The Herald is now beginning to list the Prime Minister’s memory lapses. I think we should assist its reporters with a few others. Lord Ashcroft’s visit for starters.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10875266
Here’s their list Quote
Key’s memory lapses
* Forgot how many Tranz Rail shares he owned.
* Unsure if and when he was briefed by GCSB on Kim Dotcom.
* Forgot how he voted on drinking age.
* Could not recall whether he was for or against the 1981 Springbok Tour.
* Could not remember who was aboard mystery CIA jet parked at Wellington airport.
* Forgot he phoned future director of GCSB urging him to apply for the job.
Unquote
I doubt that it is a simply case of cronyism. Copyright was obviously at the center of the DotCom affair, and the copyright industry’s approach to “moral rights” should give one pause. Industry affiliates were involved in distributing file sharing software and promoted the sharing of copyrighted material. The RIAA then pushed for legislation against piracy which resulted in awards of up to 150,000 US dollars per track of digital audio. Ian Fletcher worked for the UK Intellectual Property Office for about three years.
The industry’s approach to “moral rights” involves ignoring ethical sharing of copyrighted works consistent with fair use, and the industry labels all sharing of copyrighted material as theft regardless of the innocence of such fair use. The term “intellectual property” is an oxymoron because intellectual works in society do not have the quality of exclusive possession essential to all property.
Copyright enforcement can be used as a cover for internet espionage. Microsoft spent considerable effort implementing DRM (digital rights management) into Windows Vista. The implementation of DRM and other security features into Vista caused so many technical problems that many users abandoned Vista and returned to Windows XP. Microsoft has long been suspected of collaborating with the NSA after an encryption key called _NSAKEY was discovered in Windows NT.
In which Mark Ames goes Hunteresque, on the occasion of Andrew Breitbart’s aniversary, with regard to claims that Breitbart was anything other than a carnival barker with a legacy of, well, ‘shit’ pretty much covers it:
Big steel framed highrise building (highest high rise over there) engulfed completely in flames in Grozny, Chechnya. Guess that one will collapse into the path of most resistance in freefall speed soon too. It happened after all three times on 9/11.
To free fall symmetrically and straight downwards on to its own footprint, the building requires not just a one sided fire, it also needs to be unevenly hit from just one side by a jet plane!
So why do either of you think the building is of the same construction type as WTC?
Please respond with some substantiation of the claim that these buildings are of the same construction type as WTC. I’d really prefer not to have to conclude you really are bullshit artists.
You don’t consider your gut to be a sense organ? ***Guffaw*** Shit dude you better do a bit more research.
that’s why I asked for something verifiable.
Nah, you’ve set your view in place. You believe that its quite possible that highly assymetrical damage to a structure can cause that structure to fail instantaneously in a highly symmetrical way.
And that it happened 3 times within 12 hours at the same location.
Shit, is there even a need for controlled demolitions work any more? Just set a random fire in a skyscraper, crash a jet into one side, and straight down she goes, safe and sound on to its own building footprint, barely touching anything else around.
So I ask for verification that these buildings are like the WTC, and in response; Strawman arguments.
Typical, but sad that you’d rather talk about anything else than the question I asked.
Why’s that? Mind made up is it?
Do.Not.Question.The.Truther.Narrative.
Feel free to prove me wrong by saying that yeah, building structure is relevant to the comparison, and that no you didn’t bother to check it out and that yes you’ll do better next time.
“So why do either of you think the building is of the same construction type as WTC?”
PB, even the 911 Commission didn’t bother with silly facts like how the buildings were constructed. Hell with WTC 1 & WTC 2 they decided 94 boxsteel columns, each 110 stories high did not even exist.
Forget for a minute about what happened on September 11 2001 and instead sit watch learn think on how they are constructed and how the visual proof of their construction completely contradicts all official explanations of the Towers’ demise.
PB but you are the one who believes that highly assymetrical damage to a building can cause that building to fail in a completely symmetrical way.
3x in 12 hours.
The same exact failure effect in two completely different building types, but where only one of which suffered damage from aviation fuel and airliners.
Tall buildings are not solid blocks of wood or corn-flake packs that topple over if you push them. They’re amazing strong in some ways, fragile in others and they behave counter to the intuition bred by observing small solid objects.
The WTC centre towers were steel truss construction, which is light and efficient, but has its , um, problems… I don’t know if the Grozny building is truss or girder construction. That would make a difference.
Buildings are designed to resist horizontal forces due to wind and earthquake, which can be quite substantial (for example, going through the sums on construction and engineering for buildings in Wellington, as an undergrad, I was quite surprised to discover that due to wind-generated lift, much structure is generally devoted to keeping a roof down rather than up.)
Moreover, an airliner, while somewhat heavy (but built as light as possible in order to fly) is quite fragile and certainly not designed to resist being flown into a building, so its structure crumples and is shredded immediately as it impacts. The real problem is all the burning aviation fuel.
Now, steel building usually have what is called intumescent foam protecting the structure. This is an insulation that swells up when heated, protecting the steel structure. Under “normal” fire conditions, it will do just that, but the explosion of a plane exploding can suddenly strip off the intumescent foam normally protecting the steel truss structure used in the WTC buildings. Burning aviation fuel then continues to burn, heating the steel which loses much of its structural strength well below its melting point.
The truss then catastrophically gives way, unable to support the floor. The weight of the whole building above that floor suddenly slams down on the floor below… and you can guess the rest. Rather than this being a path of “most resistance”, a vertical piledriver effect is inevitable and unstoppable.
The energy used to destroy the building is in fact not the initial impact, but all the gravitational potential energy devoted to lifting its entire mass into the sky in the first place when it was constructed.
The truss then catastrophically gives way, unable to support the floor. The weight of the whole building above that floor suddenly slams down on the floor below
That’s the mental model they proposed in the official report.
Of course we should also consider that the weight of those top floors was already being supported by the structure underneath, it was not new weight which came from nowhere.
Also – did you notice that big huge reinforced concrete floors didn’t slam downwards at all – a large amount of that mass somehow pulverised into dust and ejected out sideways from the collapsing building.
Mass (weight) times velocity equals momentum. This is kinetic energy – a lot, a delivered in an instant.
Take a egg. You can gently rest the head of a hammer on the egg. Now drop the hammer on the egg.
Actually, the floors were not big huge reinforced slabs. They were comparatively light slabs pored over metal deck, supported, as I said, by a truss system.
Understood. I’ll buy the momentum theory IF the majority of the mass part of the equation was not lost as pulverised material as the fall took place.
Because if a lot of mass was lost during the free fall (ejected out the sides of the building) the strongest floors in the bottom half of the building, should have easily survived.
It doesn’t Matter if something is pulverized it still has the same mass and momentum drop a feather or rock in still air they will land at the same time gravity is constant.
yes and even Commander David Scott proved gravity is a constant in the Universe we have thus experienced, but don’t you want to know how the concrete became pulverized? I would love to know how the concrete at and above the point of collapse got pulverized but especially would like to know how it became pulverized at the moment of initial collapse.
mostly i want to know how can gravity throw steel girders hundreds of feet laterally to be embedded in other buildings. ( including some girders that were identified as originating from near and even above the point of ‘collapse’)
The collapse was obviously not a polite, neat retraction but a more complex affair, with forces transmitted not through the ether but through complexly branching structural members, concentrating at the nodes. Elements will buckle, bend and then fail suddenly – and catastrophically, ith all the pent-up energy suddenly released.
Take a delicate structure (and a skyscraper is delicate at its scale) and crush it and inevitably some parts will be flung sideways.
at and above the point of collapse
Gravity leads down. The kinetic force of an impact propagates in all directions.
Of course, the other point is that one truther argues that the towers fell vertically into their own footprint, while another argues steel girders were throw hundreds of feet laterally.
If only there was some sort of consistent, logical methodology by which one can create mathematical models of reality and then test the resulting hypotheses in the real world. Rather than starting from a conclusion and inventing elaborate, untestable theories that need to be evaluated more by faith than reason.
… so one should never think about engineering with the heart, gut or the pancreas or whatever.
The most common and most reflexive and hardest to overcome mental habit is to think that large structures behave like small solid objects – ie., toppling over over when nudged.
There’s a catalogue here of things that feel “right” but are utterly wrong:
Momentum is simple Newtonian physics, it’s not something one has a choice about “buying”.
OK, the mass. First, a cloud of dust and debris seen expanding from the side of a building is impressive, but minor in terms of mass. When concrete shatters, it breaks into a range of larger and smaller pieces right down to dust size. The dust particles, being of lower mass, can be thrown further sideways as they fall down. The larger chunks remain within.
Most of the structure is steel, however, and steel is ductile, meaning that it stretches, bends and tears, but essentially stays together as large clumps.
In addition to the trusses, we have office equipment – desks, chairs, couches, heavy wood conference tables, computers, whiteboards, TVs, stereos, feather dusters, toilets and sinks, files in cabinets and shelves, (paper is very heavy – archives and libraries have to have specially strengthened floors), paintings, bronze sculptures, carpet, plumbing and air-conditioning systems, vending machines, catering equipment and food, refrigerators, bottled drinks, water reservoirs, cables, glass, potted plants, aquaria, partitions, suspended ceilings, paperweights, packed lunches, burgers and fries, people… etc etc.
Not very much ends up as dust and there’s not so much forcing that mass sideways anyway. Everything, even the dust, is heading down.
<strongest floors in the bottom half of the building, should have easily survived
Nope. Not “even if”. Nothing is infinitely strong. Consider the thought experiment of a 100-storey building. Floor 99 has the mass of floor 100 above it. Floor 98 has the weight of floors 99 and 100… and so on. If floor 99 cannot resist the strike of Floor 100 hitting it, then in order for Floor 1 to survive, the force hitting it must be less than that of 100 striking 99, meaning that over 99% of the total mass of the building met be made to disappear.
This is impossible.
And that is without accounting for the acceleration of the falling mass. On earth, an object in free fall accelerates at 9.8 metres per second per second. I couldn’t calculate the effect of deceleration caused by crumpling, but I think that you should get my point.
The “thingies” are structural cores and elevator shafts. All part of the same. Partly, in their case, they get dragged down in some cases as the floors are welded and bolted to them.
Again, no material is infinitely strong and large structures an aircraft are designed to be slightly better than they need to be under expected conditions, otherwise they would not be economical or useable and wouldn’t be built in the first place.
Slightly better If things go outside expected conditions, then Murphy’s Second Law comes into force – anything that has gone wrong will get worse (and fast).
the thingies are the box steel columns that support the structure that houses your cores and elevator shafts. and yes they were attached to the floor trusses, more accurately the floor trusses were attached to the Columns. Otherwise tall buildings have a bad case of not standing up. They are ‘attached’ with thousands of welded steel rivets and bolts. Thermodynamics has some pretty constant cause and effect scenarios and disspation of heat along a connected steel body is pretty well understood.
All these people that regurgitate the ‘heat brought down the towers’ lie must find it terrifying as the world witnesses a constant stream of steel structures being destroyed by fire. What fortitude they express every time they light the woodburner at home, cook a meal on the stove, drive a car or engage that most dangerous piece of technology known to man, a gas fired barbeque. The horror the horror
Go on then, let’s see you consider it. Tick tock tick tock, twelve years, no evidence, and not one piece of checkable engineering calculations. Well, apart from all these. that is, which you have not the tools nor the experience, but crucially, not the inclination nor scepticism nor the honesty to consider, preferring instead to defame the authors and throw red herrings around.
No evidence? The issue is that the current official evidence and analysis was limited in scope and does not match up to what was observed.
You may call it “sad” or whatever adjectives you might like, but nothing in the NIST documents detailed events satisfactorily explains the perfectly symmetrical collapse of those 3 buildings of two completely different types.
I’ll add that what Architects and Engineers for 9/11 are asking for is a complete widescope official inquiry. You seem to think its time to move on, all done and dusted. As it were.
It is done and dusted, CV. This thread is proof of that; it’s the first bit of 9/11 truth denialism on TS for months. It used to be a regular feature of open mike, but with the passage of time, the fantasy loses its relevence.
Much as the ‘Elvis is alive’ thing only lasted a few years, 911 delusions will fade fast. Particularly so after the failure of that conference in Toronto to provide any actual evidence. Without credible proof of an alternative, sensible, rational people will stick with the blindingly obvious truth. Which is that the US was sucker punched by a small team of committed fanatics who succesfully did the unthinkable.
Actually it was HARRP, using thermite-laden chemtrails, that perpetrated 9/11.
What fools like you don’t realise is that all the buildings are still there. The whole thing is the biggest mass hallucination since Buzz Aldrin single-handedly faked the moon landings.
Is this comment part of your social experiment, muzza, or are you being deliberately dim? It really was the guys in the cave, that much we know. The attack was carried out by brainwashed wannabees on behalf of the guys in the caves. This we also know. There is no evidence of an alternative conspiracy after 12 years of right wing blathering. Fact.
So, bloke, P’s B and the rest of us rational thinkers aren’t scared, we’re just well grounded and capableof making sensible conclusions based on the known facts. Any time you can provide evidence that contradicts the known facts, let us know. But, I won’t hold my breath, because after twelve long years, there still isn’t a skerrick of proof that anyone else did it.
So, bloke, P’s B and the rest of us rational thinkers aren’t scared, we’re just well grounded and capableof making sensible conclusions based on the known facts
Here’s another reason I’m emotionally invested in this. The adults would like to be able to have a sensible discussion of US foreign policy, which is pretty much a terrorism factory so far as I can tell, but every time anyone raises it we have to listen to the dimwit chorous insisting we watch this video.
What is my emotional investment? Ethics: specifically. your complete lack of any: your whole argument is based on a premise of fraud perpetrated by individuals you’ve never met, but you think nothing of smearing them and effectively accusing them of being accessories to mass murder.
Your right wing behaviour is disgusting, so I’ll continue to show my contempt and disgust,.
whole argument is based on a premise of fraud perpetrated by individuals you’ve never met, but you think nothing of smearing them and effectively accusing them of being accessories to mass murder.
You dont see the irony in your comment do you!
Lets walk it through:
Fraud perpetuated by individuals you have never met – Yet you defend the *official conspiracy theory*, produced by people you have never met, with agendas you claim don’t exist, yet have been rolled out in broad daylight since 2001! Forget about the missing 2.3T Rumsfeld was on the hook for !
smearing them – Yet the smearing has been primarily and agressively against the islamic religion, and people of arabic ethnicity as a whole, while being rather ad hoc in the applications of which group is being smeared, and for which purpose, ever since!
effectively accusing them of being accessories to mass murder – But your belief/support of the *official conspiracy theory* indicates you are comfortable that an entire religion/ethnic peoples are layed waste around the ME/Africa, under the same pretence of being, *accessories to murder*.
The USA sows a bunch of dragon’s teeth; they multiply, as dragon’s teeth will.
My respect for Physics and Engineering says absolutely nothing about my opinion of US foreign policy, or Islam, or politics, or any combination thereof.
So stop putting words in my mouth, you tiresome cretin.
My respect for Physics and Engineering says absolutely nothing about my opinion of US foreign policy,
And there it is again – Its not respect of physics, engineering or any such thing, its the fear you have built up through your attachment to *believing you know whats going on, and having the theoretical answers to it rationalise it all*. Fear of what is left of you, if you actually didn’t have the answers…
Do you remember the little chat we had about confirmation bias Muzza? You remember how I said it’s inescapable by definition. Whether or not you believe this to be true, I certainly do, so:
Remind me how that gells with the notion that I believe I know what’s going on, you tiresome cretin.
I work for the CIA. And I take my instructions from the alien who remote-piloted the drone into the Pentagon. And I mutilate cows from my black helicopter, just for fun.
so just checking, how many times did NIST change not only the modelling but the very theory of how it all eventuated? Exactly how far did they stretch [fabricate] the data to fit a hypothesis that is unknown in the history of steel framed construction? On WTC7 for example they changed their mind three times and then created a whole new physical risk for steel framed buildings, all hail Thermal Expansion. Putting WTC 1&2 aside as there is no plane involvement, and just looking at WTC7, then according to NIST that building in Russia should have collapsed hours ago. Same with many large buildings of various construction that have had major fires this past decade. Only on September 11 2001 did three steel framed buildings collapse due to fire. Never before and never since.
and there was something else too . .. oh yeah
NIST might love to mention the horiziontal methods used in the Towers’ construction but have you ever noticed they do not like to mention the Columns that held the Towers upright ? They even go so far as to say that the central cavity where the lifts were housed were empty space. Every animation has zero columns. You go on about data, why can you not see past the rhetoric and look at the inconsistency in the data. Not just the specifics but the big picture.
“do not like to mention” is more than a little different from “do not mention” which you are not so subtley implying that i said.
When it comes to the official explanation for the physical events that occured the columns are barely referenced and in much of the modelling they are sidelined or removed completely so as to be insignificant to the result. NIST have all but admitted this themselves, along with the extremes they had to go to to make any of their floor collapse models actually work let alone produce the desired result. A result which people far more qualified then I have shown to be seriously flawed in its methodology.
I do love that deniers try to make out the 9/11 Truth movement is a ragtag bunch of a half dozen loons sitting in front of a video desk making shit up and posting it on Youtube. Youtube is a source of videos that people have collated and edited, yes, even disinfo has had its place amongst it all. (and many youtube vids are highly educational, there’s this one with a banana and a rubber band . . )
But, and this is a big but, the movement also has produced numerous technical papers and regularly laid out simple and direct questions for the relevant authorities to answer. Silence is the most common response. Remember many many things went on that day in many different places and none of it has been adequately answered, yet the World got turned on its head because of the events on September 11 2001.
Many of the questions and the cases they refer to are presented at great expense by the families of the victims. They are regularly subjected to delays and obfuscation and all too often sketchy legal processes have been employed that flat out deny the due process under reasons of National Secruity amongst others.
What you can choose to ignore if you so wish is the simple Truth, this movement is a global network of professionals and laymen who have co-ordinated their limited resources to attempt the accurate and honest discovery of the events of that terrible day. So yes they charge $18 USD for a book, (current on Amazon) because they did not have access to the millions of tax dollars that funded the official story. By the way, the Official 911 Commission volume still costs $8 USD (current on Amazon) yet it was paid for entirely by taxpayers. On the funding note, AE911truth are currently asking for donations for a co-ordinated global Ad campaign to raise 9/11 Truth awareness. Just suckers for punishment I guess.
The vast resources of numerous Governments and associated Agencies continue to this day to work against the wishes of the victims’ families and the first responders that have survived. Sadly, the number of survivors is dwindling and just a few weeks ago further cuts were made to the support offered to these heroes. So perhaps the scale of the discussion is the thing that so aggravates you, or the fact it is growing and not dissolving into nothingness as so many hoped it would. We are not going anywhere. We will not be silenced, but as far as 9/11 talk on the Standard goes I stated back in 2011 that regular dialogues were achieving little and causing unhelpful aggression. Today shows that little has changed. The Standard juggles enough already and I prefer the one on one in real life now. I like the human element as it allows for more of an honest Q&A that actually produces tactile results as lines of enquiry can be dutifully followed and the point scoring that fascinates so many is thankfully absent. Today, as mentioned , was a passing prod at the sleeping bear. Next time, like so many recent opportunities, I will probably not pick up the stick.
one thing more, I don’t recall you standing up in front of Richard Gage on his NZ visit and calling him a right wing moron.
nice to know you care though, holding hands is another of life’s good things
WTC7 is clearly seen on a video clip to have sustained substantial structural damage from very large segments of falling debris from the North Tower. Gashes go through several floors in the back at the middle and southwest corner. It can also be clearly seen in the same video that fiery debris has ignited fires on nearly all floors and those burned for hours. Its collapse in total is not at freefall speed but consistent with structural failure. The collapse is initiated at the Southwest corner and progresses suddenly as each floor impacts the next with fire-weakened steel unable to resist the weight and velocity. The building did not collapse into its own footprint as some claim, it can can be seen in pictures and video to have fallen backwards – its different coloured debris is atop the North Tower debris. The 9/11 building demolition conspiracy isn’t gaining ground because its debunked in so many places.
Its ok Arfamo, you tell yoursrlf what you like, then take it up with the demolition experts, who commented specifically on WTC7.
Forget the fact the building housed all the financial transactiosn data, which only days earlier, existed, and would have meant that Donald Rumsfeld would have had a tough time wishing away the $2.3T of *lost funds* through the pentagon, which had been front page news, and was not going away,
How convenient that all was, not to mention the building housed the data store for huge amounts of fiancial entities, which vansished, never to be talked of again!
Nothing in it though, just all coincidence!
Edit – I work with an american, senior guy, former DoD employee for 8 years. His position is that all 3 buildings were blown up. Not a good look for your point of view, if you get to speak with people such as him. I had that conversation just last week, it was interesting to hear an american who worked for such entities, having that view, and talking about it!
the passages you are no doubt referring to
“Many of the questions and the cases they refer to are presented at great expense by the families of the victims. ” and “The vast resources of numerous Governments and associated Agencies continue to this day to work against the wishes of the victims’ families and the first responders that have survived. ”
Neither of these state all the families or all the victims and it is a fifty fifty call how you got there i suppose. Though as we sit here, the many lives involved which unacknowledged illnesses and needless tragedies continue to diminish, should not have to suffer the indignity of being so easily dismissed.
I’m not going to get into a semantic argument about it.
I just think the bigger indignity is being the obsessive hobby of nutjobs around the world.
I get some of the victims clutching at straws in grief. But most truthers? Pffft.
I just think the bigger indignity is being the obsessive hobby of nutjobs around the world.
I get some of the victims clutching at straws in grief. But most truthers? Pffft.
A variation of the usual liar line – honour the dead by not asking too many questions.
Nope. But if it really was pretty much just hijackers + plane+towers=thousands dead, it makes your average truther half a world away look like a bit of a dick.
Like I say, grieving relatives is one thing.
But hobbyists who can’t get their stories straight are in grave danger of being dicks.
Yeah I guess being afraid to look like dicks should be a real consideration. Just try to remember that most of the people who died because of 9/11 didn’t die on that day.
Frankly, I’m don’t think a lot of truthers give as much of a damn about the dead as they do about believing in their own superior knowledge about nefarious global conspiracies and how much better the world would be if everyone were intellectual giants like them.
What you can choose to ignore if you so wish is the simple Truth, this movement is a global network of professionals and laymen who have co-ordinated their limited resources to attempt the accurate and honest discovery of the events of that terrible day. So yes they charge $18 USD for a book, (current on Amazon) because they did not have access to the millions of tax dollars that funded the official story.
😆 so they can uncover the biggest most pernicious conspiracy in history, but not leverage that into wealth and power without my $20? And why is everyone laughing at them? You. Whichever.
“heating the steel which loses much of its structural strength well below its melting point.”
Absolutely true hot steel can bend. It cannot however cause thousands of welded rivets on every floor to consistently and simultaneously fail, which is required for the collapse theory to work. Also, if you have a minute, could you be so kind as to explain where the vast quantity of extreme heat came from to form the pools of molten metal that were still being discovered weeks after the Towers’ collapse? Then again why bother . . .
There are literally thousands and thousands of points that a tit for tat truth game fail to adequately cover. As entertaining as it can be, it is also a waste of resources as very few supporters of the Official Story who engage in Truth discussions on-line, ever do it honestly and with an open mind.
In my little life, one on one dialogue has proven to be the only reliable method of 911 discussion that actually stands a chance of combating the ignorance that stubbornly refuses to follow the facts. 911 Truth is more complex than a single event and the back and forth of a chatbox cannot come close to the soul crunching reality of having to lie to another’s face when the Truth finally busts the door in on your psyche. It is perhaps one of the most difficult re-adjustments a person will ever make in their life. Knowing the world is a big evil place blah blah blah is one thing, Accepting the totality of the lie that was sold to the world takes guts and has broken people. Only you can decide how much truth you are willing to sweep under the carpet, only you have to live with the lumpy rug of your life.
Actually I can, but I never start such an analyses without understanding different alternative big pictures which might come into play. You’ve already decided however.
CV, what a load of bollocks. If NIST’s maths are wrong, all you need is a blackboard and some chalk.
What was it that helped me decide? For one thing, the fact that instead of blackboards and chalk (or even, god forbid, some actual engineering software), all you’ve got is a series of breathless talking heads on Youtube and a bunch of defamatory false allegations against NIST employees.
I don’t like your right wing bullshit any more than I like John Key’s
CV being right wing now too? That seems to be your only response these days. I believe it was CV who had to back out for a while because he upset the Labour leadership and he wanted to stay with the “left wing” party.
“As entertaining as it can be, it is also a waste of resources as very few supporters of the Official Story who engage in Truth discussions on-line, ever do it honestly and with an open mind.”
One Tāne Huna, I have been impressed in the past when you state that people need to open their mind to the real history of this Nation. You regularly berate others who don’t take off their blinkers regarding the Government’s position on numerous issues in Aotearoa especially when touching on historical innaccuracies that we live with, then you go and parrot US led propoganda designed to promote War and Poverty and Greed.
I for one get a little confused about what you actually want from this life.
The 911 debacle is, heh, a slow burner, it is not going away. My partner had an immediate “what the…” reaction watching some of the available videos particularly building 7 that was not even hit by an airplane. She is into architecture and such and no calculations were required for her to smell a rodent.
I think it will be revealed as a ‘black op’ in future decades. People on forums like this have only limited license to demand this or that from other commenters. The ongoing ferocity of the debate about 911 imo is due to people’s world view and belief systems being challenged.
Me, I am well aware of the track record of the US military/spooks and crooked offshoots. I mean they turned the ‘attack on Iraq’ into a corporate feeding frenzy.
Granada, Cuba etc anyone?
Freedom, what “propaganda”? Is the National Institute of Standards & Technology a CIA front on your planet?
Perhaps the reason I’m insisting on Physics and Engineering is the same reason I insist on a similarly skeptical approach to right wing drivel wherever it can be found. Ya think?
It cannot however cause thousands of welded rivets on every floor to consistently and simultaneously fail, which is required for the collapse theory to work.
Three rivets. One fails. The remaining two now have half again as much stress, instantly. One more fails, and now the remaining rivet’s stress has increased threefold, nearly instantly.
Also, if you have a minute, could you be so kind as to explain where the vast quantity of extreme heat came from to form the pools of molten metal that were still being discovered weeks after the Towers’ collapse?
Once the aviation fuel has ignited the fire, everything burns. That produces a hell of a lot of heat.
Heat can be lost by radiation or conduction. Surrounding materials and debris can be effective insulators, reducing conduction while blocking radiation. Radiation itself is a very slow process. Moreover, molten steel has an enormous amount of thermal energy tied up in it and takes a very long time to lose.
Never been in a steel mill?
Then again why bother . . .
The rest is sarcasm and metaphysics and is consequently of no interest.
so that’s a no to explaining anything then,
you are sticking with jet fuel and office supplies, good to know i can move on.
I can forsee a large hole resembling the shape of my forehead in the nearest wall so I am not even going to touch on the timespan required for your progressive rivet failure theory.
I thought for half a minute you might have had some logic to go with your ‘911 for parrots’ quotes but sadly the only interesting thing about your comment is your avatar and how it relates to the whole world of conspiracy theories
Given that a couple of universities have seen fit to give me a dgree in industrial design and a couple more in architecture and that their accreditation is overseen by the professions that are very cognisant of liability and that I’m now hired to teach architecture students on the integration of structure and design, I would guess that someone thinks that I do.
By the way, I don’t use Youtube in my architecture classes.
Rhinocrates,
As a suitably qualified person you would no doubt have sought out the best information and there is no more technically proficient group of Truthers than Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth. You obviously contest the statements from the 1700+ Architects and Engineers who have assigned their professional reputations to the topic of 9/11 Truth. They also have lots of hard earned letters after their name. Could you please show us where they are mistaken? The coolest thing about life, more knowledge is always welcome.
My qualifications have also been declared meaningless, so some might say you’re in good company. I have no specialised knowledge of engineering or architecture, but your explanations make a lot of sense and are consistent with what engineers have told me. I even know people who work at NIST, although they weren’t part of the inquiry.
This obviously means that I support US foreign policy and think that every statement that comes out of Washington is gospel truth, so I suppose I’ll just have to live with that.
I have also never used youtube in a lecture. How my students must be deprived!!
OK, in good faith, here goes… and I’m sorry, it’s late and I have a lot of work to do tonight, so my statements are going to read like bullet points.
I don’t doubt the sincerity of anyone involved when it comes to their fundamental beliefs.
“1700” looks like a big number, but it isn’t compared to the whole range of professions – in fact, it’s a tiny minority. Still, for s single, limited human being, sifting through 1699 and missing one to have the 1700th thrown at me is not something I care enough about. So, no, I’m not going to pick on any one individual so that 1699 can be thrown at me.
Here is the difference between lawyers (and conspiracy theorists) and scientists:
A lawyer and a conspiracy theorist thinks that truth is like a house of cards – take just one card away and the entire house collapses.
A scientist knows that truth is like a jigsaw puzzle, an old one that’s been in the attic a long time. Pieces are missing, and it’s going to be hard work to fit the rest together, but if you have enough, then you have a best guess – because any other guess has far fewer pieces, because in reality, we’ll never know everything.
Yes, I will admit that Grey alien reptiod Bilderbergers from Zeta Reticuli working in concert with the Freemasons caused the dosai I ate last night to be overcooked, but I really don’t think that that was the most probable explanation by a long shot.
1 percent of uncertainty does not trump 99 percent certainty.
As Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If the claims made by the 911 Truthers require violations of the fundamental laws of physics, which have been proven for centuries now, then they had better front up – and they haven’t. In fact, the arguments that they produce require in themselves require violations of fundamental physics.
Could the US government, under George W Bush do evil things? Oh yes, of course I know that they did – but while Jack the Ripper did evil things, I still don’t think that he killed Marilyn Monroe.
FWIW, I do agree that a full and open inquiry will reveal a great deal of complicity with the Bin Laden family, and a lot of arse-covering by intelligence agencies who were incompetent or at least not omniscient, and people will do at least as much to cover up incompetence as they will to cover up complicity. So yeah, there’s cover-ups that haven’t been revealed in inquiries and won’t be.
The thing about conspiracy theories that provokes my scepticism is their assumption that the conspirators are competent.
Everything that we know about them tells us otherwise.
FWIW, I do agree that a full and open inquiry will reveal a great deal of complicity with the Bin Laden family, and a lot of arse-covering by intelligence agencies who were incompetent or at least not omniscient, and people will do at least as much to cover up incompetence as they will to cover up complicity. So yeah, there’s cover-ups that haven’t been revealed in inquiries and won’t be.
Cover ups – Check!
The thing about conspiracy theories that provokes my scepticism is their assumption that the conspirators are competent
Conspiracy Theory – Check
Cover up = Conspiracy!.
Without transparency, openess etc, there is little to no chance of gaining a clear understanding of the why/how/who, which leaves people to draw their own conclusions, using various methods and means.
Until such time as it comes into full light (unlikely), the *official narrative* must be treated as part of any conspiracy, that’s simply the consequence of a *cover up* , on any size or scale!
Maybe you could explain Newton’s Laws to us? You seem very keen on stating that none of us understand them, between your bouts of roflolling. Please enlighten us.
Once you’ve done that, I personally would be keen to have Lord Kelvin’s contributions explained as well.
“The energy used to destroy the building is in fact not the initial impact, but all the gravitational potential energy devoted to lifting its entire mass into the sky in the first place when it was constructed.”
Stupid demolition people using all that dynamite to blow up buildings while all the while those buildings really would behave like knitwork: All you need is to find a way to unleash all that potential energy devoted to keeping all that knitwork together! Find the right stitch and voila Bob’s your uncle. Same with buildings, all you need is the right bolt to break due to heat (like in building 7 apparently according to NIST) and the building will come down in freefall speed into it’s own footprint.
In the mean time the building covered in another oil product called plastic it seems which burned nicely and long unlike the Kerosene of the planes in a few initial minutes, was destroyed but did not collapse into it’s own footprint in free fall speed.
I see a lot of concrete, but haven’t identified any steel trusses that have been stripped of fire insulation (applied by a New York construction crew in the era of the five families) by the mechanism of a large plane flying into the building.
You’ll find that real demolition work is done on that principle, actually: you don’t “blow the building up”, you use the weight of the building to do most of the demolition for you.
You say National can’t be trusted for various reasons (who knows you may even be right)
Labour can’t be trusted to run the country for various reasons and they can’t even run their own party
The Greens just say any old thing and hope no one checks (bit like National and Labour I suppose)
So what options are there for people to vote for or is it a case of the lesser of two (three) evils?
The Greens just say any old thing and hope no one checks (bit like National and Labour I suppose)
Well, if you had actually bothered to check you would have found that the Green Party had been consistent with what’s on their webpage and they back up what they say. This is unlike, say, National.
I’m not saying they don’t stay on message, I’m saying theres a lot of bullcrap in the message and nobody (especially the media) seems keen on calling them on it.
You seriously think similar pieces couldn’t be written about national party graphics? Obviously not by DPF, but really?
The only way to not vote for the ‘least worst party’ is to vote for yourself. Otherwise, everyone is making a compromise decision, and that means ‘least worse’.
“You seriously think similar pieces couldn’t be written about national party graphics?”
Well no thats why I said at the start: “You say National can’t be trusted for various reasons (who knows you may even be right)”
“Otherwise, everyone is making a compromise decision, and that means ‘least worse’.
– I dunno, just doesn’t seem the best way to get things done, how you could change it though is beyond me…
its well and truly beyond you c73!
Adding to the fog of war
Nactional can not be trusted they continually lie!
Stick to you your cup of tea and leave it at that!
Any party leader who forgets he’s got a million dollars or so in a off shore bank account shouldn’t be allowed within kilometres of the levers of power.
It’s National by default.
Actually, I’m more concerned with people who forget the shares that they have despite the fact that they’re professional traders and will be looking at those shares and what the price is doing on a day to day basis.
When you’re worth 50+ million, what a few shares, easy to forget about, especially Tranz Rail ones, toilet paper had more value than those shares.
David Shearer though, very suspicious.
How can the chap from the UN forget he has a million dollars lying around in a offshore bank account, what’s he hiding?, any reporter worth their salt would be all over this.
“Yeah, especially when you’re also trying to sell them to a business in Texas via your government contacts for more than you bought them for.”
Yeah, and in case anyone (BM) has forgotten, Key’s dishonesty in this instance went WAAAAY beyond just lying 2 or 3 times directly into the camera and changing his story several times as it became obvious that the journo had more info than he first thought.
No the real sin here was that repeatedly Key was using parliament to ask questions designed to procure financial information about the company for his won personal use.
“But since Shearer won’t tell any one, all we can do is make shit up.
FIFY
“Seen a few numbers thrown about.”
Yeah I’ve seen Slater make a few up, and then BM says he “read it somewhere”, and then he increases it by 50%, and then a few other nutjobs repeat it around the blogs, and then Slater says he “heard somewhere” that it was twice as much, and then BM says he heard that too etc etc.
If it’s just speculation, $50 million is a more prumstrial number. Do you have any idea how many shares Cunliffe has in Monsanto and Petrobras? Maybe we could speculate that Norman Russell has a few million in Rio Tinto? Be asprishnul and ambishush, don’t stop with Shearer.
Sick buckets at the ready for a war criminal’s perverted feminism….
Learn to Speak Up
by CONDOLEEZZA RICE • April 1, 2013
There have been many times in my career when I was the only woman in the room; if I didn’t speak up, it was often noticed. I found speaking up took practice, but over time it became an important source of growth in my career.
One moment occurred during my freshman year of college. I was 16 years old and taking my first government class. Midway through the lecture, the professor introduced a bizarre theory as if it was a matter of course: Black people are born with lower IQs than white people. Everyone – including the black students – just sat there, accepting his theory as fact. Meanwhile, I was a 16-year-old black woman in college who spoke two languages and could play Beethoven and Bach on the piano. I was stunned, not only by this absurd statement, but by the lack of reaction from the other students. So I raised my hand.
The professor was stunned that I chose to speak up, and seemed even more amazed when I showed up the next day to argue the point. After that day, he realized his mistake and attempted to befriend me. I went on to excel in the course, despite the obstacles. I also learned a valuable lesson: If you find something uncomfortable or wrong, speak up. If you don’t challenge people, you aren’t doing your job.
In 1984, another situation arose that challenged me to speak up once again. I attended a seminar at Stanford featuring the then-National Security Advisor, who spoke on a commission I felt very strongly about. His mealy-mouthed answers caused my blood pressure to rise; yet no one pressed him for further information. So I raised my hand and shared my perspective. He seemed surprised, yet also impressed. Later he approached me and we talked. He noted my willingness to speak up and praised my thought process. That moment led to a life-long relationship, with him acting as an early mentor.
As my career evolved, so did my desire and need to speak up. Early on in my role as the National Security Advisor, I often had the opportunity to present options, but rarely did I ever voice a strong opinion in front of the President.
One afternoon, I found myself in a heated debate over President Bush giving a speech on the situation in the Middle East. It was a violent time, and there was concern that the President’s speech would only exacerbate the situation. I knew the President wanted to give the speech, so I decided to speak up. I said, “Mr. President, sometimes the only person who can make an impact is the President of the United States. You have to do this.” I waited for his response, nervous that I had overstepped. Instead, he smiled and agreed. He gave the speech and it was a rousing success.
It would be easy to say I have always spoken up at the right times….
I met a Chemistry Professor from the university she’d been in charge of (Stanford?). He considered her extremely mediocre intellectually and said her main achievement was to make university administration meetings confidential. He’d withdrawn from a committee rather than sign a confidentiality agreement, so she certainly didn’t think speaking up was an admirable quality in her subordinates.
I thought the dateline for this item was significant, but it appears that it really was written, in a tone of high seriousness, by Condoleezza Rice herself.
As well as the intellectual mediocrity you mention, it is clear she also lacks a sense of irony.
Prof Savage said: “It is striking that we have been able to discern a distinctive elite, whose sheer economic advantage sets it apart from other classes.
“At the opposite extreme, we have discerned the existence of a sizeable group – 15% of the population – which is marked by the lack of any significant amount of economic, cultural or social capital.
“The recognition of the existence of this group, along with the elite, is a powerful reminder that our conventional approaches to class have hindered our recognition of these two extremes, which occupy a very distinctive place in British society.”
It seems rather disturbing that the professor seems surprised that the rich exist and that they have advantages over everyone else.
Try taking the test on bbcnews.com! Simply by making one addition on a second pass, I seemed to jump from ‘traditional working class’ to ‘established middle class’ in no time at all. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22000973
Still, there have been people that tell me I’m a round peg in a square’s hole :p
And there was me thinking you had no class at all 😆
Elite – the most privileged group in the UK, distinct from the other six classes through its wealth. This group has the highest levels of all three capitals
Established middle class – the second wealthiest, scoring highly on all three capitals. The largest and most gregarious group, scoring second highest for cultural capital
Technical middle class – a small, distinctive new class group which is prosperous but scores low for social and cultural capital. Distinguished by its social isolation and cultural apathy
New affluent workers – a young class group which is socially and culturally active, with middling levels of economic capital
Traditional working class – scores low on all forms of capital, but is not completely deprived. Its members have reasonably high house values, explained by this group having the oldest average age at 66
Emergent service workers – a new, young, urban group which is relatively poor but has high social and cultural capital
Precariat, or precarious proletariat – the poorest, most deprived class, scoring low for social and cultural capital
Thanks for the link. Interesting survey. I actually don’t think the Prof was surprised that this group exists. More that he hadn’t expected it would show up so clearly in a major survey. He indicates it’s something that social scientists knew, but haven’t had substantial enough evidence to really go with it. He says:
“The recognition of the existence of this group, along with the elite, is a powerful reminder that our conventional approaches to class have hindered our recognition of these two extremes, which occupy a very distinctive place in British society.”
I guess it indicates more that long held major paradigms are hard to shift in social sciences, without substantial, sound research-based evidence.
It also give’s significant reinforcement of the term “precariat” which is getting increasing currency in left wing politics.
The categories they identify at the extremes are the most significant and useful. There’s been various attempts to categorise classes showing more gradations than the Marxist working vs capitalist classes, taking into account social status, cultural capital etc – there’s so many relevant factors it’s always difficult to pin down clear class bands.
“It also give’s significant reinforcement of the term “precariat” which is getting increasing currency in left wing politics”.
And especially so in countries whose gubbamints are still wedded to the neo-liberal dogma.
Progressive taxation is regularly attacked in the media. Higher tax rates restrains the richest – well if they didn’t pay lobbyists to create loopholes.
There is to be a law change in the air concerning ‘incitement to commit suicide’. I wonder if it is aimed at people who help others with euthanasia. I am hoping that the politicians will actually pass a law that sets out procedures to facilitate this in an organised and legal way that respects the wishes of the person and protects them against pressure from others.
Any laws passed that bear on euthanasia should be directed to making this a human and humane process carried out effectively by members of the family who can face the decision to die and last ceremony. The last thing that should happen is for law makers, medical or bureaucratic personnel to become arbiters of people’s lives so they are forced to exist beyond their wishes.
Sir Peter comments that he is particularly concerned by the trend for the complex nature of science to be ignored or misunderstood in societal debates, leading to the argument that you can find a scientist to support any given position. This, he says, totally misinterprets the way that scientific consensus is achieved and can engender serious mistrust in the scientific enterprise. Society will be better served when science is used appropriately
@PB ….. it doesn’t surprise me. I suspect Key, in all his arrogance, appointed Gluckman because he thought he could be a useful ally rather than because of his acumen.
Society uses science; good science simple ways to understand how to act in concert to produce the best outcome. Take roading science, where the simple practice of all on the left (or right) makes it possible to quickly get to where you need to be. As Einstein pointed out, keep it simple but no simpler. The problem with Gluckman take on matters is its a generalization, good public science requires that the problem being discuss is referenced, then understanding of the
problem is displayed, then and only then should we accord the speaker with any integrity, if they then do not allow themselves a forum to be question in, or respond in put downs and other poor debating tactics. Gluckman is merely a talking head for Key to see being scientific minded.
Now the media often reworks, highly manufactures the work of science in order to sell newspapers, this is entirely different from the need of society for simple science that helps us act in concert to achieve results that we value. i.e. Media sluts. Science isn’t found in the media much, its found in legislation, and its noted Gluckman has little to say about legislative ends of science.
like for example, have too few mine inspectors, when you don’t measure you can’t avoid, a simple scientific practice that any chief scientist should be aware of. But you see the Human Rights Commission deals with Human rights practices of government, so you’d think that the chief science advisor would also deal to the practice of public science that legislation creates, or ministers ignore.
Like Climate change predicting globally more flash flooding, more droughts, and so when they appear, ADVISING Joyce not to make a dick of himself by arguing against climate change and
its effects on our economy, our diary output, our water use, our clean green branding.
She’s gotta keep all those private prison stats up after all! It’ll be justification for another one coming to an area near you. Perhaps there’ll be a smelter site ripe for conversion before too long. Shove a few partitions and a roof on those pot lines, and Bob’s your uncle.
Ticks all the boxes – it’s a win-win situation – regional development, tough on crime, etc. etc
(I am thinking NAct type strategic planning)
And this is why we will see our power bills rise after the Mighty River sale:
Mighty River Power’s directors are getting hefty increases in fees ahead of the company’s float, State Owned Enterprises Minister Tony Ryall has announced.
The Government announced that the annual fees for directors would increase by 73 per cent to $85,000 a year.
Chairwoman Joan Withers will see her fees increase by more than 50 per cent, to $150,000 a year.
Ryall said the move was to ”adjust the level of fees MRP directors are paid to bring them more into line with comparable listed companies”.
“Fees need to be at a level that will attract and retain directors who have the required governance skills to operate effectively in a listed company environment,” Ryall said.
As well as the pay increase, the Government will allow the company an $85,000 pool ”for committee work” to be distributed by the board.
Parasites go on a feeding frenzy for some unknown reason once ‘mum and dad’ take over. This is sick and unjustified but I’m sure the directors will turn it down ha fucking ha.
meanwhile in other parts of the world the mining and exploitation companies continue to abuse and destroy indigenous peoples and their lives – our situation here is interconnected with all struggles especially underreported ones.
The Shuar stepped up their efforts to defend their culture and way of life against the impending threat of the 25,000 acre Mirador mining Project. They initiated a legal action alongside Environmental and human rights using Articles 71-73 on Rights of Nature in the Ecuadorian Constitution. In their case, the plaintiffs have asked the courts to stop the Mirador Project using the precautionary principle. If the project is allowed to go ahead, it would have a severe impact on the Shuar’s culture, their sacred sites, and the very water and land they depend on.
The Havasupai Nation, meanwhile, teamed up with three conservation groups to sue the U.S. Forest Service over its decision to allow Energy Fuels Resources, Inc. to begin operating a uranium mine near Grand Canyon National Park without initiating or completing formal tribal consultations and without updating an outdated 1986 federal environmental review. The Canyon Mine threatens cultural values, wildlife and endangered species and increases the risk of pollution and depletion of groundwater feeding springs and wells in and around the Grand Canyon.
Traditional owners in Arnhem Land, Australia, issued a petition to Darwin and Canberra calling on the Northern Territory and Federal governments not to allow their country to be fracked. More than 80 per cent of the Northern Territory is now under application for the unconventional oil and gas exploration, including most of Arnhem Land. As a public demonstration, Traditional owners also burnt a letter from Paltar Petroleum who was responding to their objections. As they burnt the document the men called out in unison: “Paltar this is what you wrote to us, and we say no!”
I urge everyone interested to go to Intercontinental Cry and read further.
Minister for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith, one of the many millionaires in the UK Cabinet, has provoked outrage by saying he could live on £53 a week benefits.
It reminds one of the story about Tony Blair when on the speaking circuit, going into his bank and asking if he could have the amount he could withdraw from the bank’s ATMs increased.
“Let’s see,” said the cashier, “Do you earn more than £25,000?”
“It depends,” replied Tony. “Some days I do, some days I don’t.”
The British man called Mick Philpott with his wife and his drug-mate has been tried for setting fire to his house where his children were.
The plan was for Philpott to rescue his children and for Willis (a previous lover who had left him) to be prosecuted for arson, the court heard. But it went horribly wrong when the blaze took hold fast. The adults escaped the house but the six children died as they slept. (We hope.)
But in 1978 –
Philpott launched a savage attack on 17-year-old Kim Hill – before turning the knife on her mother.
He was convicted of attempted murder and GBH with intent and jailed for seven years.
Jurors in Philpott’s latest trial were not told about his previous conviction after judge Mrs Justice Thirlwall refused to allow the shocking incident to be used in evidence
Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4870695/Revealed-Mick-Philpott-stabbed-ex-girlfriend.html#ixzz2PRuHSSuf
* He has been in trouble for vicious attacks – these went back to 1978.
* He was a 21 year old soldier at that time.
* Some years later he pinned another girlfriend down and held a knife at her throat.
* Now in his mature age he, and his mates, set fire to his house and six of his children died as a
result.
* If such a person was kept in jail for his whole life from the first attacks that showed a
thoroughly dangerous and degenerate man who was unlikely to be habilitated, others
wouldn’t have had to go through hell because of him.
* He wouldn’t be able to breed a family of 17 children who would have a screwed up life as a
result of their parents being bad role models.
* He sounds as if he has the mindset of Wilson of Blenheim, an ugly and aggressive man
about to be released after all sorts of appeals.
And some are using the case to hit welfare – ‘Anyone convicted of any welfare fraud should receive a lifetime ban on ..’ It is obvious that there should be shorter sentences for welfare fraud, and longer ones for being a vicious, violent, abusive person who is a danger to society.
And lastly when trying these people, the law makes certain they get a ‘fair trial’ by not revealing that they are degenerate criminals to the jury. No mention of any past wrongdoing is told to them. They should be told at the end of the trial so that they have the whole picture of the person they are deciding on.
I felt great saddness when I saw the photo of the six children who died. It has been reported that Philpott tried to chat up a police woman and he was joking/laughing when down at the police station just after the fire.
To be charged with manslaughter and not murder is not right either.
I know that there are thousands on the East half of Washington DC who do seem to live like that. Not sure about the snow-coffee though. Sometimes information like that comes out of North Korea but the camera doesn’t lie – does it?
Interesting thanks chris73
A guy called Alun Hill did it as a joke, he admits he does not speak Korean, then it got picked up by some online news crew who mistakenly ran with it thinking it legit
as spoof it has some great lines despite the daily struggle of the reality the pictures expose
Kind of says it all really and of course South Korea has some big friends they can call on, not sure China would think its worth going to war over North Korea, in fact they’re probably hoping the USA and South Korea does deal to them and take them over, it’d mean more stability in the region which would = bigger profits and they wouldn’t have to prop up North Korea…
One Tāne Huna said
“The adults would like to be able to have a sensible discussion of US foreign policy, which is pretty much a terrorism factory so far as I can tell, but every time anyone raises it we have to listen to the dimwit chorus insisting we watch this video.”
complete horsepuckey
These days it is a rare day when 911 issues, specifically the physical events of the day, get mentioned on The Standard.
Today was an obvious tease, poking a sleeping bear with a stick so to speak, due to the events in Russia, (still hasn’t collapsed btw)
It is not a ‘conspiracy theory’ to reference 911 when discussing the Neo-Imperial aspirations of the USA into the Middle East and other Asian regions and how the events of that day were used as justification for the slaughter of hundreds and thousands of people and the instigation of a global war against largely manufactured enemies.
It is not a ‘conspiracy theory’ to reference 911 when discussing the acquisition by the DHS for hundreds of armoured personal carriers or thousands of drones or the millions of rounds of ammunition or the establishment of the TSA or the removal of an ever growing list of civil liberties throughout America. All of which are a direct and very real result of the events of September 11 2001.
It is not a ‘conspiracy theory’ to reference 911 when discussing how all US foreign policy from that day forth has been based on a litany of misinformation and hyperbole, most of which over the past decade has been proven false. Facts that to this day are openly ignored by the Administration itself.
It is a ‘conspiracy theory’ to blather on about a very complex set of engineering calculations without being able to write them down, let alone do the Maths.
It is a ‘conspiracy theory’ when it requires thousands of individuals to be in on it.
Two women were rescued from being burned alive earlier this week in Papua New Guinea.
An angry mob accused the two elderly women of being sorcerers who killed an 8-year-old girl in the city of Mount Hagen.
Those two were lucky.
Mount Hagen is the same city where a 20-year-old mother actually was burned at the stake last week.
And before we get too uppity about ourselves in the West:
Is today’s war on women in the western world so different from these events in Papua New Guinea, or the witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries?
For example: we learned recently that the Irish government has admitted that, for more than seven decades, it was in collusion with the so-called Magdalene laundries operated by religious congregations that kept generations of women and girls (as young as 12) in virtual enslavement.
Other instances of the ongoing war on women: Republican legislators in Iowa think it’s a good idea to put rape victims in jail. In Virginia, women are being forced to have ultrasounds before they can have an abortion. The state’s Republican governor, Bob McDonnell, has signed into law Virginia’s mandatory ultrasound law, making the state the eighth to require such a procedure.
As I see it, misogyny continues to be alive and well worldwide.
Yeah, we’ve got a long way to go before we call ourselves civilised.
I wonder how strong the fundamentalist churches are in Papua New Guinea. I don’t know whether fundamentalist and evangelising means the same outcome. The evangelising spirit in some churches alone, prompts a quick response to previously little known areas that are probably still versed in aminism or whatever has been traditional. Mix the ultimate truths of such christianity (with a small c) and the traditional responses to wrong-doing and that might be an explanation for this savage witch-hunting.
Seen this?
____________________________________________________________________________
Shut The Smelter!
LET THE “TOO BIG TO FAIL” SMELTER FAIL
“Too big to fail” was the mantra of the robber banks and other transnational financial sharks during the Global Financial Crisis, which remains ongoing. This left the victims to pay for the costs of the crime, while the corporate criminals walked away scotfree and kept their loot. The people of Cyprus are the latest to experience firsthand just how this works.
In this country, Rio Tinto’s Bluff smelter was decades ahead of the fashion. Every time that Rio Tinto feels that its charmed existence in New Zealand is going to become less cushy, it threatens to pull the plug, close the smelter and walk away. It does so in the knowledge that it has always been deemed “too big to fail” by the succession of Governments, both National and Labour, that it has effortlessly outmanoeuvred for more than 40 years. This time it is trying it on as a tactic to try to pressure Meridian over its power price contract, on which the ink is barely dry and which only took effect in January.
Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) calls Rio Tinto’s bluff (pun intended). Stop crying wolf, stop using your New Zealand workers as disposable pawns in your cynical game, stop holding Southland and the country to ransom. Go ahead and close the smelter and bugger off. See if we care, the country will be much better off without you. The smelter is the country’s single biggest user of electricity, consuming one sixth of the total, 24/7 for more than 40 years. It pays a top secret super cheap price that is not available for any other user and all it does is export electricity from NZ in the form of alumina, while being subsidised by all other electricity users. The smelter is the textbook example of corporate welfare in New Zealand. It is the biggest bludger in the country.
How ironic that Rio Tinto has rejected the Government’s offer of a short term subsidy. It wants a long term one, preferably indefinitely. Presumably, this is in addition to the massive taxpayer subsidy it has been receiving continuously for more than 40 years, in the form of the Manapouri power station built with public money for its exclusive use (and let’s never forget that men died building that); and the cheapest and most secret power price rate in the country bar none. Not good enough apparently, it still wants more.
Rio Tinto won the 2011 Roger Award for the Worst Transnational Corporation Operating In Aotearoa/New Zealand (and was runner up in both 2009 and 08). It was nominated for lobbying two Governments “over several years to secure excessive allocations of free emissions units under the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme”.
The Roger Award judges agreed, concluding: “It appears therefore, that the New Zealand taxpayer is subsidising a transnational corporate rort of the emissions trading scheme… The significance of this stance cannot be underestimated; a major transnational player within New Zealand materially benefits from its non-compliance with a strategy to reduce global climate change and its ecological effects”.
The Judges’ Report concludes that the company has a 50 year history of “suborning, blackmailing and conning successive New Zealand governments into paying massive subsidies on the smelter’s electricity; dodging tax, and running a brilliantly effective PR machine to present a friendly, socially responsible and thoroughly greenwashed face to the media and the public. Its milking of the Emissions Trading Scheme is entirely in character”.
The extremely detailed Financial Analysis reveals that the smelter’s claimed benefits to NZ, namely annual export earnings of “around $1 billion” are, in fact, overstated by four fifths.
In short, it is a liability to New Zealand, not an asset.
What about the people who work for the smelter, directly or indirectly? Indisputably, the smelter closing would have a negative impact on Invercargill and Southland. But let’s keep a sense of proportion – in disaster terms it doesn’t compete with Christchurch having lost 185 lives, 50,000 jobs, and sustained $30 billion worth of damage in a matter of seconds on February 22, 2011. If Christchurch can get back in the saddle after that, Invercargill should be able to handle the smelter closure and its attendant job losses. As a plus, the city will be able to shake off its unhealthily dependent situation as a company town with its local government at the beck and call of this transnational bludger.
The tobacco industry used to employ a lot of people here, but that was deemed to be no longer in the public interest. Lacing lollywater with booze and selling it to kids supports a lot of jobs too but there’s plenty of public demand to get rid of that particular industry as well. The P industry provides an income for thousands of people too, but we don’t hear any demand for that insidious trade to be kept going to keep them in a job. History is full of examples of horrible industries that kept people in jobs (such as the slave trade) but which were banned and/or abolished for the greater good.
This smelter constitutes a crime against the people of New Zealand and has done for its entire existence.
In the national interest, it must be closed and the sooner the better.
It would be a great bonus to have 15% of the country’s electricity suddenly available and no longer committed to one smelter. There would no excuse for the moneygrabbing power companies not to cut their prices (we’ve been falsely promised lower power prices since the “electricity reforms” of the 1990s). And, we’re told, it would drive down Meridian’s attractiveness to would be buyers as part of the Government’s assets sale process. How ironic that the selfishness and ruthlessness of one transnational corporation could bugger up the plans to flog off more of our public assets to transnational corporations.
Thanks for that, Penny. Murray Horton is one of this country’s most engaging and entertaining speakers. He always has lots of interesting things to say, and he says them forthrightly and stylishly. Yet he has never appeared on National Radio’s The Panel.
It can’t be because he is from Christchurch; after all, his fellow Christchurch identity Barry Corbett seems to be on the programme half a dozen times a year at least.
A naming project is starting up to expose government officials, businesses, individuals and families using British Virgin Islands and other offshore tax havens to avoid tax in their own countries. With 200 gigabytes of data from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a fair few people will be keeping their accountants quite busy right now.
The naming project may be extremely damaging for confidence among the world’s wealthiest people, no longer certain that the size of their fortunes remains hidden from governments and from their neighbours.
ICIJ’s collaborating journalists from 46 countries constituted one of the largest groups ever to have worked together on a data project. Marina Walker Guevara, Michael Hudson, Nicky Hager and Stefan Candea worked from the US, New Zealand and Romania. Others who contributed across the world included Mar Cabra, Kimberley Porteous, Frederic Zalac, Alex Shprintsen, Prangtip Daorueng, Roel Landingin, Francois Pilet, Emilia Díaz-Struck, Roman Shleynov, Harry Karanikas, Sebastian Mondial and Emily Menkes.
there’s a bit of added interest in the list of journalists.
Coasters Turn Out In Droves: It’s precisely the widening gulf between those with actual experience of things like guns, chainsaws and drilling machines, and those who regulate their use, that accounts for the angry crowd at Greymouth’s Messenger Park on Sunday, 17 November 2019. In the rarefied atmosphere where decisions ...
There are perennial arguments about the circumstances of the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, and in particular whether more than one shooter is required by the evidence (such as the Zapruder film). Those who know little about physics frequently claim that the sharp backwards motion of JFK’s head as ...
Apparently, some people enjoy washing their cars. Each to his or her own, I suppose. I mean, some people like duck shooting, some people follow Coronation Street, and some people’s idea of a good day out is to sit on a grass bank at Seddon Park and watch cricket all ...
Last week we learned that New Zealand First had apparently tried to enrich itself from public office, with a dodgy forestry company linked to a number of NZ First figures sticking its hand out repeatedly for government money. Today in Question Time Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones had his ...
Finally, governments seem slowly to be beginning to act on climate change. But its not enough. While they're publicly signing up to targets, they're planning to destroy the world by continuing fossil fuel extraction:The world’s nations are on track to produce more than twice as much coal, oil and gas ...
Stuff has begun interviewing NZ First's secret donors, and it turns out that its as bad as we expected. They start with racing industry figure Garry Chittick, who is predictably grumpy about NZ First's coalition choices. Meanwhile, I'm looking at the list of pork NZ First has effectively given its ...
Stag At Bay: Twelve years ago, Winston Peters was still robust enough to come back from the political crucifixion which his political and media enemies had prepared for him. In his seventies now, the chances of a second resurrection are slim. We should, therefore, prepare for the last gasp of ...
Satellites pass over NZ all the time (literally). Here I focus on the 187 Planet Labs ‘Dove’ Earth-imaging satellites, and I show that one can determine in advance where they will be, enabling scientists on the ground to correlate their environmental and other data collection with opportunities to get imaging ...
The Council of Disobedient Women has learned that the Prefect of Aro Valley has been promoted to a new role with the blessing of the Pope of Wellington. Softy Jejune Parson has been appointed Mother Superior of Woke Wellington for the work she has been doing calling out heretics, ...
On both sides of the Atlantic, some purportedly “contentious” and “difficult to deal with” leadership contenders to lead the US and UK, as President and Prime Minister respectively, seem to have thrown a few spanners into the works of the normal messaging most are used to hearing constantly. Except they’re ...
In Question Time today the Prime Minister was naturally facing questions about Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and his dubious party financing arrangements, which seem to violate electoral finance law. Her response was to pretend that it was nothing to do with her, and that she is not responsible for ...
A prisoner stripped of their name, imprisoned for a secret crime after a secret trial, with all details legally suppressed for secret reasons. A story by Kafka or Dumas? China? No, its just the latest stage of Australian tyranny:An Australian citizen was prosecuted, convicted, and jailed in the ACT last ...
Stuff has more details on what New Zealand First's slush-fund has been funding, with much of the spending directly benefiting the party. Which makes it look a lot like hidden donations, rather than the completely-innocent-giant-pile-of-cash Winston is trying to portray it as. The Electoral Commission is now investigating, but Simon ...
I've joked before about how hosting international summits effectively turns part of your country into a police state for the duration. Well, New Zealand is hosting APEC in 2021, with events throughout the year in Christchurch, Wellington, and Auckland. And the government has put up a bill to give itself ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzI saw an article claiming that “king tides” will increase in ...
It has been revealed that firing ranges used by the NZDF while deployed to the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Bamyan Province, Afghanistan, contained unexploded ordnance that caused numerous deaths and injuries after the NZDF withdrew the PRT in April 2013. In 2014 seven children were killed when an unidentified ...
Didn't See It Coming: NZ Herald columnist Lizzie Marvelly's latest column merits serious scrutiny because such a clear example of anti-democratic thinking is encountered only rarely on the pages of the daily press. Which is not to say that the elitism which lies at the heart of such social disparagement ...
by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh Initially it was reported that in an aerial bombardment that took place on August 30th seven children were massacred; the figure then went up to eight and then on November 11th Noticias Uno reported that, according to people from the community in close proximity to the ...
A lot has happened since the UN’s report on 1.5ºC was released in October 2018. New Zealand’s Zero Carbon Bill has passed, and enshrines the 1.5ºC goal in law. The UK and France have also legally strengthened their targets to Net Zero 2050. The School Strike For Climate and Extinction ...
Next year is an election year, and Labour needs money to fund its campaign. So naturally, they're selling access:Labour is charging wealthy business figures $1500-a-head to lunch with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at its annual conference later this month. [...] On the weekend beginning November 29th, around 800 delegates will ...
Yesterday the government announced its changes to tenancy laws, including an end to no-cause evictions, limits on rent increases, and anonyminity for tenants who defend their rights against bad landlords (sadly necessary because landlords are scum who maintain blacklists of "uppity" tenants). They're all good moves, and have resulted in ...
In 2003 New Zealand sent a Provincial Reconstruction Team to Afghanistan to support America's doomed war there. While there, they conducted regular weapons practice on local firing ranges, littering the landscape with unexploded ammunition. These ranges weren't secure - they're on land used by locals for animal herding - so ...
Green MP Gareth Hughes has announced he will retire at the election. Its understandable - he's been there ten years, and wants to actually see his children grow up rather than miss it while drowning in the toxic parliamentary sewer. But his departure is also a huge loss for the ...
Words and images by Jacqui GibsonGone are Auckland Museum’s days of doing science using a museum-centric academic approach, after Māori land rights holders Ngāti Kuri gave the museum an ultimatum.Tom Trnski holding a fossilised whale tooth from the Far North.Aussie-born Head of Natural Sciences at Auckland Museum ...
MediaWorks announced in October 2019 that it intended to sell off its struggling television business and cancel or cut back on several popular local programmes, including New Zealand Today, Married at First SightNew Zealand and 7 Days. Its radio and outdoor advertising arms are currently performing well, but MediaWorks’ ...
Westminster voting intention:CON: 44% (+3)LAB: 28% (-1)LDEM: 14% (-1)BREX: 6% (-)via @OpiniumResearch, surveyed this weekChgs. w/ 08 Nov— Britain Elects (@britainelects) 16 November 2019 This, of course, doesn't look good. Labour have been chucking big, headline grabbing policies left, right and centre ... Well, maybe not right. Left, left ...
Some readers may remember that I mentioned last year that I was applying for NZ citizenship. I filled out the paperwork and had my original citizenship interview in February. Everything went well until they discovered that, because I had spent five months in the US in 2017, I had not ...
by Deirdre O’Neill It is becoming quite acceptable for certain sections of the left to declare that people like me – women who are ‘gender critical’ – should not be allowed in leftist or anarchist spaces. Leaving aside the arrogance and implicit authoritarianism of this claim, its lack of critical ...
There is an article in The Conversation, written by Jeremy P. Shapiro (Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences, Case Western Reserve University), about what he sees as the psychologically-based underpinnings of three main matters that seem to vex people all around the planet. The article is titled “The Thinking ...
. . Blogger Martyn Bradbury has won his case against unreasonable search and surveillance against the NZ Police; and subsequent Police attempts to produce evidence in secrecy, in a closed Court. His case highlights a disturbing growing trend in Aotearoa New Zealand for State power to be used against ...
The Committee of Disobedient Women has intercepted an email from Dr Emma Eejut, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Massey University to the university’s Vice-Chancellor, Jan Thomas. Dear Jan, Thank you for your courageous move. I think 10 pages of blether** should tie any of the students game enough to try holding ...
That's the only response to the findings of the Ombudsman's investigation into LGOIMA practices at the Christchurch City Council:My investigation identified serious concerns about the Council’s leadership and culture, and its commitment to openness and transparency. In particular, Council staff raised concerns with me about various methods employed by some ...
NZ First seems to be nakedly trying to enrich itself from public office:A powerful New Zealand First figure helped establish a forestry company that then pushed for money from two key funding streams controlled by a New Zealand First Minister. An RNZ investigation has found Brian Henry, lawyer for Winston ...
Behrouz Boochani is an award winning author and journalist. He is also a refugee, who for the past six years has been detained in Australia's offshore gulag on Manus Island, and in Papua New Guinea. But last night, with the cooperation of the WORD Christchurch festival and Amnesty International, he ...
Different Strokes: If a multicultural immigration policy imposes no obligation on immigrant communities to acknowledge and ultimately embrace their host nation’s most cherished traditions and values, then how is that nation to prevent itself from being reduced to a collection of inward-looking and self-replicating ethnic and cultural enclaves?THE COALITION GOVERNMENT’S ...
Protective Zone: Reading the rules and guidelines released by Massey University, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that its governing body considers the whole concept of free speech a disruptive threat to the orderly imparting of orthodox academic knowledge.IN TRUE ORWELLIAN fashion, Massey University has announced its commitment to ...
Brian Oliver, University of Technology SydneyNew South Wales and Queensland are in the grip of a devastating bushfire emergency, which has tragically resulted in the loss of homes and lives. But the smoke produced can affect many more people not immediately impacted by the fires – even people many ...
Farmers held a hate-march on Parliament today, complete with MAGA hats, gun-nut signs, and gendered insults. While supposedly about a grab-bag of issues - including, weirdly, mental health - it was clear that the protest was about one thing, and one thing only: climate change. And specifically, forestry "destroying" rural ...
Sally Wasef, Griffith University and David Lambert, Griffith UniversityThese days, not many Aussies consider the ibis a particularly admirable creature. But these birds, now colloquially referred to as “bin chickens” due to their notorious scavenging antics, have a grandiose and important place in history – ancient Egyptian history, to ...
The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security released their annual report today, and I've been busy reading through it. In amongst the usual review of what they've been doing all year, there's a few interesting bits. For example, a discussion on "agency retention and disposal of information", which points out that ...
Recently more than 150 post-graduate students and young scientists presented an open letter to the Green Party via The Spinoff, encouraging them to reconsider their position on genetic modification. Their target is tackling climate change issues.[1] Can any party continue to be dismissive about genetic modification (GM) contributing to ...
by Deirdre O’Neill Under Thatcher and then Blair and continuing up until our contemporary moment, the working class has seen its culture slowly and progressively destroyed. The change from an industrial society to a service society produced a marked shift in focus from the working class as the backbone of ...
Since 2013, the Australian government has detained refugees without trial in Pacific gulags, where they are abused, tortured, and driven to suicide. The policy is not just an abuse of human rights and possible crime against humanity; it has also had a corrosive effect on the states Australia uses as ...
It seems fair to say that we currently live in a problematic political moment in world history. Democracies are in decline and dictatorships are on the rise. Primordial, sectarian and post-modern divisions have re-emerged, are on the rise or have been accentuated by political evolutions of the moment such as ...
Last month, Greenpeace head Russel Norman surrendered his speaking slot at an EPA conference to student climate activist Sorcha Carr, who told the EPA exactly what she thought of them. It was a bold move, which confronted both regulators and polluters (or, as the EPA calls them, "stakeholders") with the ...
The core principle supposedly underlying New Zealand's electoral finance regime is transparency: parties can accept large donations from rich people wanting to buy policy, but only if they tell the public they've been bought. Most parties abide by this, so we know that TOP was wholly-owned by Gareth Morgan, and ...
Today is a Member's Day, probably the second-to-last one of the year, and its a big one, with the Third Reading of David Seymour's End of Life Choice Bill. last Member's Day it was reported back from committee, after MPs voted narrowly to make it subject to a (rules TBA) ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzThe growth of the human population over the last 70 ...
by The Council of Disobedient Women In her excellent oral submission to the Abortion reform select committee on 31st October on behalf of Otago University’s Department of Public Health, historian and public health researcher Hera Cook stated: “We would ask that the committee not use the term ‘pregnant persons’ and ...
by Don Franks In 1957, E M Forster wrote, of his greatest work: “The India described in ‘A Passage to India’ no longer exists either politically or socially. Change had begun even at the time the book was published ( 1924) and during the following quarter of a century it ...
The Referendums Framework Bill was due back from select committee today. But there's no report on it. Instead, the bill has been bounced back to the House under Standing order 29593) because the Committee didn't bother to produce one. They probably tried. But given the membership of the committee (which ...
Two years into New Zealand’s Labour-led government, the long-delayed Zero Carbon Bill became law on 7 November. Passed essentially unanimously, the lengthy public debates and political manoeuvring faded away until the final passage was even anticlimactic: Flipping through the @nzstuff@DomPost I was starting to wonder if I’d dreamt ...
Now the Zero Carbon Bill is law, what's next? Obviously, the ETS changes currently before select committee are going to be the next battleground. But we're also going to get a good idea of where we're going, and if the progress the Zero Carbon Act promises is good enough, during ...
Grant PearceThe effects of the current Australian bushfires in New South Wales and Queensland (and also again in California) are devastating and far-reaching. To date, the fires have resulted in several lives being lost and many homes and properties destroyed. Here in New Zealand, the impacts have been only ...
A passing comment in a post the other day about the labour force participation rates of older people prompted me to pull down the fuller data and see what we could see about various participation rates over the decades since the HLFS began in 1986. As it happens, the ...
Distract And Divert: The rise of what we have come to call “Identity Politics” represents the ideological manifestation of the ruling class’s objective need to destroy class politics, and of the middle-class’s subjective need to justify their participation in the process.THE RELIEF of the ruling class can only be imagined. ...
"I saw a newspaper picture,From the political campaignA woman was kissing a child,Who was obviously in pain.She spills with compassion,As that young child'sFace in her hands she gripsCan you imagine all that greed and avariceComing down on that child's lips?" ...
Dr Matt Boyd, Prof Michael Baker, Prof Nick WilsonThe Global Health Security Index which considers pandemic threats has just been published. Unfortunately, NZ scores approximately half marks (54/100), coming in 35th in the world rankings – far behind Australia. This poor result suggests that the NZ Government needs to ...
The Zero Carbon Act is inadequate, with a weak methane target designed to give farmers a free ride. But it turns out it could have been worse: Climate Change Minister James Shaw was so desperate to get National on board, he wanted to gut that target, and leave it in ...
The Herald reprints an Australian story on a couple of tragic deaths in Bali from drinking cocktails that had methanol in them. The story argues that methanol is likely the result of home distillation. But what the young tourists were experiencing was far from a hangover. They’d consumed a toxic cocktail ...
Last month, the police announced a trial of specialist roaming armed units, which would drive round (poor, brown) areas in armoured SUVs, armed to the teeth. When they announced the trial, they told us it was about having armed police "ready to attend major incidents at any time if needed". ...
Spain went to the polls today in the second elections this year, after the Socialists (who had come to power in a confidence vote, then gone to the polls in April) rejected the offer of a coalition with the left-wing PoDemos, and instead decided to gamble n a better outcome ...
A couple of days ago I attended (and spoke at) the University of Waikato’s “LearnFest” event. There were lots of talks and sessions on very diverse aspects of teaching, mostly at tertiary level. One was by Myra Williamson from Te Piringa Faculty of Law here at Waikato, on Contract Cheating ...
There will be a transit of Mercury – the planet Mercury will pass across the face of the Sun – taking place at sunrise in New Zealand on Tuesday, 12th November. It was by observing such an event 250 years ago that James Cook and his scientist colleagues were able ...
Since becoming the world’s first openly transexual mayor and member of parliament, Georgina Beyer has been recognised as a trailblazer for trans rights. Daphna Whitmore talks with her about where she sees the current trans movement We start out talking about legislation the government put on hold that would have ...
If FFNZ really put their faith in “Top Medical Journals” they would now be amending their billboards to recognise new research results. Image from FFNZ but updated to agree with the latest research. ...
National Messiah? Chris Luxon identifies himself as an evangelical Christian. If he is genuine in this self-characterisation, then he will take every opportunity his public office provides to proselytise on behalf of his faith. He will also feel obliged to bear witness against beliefs and practices he believes to be ...
I'm going to make a Reckless Prediction™ that the Tories have 'topped out' in the 'poll of polls' / Britain Elects multipoll tracker at about 38%, and in the next week we will start to see Labour creep up on them.In fact, we might just be seeing the start of ...
by The Council of Disobedient Women Lizzie Marvelly: “I may have missed this… has @afterellen gone all terf-y? Or am I reading something incorrectly? “ https://twitter.com/LizzieMarvelly/status/1191840059105742849 After Ellen is a lesbian website that is unashamedly pro-lesbian, as you’d expect. So why is Ms Marvelly so bothered about lesbians having their ...
Did you know there once was a time when it was illegal to be a gypsy (aka Romani) in Britain?That was between 1530, when the Egyptians Act was passed, and 1856, when it was repealed.Amongst other things, the act forbade the entry of 'Egyptians' into England, ordered those already there ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister of Forestry The Government will further strengthen New Zealand’s wood processing sector as part of our focus on ‘value over volume’ in our forestry industry, Forestry Minister Shane Jones says. Minister Jones will today meet with forestry representatives in Northland to signal new measures to help the ...
New Zealand First are celebrating the announcement of an investment of $3.5 million into five new trapping devices. These are a range of bait and trap devices, all designed to be left unattended for long periods of time. NZ First conservation spokesperson Jenny Marcroft says that this latest development will ...
Clayton Mitchell, Spokesperson for Consumer Affairs The ‘wheel clamping’ Bill that will cap clamper fees to $100 passed its third readinginParliament today. New Zealand First welcomes The Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill to combat predatory wheel clamping behaviour in what is currently a largely unregulated business. Cowboy clampers are: gouging ...
Jenny Marcroft, Spokesperson for Health New Zealand First welcomes the passage of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission Bill through its first reading in Parliament. “Today’s progress takes serious action on the mental health and addiction crisis the country is facing,” says New Zealand First Health Spokesperson Jenny Marcroft. “The re-establishment ...
Mark Patterson, Spokesperson for Primary Industries Today the Government announced the delivery of the promise to protect New Zealand interests by applying a new National Interest Test to the sales of our most sensitive and high risk assets to overseas buyers. This further strengthening of the Overseas Investment Act will ...
The Coalition Government is delivering on its promise to protect New Zealanders’ interests by applying a new national interest test to the sales of our most sensitive and high-risk assets to overseas buyers. Under current Overseas Investment Act (OIA) rules, assets such as ports and airports, telecommunications infrastructure, electricity and ...
Rt Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First Allegations raised this morning by Stuff Limited / Fairfax concern a party matter but I am confident that New Zealand First has operated within electoral laws, now and for the last 27 years. Declarable donations were declared to the Electoral Commission. Our ...
The chairman of the Upper North Island Supply Chain Strategy (UNISCS) working group, Wayne Brown, has hit back at critics of his group’s recommendations to relocate the Ports of Auckland cargo operations to Whangarei’s deepwater port of Northport. The working group's recommendation to close Auckland waterfront to all but cruise ...
Jenny Marcroft MP, Spokesperson for Health New Zealand First backs the public to decide on the End of Life Choice Bill via a referendum at the 2020 General Election. The Bill, with New Zealand First’s referendum provision incorporated, passed its final reading in Parliament this evening. New Zealand First Spokesperson for ...
Darroch Ball, Spokesperson for Justice New Zealand First is proud that a key Coalition Agreement commitment which will provide for a more transparent and effective criminal justice system has been realised. Legislation to establish the Criminal Cases Review Commission, an independent body focused on identifying and responding to possible miscarriages of ...
"Today we have made a choice that will leave a legacy... I hope that means that future generations will see that we, in New Zealand, were on the right side of history." - Jacinda Ardern, Third Reading of the Zero Carbon Bill ...
Darroch Ball, New Zealand First List MP A Member’s bill has been proposed that would provide income tax exemptions for all New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel while on operational deployment overseas. The Income Tax (Exemption for Salary or Wages of NZDF Members on Active Deployment) Amendment Bill proposed by New Zealand First ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, New Zealand First Leader New Zealand First is proud to have brought common sense to the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill, which passed its final reading in Parliament today. Party Leader Rt Hon Winston Peters says months of hard work went into negotiating a balanced ...
Jenny Marcroft MP, Spokesperson for Health New Zealand First has listened to calls to recognise paramedics as registered health professionals under the Health Practitioners’ Competence Assurance Act (the Act).Today, the Coalition Government announced plans for paramedics to be registered as health practitioners under the Act, and the establishment of a ...
Stewart Island/Rakiura has been granted $3.16 million from the Provincial Growth Fund to help build two wind turbines, putting the island on a path to sustainable electricity generation, Environment Minister David Parker announced today. “Stewart Island is our third largest island, after the North and South Islands, and it is ...
A major new report on the global economy shows New Zealand is in good shape amid increased global headwinds. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has just released its latest Economic Outlook. It shows the OECD group of economies is forecast to grow between 1.6% and 1.7% across ...
The Coalition commitment to add 1800 new Police officers to frontline policing has been achieved with the graduation of 59 constables from the Royal New Zealand Police College today. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters say today’s graduation means 1825 new Police have been deployed all ...
Ensuring APEC work gets input from diverse New Zealand business and trade interests is behind three new appointments to the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC), Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says. Rachel Taulelei, Malcolm Johns and Toni Moyes have been appointed to represent New Zealand on the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) ...
Nau mai, haere mai. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tatou katoa. Thank you for having me to speak today. To start, I’d like to acknowledge Sharron Lloyd, the General Manager of the Trans–Tasman Business Circle, the partners for this event Westpac’s David McLean, and Derek McCormack from AUT, and, of course ...
A four-month investigation by former Environment Court judge Professor Peter Skelton found that Otago’s freshwater planning system is not fit for purpose to manage the region’s rivers, lakes and aquifers and that the Council has inadequate rules for the taking of water and the discharge of nutrients. “Existing planning provisions ...
Introduction Thank you for the invitation to speak to you today. This is the first opportunity I’ve had to speak to an LGNZ meeting since the local elections, and I’m delighted to see the fresh faces of newly elected mayors. To returning mayors here today, as well as chief ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters departs New Zealand today to attend the G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Nagoya at the invitation of this year’s G20 President, Japan. “This is the first time New Zealand will attend a G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting and we are deeply honoured that it is at ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters today announced the appointment of diplomat Carl Reaich as New Zealand’s next Ambassador to the European Union. “The Ambassador to the EU is one of the most important and senior roles in New Zealand’s foreign service, advocating for New Zealand’s interests with the EU institutions,” Mr ...
Innovation and technology are behind five new tools to give nature a helping hand by helping eliminate predators, funded through the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF), Minister for Conservation Eugenie Sage and Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau announced today. “The new tools will be trialled in ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has welcomed the first reading of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation 2021 (APEC 2021) Bill in Parliament today. The temporary bill supports New Zealand’s security preparations for hosting the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum in 2021. “APEC is the leading economic and trade forum ...
The Government is making progress on improving the wellbeing of the one million New Zealanders under the age of 18,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on World Children’s Day. The Government has today recommitted to the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history – the United Nation’s Convention on ...
Minister for Women Julie Anne Genter has released a new report celebrating the contribution of Māori women in business across Aotearoa New Zealand. “Māori women are leaders in our communities, they employ many people and support our economy and our communities,” Julie Anne Genter said. The report, Ngā wāhine kaipakihi: ...
Four parcels of land have been bought in Omokoroa, in the Western Bay of Plenty District, for an education facility that will accommodate both a primary and secondary school on a campus-like facility, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said today. Two parcels were acquired from private land owners and two were ...
1 million New Zealanders warmed by the Winter Energy Payment 36,000 families bank the Best Start Payment in first year 6,000 more families received the Family Tax Credit, 220,600 in total They receive an increase too – from an average of $117 to $157 a week for Inland Revenue clients, ...
New rules to clamp down on overzealous wheel clamping and extortionate fees charged in order to release a vehicle have passed their final stage in Parliament today. The Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill has now passed its third reading. “These changes mean $100 will be the maximum wheel clamping ...
An independent Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission is a step closer after it unanimously passed its first vote in Parliament today. The Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission Bill lays the groundwork for establishing the Commission as a fully independent crown entity – delivering on a key recommendation of He Ara ...
We’ve improved border security with the NZeTA, New Zealand Electronic Travel Authority, which helps us to screen travellers for border and immigration risks off-shore before they travel to New Zealand. It was launched in August and became mandatory on 1 October 2019. More than 500,000 NZeTAs have been issued since ...
A proposed national plan of action to reduce the number of seabirds caught in fisheries is being circulated for public feedback. Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash and Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage say New Zealand is a global centre of seabird diversity with about 145 species in our waters. It has more ...
The Government is delivering on its promise to protect New Zealanders’ interests by applying a new national interest test to the sales of our most sensitive and high risk assets to overseas buyers. Associate Finance Minister David Parker said under current Overseas Investment Act rules, assets such as ports and ...
The Government is building special housing to accommodate one of Aotearoa’s greatest taonga- our kaumātua, says the Minister for Māori Development, Hon Nanaia Mahuta. Speaking at a National Kaumātua Service Providers Conference in Rotorua today, the Minister reinforced the importance kaumātua play in maintaining and passing on mātauranga Māori, knowledge, ...
Eleven men from a pilot forestry training programme for prisoners in Northland now have full time jobs or job offers upon release, Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis and Forestry Minister Shane Jones announced today. The ‘release to work’ programme was a collaboration between Te Uru Rākau and the Department of Corrections, ...
Minister of State Services Chris Hipkins today introduced into Parliament a Bill that will make it easier for the public service to tackle the biggest challenges facing Governments. The Bill represents the most significant change in the public service in 30 years. The State Sector Act 1988 will be repealed ...
The families of more than 416,000 students will be better off next year as their schools have signed up to the Government’s donations scheme, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said today. The scheme will see almost $62.5 million in additional Government funding go to schools nationwide next year. “I’m really pleased ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has announced further support as the Government of Samoa responds to a serious measles outbreak. “New Zealand will deploy a further 18 vaccination nurses, bringing the total to 30 working in Samoa over the next four weeks,” Mr Peters said. “A New Zealand Medical Assistance ...
Fa’atalofa atu, malo e lelei, Kia ora koutou katoa Thank you to the Child Poverty Action Group for asking me to be here today to provide an update on some of the things that have been happening across my the social development portfolio. Can I firstly acknowledge the vast ...
***Please check against delivery*** Good morning everyone. It is a pleasure to be with you this morning to open this year’s New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing Conference and AGM. Firstly, thank you Dr Alan Jackson, NZTR Chair for your introduction. And let us acknowledge also: The NZTR Board; Dean McKenzie, Chair ...
The Government has delivered on its promise to the over one million New Zealanders who now rent to make it fairer and more secure, Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing) Kris Faafoi has announced today. Both renters and landlords will benefit from the suite of practical changes to the Residential ...
A marine conservation milestone - the 20th anniversary of the establishment of Te Tapuwae o Rongokako Marine Reserve - is being celebrated today at a community event in Tairāwhiti/East Coast attended by the Minister of Conservation, Eugenie Sage. “The creation of this marine reserve in November 1999 was a game ...
The Government is asking the food industry to step up work to tackle obesity including reducing sugar, fat and salt in their products, better information for consumers, and tighter restrictions on advertising to children. Health Minister David Clark and Food Safety Minister Damien O’Connor have responded to a ...
ew, modern emergency department and outpatient facilities at Queenstown’s Lakes District Hospital mean better emergency care for the growing tourist mecca’s visitors and locals, says Health Minister David Clark. Today Dr Clark officially opened the hospital’s redeveloped Emergency Department and Outpatient facilities. The new facilities include: • An extended Emergency Department ...
Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter says today’s release of sexual and reproductive health data reinforces the significance of the Government’s commitment to providing free or very low-cost contraception. The Ministry of Health today published statistics from the Ministry of Health’s 2014/15 Health Survey. “It is important people can make ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced that at the request of the Samoan Government, New Zealand will be providing further support to Samoa as it faces a worsening measles outbreak. “In response to a request from the people of Samoa, New Zealand is providing 3000 measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) ...
“The new Disability Action Plan 2019–2023 moves us towards the inclusive and accessible New Zealand that this government has committed to,” Minister for Disability Issues Carmel Sepuloni announced today. “The Action Plan was designed by disabled people, their family and supporters, the disability sector and government agencies. It will ensure ...
Third Singapore-New Zealand Defence Ministers’ Meeting 14 November 2019 Joint Statement 1. Defence Ministers Ron Mark and Dr Ng Eng Hen today conducted their third annual Singapore-New Zealand Defence Ministers’ Meeting in Singapore. 2. Building on the Enhanced Partnership signed between both countries in May this year, this annual meeting ...
A Bill to improve the court system’s response to sexual violence has passed its first reading in Parliament today. Justice Minister Andrew Little says the Sexual Violence Legislation Bill will reduce the trauma sexual violence complainants experience in court, while maintaining defendants’ fundamental rights and making sure the trial process ...
Streamlined payment practices are a step closer for Kiwi businesses with the formal launch of New Zealand’s e-Invoicing framework. Small Business Minister Stuart Nash says the government has now established the structure to enable automated and direct data exchange between the accounting systems of buyers and sellers. “The move to ...
Another 51 quarantine officers and four new biosecurity detector dog teams will help protect New Zealand from invasive pests and diseases this summer, says Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor. “The Government is delivering on its commitment to strengthen New Zealand’s biosecurity system and support our valuable primary sector “New Zealand’s flora, fauna ...
A new report has found New Zealand’s space sector contributed $1.69 billion to the economy in the last financial year and employs 12,000 people, Minister for Economic Development Phil Twyford announced today. The report by Deloitte was commissioned by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and shows New Zealand ...
Judge Coral Shaw has been appointed as the new Chair of the Royal Commission into Historical Abuse in State Care and in the Care of Faith-based Institutions, Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin announced today. "Judge Shaw, who is currently one of the inquiry commissioners, is extremely well qualified for the ...
Are ministers in Jacinda Ardern’s coalition beginning to live in a dreamworld of their own, distant from the one where ordinary New Zealanders live? In Parliament, in answer to patsy questions from their own backbenchers, they congratulate themselves on their extraordinary ( as it seems to them) achievements. They appear ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra [embedded content]University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Deep Saini discusses the Westpac scandal with Michelle Grattan. They then delve into the government’s recent changes to the robo-debt program, and Scott Morrison’s announcement that the government will be ...
What, for example, is a pitchfork wrapped in tinsel doing over there, leaning up by an umbrella? Toby Manhire writes a speculative article.A tumultuous week for Winston Peters and his New Zealand First Party has seen story after story raise troubling questions around donations. He’s not happy about it.What do ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendon Hyndman, Senior Lecturer in Personal Development, Health & Physical Education / Course Director of Postgraduate Studies in Education, Charles Sturt University In a study published in The Lancet today, we find out how 1.6 million adolescent school students from across 146 ...
The Otago Fish and Game Council supports Environment Minister David Parker’s decision, especially his directive that Mining Rights won't be extended beyond the 2021 deadline provided in the RMA. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Marriott, Professor of Taxation, Victoria University of Wellington A Court of Appeal decision in New Zealand set a precedent last month, allowing offenders to argue their drug addiction should be considered a mitigating factor. Methamphetamine dealers who can prove their personal ...
It was not a great week for NZ First - stuff that Prince Andrew would describe as conduct unbecoming of a political party, but which is very much becoming of NZ First. James Elliott gets slush fund, secretive and coterie all in one sentence about Winston Peters. ...
Just notifying that you have prohibited firearms or parts is not meeting your legal obligations, say Police who urge firearms owners to hand in their items now. ...
A new poem by Belfast-based poet J. Taylor Bell.the other day i witnessed a man seize with epilepsy in the produce sectionthen the bottom fell out of the plastic bag on the long diaspora between self-checkout and the deserts of the kitchen counter i felt like napoleon the morning after ...
We wonder if we were supposed top be gobsmacked, consternated or otherwise thunderstruck by the headline we encountered at the top of page 16 in our Dominion-Post today. “Fracas in Parliament,” it bellowed in a truncated version of the headline that can be found on the same report at Stuff. The ...
From academia to activism to media, Asian women are often ridiculed, overlooked and dismissed. Helen Yeung talks to Asian New Zealand women about the everyday racism they face – and how they’re fighting back.Last year, I was at the launch of an academic journal which included my essay on East ...
The Provincial Growth Fund is putting $3.16 million towards building two wind turbines on Rakiura / Stewart Island, where electricity is at present produced by diesel generators. ...
The enduring crisis of child poverty in Aotearoa New Zealand must be addressed with greater energy by government, the country’s professional body for social workers said today. ...
This week's biggest-selling New Zealand books, as recorded by the Nielsen BookScan New Zealand bestseller list and described by ReadingRoom literary editor Steve Braunias. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Anthony Albanese puts a “productivity project” at the centre of his economic agenda in the second of his “vision statements”, which seeks to further distance him from the Shorten era. “Productivity is the key to ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s content by Dr Bryce Edwards.NZ First Matt Shand (Stuff): ‘I am the dark shadow of NZ First’ – what ...
Credit Union Baywide, trading as NZCU Baywide, New Zealand’s largest customer owned credit union, has acquired Co-op Money NZ, the supplier of core banking services and support infrastructure to some of the country’s credit union sector. ...
New Zealand leaves Australia for dust on internet speeds and our children are practically born using fibre, but major challenges lie ahead, writes Rohan MacMahon.Congratulations, New Zealand: three quarters of you now have ultra fast broadband (UFB).This week Chorus hosted an event at Parliament to mark the completion of Phase ...
The Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito Tofae Su'a William Sio is advising Samoan families planning on going back to the islands for Christmas to take precautions against measles. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachael Helene Nolan, Postdoctoral research fellow, Western Sydney University Why does wood crackle in a fire? – Rocco, age 6 (nearly 7!) Hi Rocco, that’s a great question. I love sitting in front of a fire, listening to it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ihsan Yilmaz, Research Professor and Chair in Islamic Studies and Intercultural Dialogue, Deakin University The political influence of the far-right, along with a more salient national security agenda, has spurred a growing anti-Muslim sentiment and deep social division in Australia. In fact, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philippa Martyr, Lecturer, Pharmacology, Women’s Health, School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Western Australia You might remember how Gwyneth Paltrow’s health and well-being website Goop was selling “medical” products with no proven measurable health benefits. Decluttering expert Marie Kondo may be going ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Linda Newman, Associate Professor, University of Newcastle Many parents and educators agree children need to take risks. In one US study, 82% of the 1,400 parents surveyed agreed the benefits of tree-climbing outweighed the potential risk of injury. Parents cited benefits including ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie Lawson, Honorary Associate Professor, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University In the year since the Australian government created the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation (NHFIC), its bond aggregator, AHBA, has raised funds for affordable housing providers, allowing them to refinance ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Naomi Soderstrom, Professor of Accounting and Deputy Head of Department, University of Melbourne Sydney is currently blanketed by smoke haze from severe bushfires that have burned through New South Wales. Air pollution levels on Thursday reached hazardous levels for the second time ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW Australia’s system of childcare support is pretty good. It ensures high-quality care is provided to a large number of children, it is targeted through income-based subsidies, and it is attentive to the needs of disadvantaged children ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Camilla Nelson, Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame Australia Mary Ann Evans took the pseudonym “George Eliot” because she wanted to be taken seriously as a writer. Other female authors – Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen, for example – had ...
Shane Jones downplays NZ First Foundation scandal by slamming 'despicable' media; and Green MP lambasts bill allowing overseas agents to carry otherwise-illegal guns in NZ. ...
New Zealand First has upped the ante in the saga over its mysterious foundation, with party leader Winston Peters' long-time lawyer Brian Henry threatening to sue National for $30 million. ...
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Focus shifts to lawyer in NZ First Foundation scandal, Canterbury hail smashes crops, and tobacco companies cynically raise prices under tax cover.
Around this time last year, a party leader had just brazened out a week of scandal, much of ...
A report from the NZ Disability Support Network has laid bare a funding crisis impacting every level of the sector. Here, Rachel Lodewyk, of Gisborne, says the health system is failing but parent-led trusts are offering solutions in desperate times. ...
With emissions still rising, climate geo-engineering requires debate. But political researchers fear people are falling into the same left/right tribalism that's long plagued climate politics. ...
Our kinship with plants is etched out in the mythology on which our societies are founded, and in the web of life it is a scientific fact that we are indeed close kin to the plant kingdom. So why do we not live like we are, asks Matt Hall.There are ...
There’s been outrage since it was revealed that up to one in five final year medical students at the University of Otago falsified their overseas placements by spending portions of that time travelling instead. But GP registrar and former Otago medical student Toby Hills finds himself empathising deeply with his ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Scott Morrison’s government is heading to the end of 2019 amid a debate about its economic judgement and with a number of substantial policy moves started but not completed. Morrison this week delivered to an ...
Newsroom's major investigations into Oranga Tamariki and a Fijian resort development have won us the award for best current affairs programme at the NZ TV awards. ...
The government is facing criticism that it is not doing enough, fast enough to raise people out of poverty. But Minister Carmel Sepuloni says her ministry are working as quickly as possible. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Christoff, Associate Professor, School of Geography, University of Melbourne A new United Nations report shows the world’s major fossil fuel producing countries, including Australia, plan to dig up far more coal, oil and gas than can be burned if the world ...
New Zealand First leader and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters with Governor General Dame Patsy Reddy and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.New Zealand is officially one of the least corrupt countries in the world. But it could be argued that our political system is still biased in favour of the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Scott Hamilton, Strategic Advisory Panel Member, Australian-German Energy Transition Hub, University of Melbourne The possibilities presented by hydrogen are the subject of excited discussion across the world – and across Australia’s political divide, notoriously at war over energy policy. Read more: Hydrogen ...
The Real Pod assembles to dissect the week in reality television and real life, with special thanks to Nando’s.We’re still buzzing after the rip-roaring success of the Corny Christmas party this week and we won’t even let a rogue earwig in the studio dampen our spirits. There’s a lot of exciting ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Heidi Norman, Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains images and names of deceased people.Review: Linear, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney The value of Australian First Peoples’ scientific ...
Sam Brooks reviews the latest generation of the Pokémon games which finally hits the big-ish screen.“I love Pokémon but I wish I could play it on my TV.”I’ve been playing Pokémon for 20 years and that’s been the main thing I’ve heard from my fellow Pokémon friends/fans. The games have been engrossing, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Dickinson, Professor, Public Service Research, UNSW National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) Minister Stuart Robert this month announced a number of “practical changes” to the scheme. Acknowledging the NDIS is not consistently living up to expectations, he said these improvements will put ...
The trustee of the New Zealand First Foundation and Winston Peters' personal lawyer has threatened a $30 million lawsuit against a National MP, in the latest twist of the donations scandal. ...
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is a regional economic forum based in the Asia-Pacific Region. New Zealand will host APEC 2021 in November 2021, with related events running for a year from December 2020 until November 2021. ...
Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Dr Brian Ward of soft-tissue repair company Aroa.Dr Paul Callaghan, who inspired Callaghan ...
Emerging political leaders from 15 Pacific countries and territories will be in New Zealand next week to meet with one and other, and their New Zealand counterparts, to discuss major challenges and opportunities in the Pacific. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Billingsley, Senior Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, UNSW The small number of Australians being held in prison camps in northern Syria has been an ongoing, albeit low-level, challenge for the Australian government. There are believed to be eight Australian fighters for ...
Louise Mensch is set to hit New Zealand airwaves this evening. Who is this conspiracy theorist and what could she possibly be saying to Lisa Owen?Who is Louise Mensch?She’s a former Tory MP, founder of the Rupert Murdoch-funded “no safe spaces” website Heat Street, a romance novelist, and a conspiracy ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dennis McNevin, Professor of Forensic Genetics, University of Technology Sydney Designer baby, anyone? A New Jersey startup company, Genomic Prediction, might be able to help you. Genomic Prediction claims to be able to use DNA testing to predict disease risk in an ...
Marion McLeod revels in the return of Olive Kitteridge, the compassionate curmudgeon who won Elizabeth Strout a Pulitzer Prize. It’s the year of the sequel: My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, Toy Story 4, Rambo 5 … Do movies ever make it to double figures? Books and miniseries certainly do. Genre ...
National is questioning those in charge of the Provincial Growth Fund after it was revealed a NZ First-linked forestry company made an application to the fund, headed by NZ First MP Shane Jones. ...
James Borrowdale spent the last cricket season examining Neil Wagner and his unique approach to bowling. Today, in the first test of the Black Caps’ summer, Wagner returns.Neil Wagner has a wicket. He freezes mid-pitch, fists clenched at his side, knees slightly bent, a roar on his lips. His brows ...
A record volume of resales of units in its retirement villages has boosted Ryman's first half profit with the second half expected to be stronger than the first, the company says. ...
The main problem with HIV today is stigma – and it is almost entirely based on outdated information and fear, says Mark Fisher of HIV+ support organisation Body Positive ahead of the World AIDS Day Festival which opens in Auckland tomorrow.A person living with HIV on effective treatment cannot pass ...
The Department of Conservation (DOC) is hoping floating platforms will help to keep the chicks of a central Christchurch colony of critically endangered tarāpuka/black-billed gulls from drowning this breeding season. ...
The Foundation Against Islamophobia and Racism (FAIR) is a newly formed NZ-based independent Muslim human rights advocacy organisation. One of the key projects of FAIR is to provide a Report Islamophobia ( http://report.islamophobia. ) portal where ...
Open mike 04/04/2013 
Coasters Turn Out In Droves: It’s precisely the widening gulf between those with actual experience of things like guns, chainsaws and drilling machines, and those who regulate their use, that accounts for the angry crowd at Greymouth’s Messenger Park on Sunday, 17 November 2019. In the rarefied atmosphere where decisions ...8 hours ago
There are perennial arguments about the circumstances of the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, and in particular whether more than one shooter is required by the evidence (such as the Zapruder film). Those who know little about physics frequently claim that the sharp backwards motion of JFK’s head as ...13 hours ago
Last week we learned that New Zealand First had apparently tried to enrich itself from public office, with a dodgy forestry company linked to a number of NZ First figures sticking its hand out repeatedly for government money. Today in Question Time Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones had his ...22 hours ago
The Council of Disobedient Women has learned that the Prefect of Aro Valley has been promoted to a new role with the blessing of the Pope of Wellington. Softy Jejune Parson has been appointed Mother Superior of Woke Wellington for the work she has been doing calling out heretics, ...2 days ago
On both sides of the Atlantic, some purportedly “contentious” and “difficult to deal with” leadership contenders to lead the US and UK, as President and Prime Minister respectively, seem to have thrown a few spanners into the works of the normal messaging most are used to hearing constantly. Except they’re ...2 days ago
It has been revealed that firing ranges used by the NZDF while deployed to the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Bamyan Province, Afghanistan, contained unexploded ordnance that caused numerous deaths and injuries after the NZDF withdrew the PRT in April 2013. In 2014 seven children were killed when an unidentified ...2 days ago
by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh Initially it was reported that in an aerial bombardment that took place on August 30th seven children were massacred; the figure then went up to eight and then on November 11th Noticias Uno reported that, according to people from the community in close proximity to the ...3 days ago
MediaWorks announced in October 2019 that it intended to sell off its struggling television business and cancel or cut back on several popular local programmes, including New Zealand Today, Married at First Sight New Zealand and 7 Days. Its radio and outdoor advertising arms are currently performing well, but MediaWorks’ ...4 days ago
There is an article in The Conversation, written by Jeremy P. Shapiro (Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences, Case Western Reserve University), about what he sees as the psychologically-based underpinnings of three main matters that seem to vex people all around the planet. The article is titled “The Thinking ...6 days ago
. . Blogger Martyn Bradbury has won his case against unreasonable search and surveillance against the NZ Police; and subsequent Police attempts to produce evidence in secrecy, in a closed Court. His case highlights a disturbing growing trend in Aotearoa New Zealand for State power to be used against ...6 days ago
by The Council of Disobedient Women In her excellent oral submission to the Abortion reform select committee on 31st October on behalf of Otago University’s Department of Public Health, historian and public health researcher Hera Cook stated: “We would ask that the committee not use the term ‘pregnant persons’ and ...1 week ago
If FFNZ really put their faith in “Top Medical Journals” they would now be amending their billboards to recognise new research results. Image from FFNZ but updated to agree with the latest research. ... 2 weeks ago
Hon Shane Jones, Minister of Forestry The Government will further strengthen New Zealand’s wood processing sector as part of our focus on ‘value over volume’ in our forestry industry, Forestry Minister Shane Jones says. Minister Jones will today meet with forestry representatives in Northland to signal new measures to help the ...58 mins ago
We're setting our young people up for success, investing in education around the country. ...4 days ago
Stewart Island/Rakiura has been granted $3.16 million from the Provincial Growth Fund to help build two wind turbines, putting the island on a path to sustainable electricity generation, Environment Minister David Parker announced today. “Stewart Island is our third largest island, after the North and South Islands, and it is ...4 hours ago
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra [embedded content]University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Deep Saini discusses the Westpac scandal with Michelle Grattan. They then delve into the government’s recent changes to the robo-debt program, and Scott Morrison’s announcement that the government will be ...43 mins ago
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The Provincial Growth Fund is putting $3.16 million towards building two wind turbines on Rakiura / Stewart Island. ...2 hours ago
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New Zealand First has upped the ante in the saga over its mysterious foundation, with party leader Winston Peters' long-time lawyer Brian Henry threatening to sue National for $30 million. ...7 hours ago
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The Herald is now beginning to list the Prime Minister’s memory lapses. I think we should assist its reporters with a few others. Lord Ashcroft’s visit for starters.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10875266
Here’s their list Quote
Key’s memory lapses
* Forgot how many Tranz Rail shares he owned.
* Unsure if and when he was briefed by GCSB on Kim Dotcom.
* Forgot how he voted on drinking age.
* Could not recall whether he was for or against the 1981 Springbok Tour.
* Could not remember who was aboard mystery CIA jet parked at Wellington airport.
* Forgot he phoned future director of GCSB urging him to apply for the job.
Unquote
I doubt that it is a simply case of cronyism. Copyright was obviously at the center of the DotCom affair, and the copyright industry’s approach to “moral rights” should give one pause. Industry affiliates were involved in distributing file sharing software and promoted the sharing of copyrighted material. The RIAA then pushed for legislation against piracy which resulted in awards of up to 150,000 US dollars per track of digital audio. Ian Fletcher worked for the UK Intellectual Property Office for about three years.
The industry’s approach to “moral rights” involves ignoring ethical sharing of copyrighted works consistent with fair use, and the industry labels all sharing of copyrighted material as theft regardless of the innocence of such fair use. The term “intellectual property” is an oxymoron because intellectual works in society do not have the quality of exclusive possession essential to all property.
Copyright enforcement can be used as a cover for internet espionage. Microsoft spent considerable effort implementing DRM (digital rights management) into Windows Vista. The implementation of DRM and other security features into Vista caused so many technical problems that many users abandoned Vista and returned to Windows XP. Microsoft has long been suspected of collaborating with the NSA after an encryption key called _NSAKEY was discovered in Windows NT.
In which Mark Ames goes Hunteresque, on the occasion of Andrew Breitbart’s aniversary, with regard to claims that Breitbart was anything other than a carnival barker with a legacy of, well, ‘shit’ pretty much covers it:
https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/breitbart/0e8f1e346505f331287a2b46c86b21b35db47718/
Ta PB, marvellous.
Big steel framed highrise building (highest high rise over there) engulfed completely in flames in Grozny, Chechnya. Guess that one will collapse into the path of most resistance in freefall speed soon too. It happened after all three times on 9/11.
Silly travellerev!
To free fall symmetrically and straight downwards on to its own footprint, the building requires not just a one sided fire, it also needs to be unevenly hit from just one side by a jet plane!
Everyone knows this is how physics works!
So why do either of you think the building is of the same construction type as WTC?
Please respond with some substantiation of the claim that these buildings are of the same construction type as WTC. I’d really prefer not to have to conclude you really are bullshit artists.
Yes PB because somehow perfectly symmetrical failure of these buildings can be caused by highly assymetrical fires and structural damage.
BTW two quite different types of steel framed skyscrapers fell on 9/11, so it’s not just related to the Twin Towers design.
So no substantiation at all then? 🙁
Turn off all your senses buddy, you’re doing well without them.
I don’t consider my gut to be a sense organ, that’s why I asked for something verifiable.
You don’t consider your gut to be a sense organ? ***Guffaw*** Shit dude you better do a bit more research.
Nah, you’ve set your view in place. You believe that its quite possible that highly assymetrical damage to a structure can cause that structure to fail instantaneously in a highly symmetrical way.
And that it happened 3 times within 12 hours at the same location.
Shit, is there even a need for controlled demolitions work any more? Just set a random fire in a skyscraper, crash a jet into one side, and straight down she goes, safe and sound on to its own building footprint, barely touching anything else around.
So I ask for verification that these buildings are like the WTC, and in response; Strawman arguments.
Typical, but sad that you’d rather talk about anything else than the question I asked.
Why’s that? Mind made up is it?
Do.Not.Question.The.Truther.Narrative.
Feel free to prove me wrong by saying that yeah, building structure is relevant to the comparison, and that no you didn’t bother to check it out and that yes you’ll do better next time.
“So why do either of you think the building is of the same construction type as WTC?”
PB, even the 911 Commission didn’t bother with silly facts like how the buildings were constructed. Hell with WTC 1 & WTC 2 they decided 94 boxsteel columns, each 110 stories high did not even exist.
Forget for a minute about what happened on September 11 2001 and instead sit watch learn think on how they are constructed and how the visual proof of their construction completely contradicts all official explanations of the Towers’ demise.
So you got nothing either then freedom?
So far its 0:3 for the TruthSquad 🙁
PB but you are the one who believes that highly assymetrical damage to a building can cause that building to fail in a completely symmetrical way.
3x in 12 hours.
The same exact failure effect in two completely different building types, but where only one of which suffered damage from aviation fuel and airliners.
PB you’re the kind of person who says the sun can’t have come up because the correct paperwork wasn’t completed.
And this is relevant to my Question, how?
Fairly simple mate.
Tall buildings are not solid blocks of wood or corn-flake packs that topple over if you push them. They’re amazing strong in some ways, fragile in others and they behave counter to the intuition bred by observing small solid objects.
The WTC centre towers were steel truss construction, which is light and efficient, but has its , um, problems… I don’t know if the Grozny building is truss or girder construction. That would make a difference.
Buildings are designed to resist horizontal forces due to wind and earthquake, which can be quite substantial (for example, going through the sums on construction and engineering for buildings in Wellington, as an undergrad, I was quite surprised to discover that due to wind-generated lift, much structure is generally devoted to keeping a roof down rather than up.)
Moreover, an airliner, while somewhat heavy (but built as light as possible in order to fly) is quite fragile and certainly not designed to resist being flown into a building, so its structure crumples and is shredded immediately as it impacts. The real problem is all the burning aviation fuel.
Now, steel building usually have what is called intumescent foam protecting the structure. This is an insulation that swells up when heated, protecting the steel structure. Under “normal” fire conditions, it will do just that, but the explosion of a plane exploding can suddenly strip off the intumescent foam normally protecting the steel truss structure used in the WTC buildings. Burning aviation fuel then continues to burn, heating the steel which loses much of its structural strength well below its melting point.
The truss then catastrophically gives way, unable to support the floor. The weight of the whole building above that floor suddenly slams down on the floor below… and you can guess the rest. Rather than this being a path of “most resistance”, a vertical piledriver effect is inevitable and unstoppable.
The energy used to destroy the building is in fact not the initial impact, but all the gravitational potential energy devoted to lifting its entire mass into the sky in the first place when it was constructed.
That’s the mental model they proposed in the official report.
Of course we should also consider that the weight of those top floors was already being supported by the structure underneath, it was not new weight which came from nowhere.
Also – did you notice that big huge reinforced concrete floors didn’t slam downwards at all – a large amount of that mass somehow pulverised into dust and ejected out sideways from the collapsing building.
it was not new weight which came from nowhere.
Mass (weight) times velocity equals momentum. This is kinetic energy – a lot, a delivered in an instant.
Take a egg. You can gently rest the head of a hammer on the egg. Now drop the hammer on the egg.
Actually, the floors were not big huge reinforced slabs. They were comparatively light slabs pored over metal deck, supported, as I said, by a truss system.
This may help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wtc_floor_truss_system.png
Understood. I’ll buy the momentum theory IF the majority of the mass part of the equation was not lost as pulverised material as the fall took place.
Because if a lot of mass was lost during the free fall (ejected out the sides of the building) the strongest floors in the bottom half of the building, should have easily survived.
Show me your calculations. Show me how they debunk NIST. What’s that? You can’t? Then what the fuck are you wasting everyone’s time with?
You’ve got nothing emotional invested in this, right? I mean, please don’t use the reply button if you think it’s a waste of time.
As for some of the problems with the NIST analyses, AE911 describes one of them.
because new sets of calculations will somehow retroactively change the inconsistencies?
It doesn’t Matter if something is pulverized it still has the same mass and momentum drop a feather or rock in still air they will land at the same time gravity is constant.
yes and even Commander David Scott proved gravity is a constant in the Universe we have thus experienced, but don’t you want to know how the concrete became pulverized? I would love to know how the concrete at and above the point of collapse got pulverized but especially would like to know how it became pulverized at the moment of initial collapse.
mostly i want to know how can gravity throw steel girders hundreds of feet laterally to be embedded in other buildings. ( including some girders that were identified as originating from near and even above the point of ‘collapse’)
hundreds of feet laterally
Buckling.
The collapse was obviously not a polite, neat retraction but a more complex affair, with forces transmitted not through the ether but through complexly branching structural members, concentrating at the nodes. Elements will buckle, bend and then fail suddenly – and catastrophically, ith all the pent-up energy suddenly released.
Take a delicate structure (and a skyscraper is delicate at its scale) and crush it and inevitably some parts will be flung sideways.
at and above the point of collapse
Gravity leads down. The kinetic force of an impact propagates in all directions.
Of course, the other point is that one truther argues that the towers fell vertically into their own footprint, while another argues steel girders were throw hundreds of feet laterally.
If only there was some sort of consistent, logical methodology by which one can create mathematical models of reality and then test the resulting hypotheses in the real world. Rather than starting from a conclusion and inventing elaborate, untestable theories that need to be evaluated more by faith than reason.
Crudely, sitting on a burger will cause mayonaise and ketchup and the odd gherkin to squirt out the sides while the burger itself is flattened.
To be fair, though, engineering is counter-intuitive,
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealityIsUnrealistic
… so one should never think about engineering with the heart, gut or the pancreas or whatever.
The most common and most reflexive and hardest to overcome mental habit is to think that large structures behave like small solid objects – ie., toppling over over when nudged.
There’s a catalogue here of things that feel “right” but are utterly wrong:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HollywoodScience
>>a feather or rock in still air they will land at the same time gravity is constant.
NO.
Air friction will cause light objects to fall slower. Remover the air friction and the statement is true.
Challenge for more points. How can you show a rock and a feather will fall at the same rate in your living room.
I’ll buy the momentum theory
Momentum is simple Newtonian physics, it’s not something one has a choice about “buying”.
OK, the mass. First, a cloud of dust and debris seen expanding from the side of a building is impressive, but minor in terms of mass. When concrete shatters, it breaks into a range of larger and smaller pieces right down to dust size. The dust particles, being of lower mass, can be thrown further sideways as they fall down. The larger chunks remain within.
Most of the structure is steel, however, and steel is ductile, meaning that it stretches, bends and tears, but essentially stays together as large clumps.
In addition to the trusses, we have office equipment – desks, chairs, couches, heavy wood conference tables, computers, whiteboards, TVs, stereos, feather dusters, toilets and sinks, files in cabinets and shelves, (paper is very heavy – archives and libraries have to have specially strengthened floors), paintings, bronze sculptures, carpet, plumbing and air-conditioning systems, vending machines, catering equipment and food, refrigerators, bottled drinks, water reservoirs, cables, glass, potted plants, aquaria, partitions, suspended ceilings, paperweights, packed lunches, burgers and fries, people… etc etc.
Not very much ends up as dust and there’s not so much forcing that mass sideways anyway. Everything, even the dust, is heading down.
<strongest floors in the bottom half of the building, should have easily survived
Nope. Not “even if”. Nothing is infinitely strong. Consider the thought experiment of a 100-storey building. Floor 99 has the mass of floor 100 above it. Floor 98 has the weight of floors 99 and 100… and so on. If floor 99 cannot resist the strike of Floor 100 hitting it, then in order for Floor 1 to survive, the force hitting it must be less than that of 100 striking 99, meaning that over 99% of the total mass of the building met be made to disappear.
This is impossible.
And that is without accounting for the acceleration of the falling mass. On earth, an object in free fall accelerates at 9.8 metres per second per second. I couldn’t calculate the effect of deceleration caused by crumpling, but I think that you should get my point.
It wasn’t. Just need to watch the videos to be sure of that.
Wasn’t part of your argument that it all fell in its own footprint, yet now its being ejected out the sides?
Signed
Zionist CIA agent
you also need to watch this
see those big upright thingies all massed together in the middle of the Towers?
where are they in your floor collapse theory ?
The “thingies” are structural cores and elevator shafts. All part of the same. Partly, in their case, they get dragged down in some cases as the floors are welded and bolted to them.
Again, no material is infinitely strong and large structures an aircraft are designed to be slightly better than they need to be under expected conditions, otherwise they would not be economical or useable and wouldn’t be built in the first place.
Slightly better If things go outside expected conditions, then Murphy’s Second Law comes into force – anything that has gone wrong will get worse (and fast).
the thingies are the box steel columns that support the structure that houses your cores and elevator shafts. and yes they were attached to the floor trusses, more accurately the floor trusses were attached to the Columns. Otherwise tall buildings have a bad case of not standing up. They are ‘attached’ with thousands of welded steel rivets and bolts. Thermodynamics has some pretty constant cause and effect scenarios and disspation of heat along a connected steel body is pretty well understood.
All these people that regurgitate the ‘heat brought down the towers’ lie must find it terrifying as the world witnesses a constant stream of steel structures being destroyed by fire. What fortitude they express every time they light the woodburner at home, cook a meal on the stove, drive a car or engage that most dangerous piece of technology known to man, a gas fired barbeque. The horror the horror
pretty well understood
Good idea to use the passive voice impersonal. Active voice first person would have been a mistake.
fortitude they express every time they light the woodburner
If they are as ignorant of fundamental physics, engineering and the role of magnitude as yourself, I imagine they would be.
to save your energy I suggest you find a different tack,
personal insults won’t get a bite
logic and reality don’t get a response, either.
Then why have you used personal insults?
“…we should also consider…”
Go on then, let’s see you consider it. Tick tock tick tock, twelve years, no evidence, and not one piece of checkable engineering calculations. Well, apart from all these. that is, which you have not the tools nor the experience, but crucially, not the inclination nor scepticism nor the honesty to consider, preferring instead to defame the authors and throw red herrings around.
Sad.
No evidence? The issue is that the current official evidence and analysis was limited in scope and does not match up to what was observed.
You may call it “sad” or whatever adjectives you might like, but nothing in the NIST documents detailed events satisfactorily explains the perfectly symmetrical collapse of those 3 buildings of two completely different types.
I’ll add that what Architects and Engineers for 9/11 are asking for is a complete widescope official inquiry. You seem to think its time to move on, all done and dusted. As it were.
Don’t put words in my mouth, wingnut.
It is done and dusted, CV. This thread is proof of that; it’s the first bit of 9/11 truth denialism on TS for months. It used to be a regular feature of open mike, but with the passage of time, the fantasy loses its relevence.
Much as the ‘Elvis is alive’ thing only lasted a few years, 911 delusions will fade fast. Particularly so after the failure of that conference in Toronto to provide any actual evidence. Without credible proof of an alternative, sensible, rational people will stick with the blindingly obvious truth. Which is that the US was sucker punched by a small team of committed fanatics who succesfully did the unthinkable.
Oh, without a doubt.
http://torontohearings.org/
if i could i would buy you all a copy, but i suspect most of you can afford it 😉
Not psychologically we can’t
So let’s see now: NIST’s evidence: freely and publicly available. Truther propaganda: that’ll be $20 please. Ka-ching!
It’s clear to see that there’s a conspiracy to part dimwits from their cash.
Yeah it was the guys in the caves!
No evidence /snort , no evidence of a NIST whitewash either I guess eh!
Ok, you and OAB/Ps B just take your scared selves and run along then, you don’t need to keep defending your position eh bro!
Actually it was HARRP, using thermite-laden chemtrails, that perpetrated 9/11.
What fools like you don’t realise is that all the buildings are still there. The whole thing is the biggest mass hallucination since Buzz Aldrin single-handedly faked the moon landings.
Is this comment part of your social experiment, muzza, or are you being deliberately dim? It really was the guys in the cave, that much we know. The attack was carried out by brainwashed wannabees on behalf of the guys in the caves. This we also know. There is no evidence of an alternative conspiracy after 12 years of right wing blathering. Fact.
So, bloke, P’s B and the rest of us rational thinkers aren’t scared, we’re just well grounded and capableof making sensible conclusions based on the known facts. Any time you can provide evidence that contradicts the known facts, let us know. But, I won’t hold my breath, because after twelve long years, there still isn’t a skerrick of proof that anyone else did it.
KNOWN FACTS
TRP – Joke comment of the year!
BRAVO chap, that is hilarious!
🙄
Here’s another reason I’m emotionally invested in this. The adults would like to be able to have a sensible discussion of US foreign policy, which is pretty much a terrorism factory so far as I can tell, but every time anyone raises it we have to listen to the dimwit chorous insisting we watch this video.
The Moncktons of the left.
“Perfectly symmetrical collapse”. Apart from the fact that it wasn’t. Is all your bullshit so transparently dishonest?
No need to get so angry mate, what have you got emotionally invested in this?
internal reality conflict i reckon
when the heart knows what the brain continues to deny
very unhealthy way to live
Hearts are mostly muscle fibre and contain few neurons. Guts contain E coli and faeces and perhaps the odd tapeworm.
What is my emotional investment? Ethics: specifically. your complete lack of any: your whole argument is based on a premise of fraud perpetrated by individuals you’ve never met, but you think nothing of smearing them and effectively accusing them of being accessories to mass murder.
Your right wing behaviour is disgusting, so I’ll continue to show my contempt and disgust,.
You dont see the irony in your comment do you!
Lets walk it through:
Fraud perpetuated by individuals you have never met – Yet you defend the *official conspiracy theory*, produced by people you have never met, with agendas you claim don’t exist, yet have been rolled out in broad daylight since 2001! Forget about the missing 2.3T Rumsfeld was on the hook for !
smearing them – Yet the smearing has been primarily and agressively against the islamic religion, and people of arabic ethnicity as a whole, while being rather ad hoc in the applications of which group is being smeared, and for which purpose, ever since!
effectively accusing them of being accessories to mass murder – But your belief/support of the *official conspiracy theory* indicates you are comfortable that an entire religion/ethnic peoples are layed waste around the ME/Africa, under the same pretence of being, *accessories to murder*.
End.
No. Wrong. Bzzt!
The USA sows a bunch of dragon’s teeth; they multiply, as dragon’s teeth will.
My respect for Physics and Engineering says absolutely nothing about my opinion of US foreign policy, or Islam, or politics, or any combination thereof.
So stop putting words in my mouth, you tiresome cretin.
And there it is again – Its not respect of physics, engineering or any such thing, its the fear you have built up through your attachment to *believing you know whats going on, and having the theoretical answers to it rationalise it all*. Fear of what is left of you, if you actually didn’t have the answers…
You don’t have them, and you don’t want them!
🙄
Do you remember the little chat we had about confirmation bias Muzza? You remember how I said it’s inescapable by definition. Whether or not you believe this to be true, I certainly do, so:
Remind me how that gells with the notion that I believe I know what’s going on, you tiresome cretin.
Careful OTH – next CV will adopt his usual tactic of accusing anyone who disagrees with him as working for the CIA
I work for the CIA. And I take my instructions from the alien who remote-piloted the drone into the Pentagon. And I mutilate cows from my black helicopter, just for fun.
“And I take my instructions from the alien”
And one day soon, they all will. Muahahaha
But seriously, I didn’t fly a drone into anything… Unless someone can prove it, in which time I’ll shrug it off and claim brain fade.
lol I thought you were Allen with a 1 just because – but there you go…
Aka Al1 and HLM the Humanoid logic machine, but Betty when you call me, you can call me Al 😆
yeth marthter…
etc.
I’ve done that before! Ha! I noticed at least one of them collapsed after being set on fire lol
so just checking, how many times did NIST change not only the modelling but the very theory of how it all eventuated? Exactly how far did they stretch [fabricate] the data to fit a hypothesis that is unknown in the history of steel framed construction? On WTC7 for example they changed their mind three times and then created a whole new physical risk for steel framed buildings, all hail Thermal Expansion. Putting WTC 1&2 aside as there is no plane involvement, and just looking at WTC7, then according to NIST that building in Russia should have collapsed hours ago. Same with many large buildings of various construction that have had major fires this past decade. Only on September 11 2001 did three steel framed buildings collapse due to fire. Never before and never since.
and there was something else too . .. oh yeah
NIST might love to mention the horiziontal methods used in the Towers’ construction but have you ever noticed they do not like to mention the Columns that held the Towers upright ? They even go so far as to say that the central cavity where the lifts were housed were empty space. Every animation has zero columns. You go on about data, why can you not see past the rhetoric and look at the inconsistency in the data. Not just the specifics but the big picture.
“they do not like to mention the Columns”
Really, are you sure? Make sure you like, y’know check their reports for the word “column” first though, aye.
Care to revisit that assertion? Or do I need to hold your hand?
“do not like to mention” is more than a little different from “do not mention” which you are not so subtley implying that i said.
When it comes to the official explanation for the physical events that occured the columns are barely referenced and in much of the modelling they are sidelined or removed completely so as to be insignificant to the result. NIST have all but admitted this themselves, along with the extremes they had to go to to make any of their floor collapse models actually work let alone produce the desired result. A result which people far more qualified then I have shown to be seriously flawed in its methodology.
I do love that deniers try to make out the 9/11 Truth movement is a ragtag bunch of a half dozen loons sitting in front of a video desk making shit up and posting it on Youtube. Youtube is a source of videos that people have collated and edited, yes, even disinfo has had its place amongst it all. (and many youtube vids are highly educational, there’s this one with a banana and a rubber band . . )
But, and this is a big but, the movement also has produced numerous technical papers and regularly laid out simple and direct questions for the relevant authorities to answer. Silence is the most common response. Remember many many things went on that day in many different places and none of it has been adequately answered, yet the World got turned on its head because of the events on September 11 2001.
Many of the questions and the cases they refer to are presented at great expense by the families of the victims. They are regularly subjected to delays and obfuscation and all too often sketchy legal processes have been employed that flat out deny the due process under reasons of National Secruity amongst others.
What you can choose to ignore if you so wish is the simple Truth, this movement is a global network of professionals and laymen who have co-ordinated their limited resources to attempt the accurate and honest discovery of the events of that terrible day. So yes they charge $18 USD for a book, (current on Amazon) because they did not have access to the millions of tax dollars that funded the official story. By the way, the Official 911 Commission volume still costs $8 USD (current on Amazon) yet it was paid for entirely by taxpayers. On the funding note, AE911truth are currently asking for donations for a co-ordinated global Ad campaign to raise 9/11 Truth awareness. Just suckers for punishment I guess.
The vast resources of numerous Governments and associated Agencies continue to this day to work against the wishes of the victims’ families and the first responders that have survived. Sadly, the number of survivors is dwindling and just a few weeks ago further cuts were made to the support offered to these heroes. So perhaps the scale of the discussion is the thing that so aggravates you, or the fact it is growing and not dissolving into nothingness as so many hoped it would. We are not going anywhere. We will not be silenced, but as far as 9/11 talk on the Standard goes I stated back in 2011 that regular dialogues were achieving little and causing unhelpful aggression. Today shows that little has changed. The Standard juggles enough already and I prefer the one on one in real life now. I like the human element as it allows for more of an honest Q&A that actually produces tactile results as lines of enquiry can be dutifully followed and the point scoring that fascinates so many is thankfully absent. Today, as mentioned , was a passing prod at the sleeping bear. Next time, like so many recent opportunities, I will probably not pick up the stick.
one thing more, I don’t recall you standing up in front of Richard Gage on his NZ visit and calling him a right wing moron.
nice to know you care though, holding hands is another of life’s good things
WTC7 is clearly seen on a video clip to have sustained substantial structural damage from very large segments of falling debris from the North Tower. Gashes go through several floors in the back at the middle and southwest corner. It can also be clearly seen in the same video that fiery debris has ignited fires on nearly all floors and those burned for hours. Its collapse in total is not at freefall speed but consistent with structural failure. The collapse is initiated at the Southwest corner and progresses suddenly as each floor impacts the next with fire-weakened steel unable to resist the weight and velocity. The building did not collapse into its own footprint as some claim, it can can be seen in pictures and video to have fallen backwards – its different coloured debris is atop the North Tower debris. The 9/11 building demolition conspiracy isn’t gaining ground because its debunked in so many places.
Its ok Arfamo, you tell yoursrlf what you like, then take it up with the demolition experts, who commented specifically on WTC7.
Forget the fact the building housed all the financial transactiosn data, which only days earlier, existed, and would have meant that Donald Rumsfeld would have had a tough time wishing away the $2.3T of *lost funds* through the pentagon, which had been front page news, and was not going away,
How convenient that all was, not to mention the building housed the data store for huge amounts of fiancial entities, which vansished, never to be talked of again!
Nothing in it though, just all coincidence!
Edit – I work with an american, senior guy, former DoD employee for 8 years. His position is that all 3 buildings were blown up. Not a good look for your point of view, if you get to speak with people such as him. I had that conversation just last week, it was interesting to hear an american who worked for such entities, having that view, and talking about it!
They work against the wishes of all responders and all families of victims?
Yeah, right.
the passages you are no doubt referring to
“Many of the questions and the cases they refer to are presented at great expense by the families of the victims. ” and “The vast resources of numerous Governments and associated Agencies continue to this day to work against the wishes of the victims’ families and the first responders that have survived. ”
Neither of these state all the families or all the victims and it is a fifty fifty call how you got there i suppose. Though as we sit here, the many lives involved which unacknowledged illnesses and needless tragedies continue to diminish, should not have to suffer the indignity of being so easily dismissed.
I’m not going to get into a semantic argument about it.
I just think the bigger indignity is being the obsessive hobby of nutjobs around the world.
I get some of the victims clutching at straws in grief. But most truthers? Pffft.
A variation of the usual liar line – honour the dead by not asking too many questions.
Nope. But if it really was pretty much just hijackers + plane+towers=thousands dead, it makes your average truther half a world away look like a bit of a dick.
Like I say, grieving relatives is one thing.
But hobbyists who can’t get their stories straight are in grave danger of being dicks.
Yeah I guess being afraid to look like dicks should be a real consideration. Just try to remember that most of the people who died because of 9/11 didn’t die on that day.
Frankly, I’m don’t think a lot of truthers give as much of a damn about the dead as they do about believing in their own superior knowledge about nefarious global conspiracies and how much better the world would be if everyone were intellectual giants like them.
😆 so they can uncover the biggest most pernicious conspiracy in history, but not leverage that into wealth and power without my $20? And why is everyone laughing at them? You. Whichever.
That’s some mighty fine truthiness.
“heating the steel which loses much of its structural strength well below its melting point.”
Absolutely true hot steel can bend. It cannot however cause thousands of welded rivets on every floor to consistently and simultaneously fail, which is required for the collapse theory to work. Also, if you have a minute, could you be so kind as to explain where the vast quantity of extreme heat came from to form the pools of molten metal that were still being discovered weeks after the Towers’ collapse? Then again why bother . . .
There are literally thousands and thousands of points that a tit for tat truth game fail to adequately cover. As entertaining as it can be, it is also a waste of resources as very few supporters of the Official Story who engage in Truth discussions on-line, ever do it honestly and with an open mind.
In my little life, one on one dialogue has proven to be the only reliable method of 911 discussion that actually stands a chance of combating the ignorance that stubbornly refuses to follow the facts. 911 Truth is more complex than a single event and the back and forth of a chatbox cannot come close to the soul crunching reality of having to lie to another’s face when the Truth finally busts the door in on your psyche. It is perhaps one of the most difficult re-adjustments a person will ever make in their life. Knowing the world is a big evil place blah blah blah is one thing, Accepting the totality of the lie that was sold to the world takes guts and has broken people. Only you can decide how much truth you are willing to sweep under the carpet, only you have to live with the lumpy rug of your life.
Better to live a happy sheltered life without looking too hard or too far afield. Possibly.
Better to generate witless delusions than admit you can’t verify engineering calculations to save your life.
Actually I can, but I never start such an analyses without understanding different alternative big pictures which might come into play. You’ve already decided however.
your mind was so open your faculty of reasoning fell out.
CV, what a load of bollocks. If NIST’s maths are wrong, all you need is a blackboard and some chalk.
What was it that helped me decide? For one thing, the fact that instead of blackboards and chalk (or even, god forbid, some actual engineering software), all you’ve got is a series of breathless talking heads on Youtube and a bunch of defamatory false allegations against NIST employees.
I don’t like your right wing bullshit any more than I like John Key’s
CV being right wing now too? That seems to be your only response these days. I believe it was CV who had to back out for a while because he upset the Labour leadership and he wanted to stay with the “left wing” party.
Believing bullshit in the face of all available evidence is a right wing trait.
“As entertaining as it can be, it is also a waste of resources as very few supporters of the Official Story who engage in Truth discussions on-line, ever do it honestly and with an open mind.”
One Tāne Huna, I have been impressed in the past when you state that people need to open their mind to the real history of this Nation. You regularly berate others who don’t take off their blinkers regarding the Government’s position on numerous issues in Aotearoa especially when touching on historical innaccuracies that we live with, then you go and parrot US led propoganda designed to promote War and Poverty and Greed.
I for one get a little confused about what you actually want from this life.
The 911 debacle is, heh, a slow burner, it is not going away. My partner had an immediate “what the…” reaction watching some of the available videos particularly building 7 that was not even hit by an airplane. She is into architecture and such and no calculations were required for her to smell a rodent.
I think it will be revealed as a ‘black op’ in future decades. People on forums like this have only limited license to demand this or that from other commenters. The ongoing ferocity of the debate about 911 imo is due to people’s world view and belief systems being challenged.
Me, I am well aware of the track record of the US military/spooks and crooked offshoots. I mean they turned the ‘attack on Iraq’ into a corporate feeding frenzy.
Granada, Cuba etc anyone?
Freedom, what “propaganda”? Is the National Institute of Standards & Technology a CIA front on your planet?
Perhaps the reason I’m insisting on Physics and Engineering is the same reason I insist on a similarly skeptical approach to right wing drivel wherever it can be found. Ya think?
It cannot however cause thousands of welded rivets on every floor to consistently and simultaneously fail, which is required for the collapse theory to work.
Three rivets. One fails. The remaining two now have half again as much stress, instantly. One more fails, and now the remaining rivet’s stress has increased threefold, nearly instantly.
Also, if you have a minute, could you be so kind as to explain where the vast quantity of extreme heat came from to form the pools of molten metal that were still being discovered weeks after the Towers’ collapse?
Once the aviation fuel has ignited the fire, everything burns. That produces a hell of a lot of heat.
Heat can be lost by radiation or conduction. Surrounding materials and debris can be effective insulators, reducing conduction while blocking radiation. Radiation itself is a very slow process. Moreover, molten steel has an enormous amount of thermal energy tied up in it and takes a very long time to lose.
Never been in a steel mill?
Then again why bother . . .
The rest is sarcasm and metaphysics and is consequently of no interest.
so that’s a no to explaining anything then,
you are sticking with jet fuel and office supplies, good to know i can move on.
I can forsee a large hole resembling the shape of my forehead in the nearest wall so I am not even going to touch on the timespan required for your progressive rivet failure theory.
I thought for half a minute you might have had some logic to go with your ‘911 for parrots’ quotes but sadly the only interesting thing about your comment is your avatar and how it relates to the whole world of conspiracy theories
I’m sticking with physics. Take it up with Newton and Kelvin if you like.
We did and you know what? Turns out you haven’t got a clue about Newton’s laws of Physics
Given that a couple of universities have seen fit to give me a dgree in industrial design and a couple more in architecture and that their accreditation is overseen by the professions that are very cognisant of liability and that I’m now hired to teach architecture students on the integration of structure and design, I would guess that someone thinks that I do.
By the way, I don’t use Youtube in my architecture classes.
Rhinocrates,
As a suitably qualified person you would no doubt have sought out the best information and there is no more technically proficient group of Truthers than Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth. You obviously contest the statements from the 1700+ Architects and Engineers who have assigned their professional reputations to the topic of 9/11 Truth. They also have lots of hard earned letters after their name. Could you please show us where they are mistaken? The coolest thing about life, more knowledge is always welcome.
http://www.ae911truth.org/en/home.html
My qualifications have also been declared meaningless, so some might say you’re in good company. I have no specialised knowledge of engineering or architecture, but your explanations make a lot of sense and are consistent with what engineers have told me. I even know people who work at NIST, although they weren’t part of the inquiry.
This obviously means that I support US foreign policy and think that every statement that comes out of Washington is gospel truth, so I suppose I’ll just have to live with that.
I have also never used youtube in a lecture. How my students must be deprived!!
One of my lecturers showed us youtube videos of cats. That was fun. Maybe you should do that.
Lanthanide, well, actually I do show videos of cats, such as this real-life Owl and the Pussycat:
Could you please…
OK, in good faith, here goes… and I’m sorry, it’s late and I have a lot of work to do tonight, so my statements are going to read like bullet points.
I don’t doubt the sincerity of anyone involved when it comes to their fundamental beliefs.
“1700” looks like a big number, but it isn’t compared to the whole range of professions – in fact, it’s a tiny minority. Still, for s single, limited human being, sifting through 1699 and missing one to have the 1700th thrown at me is not something I care enough about. So, no, I’m not going to pick on any one individual so that 1699 can be thrown at me.
Here is the difference between lawyers (and conspiracy theorists) and scientists:
A lawyer and a conspiracy theorist thinks that truth is like a house of cards – take just one card away and the entire house collapses.
A scientist knows that truth is like a jigsaw puzzle, an old one that’s been in the attic a long time. Pieces are missing, and it’s going to be hard work to fit the rest together, but if you have enough, then you have a best guess – because any other guess has far fewer pieces, because in reality, we’ll never know everything.
Yes, I will admit that Grey alien reptiod Bilderbergers from Zeta Reticuli working in concert with the Freemasons caused the dosai I ate last night to be overcooked, but I really don’t think that that was the most probable explanation by a long shot.
1 percent of uncertainty does not trump 99 percent certainty.
As Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If the claims made by the 911 Truthers require violations of the fundamental laws of physics, which have been proven for centuries now, then they had better front up – and they haven’t. In fact, the arguments that they produce require in themselves require violations of fundamental physics.
Could the US government, under George W Bush do evil things? Oh yes, of course I know that they did – but while Jack the Ripper did evil things, I still don’t think that he killed Marilyn Monroe.
FWIW, I do agree that a full and open inquiry will reveal a great deal of complicity with the Bin Laden family, and a lot of arse-covering by intelligence agencies who were incompetent or at least not omniscient, and people will do at least as much to cover up incompetence as they will to cover up complicity. So yeah, there’s cover-ups that haven’t been revealed in inquiries and won’t be.
The thing about conspiracy theories that provokes my scepticism is their assumption that the conspirators are competent.
Everything that we know about them tells us otherwise.
Cover ups – Check!
Conspiracy Theory – Check
Cover up = Conspiracy!.
Without transparency, openess etc, there is little to no chance of gaining a clear understanding of the why/how/who, which leaves people to draw their own conclusions, using various methods and means.
Until such time as it comes into full light (unlikely), the *official narrative* must be treated as part of any conspiracy, that’s simply the consequence of a *cover up* , on any size or scale!
By their actions, you shall know them!
The official theory is that it happened while GWB was president and that “Muzza” had nothing to do with it.
Maybe you could explain Newton’s Laws to us? You seem very keen on stating that none of us understand them, between your bouts of roflolling. Please enlighten us.
Once you’ve done that, I personally would be keen to have Lord Kelvin’s contributions explained as well.
Heh, thinking of “Roflroflrofl”, I can only refer to
Roflroflrofl!!!
“The energy used to destroy the building is in fact not the initial impact, but all the gravitational potential energy devoted to lifting its entire mass into the sky in the first place when it was constructed.”
Stupid demolition people using all that dynamite to blow up buildings while all the while those buildings really would behave like knitwork: All you need is to find a way to unleash all that potential energy devoted to keeping all that knitwork together! Find the right stitch and voila Bob’s your uncle. Same with buildings, all you need is the right bolt to break due to heat (like in building 7 apparently according to NIST) and the building will come down in freefall speed into it’s own footprint.
In the mean time the building covered in another oil product called plastic it seems which burned nicely and long unlike the Kerosene of the planes in a few initial minutes, was destroyed but did not collapse into it’s own footprint in free fall speed.
which leaves the real question . .
Did Gerard Depardieu burn the soufflé ?
Hi eve, there’s a photo in this thread of the building under construction. Notice anything?
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1100661&page=2
I see a lot of concrete, but haven’t identified any steel trusses that have been stripped of fire insulation (applied by a New York construction crew in the era of the five families) by the mechanism of a large plane flying into the building.
You’ll find that real demolition work is done on that principle, actually: you don’t “blow the building up”, you use the weight of the building to do most of the demolition for you.
So heres the problem:
You say National can’t be trusted for various reasons (who knows you may even be right)
Labour can’t be trusted to run the country for various reasons and they can’t even run their own party
The Greens just say any old thing and hope no one checks (bit like National and Labour I suppose)
So what options are there for people to vote for or is it a case of the lesser of two (three) evils?
Not keen on NZFirst just to keep a foot in either coalition possibility?
Its not looking good
Yeah, may as well stick with the devil you know eh? Vote National.
Well, if you had actually bothered to check you would have found that the Green Party had been consistent with what’s on their webpage and they back up what they say. This is unlike, say, National.
I’m not saying they don’t stay on message, I’m saying theres a lot of bullcrap in the message and nobody (especially the media) seems keen on calling them on it.
As an example: http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2013/04/greens.html
But this is not specifically about the greens, its about how we’ve all gotten to the stage where we all vote for the lest worst party
You seriously think similar pieces couldn’t be written about national party graphics? Obviously not by DPF, but really?
The only way to not vote for the ‘least worst party’ is to vote for yourself. Otherwise, everyone is making a compromise decision, and that means ‘least worse’.
So don’t be such a big baby. 🙂
“You seriously think similar pieces couldn’t be written about national party graphics?”
Well no thats why I said at the start: “You say National can’t be trusted for various reasons (who knows you may even be right)”
“Otherwise, everyone is making a compromise decision, and that means ‘least worse’.
– I dunno, just doesn’t seem the best way to get things done, how you could change it though is beyond me…
its well and truly beyond you c73!
Adding to the fog of war
Nactional can not be trusted they continually lie!
Stick to you your cup of tea and leave it at that!
Any party leader who forgets he’s got a million dollars or so in a off shore bank account shouldn’t be allowed within kilometres of the levers of power.
It’s National by default.
Actually, I’m more concerned with people who forget the shares that they have despite the fact that they’re professional traders and will be looking at those shares and what the price is doing on a day to day basis.
When you’re worth 50+ million, what a few shares, easy to forget about, especially Tranz Rail ones, toilet paper had more value than those shares.
David Shearer though, very suspicious.
How can the chap from the UN forget he has a million dollars lying around in a offshore bank account, what’s he hiding?, any reporter worth their salt would be all over this.
Yeah, especially when you’re also trying to sell them to a business in Texas via your government contacts for more than you bought them for.
“Yeah, especially when you’re also trying to sell them to a business in Texas via your government contacts for more than you bought them for.”
Yeah, and in case anyone (BM) has forgotten, Key’s dishonesty in this instance went WAAAAY beyond just lying 2 or 3 times directly into the camera and changing his story several times as it became obvious that the journo had more info than he first thought.
No the real sin here was that repeatedly Key was using parliament to ask questions designed to procure financial information about the company for his won personal use.
Where does the million dollar figure come from? You wouldn’t just be making stuff up, would you? Seems to be the done thing in this thread.
Seen a few numbers thrown about.
But since Shearer won’t tell any one, all we can do is speculate.
“But since Shearer won’t tell any one, all we can do is make shit up.
FIFY
“Seen a few numbers thrown about.”
Yeah I’ve seen Slater make a few up, and then BM says he “read it somewhere”, and then he increases it by 50%, and then a few other nutjobs repeat it around the blogs, and then Slater says he “heard somewhere” that it was twice as much, and then BM says he heard that too etc etc.
I heard it was just over 9000 dollars.
Not that you’d let facts get in the way if he had.
If it’s just speculation, $50 million is a more prumstrial number. Do you have any idea how many shares Cunliffe has in Monsanto and Petrobras? Maybe we could speculate that Norman Russell has a few million in Rio Tinto? Be asprishnul and ambishush, don’t stop with Shearer.
I heard it was Saddam’s WMD, until he swapped that for tonnes of naz1 gold.
Sick buckets at the ready for a war criminal’s perverted feminism….
Learn to Speak Up
by CONDOLEEZZA RICE • April 1, 2013
There have been many times in my career when I was the only woman in the room; if I didn’t speak up, it was often noticed. I found speaking up took practice, but over time it became an important source of growth in my career.
One moment occurred during my freshman year of college. I was 16 years old and taking my first government class. Midway through the lecture, the professor introduced a bizarre theory as if it was a matter of course: Black people are born with lower IQs than white people. Everyone – including the black students – just sat there, accepting his theory as fact. Meanwhile, I was a 16-year-old black woman in college who spoke two languages and could play Beethoven and Bach on the piano. I was stunned, not only by this absurd statement, but by the lack of reaction from the other students. So I raised my hand.
The professor was stunned that I chose to speak up, and seemed even more amazed when I showed up the next day to argue the point. After that day, he realized his mistake and attempted to befriend me. I went on to excel in the course, despite the obstacles. I also learned a valuable lesson: If you find something uncomfortable or wrong, speak up. If you don’t challenge people, you aren’t doing your job.
In 1984, another situation arose that challenged me to speak up once again. I attended a seminar at Stanford featuring the then-National Security Advisor, who spoke on a commission I felt very strongly about. His mealy-mouthed answers caused my blood pressure to rise; yet no one pressed him for further information. So I raised my hand and shared my perspective. He seemed surprised, yet also impressed. Later he approached me and we talked. He noted my willingness to speak up and praised my thought process. That moment led to a life-long relationship, with him acting as an early mentor.
As my career evolved, so did my desire and need to speak up. Early on in my role as the National Security Advisor, I often had the opportunity to present options, but rarely did I ever voice a strong opinion in front of the President.
One afternoon, I found myself in a heated debate over President Bush giving a speech on the situation in the Middle East. It was a violent time, and there was concern that the President’s speech would only exacerbate the situation. I knew the President wanted to give the speech, so I decided to speak up. I said, “Mr. President, sometimes the only person who can make an impact is the President of the United States. You have to do this.” I waited for his response, nervous that I had overstepped. Instead, he smiled and agreed. He gave the speech and it was a rousing success.
It would be easy to say I have always spoken up at the right times….
If you have the stomach for it, you can read the rest of this ghastly woman’s hypocrisy HERE….
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1364979668.html
I met a Chemistry Professor from the university she’d been in charge of (Stanford?). He considered her extremely mediocre intellectually and said her main achievement was to make university administration meetings confidential. He’d withdrawn from a committee rather than sign a confidentiality agreement, so she certainly didn’t think speaking up was an admirable quality in her subordinates.
I thought the dateline for this item was significant, but it appears that it really was written, in a tone of high seriousness, by Condoleezza Rice herself.
As well as the intellectual mediocrity you mention, it is clear she also lacks a sense of irony.
UK Split Into Seven Social Classes, From The ‘Elite’ To The ‘Precariat’
It seems rather disturbing that the professor seems surprised that the rich exist and that they have advantages over everyone else.
Try taking the test on bbcnews.com! Simply by making one addition on a second pass, I seemed to jump from ‘traditional working class’ to ‘established middle class’ in no time at all.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22000973
Still, there have been people that tell me I’m a round peg in a square’s hole :p
And there was me thinking you had no class at all 😆
Elite – the most privileged group in the UK, distinct from the other six classes through its wealth. This group has the highest levels of all three capitals
Established middle class – the second wealthiest, scoring highly on all three capitals. The largest and most gregarious group, scoring second highest for cultural capital
Technical middle class – a small, distinctive new class group which is prosperous but scores low for social and cultural capital. Distinguished by its social isolation and cultural apathy
New affluent workers – a young class group which is socially and culturally active, with middling levels of economic capital
Traditional working class – scores low on all forms of capital, but is not completely deprived. Its members have reasonably high house values, explained by this group having the oldest average age at 66
Emergent service workers – a new, young, urban group which is relatively poor but has high social and cultural capital
Precariat, or precarious proletariat – the poorest, most deprived class, scoring low for social and cultural capital
Well, according to the BBC, this 60+ year old is an emergent service worker, characterised by:
Thanks for the link. Interesting survey. I actually don’t think the Prof was surprised that this group exists. More that he hadn’t expected it would show up so clearly in a major survey. He indicates it’s something that social scientists knew, but haven’t had substantial enough evidence to really go with it. He says:
I guess it indicates more that long held major paradigms are hard to shift in social sciences, without substantial, sound research-based evidence.
It also give’s significant reinforcement of the term “precariat” which is getting increasing currency in left wing politics.
The categories they identify at the extremes are the most significant and useful. There’s been various attempts to categorise classes showing more gradations than the Marxist working vs capitalist classes, taking into account social status, cultural capital etc – there’s so many relevant factors it’s always difficult to pin down clear class bands.
“It also give’s significant reinforcement of the term “precariat” which is getting increasing currency in left wing politics”.
And especially so in countries whose gubbamints are still wedded to the neo-liberal dogma.
Interesting link, Draco. Thanks
Progressive taxation is regularly attacked in the media. Higher tax rates restrains the richest – well if they didn’t pay lobbyists to create loopholes.
There is to be a law change in the air concerning ‘incitement to commit suicide’. I wonder if it is aimed at people who help others with euthanasia. I am hoping that the politicians will actually pass a law that sets out procedures to facilitate this in an organised and legal way that respects the wishes of the person and protects them against pressure from others.
Any laws passed that bear on euthanasia should be directed to making this a human and humane process carried out effectively by members of the family who can face the decision to die and last ceremony. The last thing that should happen is for law makers, medical or bureaucratic personnel to become arbiters of people’s lives so they are forced to exist beyond their wishes.
Wanna know who thinks the PM’s a dick?
The PM’s Chief Science Advisor that’s who:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC1304/S00009/gluckman-interpreting-science.htm
Gosh, whatever could he mean by that?
@PB ….. it doesn’t surprise me. I suspect Key, in all his arrogance, appointed Gluckman because he thought he could be a useful ally rather than because of his acumen.
Gluckman has authored a discussion paper on the issue.
Society uses science; good science simple ways to understand how to act in concert to produce the best outcome. Take roading science, where the simple practice of all on the left (or right) makes it possible to quickly get to where you need to be. As Einstein pointed out, keep it simple but no simpler. The problem with Gluckman take on matters is its a generalization, good public science requires that the problem being discuss is referenced, then understanding of the
problem is displayed, then and only then should we accord the speaker with any integrity, if they then do not allow themselves a forum to be question in, or respond in put downs and other poor debating tactics. Gluckman is merely a talking head for Key to see being scientific minded.
Now the media often reworks, highly manufactures the work of science in order to sell newspapers, this is entirely different from the need of society for simple science that helps us act in concert to achieve results that we value. i.e. Media sluts. Science isn’t found in the media much, its found in legislation, and its noted Gluckman has little to say about legislative ends of science.
like for example, have too few mine inspectors, when you don’t measure you can’t avoid, a simple scientific practice that any chief scientist should be aware of. But you see the Human Rights Commission deals with Human rights practices of government, so you’d think that the chief science advisor would also deal to the practice of public science that legislation creates, or ministers ignore.
Like Climate change predicting globally more flash flooding, more droughts, and so when they appear, ADVISING Joyce not to make a dick of himself by arguing against climate change and
its effects on our economy, our diary output, our water use, our clean green branding.
The irony. Mistress Collins is concerned about bullying.
She’s gotta keep all those private prison stats up after all! It’ll be justification for another one coming to an area near you. Perhaps there’ll be a smelter site ripe for conversion before too long. Shove a few partitions and a roof on those pot lines, and Bob’s your uncle.
Ticks all the boxes – it’s a win-win situation – regional development, tough on crime, etc. etc
(I am thinking NAct type strategic planning)
And this is why we will see our power bills rise after the Mighty River sale:
Parasites!
Solid Energy is their template obviously Karol
Parasites!
+1
Parasites go on a feeding frenzy for some unknown reason once ‘mum and dad’ take over. This is sick and unjustified but I’m sure the directors will turn it down ha fucking ha.
meanwhile in other parts of the world the mining and exploitation companies continue to abuse and destroy indigenous peoples and their lives – our situation here is interconnected with all struggles especially underreported ones.
I urge everyone interested to go to Intercontinental Cry and read further.
http://intercontinentalcry.org/underreported-struggles-72-march-2013/
Lets play “Guess the employer!” My money’s on Novopay
http://www.seek.co.nz/job/24274408?tracking=JMC-000034
aka No Pay
lol
I hope they’re paying a premium rate for stress. Could be any payroll company that sells vapour ware, but yeah Novopay.
Minister for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith, one of the many millionaires in the UK Cabinet, has provoked outrage by saying he could live on £53 a week benefits.
It reminds one of the story about Tony Blair when on the speaking circuit, going into his bank and asking if he could have the amount he could withdraw from the bank’s ATMs increased.
“Let’s see,” said the cashier, “Do you earn more than £25,000?”
“It depends,” replied Tony. “Some days I do, some days I don’t.”
The British man called Mick Philpott with his wife and his drug-mate has been tried for setting fire to his house where his children were.
The plan was for Philpott to rescue his children and for Willis (a previous lover who had left him) to be prosecuted for arson, the court heard. But it went horribly wrong when the blaze took hold fast. The adults escaped the house but the six children died as they slept. (We hope.)
But in 1978 –
Philpott launched a savage attack on 17-year-old Kim Hill – before turning the knife on her mother.
He was convicted of attempted murder and GBH with intent and jailed for seven years.
Jurors in Philpott’s latest trial were not told about his previous conviction after judge Mrs Justice Thirlwall refused to allow the shocking incident to be used in evidence
Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4870695/Revealed-Mick-Philpott-stabbed-ex-girlfriend.html#ixzz2PRuHSSuf
* He has been in trouble for vicious attacks – these went back to 1978.
* He was a 21 year old soldier at that time.
* Some years later he pinned another girlfriend down and held a knife at her throat.
* Now in his mature age he, and his mates, set fire to his house and six of his children died as a
result.
* If such a person was kept in jail for his whole life from the first attacks that showed a
thoroughly dangerous and degenerate man who was unlikely to be habilitated, others
wouldn’t have had to go through hell because of him.
* He wouldn’t be able to breed a family of 17 children who would have a screwed up life as a
result of their parents being bad role models.
* He sounds as if he has the mindset of Wilson of Blenheim, an ugly and aggressive man
about to be released after all sorts of appeals.
And some are using the case to hit welfare – ‘Anyone convicted of any welfare fraud should receive a lifetime ban on ..’ It is obvious that there should be shorter sentences for welfare fraud, and longer ones for being a vicious, violent, abusive person who is a danger to society.
And lastly when trying these people, the law makes certain they get a ‘fair trial’ by not revealing that they are degenerate criminals to the jury. No mention of any past wrongdoing is told to them. They should be told at the end of the trial so that they have the whole picture of the person they are deciding on.
I felt great saddness when I saw the photo of the six children who died. It has been reported that Philpott tried to chat up a police woman and he was joking/laughing when down at the police station just after the fire.
To be charged with manslaughter and not murder is not right either.
Don’t know if the translation quite fits whats being said but its amusing
I know that there are thousands on the East half of Washington DC who do seem to live like that. Not sure about the snow-coffee though. Sometimes information like that comes out of North Korea but the camera doesn’t lie – does it?
Interesting thanks chris73
I go to american prepping websites a fair bit, quite interesting some of the stuff they post about. North Korea has certainly got their attention.
A guy called Alun Hill did it as a joke, he admits he does not speak Korean, then it got picked up by some online news crew who mistakenly ran with it thinking it legit
as spoof it has some great lines despite the daily struggle of the reality the pictures expose
North v South.
Kind of says it all really and of course South Korea has some big friends they can call on, not sure China would think its worth going to war over North Korea, in fact they’re probably hoping the USA and South Korea does deal to them and take them over, it’d mean more stability in the region which would = bigger profits and they wouldn’t have to prop up North Korea…
Sounds like a CONSPIRACY THEORY
And the hits just keep on coming…
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/economic-crisis-hits-the-netherlands-a-891919.html
How will the Netherlands react to another potential German takeover?
Yep, that’s what happens when private banks are allowed to print money and are incentivised to do so by being allowed to charge interest on it.
Fuck:
http://www.sfx.co.uk/2013/04/03/a-personal-statement-from-ian-m-banks/
🙁
very sad – one of my favorite authors
One Tāne Huna said
“The adults would like to be able to have a sensible discussion of US foreign policy, which is pretty much a terrorism factory so far as I can tell, but every time anyone raises it we have to listen to the dimwit chorus insisting we watch this video.”
complete horsepuckey
These days it is a rare day when 911 issues, specifically the physical events of the day, get mentioned on The Standard.
Today was an obvious tease, poking a sleeping bear with a stick so to speak, due to the events in Russia, (still hasn’t collapsed btw)
It is not a ‘conspiracy theory’ to reference 911 when discussing the Neo-Imperial aspirations of the USA into the Middle East and other Asian regions and how the events of that day were used as justification for the slaughter of hundreds and thousands of people and the instigation of a global war against largely manufactured enemies.
It is not a ‘conspiracy theory’ to reference 911 when discussing the acquisition by the DHS for hundreds of armoured personal carriers or thousands of drones or the millions of rounds of ammunition or the establishment of the TSA or the removal of an ever growing list of civil liberties throughout America. All of which are a direct and very real result of the events of September 11 2001.
It is not a ‘conspiracy theory’ to reference 911 when discussing how all US foreign policy from that day forth has been based on a litany of misinformation and hyperbole, most of which over the past decade has been proven false. Facts that to this day are openly ignored by the Administration itself.
It is a ‘conspiracy theory’ to blather on about a very complex set of engineering calculations without being able to write them down, let alone do the Maths.
It is a ‘conspiracy theory’ when it requires thousands of individuals to be in on it.
It is a ‘conspiracy theory’ when all rational rebuttal is rejected.
Woman Burned Alive For Sorcery: Is Being Female A Death Sentence?
Those two were lucky.
And before we get too uppity about ourselves in the West:
Yeah, we’ve got a long way to go before we call ourselves civilised.
I wonder how strong the fundamentalist churches are in Papua New Guinea. I don’t know whether fundamentalist and evangelising means the same outcome. The evangelising spirit in some churches alone, prompts a quick response to previously little known areas that are probably still versed in aminism or whatever has been traditional. Mix the ultimate truths of such christianity (with a small c) and the traditional responses to wrong-doing and that might be an explanation for this savage witch-hunting.
Seen this?
____________________________________________________________________________
Shut The Smelter!
LET THE “TOO BIG TO FAIL” SMELTER FAIL
“Too big to fail” was the mantra of the robber banks and other transnational financial sharks during the Global Financial Crisis, which remains ongoing. This left the victims to pay for the costs of the crime, while the corporate criminals walked away scotfree and kept their loot. The people of Cyprus are the latest to experience firsthand just how this works.
In this country, Rio Tinto’s Bluff smelter was decades ahead of the fashion. Every time that Rio Tinto feels that its charmed existence in New Zealand is going to become less cushy, it threatens to pull the plug, close the smelter and walk away. It does so in the knowledge that it has always been deemed “too big to fail” by the succession of Governments, both National and Labour, that it has effortlessly outmanoeuvred for more than 40 years. This time it is trying it on as a tactic to try to pressure Meridian over its power price contract, on which the ink is barely dry and which only took effect in January.
Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) calls Rio Tinto’s bluff (pun intended). Stop crying wolf, stop using your New Zealand workers as disposable pawns in your cynical game, stop holding Southland and the country to ransom. Go ahead and close the smelter and bugger off. See if we care, the country will be much better off without you. The smelter is the country’s single biggest user of electricity, consuming one sixth of the total, 24/7 for more than 40 years. It pays a top secret super cheap price that is not available for any other user and all it does is export electricity from NZ in the form of alumina, while being subsidised by all other electricity users. The smelter is the textbook example of corporate welfare in New Zealand. It is the biggest bludger in the country.
How ironic that Rio Tinto has rejected the Government’s offer of a short term subsidy. It wants a long term one, preferably indefinitely. Presumably, this is in addition to the massive taxpayer subsidy it has been receiving continuously for more than 40 years, in the form of the Manapouri power station built with public money for its exclusive use (and let’s never forget that men died building that); and the cheapest and most secret power price rate in the country bar none. Not good enough apparently, it still wants more.
Rio Tinto won the 2011 Roger Award for the Worst Transnational Corporation Operating In Aotearoa/New Zealand (and was runner up in both 2009 and 08). It was nominated for lobbying two Governments “over several years to secure excessive allocations of free emissions units under the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme”.
The Roger Award judges agreed, concluding: “It appears therefore, that the New Zealand taxpayer is subsidising a transnational corporate rort of the emissions trading scheme… The significance of this stance cannot be underestimated; a major transnational player within New Zealand materially benefits from its non-compliance with a strategy to reduce global climate change and its ecological effects”.
The Judges’ Report concludes that the company has a 50 year history of “suborning, blackmailing and conning successive New Zealand governments into paying massive subsidies on the smelter’s electricity; dodging tax, and running a brilliantly effective PR machine to present a friendly, socially responsible and thoroughly greenwashed face to the media and the public. Its milking of the Emissions Trading Scheme is entirely in character”.
The extremely detailed Financial Analysis reveals that the smelter’s claimed benefits to NZ, namely annual export earnings of “around $1 billion” are, in fact, overstated by four fifths.
The full, damning, 2011 Roger Award Judges’ Report can be read at http://canterbury.cyberplace.co.nz/community/CAFCA/publications/Roger/Roger2011.pdf
Rio Tinto is, once again, a finalist in the 2012 Roger Award, the winner of which will be announced in Wellington on May 1 (http://www.watchblogaotearoa.blogspot.co.nz/)
In short, it is a liability to New Zealand, not an asset.
What about the people who work for the smelter, directly or indirectly? Indisputably, the smelter closing would have a negative impact on Invercargill and Southland. But let’s keep a sense of proportion – in disaster terms it doesn’t compete with Christchurch having lost 185 lives, 50,000 jobs, and sustained $30 billion worth of damage in a matter of seconds on February 22, 2011. If Christchurch can get back in the saddle after that, Invercargill should be able to handle the smelter closure and its attendant job losses. As a plus, the city will be able to shake off its unhealthily dependent situation as a company town with its local government at the beck and call of this transnational bludger.
The tobacco industry used to employ a lot of people here, but that was deemed to be no longer in the public interest. Lacing lollywater with booze and selling it to kids supports a lot of jobs too but there’s plenty of public demand to get rid of that particular industry as well. The P industry provides an income for thousands of people too, but we don’t hear any demand for that insidious trade to be kept going to keep them in a job. History is full of examples of horrible industries that kept people in jobs (such as the slave trade) but which were banned and/or abolished for the greater good.
This smelter constitutes a crime against the people of New Zealand and has done for its entire existence.
In the national interest, it must be closed and the sooner the better.
It would be a great bonus to have 15% of the country’s electricity suddenly available and no longer committed to one smelter. There would no excuse for the moneygrabbing power companies not to cut their prices (we’ve been falsely promised lower power prices since the “electricity reforms” of the 1990s). And, we’re told, it would drive down Meridian’s attractiveness to would be buyers as part of the Government’s assets sale process. How ironic that the selfishness and ruthlessness of one transnational corporation could bugger up the plans to flog off more of our public assets to transnational corporations.
Murray Horton
Secretary/Organiser
CAFCA
Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa
Box 2258, Christchurch, New Zealand
cafca@chch.planet.org.nz
http://www.cafca.org.nz
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=117427631610589&ref=ts
http://www.watchblogaotearoa.blogspot.com/
https://twitter.com/#!/NZN4S
http://canterbury.cyberplace.co.nz/community/CAFCA/publications/Roger/Roger2011.pdf
canterbury.cyberplace.co.nz
Thanks for that, Penny. Murray Horton is one of this country’s most engaging and entertaining speakers. He always has lots of interesting things to say, and he says them forthrightly and stylishly. Yet he has never appeared on National Radio’s The Panel.
It can’t be because he is from Christchurch; after all, his fellow Christchurch identity Barry Corbett seems to be on the programme half a dozen times a year at least.
Gr8 post Penny
In the could be a little bit interesting file:
Leaks of records from offshore tax havens
A naming project is starting up to expose government officials, businesses, individuals and families using British Virgin Islands and other offshore tax havens to avoid tax in their own countries. With 200 gigabytes of data from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a fair few people will be keeping their accountants quite busy right now.
And… When looking at how they analysed the data
there’s a bit of added interest in the list of journalists.
You mean the Mike Williams H-bomb that had the Herald journos already working on it in Melbourne when Mike got there?
[lprent: FFS – learn to use the reply button like everyone else. Shifting this to OpenMike as it is out of context for the post. ]