Open mike 06/08/2011

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, August 6th, 2011 - 101 comments
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Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

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Step right up to the mike…

101 comments on “Open mike 06/08/2011”

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  1. rosy 1
    6 August 2011 at 6:12 am

    Not good enough the ‘incentives’ to work, high inflation and no net tax cuts have had a predictable outcome, it seems.

    Susie Harris-Wright and her five children spent a week living in darkness before a candle-sparked fire destroyed their rented home.

    Her 10-year-old son, who would later save her life, went three days without a shower before Tuesday night’s blaze after she was unable to stretch the budget far enough to pay the power bill.

    The Hamilton mum, who also cares for her 24-year-old nephew, works two part-time jobs – as a Red Badge security guard and a Novotel room maid – while studying to become an emergency medical technician.

    The family spent that week scrambling: visiting friends, sneaking a shower and eating where and whenever they could. In the days before the fire, takeaways were the food of choice…. Ms Harris-Wright had visited the Dinsdale Winz branch office several times, trying to bring forward her appointment, which had been scheduled for Wednesday morning.

    • millsy 1.1
      6 August 2011 at 2:53 pm

      Personally I think it should be a scandal that someone in paid work should still have to go to WINZ for anything.

      This article highlights the real costs that a crippling New Zealanders — rent and power bills. No point in having GST off fruit and veges or price controlled milks if you cannot afford the power to cook them with.

      The sell down of our power companies, plus the changes to state housing, will only make things worse.

      • seeker 1.1.1
        6 August 2011 at 7:22 pm

        I wept when I read this. No surprise that we should come to this after 42years of neo liberal ideology (counting the years I spent under Thatcher when it was simply known as Thatcherism.) It was evil and cruel then, and changed a hard -fought -for better nation for the worse, and it is still doing its evil work in New Zealand in 2011.

        Unfortunately it is aided in these times by John Key giving greed and avarice an acceptable ‘smiley’ face and a ‘positive’ spin.

        How his followers love him as he spins his lies making it hunky dory and ‘respectable’ to be as selfish, thoughtless,ruthless and greedy as him. He makes them as fit for hell as himself and his party. Good job Key doesn’t believe in an afterlife , or maybe it isn’t, he might behave better towards his country and fellow citizen if he believed something nasty awaited him for his (and nacts) appalling actions and deceptions.

        Apologies for the apparent emotion, but this story was too much, and I know there are hundreds more out there. Oh dear.

        • rosy 1.1.1.1
          6 August 2011 at 9:32 pm

          NO apology needed. I felt exactly the same when I read this. It was made worse by the reporter’s sly suggestion that some of the blame for this should have been placed on this poor woman “they began using tealight candles despite knowing it was dangerous”. In situations such as this sometimes risks have to be taken – through no fault of their own. No wonder many people just give up – worn out and beaten down by circumstance and callousness.

          • Bill 1.1.1.1.1
            6 August 2011 at 9:44 pm

            I wonder how many people know that WINZ have to see you for a food grant on the day you turn up. Sure, you might have to wait a bit, but they can’t send you away with an appointment time (though they will try to).

            So, best to pay a portion of the necessary bill and apply for a food grant instead.

            Meanwhile. I’m guessing she wouldn’t have had house and content insurance. And it won’t be the first time a landlord has ‘whacked’ a tennant for the replacement value of a house following a fire.

            • Vicky32 1.1.1.1.1.1
              7 August 2011 at 5:06 pm

              I wonder how many people know that WINZ have to see you for a food grant on the day you turn up.

              I didn’t know that! It’s useful information.. Meanwhile, that poor woman! How terrible for her… 🙁

          • seeker 1.1.1.1.2
            6 August 2011 at 10:44 pm

            “No wonder many people just give up – worn out and beaten down by circumstance and callousness.”
            Exactly Rosy. I so admire this woman that she is still trying, but I can only imagine her exhaustion. How dare others on this planet ignore such suffering, including the thoughtless reporter and the insensitive and ghoulish WINZ.

      • prism 1.1.2
        6 August 2011 at 11:29 pm

        Reading the article it sounds as if her last month’s power bill was $730 and the current one was $900. That is such a hefty sum to find.

        Waikato can be cold and damp but perhaps there needs to be workshops for beneficiaries about using power affordably. It is so easy to turn on the heater, have long hot showers, but those two things mount up to a huge bill if not controlled. I wonder if they have a heat pump. Those things should have a meter box in them so they either stop or you turn down the thermostat to avoid being billed for unnecessary heating if they are going all the time.

        How can she do all these things and remain sane? She should be able to draw a benefit for her maternal and family care while she studies for her qualifications.

        • Draco T Bastard 1.1.2.1
          7 August 2011 at 12:48 am

          Having a power bill that high is usually down to having a faulty hot water cylinder.

        • rosy 1.1.2.2
          7 August 2011 at 12:50 am

          “perhaps there needs to be workshops for beneficiaries”
          Except that she works two jobs and is in training, as well as caring for family. Where would she find the time? Perhaps her children should attend?

          I agree with Millsy – this is a scandal. People shouldn’t have to make such choices in a rich country – and NZ is a rich country. Added to that she is in group that will be damned by others whatever she does (take your pick – Maori, solo mother, or the area she lives). I can’t imagine how hard it is for her to keep going.

    • Deadly_NZ 1.2
      7 August 2011 at 11:44 am

      Unfortunately Their reception at WINZ is the usual now a days, their staff have been gutted to bugger all they are over worked, underpaid, stressed to the max, and then they have US the beneficiary already stressed out due to circumstances beyond our control and this is the out come, or as I saw one day in a winz office a particularly rude and unhelpful staff member was ‘punched out’ . And I noticed here in Levin that one or two of the more ‘unhelpful’ staff members has disappeared and upon querying as to whether or not he’s been given the boot found out that he has been sent to CHCH. Now if all winz offices have done the same and sent the ‘worst’ of their staff to sort out CHCH I really do pity them. Puddin Bennett and co have got a lot to answer for.

  2. just saying 2
    6 August 2011 at 7:52 am

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10742995

    Such an effective article against fracking, I had to check I really was reading the Herald.
    Interesting that she challenges the astroturfers, and asks that commenters front-up with their real identities.

  3. John Dalley 3
    6 August 2011 at 8:24 am

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10743290
    AN interesting timeline between request from Cameron Slater and the SIS meeting with Goff. The day after the supposed meeting with Goff and Slater is requesting the exact documents.
    Suspicions of a setup anyone?

  4. LynW 4
    6 August 2011 at 8:28 am

    An excellent article in todays Herald .Well worth reading. Sorry, don’t know how to direct link.

    It shouldn’t be just the rich getting rich getting richer
    By Brian Gaynor
    5:30 AM Saturday Aug 6, 2011

    He summarises with

    ‘A large number of government policies, including capital gains taxes, death duties, income tax, superannuation policies and government income transfers, play big roles as far as wealth and income inequality are concerned.’

    If the National Business Review’s Rich List figures are accurate then there has been a dramatic concentration of wealth at the top end since the 1980s.

    The increase in income inequality has been checked in recent years only through the introduction of Working for Families and lower investment returns for the wealthy.

    There seem to be inconsistencies regarding the latter point as the National Business Review reports that its Rich List group is doing very well, yet the ministry argues that income inequality is contracting because the wealthy are experiencing low investment returns.

    The most appropriate way to solve the wealth and income inequality problem is to find ways to raise the wealth and income of all New Zealanders.

    This should be one of the main issues for debate in the upcoming general election campaign’.

  5. jackal 5
    6 August 2011 at 8:59 am

    How about that capitalism eh! Is it working for you?

  6. tc 6
    6 August 2011 at 9:39 am

    Reading Armstrong in granny you’d think the sky had fallen simply because labour was doing it’s job opposing rabid roy’s bill…….blatant one eyed reporting. This guys meant to be an experienced political reporter, what a fn joke.

    • Pete George 6.1
      6 August 2011 at 10:05 am

      I think Armstrong makes fair comments that are fairly plain outside devout the Labour circle. Labour have blocked all private members bills this year, that’s a terrible way to abuse democracy, in this case the only (outside) chance non government MPs have of getting anything through parliament.

      Anyone doing so would have witnessed a spectacle which would immediately have brought several words to mind – words such as pitiful, pathetic, embarrassing and disgraceful.

      It is a further black mark on Labour that not only has an innocent third party been caught in the crossfire, but the presence of the Royal Society’s measure on the order paper has been exploited for purely political motives.

      And not only Labour.

      The Greens should likewise hold their heads in shame over being party to Labour’s shoddy behaviour. They put much stock in parliamentary probity.

      Selfish, desperate and petty party politics shits on our democracy.

      • Blue 6.1.1
        6 August 2011 at 10:26 am

        Reading Armstrong’s column one would wonder if he has ever seen Parliament before, let alone being one of the Herald’s senior political journalists who has made a career out of watching it.

        It is a petty, stupid farce on the best of days. And that applies to all parties, usually excepting the Greens and the Maori Party.

        John does a nice line in outraged on this one, getting his knickers in a real knot over something that is no more and no less abuse of Parliament than National’s overuse of urgency or Gerry Brownlee’s flat refusal to even stand up and answer a question during Question Time.

        Perhaps John just found himself with nothing to write about this week, given that Audrey Young was writing the piece about Goff and the SIS.

      • Deadly_NZ 6.1.2
        6 August 2011 at 5:48 pm

        oh Pete SS George, you really do try and spin. But what about the bloody NACTS abusing the parliamentary process through the use of urgency, to ram their bullshit policies through without debate??? Oh or is that ok?

    • Joe Bloggs 6.2
      6 August 2011 at 3:08 pm

      When John Armstrong starts describing Labour’s antics as pitiful, pathetic, embarrassing and disgraceful, deemeaning itself and the institution of parliament, you know the sky really is falling.

      What a sea-change for a once respectable political party!

      • KJT 6.2.1
        6 August 2011 at 5:56 pm

        No mention of the NACTs constant abuse of process and urgency to stuff NZ as far as possible, in case they lose the election and cannot get their, so called, mandate for burglery.

        Seem to remember Nat’s fillibusters on occasions.

        If Labour are doing their job they should not allow any more NACT policy to get through until after the election.

        Mind you, if politicians were really representing us, they would be legislating for democracy.

        • logie97 6.2.1.1
          6 August 2011 at 6:25 pm

          The problem that Armstrong misses is that this is a private member’s bill in name only. It is in fact a government bill. They have just allowed a minor partner to run it so that they won’t lose any popularity of it. If it was a private members bill it would be a conscience vote and not a whipped vote.

          Armstrong’s reporting is the disgrace here.

        • Joe Bloggs 6.2.1.2
          6 August 2011 at 8:14 pm

          @KJT,

          you avoid the whole thrust of Armstrong’s article – it’s not about the filibustering process. It’s about the shameful behaviour of Labour’s MPs after they got caught out.

          Eric Roy’s authority as the Chairman of the Committee of the House was constantly being questioned and challenged.

          Labour made repeated demands that Speaker Lockwood Smith be recalled to the chamber to rule on decisions made by Roy.

          For the best part of an hour, Labour MPs raised timewasting points of order and forced a series of pointless votes to try to stop debate.

          Trevor Mallard was ordered to leave the chamber but did not…

          As Armstrong said: A clear line can be drawn between trying to delay a measure’s progress through Parliament by filibuster and trying to find and exploit gaps, loopholes and apparent anomalies in Parliament’s rules to subvert the will of the majority. Labour crossed that line.

          • KJT 6.2.1.2.1
            7 August 2011 at 1:01 pm

            Labour is, finally, doing their job. Trying to stop a bill that overrides the democratic decision of the students involved. People Labour represent.

            National is not doing their job, which is to work in the best interests of the people they represent.

            All, the nit picking and crap ignores the real story.

            We are being betrayed by NACT. Who are heading us in the same direction as the USA.

  7. rd 7
    6 August 2011 at 11:01 am

    John Roughan in Herald
    Would Key Expose Israeli spies?
    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10743239

    Worth a read.
    Last Para
    I’d like to visit Arab countries one day. I’d like to trust this Government to protect the integrity of my passport. But I don’t.

  8. travellerev 8
    6 August 2011 at 11:03 am

    On the open mike post of the 3th of August I started a thread about the new video of the Architects and Engineers for 911 truth.

    Two questions were posted and I promised to respond so here it is:

    If they wanted to attack Iraq then why didn’t they do so instead of planning this highly risky (in case of being found out) attack?

    The issue of course is much more complex then that. First of all they did not want to attack just Iraq but to have an enemy they could call upon whenever the reached the next stage of gaining dominance in another one of the most oil rich areas on the planet the Caspian basin and the south Mediterranean countries. One book that is very enlightening is the “Grand Chess board” written by Zbignew Brezinski and I greatly advise those of you interested and inclined to read rather than watch to go out get the book and read it.

    For those of you who like to watch videos here is the link to a presentation of Michael Ruppert.

    Michael Ruppert is an ex Los Angeles cop who broke the CIA drug dealing scandal and who presents the case for 911 and what motivated the perpetrators to plan and execute 911. THis presentation is a couple of years old and at the time Michael still adhered to the LIHOP (Let it happen on purpose) scenario but he has since deserted that for the MIHOP (Make it happen on purpose) scenario.

    The presentation is a whopping 2.5 hours but he is a very entertaining intelligent raconteur and the connections he makes with the finance world, their drug dealing and robber baron empire building methods are very well supported with evidence and very compelling as presents the evidence as he would do to a prosecutor to make his case in a crime.

    It pays to remember that John Key at the years leading up to 911 was at the peak of his game and that Merrill Lynch was too. They were involved in most of the financial scandals he mentions in the years leading up to 911 and while that does not mean that John Key was necessarily involved in these scandals he did earn his name of the “Smiling Assassin” when he fired many of his colleagues in the aftermath of the collapse of one of the biggest hedge funds LTCM in which Merrill Lynch lost billions of dollars. So to think that John Key was an innocent dolphin swimming with sharks is naive to say the least.

    The other issue was the free fall speed of WTC 7 and I found two videos back of two scientists David Chandler and prof. Jones who confronted NIST in the peer to peer review stage of the WTC 7 investigation which took 7 years to complete and they forced NIST to admit that during 2.5 sec (or thereabouts) the building did indeed come down in freefall speed which begs the question. How did the material of at least 8 floors disappear into nothing to allow for the building to come down in freefall speed.

    There is only one answer to that question. Explosives were used to bring it down!!

     

    • KJT 8.1
      6 August 2011 at 12:03 pm

      Do you really think the US government and intelligence services have the competence and ability to organise such a complex conspiracy. And keep it secret.

      The engineering behind what happened and how the twin towers collapsed is easily understood.

      It was due to a plane hitting them.

      • travellerev 8.1.1
        6 August 2011 at 12:07 pm

        We were talking about WTC 7, the third building that collapsed on that day but for your information steel framed buildings do not collapse due to a carbon fire. Not even with planes hitting them.

        • Lanthanide 8.1.1.1
          6 August 2011 at 12:40 pm

          Conspiracy theorists like to say “no other steel framed building has ever fallen down from a fire, some of which have raged for much longer than the twin towers did”.

          How many other steel framed buildings, of that height, have had two planes flown into them deliberately?

          • travellerev 8.1.1.1.1
            6 August 2011 at 12:43 pm

            Rare earth man,

            Only two but the third building is what we are talking about. And about the theorist part: Buildings do not collapse breaking all three laws of motion. Impossible. So what we want is a new investigation. Has nothing to do with theory.

            • Lanthanide 8.1.1.1.1.1
              6 August 2011 at 12:50 pm

              Engineers cannot be 100% certain exactly what was going on inside the building at the time.

              To more easily express it in terms of alternate universes, maybe there was only a 1 in 1,000,000 combination of factors that lead to the building collapsing in the way it did. We happen to be in that universe. In all of the other universes where it didn’t collapse, or collapsed in a different fashion, there is no conspiracy theory. But we happen to live in this one.

              Just because something is very very unlikely to happen, when it does happen that doesn’t mean there must have been some other factor that caused it.

              • travellerev …
                6 August 2011 at 12:58 pm

                LOL,
                That is idiotic L. even by your standards. You are willing to accept a 1,000,000 factors just so long as they are different from the one obvious one: 19 Arabs had no access to WTC 7 and the only building to collapse in a controlled demolition fashion did so because a 1,000,000 factors other the OCT “conspired” to do so!!!
                Here are 1500 Engineers and Architects who have an issue with that!
                Oh, and by the way Fukushima is still killing and we are still importing foodstuffs from Japan!!! I hope like hell it isn’t beef.

                • Lanthanide …
                  6 August 2011 at 1:03 pm

                  Once again, you’re simply saying that the collapse of the building was so unlikely for the given reasons, that it must have been something else that caused it.

                  Unlikely things happen all the time, like people winning lotto (or no one winning lotto for 16 weeks in a row so the jackpot gets to 30m), or hurricanes being set on a bullseye path towards New Orleans.

                  • travellerev …
                    6 August 2011 at 1:08 pm

                    About 1 guy winning 35 or more lotteries in one minute at the same time happened on that day. L, you fuckwit.

                    I’m going to have a Siesta so count me out for the rest of the afternoon. Jeez.

    • Pascal's bookie 8.2
      6 August 2011 at 12:04 pm

      As I understand the NIST explanation the support for the building was compromised in the bottom half of the building. That is, there was no support holding the building up.

      It is natural that it would free fall while there is nothing holding it up.

      It falls in three phases. A slower initial phase as the support disappears, a free fall phase as that which is not supported falls, and a final slow phase as that which is falling starts to meet resistance from all the rubble.

      On the motivations, you still haven’t adressed my point. If they were after a casus belli, then the AQ attacks provided it, and indeed, they went on to use the attacks in a clumsy fashion. Getting involved themselves in the way truthers allege would only add little at great risk.

      The question is not ‘did neocons or whomever want an event that they could use to justify things they wanted to do’. The question is ‘why would they need to rig 3 buildings to blow up when AQ had already hijacked commercial airliners and flown them into buildings.’

      As I said before, why launch the most risky and audacious false flag op in history, when a genuine flag is being waved in the form of the most audacious terror attack in history?

      I’m not seeing what extra value was gained for the enormous risk to have been worth it. And I’m not seeing the ground work laid.

      By that I mean that the propaganda efforts, both before and after the attack were clumsy. After the attack the propaganda worked long enough to get the job done, but if they were really in on it, it wouldn’t have been so clumsy. They would have already laid the groundwork so that people automatically thought ‘saddam’ when people heard ‘AQ’. As it turned out they had to go and try and create those links and work them into their previous narrative based on WMDs. They pulled it off, but it wasn’t as smooth as one would expect of people that had known what was going to happen.

      • travellerev 8.2.1
        6 August 2011 at 12:15 pm

        PB,
        I can see from the time it took you you basically responded based on your believes and you are entitled to them.

        I just spend 2.5 hours watching the doco again and I suggest you do the same. Added to that I spend another hour watching both Chandler and Jones in their response to the NIST report and what they think about the “phase” hypothesis.

        You on the other hand think that buildings of 47 floors collapsing into a pile of dust as the result of office fires within 5.7 seconds is reasonable which begs the question; do you still dare to go into steel framed high rises now that you know that simple office fires can bring them down into a pile of dust within 5.7 seconds?

        So for now let’s agree to disagree and if and only if you are prepared like me to seriously study links I give you like I study yours I think I’m going to stop responding to you because it seems like a huge waste of time to me

        • Pascal's bookie 8.2.1.1
          6 August 2011 at 12:24 pm

          It wasn’t a ‘simple office fire’. 25% of the structure over several floors had been scooped out by debris from WTC1. The fire burned, uncontrolled, for several hours.

          • travellerev 8.2.1.1.1
            6 August 2011 at 12:41 pm

            As did the fire in this Madrid, Much hotter and much longer but no collapse of the steel frame. The WTC 7 walls did not even disappear and the damage to adjacent buildings was much more extensive but they did not collapse into a pile of dust in 5.7 seconds

            • Pascal's bookie 8.2.1.1.1.1
              6 August 2011 at 1:02 pm

              Yes yes, Madrid is always dragged out.

              What truthers don’t mention is that the Madrid building, or at least the section of it that didn’t collapse, was steel reinforced concrete. So not the same at all.

              The top section, which didn’t have the concrete, did collapse.

              plenty of related detail here:

              http://www.debunking911.com/firsttime.htm

              • travellerev …
                6 August 2011 at 1:06 pm

                All three fucking buildings were twice reinforced with fucking steel. The twin towers both on the inside and the outside and WTC throughout the whole fucking building. You fuckwit.

                • Pascal's bookie …
                  6 August 2011 at 1:17 pm

                  Is fucking steel fucking concrete fucking fuckity fuckishy fuck fuck fuck?

                  You compare steel buildings to steel reinforced concrete buildings, and suggest they should act the same. Not my problem.

                  • Colonial Viper …
                    6 August 2011 at 1:27 pm

                    Please come up with any other instance of a steel framed building collapse due to fire.

                    We have been using steel framed buildings for more than half a century, and they have suffered many fires.

                    You should be able to point to some other building collapses due to fire, right?

                    travellerev is correct IMO. There is nothing to suggest that a steel framed building is more likely to collapse due to fire vs a building based on steel reinforced concrete. Or vice versa.

                    Its as irrelevant as saying that one had a sign hanging outside and the other didn’t, and that makes all the difference.

                    • Pascal's bookie …
                      6 August 2011 at 1:32 pm

                      The McCormick Center in Chicago.

                      Sight and Sound Theater in Pennsylvania.

                      Steel framed buildings, caught fire, collapsed.

                      The Madrid building was steel framed. The bottom half was steel reinforced concrete. Top half collapsed, bottom half didn’t.

                    • Colonial Viper …
                      6 August 2011 at 1:48 pm

                      http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/compare/mccormick.html

                      Please be aware the McCormick building collapse was a roof collapse. You can also see in photos on the net that large parts of the roof structure framework collapsed but remained intact.

                      That is, the steel structures were not disintegrated by the fire

                      Re: the Madrid fire, I can see references to parts of the building having come down, but that most of the structure stayed upright (not just the bottom half) and had to be deliberately demolished at the cost of millions of euros.

                    • Pascal's bookie …
                      6 August 2011 at 2:01 pm

                      But it remains, fires being hot enough to make the steel unable to bear the weight. That point is demonstrated.

                      Add to the fact that a skyscraper is one hell of a lot heavier than a roof…

                    • KJT …
                      6 August 2011 at 5:05 pm

                      Got seven in 10 seconds on Jstor..

                      Engineering. Steel framed buildings fire resistance.

                      Of course a reinforced concrete building is less likely to collapse due to fire than a steel frame. Concrete does not weaken in the same heat range and insulates the steel reinforcing from heat.

                      http://www.imoa.info/moly_uses/moly_grade_stainless_steels/architecture/fire_resistance.php

                      “Under continuous loading, carbon steel is usually limited to a maximum temperature of 700F (370C). (3, 4) By the time steel reaches 930F (500C), it has lost about 30% of its tensile strength. Unprotected weathering steel loses about half of its tensile strength above 1000F (539C)”.

                      Average temperature in a house fire, WITHOUT JET FUEL ACCELERANT, 593 C (1100 degrees F) for 27 minutes. (Victoria University Engineering Dept. Fire resistance studies).

                      Saying that planes could not have bought the world trade centre down is nonsense.

                      Engineers who studied the construction afterwards concluded that, even though a plane crashing into the building was one of the design criteria, the buildings, as built, would not have been able to withstand a crash at the actual speed and size that occurred.

                      Don’t let facts get in the way of a good story though.

          • Lanthanide 8.2.1.1.2
            6 August 2011 at 12:46 pm

            I also read a thing from about 2004 or so, linked from here, I think it was a popular mechanics website.

            The article said that in W7 there was a fuel pump leading to the basement high up into the upper stories and that this likely continued to pump fuel into the fire for 5-6 hours after the debris first struck it.

            I have no idea if that’s the case or not, but if it is, then it really wasn’t a “simple office fire”.

            • travellerev 8.2.1.1.2.1
              6 August 2011 at 12:49 pm

              NIST itself stated the fuel had no impact on the collapse and popular mechanics is the most shamed and debunked magazine for 911.

              • Lanthanide …
                6 August 2011 at 12:51 pm

                “popular mechanics is the most shamed and debunked magazine for 911.”

                You mean the magazine that conspiracy theorists heap the most derision on.

                • travellerev …
                  6 August 2011 at 1:04 pm

                  That could be because it was Benjamin Chertoff nephew of the Chertoff of NSA and x-ray airport machine infamy wrote the bloody articles. And he wrote a bunch of unsupported crap easily debunked.

            • Colonial Viper 8.2.1.1.2.2
              6 August 2011 at 12:55 pm

              liquid fuels cannot burn hot enough in air to destroy steel structured frameworks.

              • Lanthanide …
                6 August 2011 at 1:01 pm

                Sure, a puddle of fuel in an open space may not get hot enough.

                But in an enclosed space it’s possible the heat could have been amplified. Probably still not enough to melt steel, but I can imagine it could weaken it more than would be expected from flame in a pure pool.

                I’m not claiming to be an expert or know more than the experts, but no one knows for 100% sure exactly what conditions inside the building were like during the whole drama.

                • Colonial Viper …
                  6 August 2011 at 1:08 pm

                  Enclosed spaces have extraordinarily limited air supply – fires would have largely gone out. In the footage of the building you can see that the fires suffer from a lack of oxygen – they are not ‘bright’ or ‘raging’ or ‘inferno’-like. They are taking their sweet time, struggling along for air for a lot of it.

                  • Lanthanide …
                    6 August 2011 at 1:12 pm

                    Blast furnaces are enclosed spaces that have air fed in at the bottom.

                    The heat in a blast furnace is much hotter than you can get from just a pile of burning material, and yet it still gets enough air to continue burning. In fact the act of combustion in a blast furnace helps to draw more air into the chamber.

                    • Colonial Viper …
                      6 August 2011 at 1:17 pm

                      that have air fed in at the bottom.

                      yes, blast furnaces are often pressure fed with pure oxygen to smelt iron etc.

                      That does not happen in a skyscraper fire. Fire proof doors and walls prevent just that effect.

                      Try burning a newspaper inside a closed oven and see how well it goes.

                    • Lanthanide …
                      6 August 2011 at 1:22 pm

                      Bringing up blast furnaces is simply to illustrate that the physical environment in which a fire is burning can greatly increase heat while not depriving it of oxygen.

                      Clearly an office building is not akin to a modern industrial blast furnace that uses pure oxygen force-fed into the fire. But the concept of a blast furnace has existed for several thousand years.

                    • Colonial Viper …
                      6 August 2011 at 1:31 pm

                      But Lanth, those kinds of environments typically have to be designed to feed oxygen to a fire.

                      Buildings are deliberately designed to do just the opposite: to impede feeding a fire.

                    • Lanthanide …
                      6 August 2011 at 1:53 pm

                      If a physical structure resembling a blast furnace exists, it doesn’t matter whether it was deliberately constructed by a man, or created by pure random chance of structural debris falling down in the right configuration.

                      Note I’m not suggesting it was a blast furnace, I’m just giving you an example of a physical structure that results in hotter than normal temperatures while also not exhausting it’s oxygen supply.

                      “Buildings are deliberately designed to do just the opposite: to impede feeding a fire.”

                      Buildings are also designed not to have huge chunks missing out of them due to planes crashing into them, too.

                    • Colonial Viper …
                      6 August 2011 at 2:05 pm

                      Buildings are also designed not to have huge chunks missing out of them due to planes crashing into them, too.

                      The Twin Towers were built and designed to withstand a direct hit from a Boeing 707.

                      (But not WTC 7 of course).

                    • McFlock …
                      6 August 2011 at 5:04 pm

                      meh. When I think of a fire in a skyscraper, I can’t but notice liftshafts and emergency stairwells. Assuming all the doors are shut, cool, but if they were breached by debris or opened by people evacuating, there’s a pretty strong air feed.
                       
                      Shoot – when I worked venue security and there were 2k people in an unventilated auditorium, we’d open the lower and upper level doors to cool the place down and the windspeed got very noticable.

              • KJT …
                6 August 2011 at 1:17 pm

                Yes they can and have.

                Deepwater horizon for one!

                Steel loses stiffness at well below melting point anyway.

                Which is why wooden framed buildings can often hold up longer in a fire, than a similar steel structure.

                • Colonial Viper …
                  6 August 2011 at 1:35 pm

                  True 🙂

                  So where are the cases of steel framed skyscraper collapses? 😈

                  Don’t forget with Deepwater that you had the small effect of massive oceanic tidal forces pushing the thing over, along with several large explosions, explosives onsite, and not just a simple fire 🙂

      • Colonial Viper 8.2.2
        6 August 2011 at 1:05 pm

        As I understand the NIST explanation the support for the building was compromised in the bottom half of the building. That is, there was no support holding the building up.

        In that case, large areas of the top half of the building should have stayed largely structurally intact in big recognisable ‘blocks’ and floors as we saw with the CTV building collapse.

        It didn’t. The building was pulverised into fine dust and small debris. How did that happen to the top half of the building from a structural failure in the bottom half of the building?

        The question is ‘why would they need to rig 3 buildings to blow up when AQ had already hijacked commercial airliners and flown them into buildings.’

        As I said before, why launch the most risky and audacious false flag op in history, when a genuine flag is being waved in the form of the most audacious terror attack in history?

        Potential whys, off the top of my head in 20s: higher death toll, more psychological impact, deeper and longer lasting political reverberations, additional leverage with international allies, destruction of event evidence, destruction of other materials on sites, replacement insurance pay out,…

  9. Pascal's bookie 9
    6 August 2011 at 11:39 am

    Looks like aklanders might have themselves a waterfront.

    http://eyeonauckland.com/2011/08/karanga-plaza/

    Looks nice.

    • felix 9.1
      6 August 2011 at 12:52 pm

      Wow. Having grown up in Auckland I’m quite shocked to see something good happen there.

  10. Outofbed 10
    6 August 2011 at 12:05 pm

    Iceland Revolution Project – Interview with Birgitta Jónsdóttir

  11. Gareth 11
    6 August 2011 at 12:30 pm

    I’ve decided that labour have been defeated using a rope a dope tactic,
    The Govt have let them flail away fillibusting all year to prevent the vsm in the knowledge that that they could use procedure to allow the vsm to pass before the end of the cycle, (which is what we saw the other day)

    All this has prevented more important and perhaps popular labour members bills from been drawn from the ballott which I suspect was the end game,

    I’d have to say labour have been out manouvered on this one, or am I barking up the wrong tree?

    • Pete George 11.1
      6 August 2011 at 12:46 pm

      It’s hard to know if National and Act deliberately played this out or eventually got fed up and decided to deal with it.

      In any case it certainly looks like Labour out maneuvered themselves and also out maneuvered sensible democratic process.

      • Lanthanide 11.1.1
        6 August 2011 at 12:55 pm

        iPredict can perhaps lend a little insight here.

        When the contract for VSM passing before the election was first launched, it was up around 60%. It stayed around 40% for quite a long time, all while Labour was successfully filibustering it.

        On Wednesday morning the stock spiked up from 20% to 40%, before eventually spiking around 95% prior to 2pm when parliament actually sat.

        Clearly there was insider trading on this past Wednesday. Those same insiders may have been pumping the stock back as early as when it was first launched.

        I guess the iPredict admin could probably investigate this – if the accounts involved in the recent insider trading were also the accounts that held up the price when the contract first announced, it would point towards this being the plan all along. Of course you can also just say that when they first bought up the stocks there were just hopeful of the outcome or expecting the filibuster to fail and didn’t specifically know that it would be broken in the way that it was.

  12. NickS 12
    6 August 2011 at 12:45 pm

    Isn’t it just amusing when the supposed party of free speech whines about someone exercising it?
    http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/head-student-body-urged-resign-after-abuse-4340774

    • felix 12.1
      6 August 2011 at 12:56 pm

      He should’ve told him to “get raped”, they’re ok with that.

    • Pete George 12.2
      6 August 2011 at 12:59 pm

      “Whining” is also a part of free speech.

      Being President of an association carries responsibilities. Acting (and posting) in a manner that reflects badly on the organisation can have consequences.

      • NickS 12.2.1
        6 August 2011 at 1:15 pm

        Except of course the little fact that ACT pretty much treated Alistair Thompson’s comments entirely differently, despite his position /smug

        And you’ve entirely missed the point too, but that’s completely unsurprising given your extensive prior history of moronic posts.

      • McFlock 12.2.2
        6 August 2011 at 5:11 pm

        Well, if you’re right, Pete, then there’ll be an election in a couple of months anyway.
         

  13. NickS 13
    6 August 2011 at 1:11 pm

    w00t:
    http://tvnz.co.nz/technology-news/nasa-finds-fresh-proof-water-mars-4340213

    Not that I think such environments would be conducive to anything but extremophiles, on top of the little problem of “energy sources” required to keep cellular metabolism kicking over. This does however make terraforming possibly more viable 😛

    • Draco T Bastard 13.1
      6 August 2011 at 1:42 pm

      The Solar Wind at Mars

      New evidence from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft supports a long-held suspicion that much of the Red Planet’s atmosphere was simply blown away — by the solar wind.

      To successfully terraform Mars you’d need to get a magnetosphere there and that’s looking problematical at best. My own guess is that you’d need to get Mars’ mass up to Earth standard or better.

      • NickS 13.1.1
        6 August 2011 at 2:01 pm

        Or you’d just keep replenishing the atmosphere with dirty snowballs as the rate of loss is so slow that it takes geological time frames to strip the atmosphere. Though the real problem is actually the lack of plate tectonics which in geological time frames stuffs up the carbon cycle slightly 😛

        Along with genetically tweaking everything to put up with slightly higher background levels of radiation.

        Of course the more current problems make it all a bit of a pipe dream at present…

        • Colonial Viper 13.1.1.1
          6 August 2011 at 2:40 pm

          Along with genetically tweaking everything to put up with slightly higher background levels of radiation.

          I’m pretty sure this is what cell phones are for.

          • NickS 13.1.1.1.1
            6 August 2011 at 2:48 pm

            Dude, the wavelengths for cellphone radio only interact very, very, very weakly with biological tissue. The sort I’m taking about is standard cosmic background xray and gamma (and beta) radiation kicked out from the sun’s nuclear fusion processes + extrasolar sources that the earth’s magnetosphere shields us partly from. Combined with a nice thick atmosphere of course.

            With a bit of tweaking to up-regulate DNA repair or splicing in relevant enzymes from radiation tolerant organisms, it would lead to plants (or rather algae) capable of surviving on Mars after initial terraforming steps, such as thickening the atmosphere.

      • Deadly_NZ 13.1.2
        7 August 2011 at 11:59 am

        There have been some really good doco’s on sky, one I watched was about storms on earth and other planets A force 5 huricane is just a gentle breeze on Jupiter where they have a storm thats been raging for hundreds of years. Or the nice Methane rain on a moon or two

  14. aerobubble 14
    6 August 2011 at 1:42 pm

    Nats did not have a mandate to raise GST, or change kiwisaver, predicated on raising savings!

    What! People with savings had value wiped out by GST rise and changes to kiwisaver make it less advantageous!

    yet the mainstream media love lying to us, or letting National talking heads lie to our face.

  15. jackal 15
    6 August 2011 at 2:25 pm

    Request Ignored by SIS

    There’s been a lot written about the possibility that Israeli spies gained false New Zealand passports and whether Phil Goff was briefed on the situation by the head of the SIS, Warren Tucker…

    • logie97 15.1
      6 August 2011 at 6:46 pm

      There are only two dots to join here – the cetacean and Joky Hen.
      According to TVNZ news Goff’s explanation appears to be correct.

      http://tvnz.co.nz/politics-news/sis-boss-admits-no-record-goff-receiving-spy-briefing-4340822

      Of course, all the RWNJ’s who have opined on The Standard over the last couple of days have suddenly gone silent.

    • seeker 15.2
      6 August 2011 at 10:26 pm

      @jackal 2.25pm
      I agree with everything in your link,”Request Ignored by SIS” including the word ‘besmirch’ which I was using earlier in relation to this unsavoury situation. ‘Besmirching Phil Goff’ is just what the Nats under john key are trying to do via that misguided being Cameron Slater.

      They used this tactic to bring down Winston Peters in 2008 and through him tried to get to Helen Clark. john key was aided and abetted in this by rodney hide and the msm,not to mention simon power later.
      I know this because I recorded every TV news report/interview/newspaper clipping/utterance/ etc. that I could for 18 months so that I had proof of the manipulation that I could see unfolding before me.(I knew nothing of Winston P. at the time just noticed Guyon Espiner and Barry Soper doing an untruthful hit job when Peters was speaking with John McCain and followed it from there.)
      Here we go again , I thought, as I watched this SIS story unfold and then read Andrea Vance, subtly tilting the story towards besmirching Goff and whitewashing her beloved key on Stuff today

      However I have to say that key has not got hide (the arch besmircher) with him this time so I think he has had to use slater which might not be so successful. (Act are really good at defaming others in order to get into power. In fact in order to get into power I think they will stop at very little- quite ruthless.No wonder the trickle down effect from such people creates such a horrible horrible world to live in.)

      I really hope the truth comes out and that key,his party and all who sail in her are shown up for who and what they really are- selfish, manipulating, power hungry, robbers of reputation and integrity (having none themselves) and worthless robber barrenz (cretainly not a government of any merit) of New Zealand.

      PS also agree with logie97-“there are only two dots to join here …..”

      • jackal 15.2.1
        10 August 2011 at 10:13 am

        I completely agree with your summation there seeker. It’s exactly the same tactics, which must have a compliant media that does not dig any deeper than a scratch on the surface. I’m optomistic this time re Phil Goff that there’s a stronger alternative media presence, the public is becoming more aware of such propaganda and that the perpetrators have overreached themselves. It would be good to see some documentation re the Peter’s besmirch, there’s at least a documentary to be made there. The part Owen Glenn played needs special attention.

  16. Morrissey 16
    6 August 2011 at 2:56 pm

    http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/siege-of-gaza-has-become-a-moral-blockade-of-israel-1.371516

    “Imagine Living Without Any Protection”

    Siege of Gaza has become a moral blockade of Israel
    by YITZHAK LAOR Haaretz, July 5, 2011

    Israel is indeed connected to the centers of power in the world. The predictions of a tsunami at present seem to be exaggerated, but nevertheless, before the victory ball, it is worth remembering – the Israeli occupation is the longest military occupation of modern times. The subjects of the occupation in its two forms – the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – live under a brutal regime that few other occupations allowed themselves, without any law – the blockade and the morbidity rate among children, the roadblocks and the arbitrariness of the soldiers, breaking in to people’s homes (imagine your children being awakened at night by the shouting of armed men, breaking down doors and blinding them with flashlights; imagine living without any protection ), the prolonged occupation, a disaster for us and for the Palestinians – because Israel enjoys the support of the West.

    The settlements have turned the occupation into something insolvable, at least in the next few decades, so that the occupation will not merely raise another generation of Israeli troopers, egged on by the rabbis of the rabble, but also a third and fourth generation of Palestinians without another kind of life.

    The fact that the Gaza Strip has become an international symbol of cruelty is yet further proof of the stupidity of our leaders. Operation Cast Lead and the blockade of Gaza – both of them with broad national consensus – have turned Gaza into a symbol that no longer needs coordination on the part of the Palestinians. Israeli democracy appears as it actually is: In the name of the majority (six million Jews ) it is permitted to do to the minority (five million, in Israel and the territories ) almost anything.

    The national minority in Israel has the right to vote but it does not have television of its own ; it has health insurance but also heavy unemployment and infant mortality rates that are much higher than among the Jews (8.3 compared with 3.7 for every 1000 births ). Tel Aviv, which sells itself to the world as a liberal city, is the only metropolis in the West that does not have a Muslim population. Its “coolness” is racist – the 20 percent minority does not appear at all in the life of the city. And it is advisable for propagandists not to point to Jaffa as proof of diversity – Jaffa with its yuppie immigration is a perfect example of apartheid carried out by “secular” and “liberal” Tel Aviv.

    Official propaganda, too, will not help. The more pressure Israel brings to bear on centers in the West – countries and media giants – the more the wave against it grows, because the hatred of the occupation and of Israeli racism springs from the knowledge that what Israel does is funded by the West, gets assistance from the West, and from connections with the focuses of power – as a living memorial to colonialism. There is nothing better than the way in which the Greeks thwarted the Gaza aid flotilla’s departure to reinforce this. It was not just Greece that thwarted it.

    The coalitions that are being organized against Israel in the West include members of the left. There are also many others and not all of them are humanistic. They are not always Jew-lovers. These coalitions will continue to grow as long as the western political community presents itself as “helpless” in the face of Israeli obduracy. Of course it is not helpless, and when it has actual interests, it is capable of behaving in typically western barbaric fashion, as it is doing now in Libya and in Iraq.

    The loathing of Israel fits in with the growing anti-establishment wrath, within the context of politics where there is no difference between the parties. The protests in Greece are an example of lack of faith of this kind, which does not spring from the Israeli occupation but from the powerlessness of the masses to influence what is taking place in their countries – economics and war.

    Israel is merely one subject out of several that the political – or the apolitical – complaining is busy with. Very few people join flotillas, but many more participate in sending them and even more internalize their oppression. The complaining and mumbling is part of a burgeoning anti-establishment consensus. The record of what is always known as “the hypocritical politicians” has been joined by the hypocritical attitude toward Israeli cruelty.

    It is not surprising therefore that the blockade of Gaza is getting tighter in the form of a moral blockade of Israel. Slowly but surely, in a world filled with injustice and war crimes and racism toward minorities and migrants, Israel has learned, during decades of stupidity, how to become the symbol of injustice and these crimes. We are no longer the embodiment of progress, as we were trumpeted as being for a long time, but the exact opposite. And this is truly just the beginning.

    http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/siege-of-gaza-has-become-a-moral-blockade-of-israel-1.371516

    • Colonial Viper 16.1
      6 August 2011 at 3:07 pm

      How do they print this in Israel and get away with it???

      • Morrissey 16.1.1
        6 August 2011 at 3:37 pm

        How do they print this in Israel and get away with it???

        The same way that diligent and honest reporters like Seymour Hersh survive in the United States, and the likes of Gordon Campbell and Jon Stephenson survive in New Zealand—because the government simply ignores them as far as possible. No need to worry about intelligent and informed critics when you have a guaranteed faithful government mouthpiece like the Jerusalem Post—or the New York Post or the New Zealand Herald to support you no matter what crimes you commit, or what stupid and offensive statements you make after a massacre in Norway.

        By the way, Haaretz is where you can read many other great Israeli writers, such as Gideon Levy and Amira Hass.

  17. felix 17
    6 August 2011 at 4:40 pm

    I/S tweets:

    Just got juicy OIA on Brownlee / Shipley. Looks very bad. Docs soon.

  18. rosy 18
    6 August 2011 at 9:40 pm

    The Trident programme was excluded from the UK defence review while conventional forces were reduced and public austerity measures were implemented. Priorities like this do my head in.

    Hiroshima Day, an apt time to question Trident

    But with today the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, that other image of destruction from Japan leaves many questioning why on Earth we would countenance building a new nuclear weapons capable of causing death and destruction thousands of times worse than the havoc wreaked by a natural disasters and the fall-out from Fukushima.

    • Vicky32 18.1
      7 August 2011 at 5:41 pm

      I remembered Hiroshima Day yesterday, how many others did? (I know you did Rosy)…
      It still matters!

  19. logie97 19
    6 August 2011 at 9:59 pm

    Given that we are lumbered with the “dirge” that is now our national song, it is interesting that the two most important words in the first verse are “the” and “of”.
    Have a listen next time and it won’t matter if it is a highly trained opera singer or a wailing two bit celebrity they will emphasise those two words. Seems we will have to get the Minister of Education to order that the song be taught correctly at primary school. It’s going to be a long process.

    … at thy feet,
    in THE bonds OF love we meet.

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