Open mike 06/02/2024

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, February 6th, 2024 - 18 comments
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18 comments on “Open mike 06/02/2024 ”

  1. Sanctuary 1

    So does the fact that the entire British news media donned black when it was announced king Charles has cancer mean it worse than they are publicly letting on or that the entire UK MSM is a bunch of obsequious establishment toadies?

    • Ad 1.1

      Prince William is, I hope, concentrated on getting Kate well again after several weeks of hospital.

      Accelerated succession was always going to be the problem after QE2.

    • weka 1.2

      it's what sells newspapers. Can't see how it's much different from a lot of sports coverage in that it's what the people want (apparently).

    • AB 1.3

      Possibly the former and definitely the latter. Not an either/or.

  2. Stephen D 2

    Tim Watkin makes some good points regarding our treaty debate.

    https://www.pundit.co.nz/content/lets-put-down-our-chisels-and-let-te-tiriti-o-waitangi-evolve

    ”The stone of history cannot be just shaken from our shoe. We have to learn to live with it by learning more about our past, listening more intently to each other and accepting that all our arguments are only part of a complex picture. We have to live with our history, not decide or judge it. Put down our chisels. Only then can we learn from it and from each other.”

    • Ad 2.1

      We should be thankful at how confident, assured and unified Maori are right now. In public leadership and in commerce Maori are stronger than they ever were in the 20th century.

      It's so different now to the response to Foreshore and Seabed or Waitangi 1999-2010. It's an institutional confidence.

      This government will pass.

      The partnership won't.

  3. joe90 3

    Serfdom's back in Poots' Russia.

    Russia's State Duma is considering a return to the Soviet practice of so-called "work troops," in which city dwellers were forced to work in rural areas, The Moscow Times reported on Feb. 2.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/russian-lawmakers-want-revive-soviet-154900146.html

  4. joe90 5

    Shane Jones' grubby stickies are all over this.

    Following orders from the new Government, New Zealand successfully blocked consensus on a measure to restrict bottom trawling in the South Pacific at an international forum that ended at the weekend.

    The annual meeting of the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation wrapped up on Friday in Ecuador (Saturday NZT) with no agreement being reached on a proposal New Zealand originally put forward to restrict seamount trawling to just 30 percent of seamount areas in the South Pacific.

    https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/02/05/govt-kills-proposed-south-pacific-trawling-restrictions/

  5. Dave Meech 6

    Britain is aghast today at the sudden possibility of one royal old person dying.

    News that the British King has cancer and may, at some point, (given adequate access to food, potable water, electricity, medicine, safe living conditions and remedial health care) pass away slightly earlier than comparable aged persons, given his advanced age, has rocked the nation. Around the globe the story has gathered momentum and featured on virtually every media outlet available.

    Leaders around the world have expressed their profound sympathy.

    All over Britain journalists have pulled themselves away from other trivial, less news worthy stories to focus on a single royal person facing the impending possibility of feasibly passing away at some undetermined future date, despite the fact that he was probably going to pass away fairly soon anyway, given that the Queen waited so awfully long and that he is already pretty old now. Nevertheless, politicians have interrupted their busy schedules in order to fully address what can only be described as a major international crisis of epic proportions that fully deserves global attention and sympathy.

    “We have already had the Queen pass away recently at 96 years old,” a palace source stated, “ so this may mean a total of 1 + 1 more = 2 Royal personages passing away at relatively advanced ages amidst a stable, safe environment of professional, curative, round the clock medical attention .”

    Could the world face a deeper crisis?

    The Conservative Government is today asking themselves what further measures might be undertaken to prevent or ameliorate such an impending tragedy, given that they are a Christian nation with a deep moral code. What could be organized or arranged to avoid this one, singular, lone, statistical risk of a royal person perhaps getting sick and then slipping away in comfortable conditions two or even three years earlier than predicted? How can the nation ensure that the King has adequate food and medicine to face his daily challenges?

    “Fortunately we are well aware of the dangers here. We need to monitor the situation,” Britain’s Prime Minister Richie Sunak announced in a crisis meeting, “lest conditions grow worse for him in his fully monitored environment. We need to pull all stops and address the crisis now. We must stop twiddling our thumbs and making weak excuses when we all know what is at stake here.”

    Recent stories have focused on Sunak’s weekly fasting regime, which looks really cool and fun to try.

    Questions have arisen as to who the best care giver would be to monitor the Royal personage around the clock.

    “Mate, I’ll do it,” replied Najib,, a 34 year old homeless Palestinian father of three who lost most of his family in a bomb attack that blew the legs off his children. He is now homeless along with 2.3 million other Palestinians and watching his children slowly starve to death. Sadly his wife, giving birth to their newest child without the benefit of an anaesthetic, lies crushed beneath the dust and rubble of a hospital, just next to a school, along with an estimated 10,000 other children.

    “Jesus Christ, I’ll do it for free.”

  6. George 7

    It's coming up to 3.5 months since our election.. almost a third of a year. The great undoing has commenced but have the government produced any actual policies yet? Or did I blink and miss it?

    • Rolling-on-Gravel 7.1

      I would love for them never to pass a policy ever again until they learn never to be destructive munters again.

      Our nation and land is too important for their tawdry shenanigans.

  7. joe90 8

    The world's most moral army.

    /

    @ireallyhateyou

    The IDF now admits, after its initial denial: the snuff/extreme right-wing Telegram channel "72 Virgins", now defunct, was operated by the army's Operations Division https://haaretz.co.il/news/security/2024-02-04/ty-article/.premium/0000018d-7042-dd6e-a98d-f462d6a00000?utm_source=App_Share&utm_medium=Android_Native&utm_campaign=Share

    https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1754099934855328172

    The IDF admits that the Telegram channel "72 Virgins – No Censorship" was operated in the Influence Department of the Operations Wing. The connection between the IDF and the channel, which presented uncensored images of the army's activities in the Gaza Strip as part of an influence operation, was exposed by Haaretz in December – but then they denied He was contacted in the army. Since then, the channel has been suspended. Following another investigation into the matter, IDF senior officials retracted their initial denial and said that the channel was operated by commanders and soldiers in the influence department, and that the source of the denial was the unreliability of commanders and soldiers in the department. Following the findings, it was decided that the commander of the influence department, an officer with the rank of lieutenant colonel, would end the His service and will retire from the IDF.

    from the publications in the group from the publications in the group "To exterminate the cockroaches, la familia heroes": the IDF deceives the citizens of Israel on Telegram

    From the information that reached "Haaretz" it emerged that commanders and servants from the influence department, which believes in psychological warfare operations against the enemy and foreign audiences, began to operate the channel independently and without permission on the second day of the war. Sources familiar with the matter claimed that the message was aimed at an Israeli audience, something the IDF is not authorized or allowed to do. The channel uploaded content that was difficult to watch every day. Among other things, it displayed the bodies of Hamas terrorists, on which was written "Shatter the terrorists' fantasy". Also, the channel uploaded exclusive materials from investigations, or information that at that stage was only available to the security establishment, and pledged that the materials were "exclusive from Gaza". The channel also published thousands of posts, photos and videos of killing terrorists and destruction in the Strip. The channel even encouraged its followers to share the content so that "everyone can see that we are fucking them".

    google translate

    https://archive.li/gbe28

  8. SPC 9

    The point of banning candidates in Russia is a regimes control of the narrative.

    A similar control of allowed candidates is practiced in Teheran.

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/350170086/russia-poised-bar-only-anti-war-candidate-presidential-race

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