating on a sound basis. Accountability hinges on identity.
Israel's view is that state agents are officially unaccountable to other people, doesn't matter if they did genocide. Morality is irrelevant in geopolitics. That our govt shares their view shows solidarity with T's jewish niche connection. One wonders why zionism is worth supporting when it has no moral basis. Automatism, I guess.
The link.
https://www.1news.co.nz/2025/02/02/fake-news-peters-hits-back-at-us-senator/
Peters (and not the only one) is trying to confuse.
The story
There are tourist visas and there are visitor visas. The visa waiver only applies for 3 month visas (tourist visa only category).
AI
General terminology
Local
The Haaretz article said
https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/asia-and-australia/2025-01-30/ty-article/.premium/new-zealand-to-require-israelis-to-detail-idf-service-as-part-of-visa-application-process/00000194-b792-db53-a1bd-f7bf0eeb0000
And this, the story
New Zealand’s Immigration Authority (INZ) spokesperson
Is anyone talking about the same thing?
https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-zealand-requires-israelis-to-disclose-idf-service-details-as-condition-for-entry/
Seymour says
Yeah but they still need a
And the Haaretz article said
The visa waiver is in the tourist visa category.
Minto has put pressure on the government and the immigration service from below, Ted Cruz is putting pressure on our government and immigration service from above.
Which one will win out?
From the link supplied by SPC @3.1
The new immigration service policy as it applies to serving IDF soldiers wanting to holiday in New Zealand:
Peters may huff and puff and obfuscate, and deny it, but will he, Winston Peters New Zealand minister for immigration, bow to pressure from the US, and reverse the immigration authority's requirement for IDF soldiers to complete an "additional information form"?
And what if Peters doesn't act to reverse this policy?
Apart from his snarky comment on X, what US pressure could Ted Cruz seek to bring to bear on this country to get his way?
All politics is pressure.
Ted Cruz on X on New Zealand, inferring tariff bullying risk to those not in lock step with the USA.
https://x.com/tedcruz/status/1885445724755673110
Cruz seems to have missed the salient point that were we to let in possible war criminals we'd be obliged to arrest them as per the International Crimes and International Criminal Court Act 2000.
That is the point.
That Act was part of the legislation required for signing up to the ICC. I can't see any reason for us to not be signed up to the ICC. After all NZ Soldiers are not widely known for their tendency to indulge in the following acts with a few now well-known exceptions..
https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2000/0026/latest/whole.html#DLM63091
Achieving compliance with this Act, INZ collects information at or before the border.
Now I know that Israel, US, Russian, Mymar, China, India and a number of other nations haven't signed up or have failed to ratify with the Rome Convention. Probably because their military, citizens, or politicians have performed actions that violate the Rome convention.
However unlike them, NZ is actually reasonably civilised. So Israeli politicians and dumbarse US ones can screw themselves, and they, their citizens and soldiers can conform to our laws whilst entering this country.
That includes making declarations that are used to determine if there may be a case to answer under international laws that we have signed up for.
Oh yeah, clearly the gap between early morning coffee & brain activation was too short; thanks for that, plus your excellent clarification of the diplomacy murk!
And don't forget the Mossad agents who came here some years ago and stole the identities of disabled Kiwi children to get false New Zealand passports.
As usual, Jonathan Pie tells it like it is!
And it's a message we should make abundantly clear to any incoming Labour/Greens/PTM government – stop fucking around and deliver REAL change!
https://gridfree.store/blogs/how-to-articles/qa-is-going-off-the-grid-legal
AI
All in my parents' generation were "off grid" farms in the backblocks.
Except they were more honest and now call it for the true mean poverty it was. Ain't nothing to aspire to.
Nor is renting a "shoe box" for life (water and power charges), in a nation with lack of state housing and old aged care homes and declining health care.
The thing is lifestyle blocks could also be used for villages, composed of mobile small builds and motor home places. Many would prefer that to retirement villages (where the property and CG goes to a corporate).
No, people vastly prefer retirement villages – ideally with title.
Off grid life is just unrelenting work. Which only the heroic want, and only then in their youth. The ohu movement took less than 5 years to die.
https://sorted.org.nz/guides/retirement/living-in-a-retirement-village/
Solar power is the game changer. And more modern water systems.
That combined with a lot of retired people spending years in camper vans/converted buses/mobile homes means that the development of bases for them is likely.
Consider it as a holiday park for retired oldies.
Or part of the small build movement, but including provision for mobile homes/camper vans.
Some younger people do it to save money, etc.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=retired+and+camper+van+lifestyle
I've done bits and pieces for an electrical engineer brought in to try and sort out pie in the sky off-grid systems. All sorts of stupid, ill conceived shit where people have cheaped-out and ultimately, pissed tens of thousands up the wall.
We went with a composting toilet in Wanaka. I hate it.
An important day to be aware in NZ of what is happening to our Wetland NZ "kidneys"…
Today, 2 February, marks World Wetlands Day 2025. Some links…
Positive action to help
If you don't believe bureaucrats rule, contemplate the fact that the origin of civilisation was official accounting of economic production (oldest clay tablet in Mesopotomia inscribed with cuneiform signs, about 5 millennia back). Bomber specifies rule by bureaucrats in Aotearoa:
So the result of bureaucratic rule has been innocent Israeli soldiers denied holidays here because they told the truth: a bureaucrat's dream outcome. Gotta ensure that truth and reality get eliminated by procedure.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2025/02/02/no-one-has-told-winston-immigration-nz-have-already-started-vetting-idf-war-criminals-and-he-panics/
At Stuff's site the under-banner headings now just starts : 'NZ news…Trump in power…'
No World News, just Trump.
New DNC chair is establishment:
Huffpost profiled the three candidates here: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ken-versus-ben-dnc-chair-preview_n_679d7d49e4b0d54b8bb888a9
Neoliberalism as sacrifice cult, according to Dame Anne:
The finesse with which the dame evades mentioning ongoing leftist support for neoliberalism is awe-inspiring. She dances all around that elephant in the room. Readers marvelling at her expertise will think "Whatta dame!"
Damien Grant doing some greenwashing, to show that, some of those who worship at the altar of deconstruction society to serve aggregate capital order of the economy, are somehow still also fellow human-beings.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360566722/damien-grant-golriz-ghahraman-and-visceral-antipathy-she-generates-fringes
Don't give Grant the clicks, order or put a loan request for Ghahramen’s book instead.
Exactly tWig….I have stopped wasting my time with his extreme RW nonsence.
There is a curious irony here that the ravings of Cruze represents what SHOULD be the case.
Why the hell should a country at war be entitled to visa free access to NZ?
They should have to apply for a visa and answer questions about their military service. I should add that Chinese citizens have to answer those same questions in their visa applications.
Canada Oh Canada a good leader even.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Canadian_federal_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagmeet_Singh
Steve Bannon excoriates tech bros jumping on the Trump bandwagon, calls them
Perhaps he's miffed because T is using Musk and not him? Perhaps ideological purity is important to him, so he hates pragmatic power-shifts.
The Trump tariff earthquake: will Red State governors or Canada+Mexico blink first.
Those US Midwest refineries which rely on Canadian crude the most will I think means Red State governors will be in serious mid term election trouble.
Plus 25% on Canadian hydro supplied to Eastern states.
Ketamine doing it's thing.
/
@kevinmkruse.bsky.social
The only thing better than having an unelected dipshit in charge of the federal government, is having that dipshit refer to that same government as "the opposing team."
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:cnpe7qvcyjrhm6w7w7e4atur/post/3lh5r5vtbvc2g