Come on NZ! We cannot support this. Glenn Greenwald hold the mirror up to the USA to expose its shameful support of Israel’s despicable behaviour.
Worst of all is that U.S. political orthodoxy has not only funded, fueled, and protected this apartheid state, but has attempted to render illegitimate all forms of resistance to it. Just as it did with the African National Congress and Nelson Mandela, the U.S. denounces as “terrorism” all groups and individuals that use force against Israel’s occupying armies. It has formally maligned non-violent programs against the occupation — such as the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement — as bigotry and anti-Semitism (a position Clinton has advocated with particular vehemence), and that boycott movement has been increasingly targeted throughout the West with censorship and even criminalization. Under U.S. political orthodoxy, the only acceptable course for Palestinians and supporters of their right to be free of occupation is complete submission.
But the State Department denunciation yesterday was actually notable for what amounts to its stark and explicit acknowledgement — long overdue — that Israel is clearly and irreversibly committed to ruling over the Palestinians in perpetuity, becoming the exact “apartheid” state about which Barak warned:
Israel doesn’t want to rule over Palestinians – they want to eliminate them. What Israel is engaging in is genocide – pure and simple.
A few days ago, and after the “accidental” US bombing of a Syrian army unit, Russian and Iranian media reported that a covert ‘Intelligence Operations Room’ run by the US in Aleppo province and staffed by around 30 military officers from the US and key US allies, had been targeted and destroyed by Russian sea launched cruise missiles. All foreign officers were reported killed and the facility destroyed.
To me this explains US Army Chief of Staff Gen Mark Milley making a speech 2 days ago saying that the US was being challenged in an unprecedented way in decades but was ready to destroy its enemies anywhere, any time.
You could choose to look at National’s decision to pass legislation for an ocean sanctuary in isolation, without looking at the history of the Treaty settlement or even the record of discussions on the Kermadecs over the last year or two, but if you did that you wouldn’t really be able to fully understand the dynamics of what was happening and why, would you.
The theory is that this Operations Room was involved in co-ordinating the air strike on the Syrian Government Army position which resulted in the deaths of 83 government troops.
So it was pay back for that. 30 western specialists and officers lives exchanged for the lives of 83 Syrian Army grunts and officers.
so payback and that makes it somehow the US ratshitting it up? Your logic doesn’t make sense.
Oh and trying to misuse indigenous rights (Kermadec), in the same way you misuse women’s rights, to help you score petty points is, well, sorta, pathetic and petty. We don’t need the fake tears from a snake – so please just don’t bother.
Someone who supports a misogynist racist like Trump, and then pretends to care about indigenous rights, or women’s rights, or human rights for that matter, is contemptible IMO.
It might help if you could think independently for a moment.
False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton
“Intensely engrossing … A damning portrait of both Clinton and American politics.” – Publisher’s Weekly
Hillary Rodham Clinton is one of the most powerful women in world politics, and the irrational right-wing hatred of Clinton has fed her progressive appeal, helping turn her into a feminist icon. To get a woman in the White House, it’s thought, would be an achievement for all women everywhere, a kind of trickle-down feminism.
In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, the mantle of feminist elect has descended on Hillary Clinton, as a thousand viral memes applaud her, and most mainstream feminist leaders, thinkers, and organizations endorse her. In this atmosphere, dissent seems tantamount to political betrayal.
In False Choices, an all-star lineup of feminists contests this simplistic reading of the candidate. A detailed look at Hillary Clinton’s track record on welfare, Wall Street, criminal justice, education, and war reveals that she has advanced laws and policies that have done real harm to the lives of women and children across the country and the globe. This well-researched collection of essays restores to feminism its revolutionary meaning, and outlines how it could transform the United States and its relation to the world.
“It might help if you could think independently for a moment”.
Unable to deny that Trump is a racist misogynist you decide to insult me instead. Did I say Hillary Clinton was a feminist? Did I say anything at all about Clinton? No.
Just for the record I read very widely and I assess many sources before I come to any opinion about any issue, and I am always ready to have my ideas challenged by people whose opinion I value. My judgement on whose opinions are worth valuing depends on their knowledge of a topic and is tempered by their attitudes to human rights, racism, etc.
Unable to deny that Trump is a racist misogynist you decide to insult me instead.
Why the should I bother trying to deny bullshit liberal lefty propaganda memes?
Instead, I am carefully pointing out how much worse and studied a misogynist Hillary Clinton is, which includes her personal enabling of predatory sexual behaviour, and how much worse a liar she is, as per her record in public office.
CV: the reason that your comments are going into moderation is because you are commenting without logging in. Wordfence auto moderates all comments by non-logged commenters that match people with logins. The reasons for this are obvious – it is to highlight possible spoofing. Could you either login, or use a pseudonym/email that doesn’t clash.
marty: the reason that your comments are going into moderation is because you are commenting without logging in. Wordfence auto moderates all comments by non-logged commenters that match people with logins. The reasons for this are obvious – it is to highlight possible spoofing. Could you either login, or use a pseudonym that doesn’t clash.
If you don’t know your password, tell me and I’ll send through a password reset when I’m cleaning up the login system this weekend.
Yep I can’t remember my password – so either an email or reset would be good. Does that mean I have to log in each session – I haven’t in the past but if that is what it takes I’ll gladly do it – spose I could add a cool gravitar too.
Ok. I’ll send a reset this evening. I want to check the email works.
It will be pretty much the same as usual. The browsers will remember the logged in details. You just have to remember the login/password occasionally when the browser forgets (upgrades etc).
In the meantime, I’m turning off the security check.
it isn’t matching it is escalation and it is pretty obvious. Hell for a fanatic internet general you don’t seem to understand the basics – maybe all your years of living over in Russia has coloured your thinking – oh that’s right you get your facts off the net…
it isn’t matching it is escalation and it is pretty obvious.
It could also be considered a warning rather than a ratcheting up.
The US has been doing shit and getting away with it for far too long and usually at the expense of Russia and other nations. This could be a very physical we’re not going to take this shit from you any more on the Russians part.
The next step is in the US’ hands. Whether they continue acting like a childish bully or if they start acting like an mature adult.
And, no, I don’t think that the US killing those Syrians was a mistake and I’m pretty sure that the Russians don’t think so either.
I am sure you have seen this.
Just wish others would watch it and listen carefully.
John Pilger – A World War Has Begun: Break The Silence
In the last eighteen months, the greatest build-up of military forces since World War Two — led by the United States — is taking place along Russia’s western frontier. Not since Hitler invaded the Soviet Union have foreign troops presented such a demonstrable threat to Russia.
Ukraine – once part of the Soviet Union – has become a CIA theme park. Having orchestrated a coup in Kiev, Washington effectively controls a regime that is next door and hostile to Russia: a regime rotten with Nazis, literally. Prominent parliamentary figures in Ukraine are the political descendants of the notorious OUN and UPA fascists. They openly praise Hitler and call for the persecution and expulsion of the Russian speaking minority.
This is seldom news in the West, or it is inverted to suppress the truth.
In Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia — next door to Russia – the US military is deploying combat troops, tanks, heavy weapons. This extreme provocation of the world’s second nuclear power is met with silence in the West.
Also worth remembering the Russian approach in these matters – they talk small and they act big. They try to only minimally telegraph their plans. Stylistically, this tends to be the diametric opposite of the US approach.
If war does” officially” break out no guesses whose side we will be on with Key in the beehive.
Why is this military build up happening without official comment and has not been raised so far in the presidential campaign ?
The usual ‘talk tough’ routine from a US Military leader.
Fine and dandy till they have to fight on foreign soil and the body bags start arriving back home. US soldiers are not know for their morale once the going gets tough.
Fighting Russian forces will be quite a bit different to fighting Iraqi conscripts who would rather be someplace else.
Thanks, Paul, Are we sure this boneheaded cretinous bloody dangerous prat is for real? or is it a new modern version of the TV programme Rowan & Martins Laughin with General Bull Right
That is one of the problems today, we don’t have the satire that shows up these dickheads for what they are.
“I trust Pilger though”
+100
Thanks Paul i always make time to listen to Mr Pilger and it would be great to have his analysis here on a regular basis as he no longer welcome on MSM.
MSM and our government prefer the silence and keeping the idiots entertained.
Aaron Smith sex scandal: ‘A huge mistake’ – All Black speaks
Bullies ‘set fire’ to autistic boy
Thunderstruck: ‘Household was shaking’
Dick Smith CEO has his day in court
Is this Steven Adams’ biggest fan?
Luxury air travel fares drop by 40%
Revealed: NZ’s cheapest supermarket
Shortland Street shock as Rachel leaves
Business Class punch-up onboard flight
$1200 for pizza order that never arrived
The Cold War is simmering and we still get fed pap.
@Paul on the same topic Morning Report was dross this morning.
In an hour from 6.30 it was mostly very very long weather forecasts, TWO stories on the UN secretary-general job (this has been done to death-the classic being Susie Ferguson’s questioning who will be appointed deputy to the s-g; Quiz question: name the current, or any, deputy s-g) followed by (yes you guessed) Aaron Smith’s knee trembler, though to be fair Guyon’s interview with the reporter in South Africa was good, especially when the reporter said Smith’s mistake was to have his AB’s kit on to which Guyon said “well some of the time” and the reporter’s comment (paraphrasing here) that “he was amazed the NZ PM had got involved. In South Africa this would never happen as there are far more important issues for the PM to deal with.” Precisely.
Who on earth is editing Morning Report these days?
@ Paul (2.3) WHAT!!!! Nothing about that shallow, still in shock Kardashian woman. NZH’s standards are indeed slipping! (sarc)
Seriously though, I agree with you. The pathetic un-newsworthy rubbish msm is dishing up as news, has National’s chief of misinformation Joyce’s foul stamp all over it, directing what Kiwis shall or shall not be told.
To keep the people informed on the important issues, might open up some thought and discussion, giving rise to some serious questions being asked.
Aaron Smith sex scandal: ‘A huge mistake’ – sex, role models, social norms, toxic masculinity
Bullies ‘set fire’ to autistic boy – othering, dehumanising, violence
Thunderstruck: ‘Household was shaking’ – climate change, community
Dick Smith CEO has his day in court – potential corporate notgoodthings
Is this Steven Adams’ biggest fan? – heroes, role models
Luxury air travel fares drop by 40% – the 1%ers
Revealed: NZ’s cheapest supermarket – the bottom 50%ers
Shortland Street shock as Rachel leaves – issues raise3d about her on screen addictions/manipulated
Business Class punch-up onboard flight – violence, 0,1%ers
$1200 for pizza order that never arrived – food, nutrition, service
So Paul each and every one of those stories can be illuminating to the current issues facing humankind in 2016.
It is like when my 8year old says, “It’s boring” umm no ‘it’ isn’t.
You have to search out the flakes of gold, it takes work – stop moaning and do some work paul.
I’m mildly relieved that the kid being set alight looks to be accident resulting from kids playing with fire rather than malice. Doesn’t change much overall, poor lad is still in a bad way and South Sudan still looks sucky, but I register enough shit in the world already.
A few days ago, and after the “accidental” US bombing of a Syrian army unit, Russian and Iranian media reported that a covert ‘Intelligence Operations Room’ run by the US in Aleppo province and staffed by around 30 military officers from the US and key US allies, had been targeted and destroyed by Russian sea launched cruise missiles.
Things reported by “Russian media” mean “things the Russian government would like reported.” Can you think of a reason why the Russian government might want to release a story for domestic consumption about how they paid back the Americans hard for that friendly fire incident against a Russian client? Because I can. For consumption outside Russia and Iran, they’d need some evidence that this actually happened, which is why it’s not news outside those countries.
9/11 was the first big lie.
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was the second and it looks like Syria is the third.
And the gullible still believe what the repeaters and the sockpuppets tell them. We are on the brink of WW3 thanks to this ubnquestioning acceptance of the media.
By the way, ad hominems do not an argument make. You do not end a debate by saying the words ‘truthers.’ or ‘conspiracy theory.’
I spend very little time or energy thinking about 911 these days. For a few months immediately afterwards I was intensely curious, but quickly realised that as a very ordinary person on the other side of the planet I had no way to properly verify any information … official or otherwise.
The ‘truthers’ probably made a mistake to have spent so much energy on the building collapses. While they were the dramatic, visible and deeply intriguing aspect of what happened that day, it was the astounding myriad of other details, coincidences, inconsistencies on the fringes of these events which left the biggest impression on me.
No single one of them amounted to a smoking gun. Many could have just been an artifact of confirmation bias, but the sheer mass of them could not be so easily dismissed. The internet has accumulated an extraordinary volume of speculation on 911, probably much of it misguided, near-misses or downright absurd. But that does not mean ALL of it is wrong. Even if just 1% of it is correct we still have a problem.
In the end it comes down to credibility, “who ya gunna believe?” Well you cannot get around the established fact that official 911 narrative was written by the same people who told us Iraq had WMD’s it was about to unleash on the world. On that basis alone you have to understand these people are capable of the big, deliberate and conscious lie. The truthers have failed to land a critical blow, the establishment loses more and more credibility with every passing year. Both have hidden agendas, both twist and distort to suit their purposes. After all these years, all these wasted pixels, certainty eludes us.
It is my guess that only a very small number of people know exactly what happened that day; probably fewer than 30. And they are all very good at keeping secrets.
The main thing is understanding that the official narrative of the events of 9/11 cannot be correct.
From passengers making cell phone calls at 30,000 to 40,000 feet in the air, to the 110 tonne mass of Flight UA93 ‘vapourising’ into a small burnt hole in Shanksville paddock (but the flight recorders found intact) to the NIST modelling and explanation for the collapse of WTC7 now being definitively refuted.
However, as to what actually happened on that day I agree with you that only a few dozen people at most would know.
I am reminded of all the crazy theories in the years after the President Kennedy assassination. All of them ultimately debunked.
I suspect something similar will happen over 9/11.
The film clip of the 9/11 tragedy which made quite an impression on me at the time was the moment George W Bush was informed of what happened. He was sitting in a classroom reading to the children and – while he showed no facial emotion – I could see the shock in his eyes. He got up and quietly left the room.
I have no doubt mistakes were made and actions taken that the “authorities” wouldn’t want the masses to know about (there always is) but a US conspiracy of lies as promoted by the 9/11 conspiracy theorists? No way. Those hijackers were al qaeda trained terrorist operatives and they were there to commit the gravest possible damage possible on behalf of Osama bin Laden and co.
In the end it comes down to credibility, “who ya gunna believe?” Well you cannot get around the established fact that official 911 narrative was written by the same people who told us Iraq had WMD’s it was about to unleash on the world.
And that is a very good example. The WMD claim was a big, deliberate lie involving only a few intelligence operatives, and it fell to bits in pretty short order. As you say, it comes down to credibility, and a big, deliberate lie involving huge numbers of people and far greater complexity than the WMD scam, but that has held solid for 15 years and counting, just isn’t credible.
I thought about point that when I was writing it. My response is that the two matters are not equivalent or directly comparable.
It was my sense that ultimately if there was a secret operation around 911, it actually did not need to involve very many people at all. And it was all over in a matter of hours.
By contrast invading Iraq involved whole armies from many countries, over many years. Of course that lie was unsustainable. (And even then it took years before it was officially acknowledged as such.)
CV – the calls were not made from cellphones. They were made from the phones already on the plane.
From the onboard Airphones you mean?
You need to recheck your facts. In the official narrative, although those Airphones were also used, at least two of the calls were made from passenger cell phones.
It was my sense that ultimately if there was a secret operation around 911, it actually did not need to involve very many people at all. And it was all over in a matter of hours.
Thing is, what kind of a secret operation? The one that Paul et al favour, that it was actually a false flag operation by the US government, is so laughable that once you know someone gives it credence, you write them off as completely lacking judgement. Lesser versions, such as that they US government knew it was planned but allowed it to happen, still have a huge credibility hurdle in that it requires all of the people involved to have no conscience and to have never mentioned it to someone who does. That’s common among the people running totalitarian regimes, but isn’t in democratic ones, and even in totalitarian regimes it usually gets out eventually. There is no credible theory of a secret operation yet presented.
Using the power of geometry again, in a right-angled triangle where the height of the aircraft is 6 and the length of the hypoteneuse (distance between the plane and the cell tower) is 20, then the ground distance from the cell tower is roughly 18.
So to make a cell call from 30,000ft a cell tower needs to be within an 18 mile ground radius for the minimum call duration. Aluminium airframe might lower that, but no terrain interference would compensate the other direction. I lazily wonder whether clouds or humidity might be an issue either way.
So anyway, yeah it’s possible to make a cell call from an airplane.
So anyway, yeah it’s possible to make a cell call from an airplane.
Firstly, how does the range of those towers change once you take into account that cell phone towers have the maximum sensitivity of their TX/RX antennae configured for terrestrial (ground or near ground) mobile phone users?
Secondly, are there any other examples (other than 9/11) where passengers in the late 90’s / early 00’s successfully used their mobile phones from planes over 30,000 feet?
By the year ~2000 virtually every business professional on a commercial plane would have had a mobile phone.
In fact, the main problem with their signal on the cell network seems to be that they tie up too many cell towers at the same time, rather than having difficulty just reaching one.
Well yeah, the version released in the English services isn’t for domestic consumption – it’s for the gullible dupes in the English-speaking world who imagine they’re consuming something other than government propaganda via those services.
There are of course people in the Pentagon who know the truth or lack of it in the story, but I don’t think they’re going to join the thread to confirm or deny it.
McFlock: the reason that your comments are going into moderation is because you are commenting without logging in. Wordfence auto moderates all comments by non-logged commenters that match people with logins. The reasons for this are obvious – it is to highlight possible spoofing. Could you either login, or use a pseudonym that doesn’t clash.
If you don’t know your password, I’ll push a password reset through over the weekend (I’m cleaning up unused logins and fixing the login system then)
Dunno, but they’re all dead now according to Iranian and Russian news services, and the intelligence operations facility that they were working out of destroyed.
Some inmates were so badly injured in the fighting they were hospitalised, for injuries ranging from brain damage to broken limbs.
In some cases staff present in a unit were observed from CCTV footage failing to undertake an active role in supervising prisoners – for instance staff were observed playing pool or table tennis.
Prisoners who refused to participate were threatened or “pack attacked” by gang members.
Despite some incidents meeting the threshold for serious assault, Serco reported them to Corrections as “accidents”, or not at all, the report said.
Serco paid $8 million to cover the costs of Corrections stepping in and for failing to reach performance targets. It also missed out on performance bonuses worth $3.1m.
The Government could not rule out rehiring Serco to run the Mt Eden jail again in future.
Government shrugging this off as nothing to do with them. It’s all Corrections’ and Serco’s fault apparently and the private model (reducing costs and raising risks for profit) which they forced upon the sector is and always was the way to go.
The fact that the Government could not rule out rehiring Serco (despite it’s poor performance) raises questions if it goes beyond being merely an ideological belief.
Prime Minister John Key admitted in hindsight Serco was “the wrong choice” to run Mt Eden, but won’t cancel the Wiri contract over fears of legal action.
No. I was referring to the assertion the Government could not rule out rehiring Serco to run the Mt Eden jail again. Made in the link I provided above.
As for the Government fearing legal action, it brings into question the quality of the contract and the competence of the Government to safeguard the public interest.
Government shrugging this off as nothing to do with them.
The ability to do this is a major, if never-mentioned, benefit of privatising prisons – from the government’s perspective, at least. Not so much for the rest of us.
That’s what I love about National’s attitude to private prisons. It borders on a religious belief. Serco ran Mt Eden like a man with no legs runs the New York marathon. They woefully understaffed the prison (presumably a cost-cutting measure), lacked all supervision of both inmates and officers (whose attitude to their roles appeared to be “I’m just chillin’ with my homies, yo!”), failed to adequately monitor the deteriorating situation and then lied about it all in an attempt to evade responsibility.
And National’s response is basically, “Yes, we acknowledge that this all looks distinctly shonky and we’ve rapped Serco across the knuckles accordingly. In other news, we’ll probably award them another multi-million dollar contract sometime in the near future despite their track record of incompetence, negligence and a complete disregard for the job they’re being paid millions of tax-payer dollars to perform. It could be worse, after all. They could be having sex in a public toilet. Tsk tsk, Aaron Smith. Shame on you.”
After reports of the culture of corruption within the Auckland City Council being described as normalised, one begins to wonder what’s going on in central government.
“Does anybody know if the inmates that were forced to partake have been compensated?”
Yes, you will be happy to hear that the Head Hunters have offered the inmate’s they forced to participate in the Mt Eden fight club $10k each or to the same value in meth. 🙂
The Herald (yes I know highly dubious) reader poll today has Crone 34 Goff 33 Swarbrick 17
Some interesting numbers there! Really shows who reads the Herald-Goff should walk it on these numbers given the characteristics of the response group…..but….but…. Swarbrick is really eating into Goff’s vote with an amazing 17%
Here’s a survey showing that among voters saying they will definitely vote, Goff is attracting 50 per cent of all Labour voters and 35 per cent of Greens. But he is also picking up 24 per cent of National Party voters and 25 per cent of NZ First voters.
Goff is a complete waste of space IMIO . As minister of justice he failed to exercise his responsibility to see justice done in the case of Peter Ellis.
Dont expect anything more than favors for business friends from him.
@savenz…..agreed abysmal turnout will certainly help Crone. How hard is it to post a letter?
The real scandal is that (anecdotally) many potential voters are not even registered, so the one third that vote are much less than that in reality. The Labour/Green bloc should be working right now to increase registration for the election next year.
Toby Manhire being serious about Child Poverty versus Key inaction.
“As has been noted repeatedly this week, it’s more than a little galling that a bold target can be set to rid New Zealand of predators but not to rid New Zealand of child poverty, although it’s important to note that no one is suggesting such eradications should following the same prescriptions.” http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11723866
“although it’s important to note that no one is suggesting such eradications should following the same prescriptions.”
Pity, because it’s about time that people in power stood up and named NACT as the predators that they are. I would say a similar prescription would work. We can’t eradicate pests, but we can learn how to control them and keep them in their place so they don’t fuck with the wider ecosystem.
Clearly Toby Manhire has mistaken the “ashprashnull” for “aspirational”. An ashprashnull person makes promises while an aspirational person tries to fulfil them.
If the couples kid needed the toilet why didn’t one parent take the kid to another toilet and the other parent go find security/management but instead they waited 10 minutes filing the incident
If no laws were broken then whose business is it anyway but If a law was broken then charge Aaron Smith and the women involved
Why does Aaron Smith have to be paraded on TV and beg forgiveness as if he’s done something terrible
Having said all that…if you’re a public figure then its best not to do anything dodgy in public
Population Impacts from #Matthew [NWS forecasts]Tropical Storm Gusts: 17.6MHurricane Force Wind Gusts: 6MMajor Hurricane Force: 1.5M pic.twitter.com/I0YmwYUZdL— Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue) October 6, 2016
Hurricane Center has monopoly on data. No way of verifying claims. Nassau ground observations DID NOT match statements! 165mph gusts? WHERE?— MATT DRUDGE (@DRUDGE) October 6, 2016
The deplorables are starting to wonder if govt has been lying to them about Hurricane Matthew intensity to make exaggerated point on climate— MATT DRUDGE (@DRUDGE) October 6, 2016
You know, Pucky – Doogs is doing for the Left what you do for the right – mocking and eroding your confidence, over-playing any perceived advantage and aiming to discourage adherents (in this case, you and your mob).
I’m amazed you didn’t recognise it!
Well I tend to post something to back up what I say, polls, articles that kind of thing, people may not believe it but at least I try to base it on something
This is really close to the “I sense the tide is going out on National because I spoke to someone” kind of thing with nothing to back it up with
He’s a spambot dick pic ……. a dick pic stalking a site …. a troll
In earlier days he would have been that heavy breather on the phone ….
What he most certainly is not is a person who walks into a meeting or party and walks around offending and insulting everybody …….. in real life that would have consequences
Interesting that an overt right winger supports Leggett.
Like all those Tories in the UK supporting Owen Smith and all those large corporates supporting Clinton.
Muttonbird – yes got link from kiwiblog. Then read it and found it interesting. This posted in here – you know a blog that discusses politics.
Paul – you will see there was no commentary from me other than it was an interesting read.
How you take that as repeating farrar I don’t know.
All I can guess is that the two of you are so pathetic that you actually have no reasonable comment and just have to follow post of people who disagree with you and make unfounded and bullshit (Paul looking at you) comments.
So I’m guessing hat makes you guys the trolls – and second rate ones at that.
I will type this slowly for you. I clicked on the link from kiwiblog and then after reading the article copied the link and pasted here.
That’s not repeating dpf it’s using a little thing call hyperlinks. They are all over the internet.
And congrats yes this is a left wing blog. Well done. I’m sorry comrade I missed the bit where everything written has to be be left good – right bad and no other discussion is allowed or must be called lies or trolling.
If you ever posted anything ‘leftgood’ you might get a different reaction – but you only come here to exhibit your biases. You have no content and you don’t engage. That’s trolling.
And Minister Parata was speaking to the U Learn Conference of teachers in Rotorua yesterday.
Actually everything that she said was true to my ears, though I thought that most schools had been innovating already.
“Going forward, some of the key themes that will characterise New Zealand’s future education system are:
-every student can be in the driving seat of their own learning through digital technologies, with support from highly skilled teachers who help them chart a course to achieve their goals for the future;
-the collapse of traditional institutional boundaries with students able to learn from a range of settings, both physical and virtual;
-learning in collaboration with their peers and others, face-to-face and virtually;”…
In depo for Trump Plaza bankruptcy case, Trump's own lawyer testifies they often met with him in pairs because Trump lies so much. pic.twitter.com/TdEkdf4ZiB— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) October 6, 2016
Brief video compiling the lies Hillary Clinton has told to the public:
– Claiming that ISIS uses videos of Donald Trump to recruit new members
– Lies she told to the victims families of the Benghazi embassy attacks
– Claiming that she arrived in Bosnia under sniper fire
– Pretending that she has always been against NAFTA
– etc
25! in one speech! WTF I wonder how don monetizes that shit – he’s sitting 0.1% 5ppm like scrooge mcfuckenduck! I bet all his advisers are working hard on that one – how do we get the money, come on think, THINK!
Listening to Trump speak at NH town hall mtg. Says polls show him leading in Colorado. Actually, Clinton 11% lead: https://t.co/XRBzSp1p7H— Stuart Bonar (@StuartBonar) October 7, 2016
edit: patsy questions, huh
Trump taking a question from his vets adviser — Al Baldasaro — who called once for killing Clinton by firing quad— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) October 7, 2016
That video tries to argue that free trade, off shoring production and having goods manufactured in China have CREATED more US jobs than it has destroyed.
Do you really believe that?
And if you really believe that, why do you think Trump has picked up so many voters from blue collar families and from counties who have been directly affected by high levels of unemployment?
'The only day when Trump didn't lie: September 23rd, when he didn't say anything in public at all.' https://t.co/ZAVDB4DmUo— LA Uber Gal (@LAUberGal) September 26, 2016
You need to be a bit more discerning about your sources.
Has Al-Jazeera lost its journalistic independence?
That’s the charge made by some prominent staffers who quit their jobs at the Arab TV network. They claim Al-Jazeera is now beholden to a political agenda dictated by the man who bankrolls the operation, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the emir of Qatar.
yep and fanatics on both – I always get very wary of those who profess to know, from the other side of the world, what is going on in such a messed up, complex and confusing situation. The squeaky door technique does not mean they know more.
There is one side that is most certainly wrong and that is Turkey allowing a flow of arms, men and materiel to resupply the Islamists with in an illegal effort to take down Assad, and NATO/US at the very least implicitly approving of that.
I’m wary, nay skeptical, of anything you say – as I’ve said to you before your ability to discern is gone, your ability to consider is gone – all that is left is gone, you are a puppet saying set lines to spin a story – probably a fanatic by most of the inaccurate and frankly embarrassing spin you seem to love to tell us all, along with slogans NKorea would be proud of.
Well, if you can’t judge for yourself the last several years role played by Erdogan and Turkey in Syria, you probably shouldn’t be criticising my abilities of discernment.
What’s the “hegemonic agenda” that Russia has for Syria?
What’s the “hegemonic agenda” that the US has for Syria?
BTW the Qatari want control of Syria to go to a friendly government willing to deny Syrian territory to Gazprom, and instead put Qatari pipelines through to Europe.
Russia’s hegemonic agenda includes permanent ground force basing and a Mediterraean naval base. It also includes dumping shit on everything the US does or attempts, whether or not it might be constructive.
You believe yourself remarkably well-informed about Qatari ambitions. Now, get a map and draw a line consistent with this pipeline you envisage. If such a pipeline is planned rest assured Qatar is a pretty minor player compared to others on its route.
And do explain why Gazprom is entitled to veto a Qatari pipeline anyway.
No problem with Syrian bases for Russia – if you ascribe the same predatory hegemonic agenda to them that we do to US base expansion.
So Gazprom isn’t really part of the equation – you brought them up – they are irrelevant. Qatar is entitled to support or press for a pipeline – though not by force of arms.
There is rather a lot of force of arms in Syria atm. Everywhere that Russia goes armed force, not public assent, is seen to triumph. This is not democracy. Putin rigging his first election was not democracy. Putin having Politkovskaya and Nemtsov killed and revising the Russian constitution to become effectively president for life is not democracy.
And Assad’s lifelong ‘presidential’ misrule of Syria is not democracy. Democracies do not barrel bomb their citizens – only despots do that.
A doco on the indiscriminate Russian bombing in Aleppo, Syria. Just awful.
Important to remember that over 3/4 of Aleppo is under government or YPG control now.
Unfortunately in the remaining area several thousand Jihadist/ISIS fighters have created a whole tunnel/bunker network around, under and through many civilian buildings.
Eliminating these entrenched forces will be tough, deadly work and yes despite safe evacuation corridors created earlier in the year for civilians, there will be many civilian deaths.
It’s kind of funny how much your comments these days read like US spokesthings’ announcements from its more unsavoury wars. I used to read shit like the comment above all the time when I was working for the US Army during the Iraq War – it’s as stomach-turning coming from you as it was from them.
Syrian Government forces with Russian air support will be doing exactly the same thing in South West Aleppo as US/Iraqi forces have done to cities like Mosul/Fallujah/Ramadi with US air support.
Even in 2003, the US military wasn’t bombing cities by unloading barrels full of explosive out of the back of a helicopter, and generally managed to avoid hospitals. The indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets you’re promoting as reasonable are actually worse, by a long way, than the activities of the US military in Iraq that you constantly treat as a benchmark of western criminality. And orders of magnitude worse than the drone strikes you get so irate about.
But barrel bombs delivered by helicopter are just another BS western propaganda trope. Firstly if they existed they are nothing more than low yield IEDs.
Secondly helicopters are highly vulnerableto small arms fire and are thus a useless delivery platform for these weapons.
Stop pretending you know what you’re talking about. They can be equivalent in size to the largest regularly used conventional bombs (2,000 pounds), and the “yield” in this context is meaningless (I suspect you came across the term in arguments about nukes, and didn’t realise that the explosive power of a nuke has more to do with its construction than its net weight in explosive material).
Secondly, yes helicopters are vulnerable. that’s why there’s footage of them dropping barrel-shaped objects that seem to be associated with large explosions where they land, and helicopters being shot down. Someone who avidly seeks online videos like you do will have seen it. It’s a pretty simple youtube search. Similarly wikipedia has a page devoted to them and another to their use in Syria, both with source links.
They can be equivalent in size to the largest regularly used conventional bombs (2,000 pounds), and the “yield” in this context is meaningless
Why is “yield” in this context meaningless? You yourself have noted that conventional warheads and bombs are measured by “yield”.
and didn’t realise that the explosive power of a nuke has more to do with its construction than its net weight in explosive material).
Huh? Nukes?
Secondly, yes helicopters are vulnerable. that’s why there’s footage of them dropping barrel-shaped objects that seem to be associated with large explosions where they land, and helicopters being shot down.
But so what? The Syrian airforce has a very limited number of helicopters and each of these helicopters would only be able to carry a bomb load of a few of these barrels.
With a high risk of getting shot down.
Totally combat ineffective weapon, and hence a silly propaganda trope used by the west.
BTW when you see photos and video of places like Homs totally levelled to the ground, that was done by artillery, not by primitive ineffective improvised “barrel bombs” whatever the hell they are.
Well, obviously it must be sensible to them because there’s so much film of them actually doing it.
Cheap substitute for jet bombs, and more accurate. So a few older choppers and younger pilots get zotzed. Plenty more aid from Putin when that becomes and issue.
You yourself have noted that conventional warheads and bombs are measured by “yield”.
But barrel bombs delivered by helicopter are just another BS western propaganda trope.
The eye-witness accounts, the video footage, the unexploded barrel bombs… no expense spared on those BS western propaganda tropes, huh?
Secondly helicopters are highly vulnerable to small arms fire and are thus a useless delivery platform for these weapons.
It’s funny how often you dismiss things that actually happened with some made-up bullshit about how something like that couldn’t happen. Here’s a heuristic that could improve your life dramatically: if your theory and actual events in the real world are in dispute, it’s very unlikely to be the actual events in the real world that are mistaken.
How many barrel bombs in total have been dropped? What % of the total munitions used during the Jihadist invasion of Syria have been barrel bombs?
“Barrel bombs” are just a propaganda trope used by the west.
I have no doubt that a few have been used here and there, but they are clumsy, slow improvised weapons and the Syrian government doesn’t want their helicopters so easily shot down.
A standard 155 mm howitzer shell has way more destructive potential than some ad hoc rarely to never used “barrel bomb.”
Oh yes wikipedia. How many US officers were convicted of war crimes for using “barrel bombs” on Vietnamese and Laotian villagers?
OK one barrel bomb might at times kill more people than a single 155mm howitzer shell. But an improvised, unreliable IED is exactly that: improvised and unreliable.
And in fifteen minutes you can deliver fuck all barrel bombs in comparison to the saturation shelling you can accomplish with artillery.
BTW who needs dangerous, unreliable and difficult to deliver “barrel bombs” now that the Russian air force is using precision bunker buster munitions in theatre.
“The war in Afghanistan brought with it losses by attrition.[16] The environment itself, dusty and often hot, was rough on the machines; dusty conditions led to the development of the PZU air intake filters. The rebels’ primary air-defense weapons early in the war were heavy machine guns and anti-aircraft cannons, though anything smaller than a 23 millimetre shell generally did not do much damage to an Mi-24. The cockpit glass panels were resistant to 12.7 mm (.50 in caliber) rounds.”
Standardista’s grab a coffee and sit down.. this is going to be rough..
You know Russia and the US are preparing for war, and they are almost launching nukes over Syria, and that China’s is a communist country allied with Russia, well…..
This is far more important.. John Key is flying there now, I presume.
Cripes. I really admire Steve for a lot of reasons …. but my god he has a propensity for putting his nuts on the line!
Logically his argument is good, but reality has a way of being less logical. A lot will depend on just how much longer China keeps exporting vast amounts of flight capital into the Australasian property markets.
Isn’t it amazing the amount of high performance athletes like Sharapova, Serena/Venus Williams, Tour de France cyclists, and all those olympic athletes who are all carrying debilitating medical conditions while competing at the highest level in sport. Thank god for Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUE’s) they must be thinking!
When you consider the amount of punishment their joints would take its not really, like imagine what its like to spend a couple of hours running up and a clay court, day after day and week after week, not counting the practice as well
Then consider the extra punishment players in contact sports take as well, like Dan Carter will be called on to stop 110kgs plus running at him time and time again, it makes sense that TUEs are allowed, in certain situations
However if its found they’ve broken the rules then they should be dealt with accordingly
No, it creates an avenue to cheat, and it’s obvious this is rife now for anyone who isn’t nieve. If you can take a substance that can enhance your performance some people will do that and take advantage of the rules.
If you don’t think that the increasing size of players and the amount of extra stress on joints means an increase in TUE then you are the one who is naïve
“At 92kg, right wing John Kirwan was like Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians during the 1987 Rugby World Cup, a physical anomaly. Seven of the All Blacks’ 12 backs weighed under 80kg.
To put things in perspective, Kirwan would have been four kilograms lighter than the average All Black back in the 2015 squad Fox helped select for this year’s World Cup.”
As long as what they players are doing are within the rules then its just another media beat up
Indeed. I noticed after I’d released a very few. So I spent a few minutes to do a diagnosis of why it was happening.
It was a feature that I had turned off on the original install of Wordfence. However it is a valid and useful security measure against the odd fool that wants to indulge in identity theft, so this time around I’ll shift behavior.
I also want to reactivate the ability for established commenters to use logins if they wish to. It bypasses the issues that Anne and others have commented about with the blocked cookies not remembering the comment details. And I’m pretty sure that I can fix the issues with the damn bots seeking logins.
Here’s my student loan rant from a few days ago that i posted as a comment to one of the contributors on a series about student loans on stuff.co.nz.
I just thought it contained some good valid points and maybe could provoke some more intelligent debate about a scheme that’s clearly very dysfunctional and unegalitarian and stuff rarely sees any good analysis, just emotive and nasty snide comments:
This article on stuff I’m responding to sounds like it was written by a right wing think tank policy person perhaps representing The New Zealand Business Roundtable or their new name ‘The New Zealand Initiative’.
The writer is however correct about one thing which is that the responsibility for the paying of a much larger proportion of tertiary education has been switched from the taxpayer and placed on to the shoulders of students themselves unlike any other previous generation in New Zealand which did not have to endure this (which includes many current and former National Party politicians who benefited from previous schemes but instituted this one)
The systemic problem with this scheme is that in a deregulated neo-liberal environment in New Zealand today where jobs are scarce, wages are low and not only not keeping pace with productivity but with the disestablishment of the requirement of employers to conclude collective bargaining means that students with student loans struggle to pay them back at all.
Now couple this economic environment with a student loans scheme that has a much lower repayment threshold (NZ$18,000) than several other developed European countries including Australia (about $40,000) and interest placed on top of this if you are forced to work overseas because getting a job in New Zealand was much harder than anticipated and you have a recipe for inter-generational debt ultimately causing poverty.
The working overseas after 6 months (184 days) category is particularly punitive in that it doesn’t take into account the borrowers income at all but simply states that you must pay for example $5000 per year if your loan is over $50,000. That amount of payment (if you can afford it) barely covers the interest for one year and at that rate it would take more than 100 years to pay it off.
The Student Loans scheme as it stands now is simply unworkable, unsustainable, punitive and generally unfair. To effectively create a ‘tax switch’ from taxpayers to students via a right wing ideological ‘userpays’ system (in order to keep other tax rates such as corporate tax at a much lower level than they should be) we are ‘building in’ inter-generational inequity, poverty, and homelessness.
Now couple this economic environment with a student loans scheme that has a much lower repayment threshold (NZ$18,000) than several other developed European countries including Australia (about $40,000) and interest placed on top of this if you are forced to work overseas because getting a job in New Zealand was much harder than anticipated and you have a recipe for inter-generational debt ultimately causing poverty.
The Student Loans scheme as it stands now is simply unworkable, unsustainable, punitive and generally unfair. To effectively create a ‘tax switch’ from taxpayers to students via a right wing ideological ‘userpays’ system (in order to keep other tax rates such as corporate tax at a much lower level than they should be) we are ‘building in’ inter-generational inequity, poverty, and homelessness.
Graham didn’t lose his knighthood because the conviction wasn’t for something he deliberately set out to do. Was more about failing to take reasonable care. Love, on the other hand, is a different story. Unless there’s a successful appeal he’s likely to lose his knighthood.
The Kiwi CEO of ANZ Bank has pledged to look at cutting credit card rates and apologised for failing customers on day two of a parliamentary committee review critics say is increasingly playing out a familiar, sorry, and soft, script.
Echoing comments yesterday from Commonwealth Bank boss Ian Narev, Shayne Elliott told the second day of the hearings into the big four banks his industry had lost touch with its customers, was full of apologies for past wrongdoings by ANZ, and promised to do better.
Logical fallacies aren’t “flexible”. If you have make logically fallacious arguments in order to prove your point it means your point isn’t valid and you need to start again
Because 96.79% of life isn’t spent forming and defending arguments on The Standard. If I go the shop and buy something I don’t expect nor receive the following:
“$4.50 for bread, that’s a bit steep.”
“Yeah but Hillary is a misogynist”
Talking to you here, however, the preceding is pretty standard issue.
I am inclined to agree with Garibaldi. CV has never praised Trump as far as I remember: he admits all Trump’s failings, but then gets into trouble by trying to warn you that Hillary may well be worse. He has not praised Trump, but gets accused of doing so for criticising Hilary. Sorry..
Given the confused state of things – especially, it seems , of the USA electorate, it would not surprise me if Trump did win. That does not mean I want him to.
Given the hostile trolls that spend endless time in disrupting discussion on this site, I echo Garibaldi’s praise of CV and Paul.
Alex Jones – a character as ever – decries Hillary Clinton using a minor and child actor as a political tool in a town hall meeting to further her campaign’s attack narrative on Trump
The most interesting part about this segment is watching how Hillary Clinton lies to the entire crowd by pretending to be surprised and delighted by a ‘random question’ that she knew was coming, and which was probably written for the child actor.
Pretty weak cv, goodness next thing trump will be asking the terminally Ill to hold on a bit and give him their vote but I doubt even he’d sink that low and desperate eh.
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Mountain Tui is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Correction: On the article The Condundrum of David Seymour, Luke Malpass conducted joint reviews with Bryce Wilkinson, the architect of the Regulatory Standards Bill - not Bryce Edwards. The article ...
Tomorrow the council’s Transport, Resilience and Infrastructure Committee meet and agenda has a few interesting papers. Council’s Letter of Expectation to Auckland Transport Every year the council provide a Letter of Expectation to Auckland Transport which is part of the process for informing AT of the council’s priorities and ...
All around in my home townThey're trying to track me down, yeahThey say they want to bring me in guiltyFor the killing of a deputyFor the life of a deputySongwriter: Robert Nesta Marley.Support Nick’s Kōrero today with a 20% discount on a paid subscription to receive all my newsletters directly ...
Hi,I think all of us have probably experienced the power of music — that strange, transformative thing that gets under our skin and helps us experience this whole life thing with some kind of sanity.Listening and experiencing music has always been such a huge part of my life, and has ...
Business frustration over the stalled economy is growing, and only 34% of voters are confidentNicola Willis can deliver. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short, the top six things in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Wednesday, February 12 are:Business frustration is growing about a ...
I have now lived long enough to see a cabinet minister go both barrels on their Prime Minister and not get sacked.It used to be that the PM would have a drawer full of resignations signed by ministers on the day of their appointment, ready for such an occasion. But ...
This session will feature Simon McCallum, Senior Lecturer in Engineering and Computer Science (VUW) and recent Labour Party candidate in the Southland Electorate talking about some of the issues around AI and how this should inform Labour Party policy. Simon is an excellent speaker with a comprehensive command of AI ...
The proposed Waimate garbage incinerator is dead: The company behind a highly-controversial proposal to build a waste-to-energy plant in the Waimate District no longer has the land. [...] However, SIRRL director Paul Taylor said the sales and purchase agreement to purchase land from Murphy Farms, near Glenavy, lapsed at ...
The US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has been a vital tool in combatting international corruption. It forbids US companies and citizens from bribing foreign public officials anywhere in the world. And its actually enforced: some of the world's biggest companies - Siemens, Hewlett Packard, and Bristol Myers Squibb - have ...
“The ACT Party can’t be bothered putting an MP on one of the Justice subcommittees hearing submissions on their own Treaty Principles Bill,” Labour Justice Spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
The Government’s newly announced funding for biodiversity and tourism of $30-million over three years is a small fraction of what is required for conservation in this country. ...
The Government's sudden cancellation of the tertiary education funding increase is a reckless move that risks widespread job losses and service reductions across New Zealand's universities. ...
National’s cuts to disability support funding and freezing of new residential placements has resulted in significant mental health decline for intellectually disabled people. ...
The hundreds of jobs lost needlessly as a result of the Kinleith Mill paper production closure will have a devastating impact on the Tokoroa community - something that could have easily been avoided. ...
Today Te Pāti Māori MP for Te Tai Tokerau, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, released her members bill that will see the return of tamariki and mokopuna Māori from state care back to te iwi Māori. This bill will establish an independent authority that asserts and protects the rights promised in He Whakaputanga ...
The Whangarei District Council being forced to fluoridate their local water supply is facing a despotic Soviet-era disgrace. This is not a matter of being pro-fluoride or anti-fluoride. It is a matter of what New Zealanders see and value as democracy in our country. Individual democratically elected Councillors are not ...
Nicola Willis’ latest supermarket announcement is painfully weak with no new ideas, no real plan, and no relief for Kiwis struggling with rising grocery costs. ...
Half of Pacific children sometimes going without food is just one of many heartbreaking lowlights in the Salvation Army’s annual State of the Nation report. ...
The Salvation Army’s State of the Nation report is a bleak indictment on the failure of Government to take steps to end poverty, with those on benefits, including their children, hit hardest. ...
New Zealand First has today introduced a Member’s Bill which would restore decision-making power to local communities regarding the fluoridation of drinking water. The ‘Fluoridation (Referendum) Legislation Bill’ seeks to repeal the Health (Fluoridation of Drinking Water) Amendment Act 2021 that granted centralised authority to the Direct General of Health ...
New Zealand First has introduced a Member’s Bill aimed at preventing banks from refusing their services to businesses because of the current “Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Framework”. “This Bill ensures fairness and prevents ESG standards from perpetuating woke ideology in the banking sector being driven by unelected, globalist, climate ...
Erica Stanford has reached peak shortsightedness if today’s announcement is anything to go by, picking apart immigration settings piece by piece to the detriment of the New Zealand economy. ...
Our originating document, theTreaty of Waitangi, was signed on February 6, 1840. An agreement between Māori and the British Crown. Initially inked by Ngā Puhi in Waitangi, further signatures were added as it travelled south. The intention was to establish a colony with the cession of sovereignty to the Crown, ...
Te Whatu Ora Chief Executive Margie Apa leaving her job four months early is another symptom of this government’s failure to deliver healthcare for New Zealanders. ...
The Green Party is calling for the Prime Minister to show leadership and be unequivocal about Aotearoa New Zealand’s opposition to a proposal by the US President to remove Palestinians from Gaza. ...
The latest unemployment figures reveal that job losses are hitting Māori and Pacific people especially hard, with Māori unemployment reaching a staggering 9.7% for the December 2024 quarter and Pasifika unemployment reaching 10.5%. ...
Waitangi 2025: Waitangi Day must be community and not politically driven - Shane Jones Our originating document, theTreaty of Waitangi, was signed on February 6, 1840. An agreement between Māori and the British Crown. Initially inked by Ngā Puhi in Waitangi, further signatures were added as it travelled south. ...
Despite being confronted every day with people in genuine need being stopped from accessing emergency housing – National still won’t commit to building more public houses. ...
The Green Party says the Government is giving up on growing the country’s public housing stock, despite overwhelming evidence that we need more affordable houses to solve the housing crisis. ...
Before any thoughts of the New Year and what lies ahead could even be contemplated, New Zealand reeled with the tragedy of Senior Sergeant Lyn Fleming losing her life. For over 38 years she had faithfully served as a front-line Police officer. Working alongside her was Senior Sergeant Adam Ramsay ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson will return to politics at Waitangi on Monday the 3rd of February where she will hold a stand up with fellow co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick. ...
Te Pāti Māori is appalled by the government's blatant mishandling of the school lunch programme. David Seymour’s ‘cost-saving’ measures have left tamariki across Aotearoa with unidentifiable meals, causing distress and outrage among parents and communities alike. “What’s the difference between providing inedible food, and providing no food at all?” Said ...
The Government is doubling down on outdated and volatile fossil fuels, showing how shortsighted and destructive their policies are for working New Zealanders. ...
Green Party MP Steve Abel this morning joined Coromandel locals in Waihi to condemn new mining plans announced by Shane Jones in the pit of the town’s Australian-owned Gold mine. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to strengthen its just-announced 2030-2035 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement and address its woeful lack of commitment to climate security. ...
The Government’s commitment to get New Zealand’s roads back on track is delivering strong results, with around 98 per cent of potholes on state highways repaired within 24 hours of identification every month since targets were introduced, Transport Minister Chris Bishop says. “Increasing productivity to help rebuild our economy is ...
The former Cadbury factory will be the site of the Inpatient Building for the new Dunedin Hospital and Health Minister Simeon Brown says actions have been taken to get the cost overruns under control. “Today I am giving the people of Dunedin certainty that we will build the new Dunedin ...
From today, Plunket in Whāngarei will be offering childhood immunisations – the first of up to 27 sites nationwide, Health Minister Simeon Brown says. The investment of $1 million into the pilot, announced in October 2024, was made possible due to the Government’s record $16.68 billion investment in health. It ...
New Zealand’s strong commitment to the rights of disabled people has continued with the response to an important United Nations report, Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston has announced. Of the 63 concluding observations of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), 47 will be progressed ...
Resources Minister Shane Jones has launched New Zealand’s national Minerals Strategy and Critical Minerals List, documents that lay a strategic and enduring path for the mineral sector, with the aim of doubling exports to $3 billion by 2035. Mr Jones released the documents, which present the Coalition Government’s transformative vision ...
Firstly I want to thank OceanaGold for hosting our event today. Your operation at Waihi is impressive. I want to acknowledge local MP Scott Simpson, local government dignitaries, community stakeholders and all of you who have gathered here today. It’s a privilege to welcome you to the launch of the ...
Racing Minister, Winston Peters has announced the Government is preparing public consultation on GST policy proposals which would make the New Zealand racing industry more competitive. “The racing industry makes an important economic contribution. New Zealand thoroughbreds are in demand overseas as racehorses and for breeding. The domestic thoroughbred industry ...
Business confidence remains very high and shows the economy is on track to improve, Economic Growth Minister Nicola Willis says. “The latest ANZ Business Outlook survey, released yesterday, shows business confidence and expected own activity are ‘still both very high’.” The survey reports business confidence fell eight points to +54 ...
Enabling works have begun this week on an expanded radiology unit at Hawke’s Bay Fallen Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital which will double CT scanning capacity in Hawke’s Bay to ensure more locals can benefit from access to timely, quality healthcare, Health Minister Simeon Brown says. This investment of $29.3m in the ...
The Government has today announced New Zealand’s second international climate target under the Paris Agreement, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand will reduce emissions by 51 to 55 per cent compared to 2005 levels, by 2035. “We have worked hard to set a target that is both ambitious ...
Nine years of negotiations between the Crown and iwi of Taranaki have concluded following Te Pire Whakatupua mō Te Kāhui Tupua/the Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill passing its third reading in Parliament today, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “This Bill addresses the historical grievances endured by the eight iwi ...
As schools start back for 2025, there will be a relentless focus on teaching the basics brilliantly so all Kiwi kids grow up with the knowledge, skills and competencies needed to grow the New Zealand of the future, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “A world-leading education system is a key ...
Housing Minister Chris Bishop and Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson have welcomed Kāinga Ora’s decision to re-open its tender for carpets to allow wool carpet suppliers to bid. “In 2024 Kāinga Ora issued requests for tender (RFTs) seeking bids from suppliers to carpet their properties,” Mr Bishop says. “As part ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yanyan Hong, PhD Candidate in Communication and Media Studies, University of Adelaide IMDB On the surface, Ne Zha 2: The Sea’s Fury (2025), the sequel to the 2019 Chinese blockbuster Nezha: Birth of the Demon Child, is a high-octane, action-packed and ...
Wellington travellers say their buses are so hot they’re often forced to get off early and walk. Shanti Mathias explores the impact of non-functioning air conditioning on public transport. When Bella, a young professional living in Wellington, thinks about taking the bus, her first thought is “Ugh”. The bus might ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Annette Kroen, Research Fellow Planning and Transport, RMIT University The cleanup is underway in northern Queensland following the latest flooding catastrophe to hit the state. More than 7,000 insurance claims have already been lodged, most of them for inundated homes and other ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Subha Parida, Lecturer in Property, University of South Australia Carl Oberg/Shutterstock Houses and fire do not mix. The firestorm which hit Los Angeles in January destroyed nearly 2,000 buildings and forced 130,000 people to evacuate. The 2019–20 Australian megafires destroyed ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Bowman, Professor of Pyrogeography and Fire Science, University of Tasmania Tasmania has been burning for more than two weeks, with no end in sight. Almost 100,000 hectares of bushland in the northwest has burned to date. This includes the Tarkine rainforest ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Martin Loosemore, Professor of Construction Management, University of Technology Sydney This week, the Productivity Commission released its much-awaited report into productivity growth in Australia’s housing construction sector. It wasn’t a glowing appraisal. The commission found physical productivity – the total number ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pascale Lubbe, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Molecular Ecology, University of Otago Royal spoonbills are among several new species that have crossed the Tasman and naturalised in New Zealand. JJ Harrison/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA When people arrived on the shores of Aotearoa ...
Stats NZ’s head is stepping down over the agency’s failure to safeguard census data, and more officials may soon be in the firing line, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. An ‘absolutely unacceptable’ failure Stats NZ chief ...
Health NZ is under greater government scrutiny, with the new health minister setting up a unit he says will "drive greater accountability and performance". ...
Manurewa Marae acknowledges should have done better at handling completed census forms, following an inquiry into steps government agencies took to protect data. ...
Police failed to protect people from protesters at a high-profile rally and made unlawful arrests at another, the Independent Police Conduct Authority says. ...
Comment: Crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are making it easier for people to invest in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum without having to handle digital wallets or private keys. These allow investors to buy and sell cryptocurrency through their regular brokerage accounts.This has opened the door for billions of dollars ...
Two long-awaited reports into alleged personal data misuse, centred on census collection and Covid-19 vaccination efforts at Manurewa Marae, were released yesterday. Here’s what you need to know.“Very sobering reading” was how public service commissioner Sir Brian Roche described his organisation’s long-awaited report into the alleged misuse of census ...
Backbench MPs reached new levels of patsy questions in an extraordinarily dull question time on Tuesday. Echo Chamber is The Spinoff’s dispatch from the press gallery, recapping sessions in the House. Columns are written by politics reporter Lyric Waiwiri-Smith and Wellington editor Joel MacManus. “MPs ask questions to explore key issues ...
The New Zealand Government says the Cook Islands must share more information about the deals it has signed with China, following the release of an ‘action plan’ in the face of protests in the Pacific nation’s capital.The Cook Islands government has also revealed plans to spend $3 million on a ...
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Comment: The recent attack by Destiny Church front groups on a Drag science show at Te Atatū library crossed a line. This wasn’t the first time that Brian Tamaki, the multimillionaire self-appointed ‘apostle’, has ordered acts of aggression against the queer community. Last year, Drag Story Time events were targeted, ...
Martina Salmon is well versed in the fast-paced action on a netball court, but even she was caught by surprise with the speed at which her career changed tack last year.Staying in the fast lane is only part of her drive this season.Fresh off a nine-day camp in Sydney with ...
Last night I may as well have been in Taihape. Or, closer to home, for me at least, somewhere in the Wairarapa. Or Tūrangi, even – which is near where we used to spend the summer when I was a child. For there was that same gorgeous small town feeling ...
Having Auckland’s food scraps dumped onto your rural backyard sounds scandalous, but in the North Island town of Reporoa there’s no fuss about the thousands of tonnes carted here every week.From the same site as one truck drops the waste, another truck picks up fertiliser to spread on local sheep ...
Negotiating rights over freshwater in Treaty settlement negotiations could have extended negotiations a decade, a Ngāi Tahu leader says.Tribal leaders, and its umbrella body, Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, have taken the Attorney-General to court in a bid to have the Crown recognise its rangatiratanga (chiefly authority) over wai māori ...
Analysis: Poor safeguarding of New Zealanders’ data could be a widespread practice within the public service and certainly within the health system, according to the findings of an independent inquiry into allegations of misused census and Covid-19 vaccination information.The Public Service Commission’s review, led by consultant Pania Gray and former ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Stone, Principal Research Fellow, School of Population and Global Health, The University of Western Australia Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock Having dense breasts is a clear risk factor for breast cancer. It can also make cancers hard to spot on mammograms. Yet you ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The National Anti-Corruption Commission will finally investigate whether six people referred to it by the royal commission into Robodebt engaged in corrupt conduct. This follows an independent reconsideration by former High Court judge Geoffrey ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Blaxland, Professor, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University Last week in Europe, the United States sent some very strong messages it is prepared to upend the established global order. US Vice President JD Vance warned a stunned Munich ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Reserve Bank has delivered the expected modest rate cut of a quarter of a percentage point, and we’re set for the predictable frenzy of speculation about an April election. The cut is unlikely to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra The Reserve Bank cut official interest rates on Tuesday, the first decrease in four years, saying inflationary pressures are easing “a little more quickly than expected”. However, the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Reserve Bank has delivered the expected modest rate cut of a quarter of a percentage point, and we’re set for the predictable frenzy of speculation about an April election. The cut is unlikely to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Allan Fels, Professor Allan Fels, Professor of Law, Economics and Business at the University of Melbourne and Monash University., The University of Melbourne Australia is creeping towards adding a divestiture power to its Competition and Consumer Act. Under such a law, ...
Come on NZ! We cannot support this. Glenn Greenwald hold the mirror up to the USA to expose its shameful support of Israel’s despicable behaviour.
https://theintercept.com/2016/10/06/u-s-admits-israel-is-building-permanent-apartheid-regime-weeks-after-giving-it-38-billion/
Israel doesn’t want to rule over Palestinians – they want to eliminate them. What Israel is engaging in is genocide – pure and simple.
A few days ago, and after the “accidental” US bombing of a Syrian army unit, Russian and Iranian media reported that a covert ‘Intelligence Operations Room’ run by the US in Aleppo province and staffed by around 30 military officers from the US and key US allies, had been targeted and destroyed by Russian sea launched cruise missiles. All foreign officers were reported killed and the facility destroyed.
To me this explains US Army Chief of Staff Gen Mark Milley making a speech 2 days ago saying that the US was being challenged in an unprecedented way in decades but was ready to destroy its enemies anywhere, any time.
This is on the verge of getting very nasty.
Thanks Paul. It is ratcheting hard and idiots like Psycho Milt can’t see it for its obviousness.
If those 30 people were targeted and blown up then how is the US ratcheting it up, isn’t that the people who did the targeting and blowing up?
You could choose to look at National’s decision to pass legislation for an ocean sanctuary in isolation, without looking at the history of the Treaty settlement or even the record of discussions on the Kermadecs over the last year or two, but if you did that you wouldn’t really be able to fully understand the dynamics of what was happening and why, would you.
The theory is that this Operations Room was involved in co-ordinating the air strike on the Syrian Government Army position which resulted in the deaths of 83 government troops.
So it was pay back for that. 30 western specialists and officers lives exchanged for the lives of 83 Syrian Army grunts and officers.
so payback and that makes it somehow the US ratshitting it up? Your logic doesn’t make sense.
Oh and trying to misuse indigenous rights (Kermadec), in the same way you misuse women’s rights, to help you score petty points is, well, sorta, pathetic and petty. We don’t need the fake tears from a snake – so please just don’t bother.
+1 Marty.
Someone who supports a misogynist racist like Trump, and then pretends to care about indigenous rights, or women’s rights, or human rights for that matter, is contemptible IMO.
It might help if you could think independently for a moment.
False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton
https://www.versobooks.com/books/2121-false-choices
“It might help if you could think independently for a moment”.
Unable to deny that Trump is a racist misogynist you decide to insult me instead. Did I say Hillary Clinton was a feminist? Did I say anything at all about Clinton? No.
Just for the record I read very widely and I assess many sources before I come to any opinion about any issue, and I am always ready to have my ideas challenged by people whose opinion I value. My judgement on whose opinions are worth valuing depends on their knowledge of a topic and is tempered by their attitudes to human rights, racism, etc.
I do not value your opinion.
+ 1 Karen.
That viper thinks he is independent shows the extent of his delusion. I value your actual independent views – keep them coming please.
http://wondermark.com/1k62/
Why the should I bother trying to deny bullshit liberal lefty propaganda memes?
Instead, I am carefully pointing out how much worse and studied a misogynist Hillary Clinton is, which includes her personal enabling of predatory sexual behaviour, and how much worse a liar she is, as per her record in public office.
CV: the reason that your comments are going into moderation is because you are commenting without logging in. Wordfence auto moderates all comments by non-logged commenters that match people with logins. The reasons for this are obvious – it is to highlight possible spoofing. Could you either login, or use a pseudonym/email that doesn’t clash.
yeah ratshitting it up because you got NO actual argument because your man is a total abomination – and you know it
marty: the reason that your comments are going into moderation is because you are commenting without logging in. Wordfence auto moderates all comments by non-logged commenters that match people with logins. The reasons for this are obvious – it is to highlight possible spoofing. Could you either login, or use a pseudonym that doesn’t clash.
If you don’t know your password, tell me and I’ll send through a password reset when I’m cleaning up the login system this weekend.
Yep I can’t remember my password – so either an email or reset would be good. Does that mean I have to log in each session – I haven’t in the past but if that is what it takes I’ll gladly do it – spose I could add a cool gravitar too.
Thanks for your help L.
Ok. I’ll send a reset this evening. I want to check the email works.
It will be pretty much the same as usual. The browsers will remember the logged in details. You just have to remember the login/password occasionally when the browser forgets (upgrades etc).
In the meantime, I’m turning off the security check.
cool bananas – could you send me a reset as well 🙂
edit – sorry Karen, that was to lprent
Rinocrates
http://wondermark.com/1k62/
Thats wonderful, required reading for thestandard moderators
Actually Karen you have it backwards, as it was you who insulted CV
You essentially accused CV of being a racist and mysogenist because he has expressed opinions backing Trump..
Therefore CV is unable and in fact ineligible in your mind to have valid opinion on other topics because you have decided they don’t count
Frankly your view and opion is not only a logical fail but also emotionally flawed
Marty Mars has let his own prejudice get in the way and his support for your comment is terribly misplaced
False equivalence once again from CV
Not my problem that you can’t tell the fundamental difference between “escalation” and “matching” in a game of deterrence.
it isn’t matching it is escalation and it is pretty obvious. Hell for a fanatic internet general you don’t seem to understand the basics – maybe all your years of living over in Russia has coloured your thinking – oh that’s right you get your facts off the net…
It could also be considered a warning rather than a ratcheting up.
The US has been doing shit and getting away with it for far too long and usually at the expense of Russia and other nations. This could be a very physical we’re not going to take this shit from you any more on the Russians part.
The next step is in the US’ hands. Whether they continue acting like a childish bully or if they start acting like an mature adult.
And, no, I don’t think that the US killing those Syrians was a mistake and I’m pretty sure that the Russians don’t think so either.
I am sure you have seen this.
Just wish others would watch it and listen carefully.
John Pilger – A World War Has Begun: Break The Silence
http://johnpilger.com/articles/a-world-war-has-begun-break-the-silence-
Thanks for the link, Paul.
Russia will take down any American airplane or missile targeting Syrian army!
Also worth remembering the Russian approach in these matters – they talk small and they act big. They try to only minimally telegraph their plans. Stylistically, this tends to be the diametric opposite of the US approach.
If war does” officially” break out no guesses whose side we will be on with Key in the beehive.
Why is this military build up happening without official comment and has not been raised so far in the presidential campaign ?
The usual ‘talk tough’ routine from a US Military leader.
Fine and dandy till they have to fight on foreign soil and the body bags start arriving back home. US soldiers are not know for their morale once the going gets tough.
Fighting Russian forces will be quite a bit different to fighting Iraqi conscripts who would rather be someplace else.
Thanks, Paul, Are we sure this boneheaded cretinous bloody dangerous prat is for real? or is it a new modern version of the TV programme Rowan & Martins Laughin with General Bull Right
That is one of the problems today, we don’t have the satire that shows up these dickheads for what they are.
I trust Pilger, though.
“I trust Pilger, though”
+1
“I trust Pilger though”
+100
Thanks Paul i always make time to listen to Mr Pilger and it would be great to have his analysis here on a regular basis as he no longer welcome on MSM.
MSM and our government prefer the silence and keeping the idiots entertained.
I am sure you are aware of this site Mosa, if not highly recommended.
http://johnpilger.com/
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/718154/world-war-three-warfare-lethal-fast-guaranteed-William-Hix-Joseph-Anderson
Meanwhile the Herald’s online stories are:
Aaron Smith sex scandal: ‘A huge mistake’ – All Black speaks
Bullies ‘set fire’ to autistic boy
Thunderstruck: ‘Household was shaking’
Dick Smith CEO has his day in court
Is this Steven Adams’ biggest fan?
Luxury air travel fares drop by 40%
Revealed: NZ’s cheapest supermarket
Shortland Street shock as Rachel leaves
Business Class punch-up onboard flight
$1200 for pizza order that never arrived
The Cold War is simmering and we still get fed pap.
@Paul on the same topic Morning Report was dross this morning.
In an hour from 6.30 it was mostly very very long weather forecasts, TWO stories on the UN secretary-general job (this has been done to death-the classic being Susie Ferguson’s questioning who will be appointed deputy to the s-g; Quiz question: name the current, or any, deputy s-g) followed by (yes you guessed) Aaron Smith’s knee trembler, though to be fair Guyon’s interview with the reporter in South Africa was good, especially when the reporter said Smith’s mistake was to have his AB’s kit on to which Guyon said “well some of the time” and the reporter’s comment (paraphrasing here) that “he was amazed the NZ PM had got involved. In South Africa this would never happen as there are far more important issues for the PM to deal with.” Precisely.
Who on earth is editing Morning Report these days?
Ways to express your displeasure
Text : 2101
Phone: (04) 474 1999
rnz@radionz.co.nz
Steven Joyce?
@ Paul (2.3) WHAT!!!! Nothing about that shallow, still in shock Kardashian woman. NZH’s standards are indeed slipping! (sarc)
Seriously though, I agree with you. The pathetic un-newsworthy rubbish msm is dishing up as news, has National’s chief of misinformation Joyce’s foul stamp all over it, directing what Kiwis shall or shall not be told.
To keep the people informed on the important issues, might open up some thought and discussion, giving rise to some serious questions being asked.
Yes it is an outrage that the shallow MSM has so quickly dropped the kardashian story. What are they afraid of!
Whilst I agree with your point in general I hardly think setting a disabled 10 year old on fire is “pap”.
yep
Aaron Smith sex scandal: ‘A huge mistake’ – sex, role models, social norms, toxic masculinity
Bullies ‘set fire’ to autistic boy – othering, dehumanising, violence
Thunderstruck: ‘Household was shaking’ – climate change, community
Dick Smith CEO has his day in court – potential corporate notgoodthings
Is this Steven Adams’ biggest fan? – heroes, role models
Luxury air travel fares drop by 40% – the 1%ers
Revealed: NZ’s cheapest supermarket – the bottom 50%ers
Shortland Street shock as Rachel leaves – issues raise3d about her on screen addictions/manipulated
Business Class punch-up onboard flight – violence, 0,1%ers
$1200 for pizza order that never arrived – food, nutrition, service
So Paul each and every one of those stories can be illuminating to the current issues facing humankind in 2016.
It is like when my 8year old says, “It’s boring” umm no ‘it’ isn’t.
You have to search out the flakes of gold, it takes work – stop moaning and do some work paul.
I’m mildly relieved that the kid being set alight looks to be accident resulting from kids playing with fire rather than malice. Doesn’t change much overall, poor lad is still in a bad way and South Sudan still looks sucky, but I register enough shit in the world already.
+ 1 yep
A few days ago, and after the “accidental” US bombing of a Syrian army unit, Russian and Iranian media reported that a covert ‘Intelligence Operations Room’ run by the US in Aleppo province and staffed by around 30 military officers from the US and key US allies, had been targeted and destroyed by Russian sea launched cruise missiles.
Things reported by “Russian media” mean “things the Russian government would like reported.” Can you think of a reason why the Russian government might want to release a story for domestic consumption about how they paid back the Americans hard for that friendly fire incident against a Russian client? Because I can. For consumption outside Russia and Iran, they’d need some evidence that this actually happened, which is why it’s not news outside those countries.
And things reported by corporate western media mean things the military industrial complex would like reported.
I’m glad you posted a 9/11 Truther video to illustrate your point – it does illustrate it, just not in the way you’d hoped.
9/11 was the first big lie.
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was the second and it looks like Syria is the third.
And the gullible still believe what the repeaters and the sockpuppets tell them. We are on the brink of WW3 thanks to this ubnquestioning acceptance of the media.
By the way, ad hominems do not an argument make. You do not end a debate by saying the words ‘truthers.’ or ‘conspiracy theory.’
Iraq
Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/man-whose-wmd-lies-led-to-100000-deaths-confesses-all-7606236.html
9/11
9/11 – the big cover-up?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/sep/12/911thebigcoverup
As expected, the opinion piece “9/11 – the big cover-up?” fails to either identify or describe a cover-up, let alone a big one.
9/11: The Big Lie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11:_The_Big_Lie
He’s wrong. It was the Illuminati, assisted by the Lizard people.
I spend very little time or energy thinking about 911 these days. For a few months immediately afterwards I was intensely curious, but quickly realised that as a very ordinary person on the other side of the planet I had no way to properly verify any information … official or otherwise.
The ‘truthers’ probably made a mistake to have spent so much energy on the building collapses. While they were the dramatic, visible and deeply intriguing aspect of what happened that day, it was the astounding myriad of other details, coincidences, inconsistencies on the fringes of these events which left the biggest impression on me.
No single one of them amounted to a smoking gun. Many could have just been an artifact of confirmation bias, but the sheer mass of them could not be so easily dismissed. The internet has accumulated an extraordinary volume of speculation on 911, probably much of it misguided, near-misses or downright absurd. But that does not mean ALL of it is wrong. Even if just 1% of it is correct we still have a problem.
In the end it comes down to credibility, “who ya gunna believe?” Well you cannot get around the established fact that official 911 narrative was written by the same people who told us Iraq had WMD’s it was about to unleash on the world. On that basis alone you have to understand these people are capable of the big, deliberate and conscious lie. The truthers have failed to land a critical blow, the establishment loses more and more credibility with every passing year. Both have hidden agendas, both twist and distort to suit their purposes. After all these years, all these wasted pixels, certainty eludes us.
It is my guess that only a very small number of people know exactly what happened that day; probably fewer than 30. And they are all very good at keeping secrets.
The main thing is understanding that the official narrative of the events of 9/11 cannot be correct.
From passengers making cell phone calls at 30,000 to 40,000 feet in the air, to the 110 tonne mass of Flight UA93 ‘vapourising’ into a small burnt hole in Shanksville paddock (but the flight recorders found intact) to the NIST modelling and explanation for the collapse of WTC7 now being definitively refuted.
However, as to what actually happened on that day I agree with you that only a few dozen people at most would know.
I am reminded of all the crazy theories in the years after the President Kennedy assassination. All of them ultimately debunked.
I suspect something similar will happen over 9/11.
The film clip of the 9/11 tragedy which made quite an impression on me at the time was the moment George W Bush was informed of what happened. He was sitting in a classroom reading to the children and – while he showed no facial emotion – I could see the shock in his eyes. He got up and quietly left the room.
I have no doubt mistakes were made and actions taken that the “authorities” wouldn’t want the masses to know about (there always is) but a US conspiracy of lies as promoted by the 9/11 conspiracy theorists? No way. Those hijackers were al qaeda trained terrorist operatives and they were there to commit the gravest possible damage possible on behalf of Osama bin Laden and co.
In the end it comes down to credibility, “who ya gunna believe?” Well you cannot get around the established fact that official 911 narrative was written by the same people who told us Iraq had WMD’s it was about to unleash on the world.
And that is a very good example. The WMD claim was a big, deliberate lie involving only a few intelligence operatives, and it fell to bits in pretty short order. As you say, it comes down to credibility, and a big, deliberate lie involving huge numbers of people and far greater complexity than the WMD scam, but that has held solid for 15 years and counting, just isn’t credible.
@PM
I thought about point that when I was writing it. My response is that the two matters are not equivalent or directly comparable.
It was my sense that ultimately if there was a secret operation around 911, it actually did not need to involve very many people at all. And it was all over in a matter of hours.
By contrast invading Iraq involved whole armies from many countries, over many years. Of course that lie was unsustainable. (And even then it took years before it was officially acknowledged as such.)
CV – the calls were not made from cellphones. They were made from the phones already on the plane.
And the reasons for the collapse of the WTC 7 haven’t been refuted in the slightest
The story we have been told cannot be correct.
We don’t know what happened and we do know that we have been lied to.
So you believe the conclusions of the Warren Report?
You don’t think that Oliver Stone makes some very obvious points?
From the onboard Airphones you mean?
You need to recheck your facts. In the official narrative, although those Airphones were also used, at least two of the calls were made from passenger cell phones.
It was my sense that ultimately if there was a secret operation around 911, it actually did not need to involve very many people at all. And it was all over in a matter of hours.
Thing is, what kind of a secret operation? The one that Paul et al favour, that it was actually a false flag operation by the US government, is so laughable that once you know someone gives it credence, you write them off as completely lacking judgement. Lesser versions, such as that they US government knew it was planned but allowed it to happen, still have a huge credibility hurdle in that it requires all of the people involved to have no conscience and to have never mentioned it to someone who does. That’s common among the people running totalitarian regimes, but isn’t in democratic ones, and even in totalitarian regimes it usually gets out eventually. There is no credible theory of a secret operation yet presented.
CV:
cell phone signals can work between 20 and 40 miles from a tower.
30000ft is about 6 miles.
Using the power of geometry again, in a right-angled triangle where the height of the aircraft is 6 and the length of the hypoteneuse (distance between the plane and the cell tower) is 20, then the ground distance from the cell tower is roughly 18.
So to make a cell call from 30,000ft a cell tower needs to be within an 18 mile ground radius for the minimum call duration. Aluminium airframe might lower that, but no terrain interference would compensate the other direction. I lazily wonder whether clouds or humidity might be an issue either way.
So anyway, yeah it’s possible to make a cell call from an airplane.
Firstly, how does the range of those towers change once you take into account that cell phone towers have the maximum sensitivity of their TX/RX antennae configured for terrestrial (ground or near ground) mobile phone users?
Secondly, are there any other examples (other than 9/11) where passengers in the late 90’s / early 00’s successfully used their mobile phones from planes over 30,000 feet?
By the year ~2000 virtually every business professional on a commercial plane would have had a mobile phone.
It looks like people were using cellphones on aircraft in the 1980s, and on private and corporate jets in the 1990s.
In fact, the main problem with their signal on the cell network seems to be that they tie up too many cell towers at the same time, rather than having difficulty just reaching one.
Incorrect
Speed plays as big of a factor as the distance from the towers
ad hominems…..
Yes Paul ever day to you a new crisis dawns, doomsday looms, what a sad existence you lead
A story in the English services of Russian and Iranian media is not for “domestic consumption” if you think about it.
Btw the people in the Pentagon who need to know, know the truth.
Well yeah, the version released in the English services isn’t for domestic consumption – it’s for the gullible dupes in the English-speaking world who imagine they’re consuming something other than government propaganda via those services.
There are of course people in the Pentagon who know the truth or lack of it in the story, but I don’t think they’re going to join the thread to confirm or deny it.
Are we sure the ‘Intelligence Operations Room’ wasn’t a hospital?
What would a hospital be doing with military personnel from the US, UK, France, Turkey and Israel?
Are we sure that the “military personnel from the US, UK, France, Turkey and Israel” weren’t babies?
McFlock: the reason that your comments are going into moderation is because you are commenting without logging in. Wordfence auto moderates all comments by non-logged commenters that match people with logins. The reasons for this are obvious – it is to highlight possible spoofing. Could you either login, or use a pseudonym that doesn’t clash.
If you don’t know your password, I’ll push a password reset through over the weekend (I’m cleaning up unused logins and fixing the login system then)
argh bother.
My password might be on my home computer, if it’s operational today lol (dodgy power plug)
found my password 🙂
Cool.
Are we sure the ‘ military personnel ‘ weren’t medical staff?
Dunno, but they’re all dead now according to Iranian and Russian news services, and the intelligence operations facility that they were working out of destroyed.
Makes a good cover.
The Aaron Smith saga shows how dreadful the media has begun.
RNZ is there with the rest of the awful tabloid media this country now has.
Brilliant talk.
Worth 18 minutes of your time.
I gazed at this big white space for 18 minutes, I feel sleepy, not enlightened?
what clip?
Some inmates were so badly injured in the fighting they were hospitalised, for injuries ranging from brain damage to broken limbs.
In some cases staff present in a unit were observed from CCTV footage failing to undertake an active role in supervising prisoners – for instance staff were observed playing pool or table tennis.
Prisoners who refused to participate were threatened or “pack attacked” by gang members.
Despite some incidents meeting the threshold for serious assault, Serco reported them to Corrections as “accidents”, or not at all, the report said.
Serco paid $8 million to cover the costs of Corrections stepping in and for failing to reach performance targets. It also missed out on performance bonuses worth $3.1m.
The Government could not rule out rehiring Serco to run the Mt Eden jail again in future.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11723624
Does anybody know if the inmates that were forced to partake have been compensated?
Fortunately for John Key the Aaron Smith story has drowned this out….even on RNZ.
Indeed, Paul. It was also the lead story on One News last night.
Government shrugging this off as nothing to do with them. It’s all Corrections’ and Serco’s fault apparently and the private model (reducing costs and raising risks for profit) which they forced upon the sector is and always was the way to go.
The fact that the Government could not rule out rehiring Serco (despite it’s poor performance) raises questions if it goes beyond being merely an ideological belief.
This what you mean?
http://www.newshub.co.nz/politics/sercos-prison-fight-clubs-might-have-spread-to-wiri—labour-2016100708
“Fears of legal action” has been used as a smokescreen before by this government.
No. I was referring to the assertion the Government could not rule out rehiring Serco to run the Mt Eden jail again. Made in the link I provided above.
As for the Government fearing legal action, it brings into question the quality of the contract and the competence of the Government to safeguard the public interest.
Certainly does. The same government who negotiated New Zealand’s position in the TPP.
Indeed.
Government shrugging this off as nothing to do with them.
The ability to do this is a major, if never-mentioned, benefit of privatising prisons – from the government’s perspective, at least. Not so much for the rest of us.
That’s what I love about National’s attitude to private prisons. It borders on a religious belief. Serco ran Mt Eden like a man with no legs runs the New York marathon. They woefully understaffed the prison (presumably a cost-cutting measure), lacked all supervision of both inmates and officers (whose attitude to their roles appeared to be “I’m just chillin’ with my homies, yo!”), failed to adequately monitor the deteriorating situation and then lied about it all in an attempt to evade responsibility.
And National’s response is basically, “Yes, we acknowledge that this all looks distinctly shonky and we’ve rapped Serco across the knuckles accordingly. In other news, we’ll probably award them another multi-million dollar contract sometime in the near future despite their track record of incompetence, negligence and a complete disregard for the job they’re being paid millions of tax-payer dollars to perform. It could be worse, after all. They could be having sex in a public toilet. Tsk tsk, Aaron Smith. Shame on you.”
“It borders on a religious belief”
Or dear we say, possibly corruption?
Both?
Corruption carried out because of their religious belief that privatisation and doing stuff because you get paid is always better.
After reports of the culture of corruption within the Auckland City Council being described as normalised, one begins to wonder what’s going on in central government.
Food for thought: https://charteredaccountantsanz.com/~/media/FutureInc/Pdfs/2015/0415-45_%20FutureIncAntiCorruption.ashx
“Does anybody know if the inmates that were forced to partake have been compensated?”
Yes, you will be happy to hear that the Head Hunters have offered the inmate’s they forced to participate in the Mt Eden fight club $10k each or to the same value in meth. 🙂
Seriously though, has Serco coughed up?
Is anyone taking a case?
Is there anything in the contract ensuring Serco are liable to compensate inmates they fail to care for?
The Chinese community seem to have been feeling rather generous towards Phil Goff.
In all, the event raised $250,000, which is around half the candidate’s estimated campaign bill.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11723129
They like to back a winner, don’t they?
Corruption though? No sir, not the Chinese!
Careful, they may just have Chinesesoundingsurnames but be diedinthewool kiwis of long standing.
And good on him.
A winning campaign is a well funded campaign.
Hope he wins tomorrow.
If that’s the case labour are in serious trouble.
Trolling away…………
Trolling the trollers……..
Yup
Might want to forward that advice to the Labour party
“A winning campaign is a well funded campaign”
The problem is, what cost will that funding have?
Why are you hoping he wins tomorrow?
The Herald (yes I know highly dubious) reader poll today has Crone 34 Goff 33 Swarbrick 17
Some interesting numbers there! Really shows who reads the Herald-Goff should walk it on these numbers given the characteristics of the response group…..but….but…. Swarbrick is really eating into Goff’s vote with an amazing 17%
Interesting.
Here’s a survey showing that among voters saying they will definitely vote, Goff is attracting 50 per cent of all Labour voters and 35 per cent of Greens. But he is also picking up 24 per cent of National Party voters and 25 per cent of NZ First voters.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/84608545/phil-goffs-winning-centreright-appeal
Hilarious; 50% of Labour voters will not support the former Labour Leader
Alternatively, considering he’s not that Left, it’s disappointing 50% of Labour voters are supporting him.
This.
He must be disappointed not to pick up many ACT supporters.
Goff is a complete waste of space IMIO . As minister of justice he failed to exercise his responsibility to see justice done in the case of Peter Ellis.
Dont expect anything more than favors for business friends from him.
Well, nobody offered to ‘buy’ so much as a bottle of wine from him. Such lack of commitment.
@Bearded Git. Pretty much anything could happen with such low voter turn out.
If Goff somehow managed to lose or win by a small margin compared to what he originally had, some lessons for labour there.
@savenz…..agreed abysmal turnout will certainly help Crone. How hard is it to post a letter?
The real scandal is that (anecdotally) many potential voters are not even registered, so the one third that vote are much less than that in reality. The Labour/Green bloc should be working right now to increase registration for the election next year.
Toby Manhire being serious about Child Poverty versus Key inaction.
“As has been noted repeatedly this week, it’s more than a little galling that a bold target can be set to rid New Zealand of predators but not to rid New Zealand of child poverty, although it’s important to note that no one is suggesting such eradications should following the same prescriptions.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11723866
Manhire is a hero. Keeps me sane. I love his Totally Fucking Baffled measuring device.
Its simpler in theory to get rid of predators then it is to deal with people
“although it’s important to note that no one is suggesting such eradications should following the same prescriptions.”
Pity, because it’s about time that people in power stood up and named NACT as the predators that they are. I would say a similar prescription would work. We can’t eradicate pests, but we can learn how to control them and keep them in their place so they don’t fuck with the wider ecosystem.
Weka
” We can’t eradicate pests, but we can learn how to control them and keep them in their place so they don’t fuck with the wider ecosystem.”
That is really important truth.. many policy makers and standard contributers dont get this. That must be the foundation of any pest policy!
Clearly Toby Manhire has mistaken the “ashprashnull” for “aspirational”. An ashprashnull person makes promises while an aspirational person tries to fulfil them.
No ones links are appearing? vids? I just get blank boxes that are quite large with only what the commenter says, not there clip. -sysop
Hey Paul, when you join the David Vaughan Icke fan club, do you also get complimentary copies of “Enemy of the State” and “Conspiracy Theory”?
Ad hominems do not consitute an argument.
Have you watched this film?
Have you read or listened to the work of John Pilger?
Have you heard of the Chilcott report?
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/06/iraq-inquiry-key-points-from-the-chilcot-report
Have you listened to Chomsky on the Ukraine and Crimea?
The Big Lie About the Libyan War
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/22/libya-and-the-myth-of-humanitarian-intervention/
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-22/british-parliament-confirms-libya-war-was-based-lies-%E2%80%A6-turned-nation-%E2%80%9Cshit-show%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%A6-s
http://www.thecivilian.co.nz/steve-hansen-assures-public-that-all-blacks-would-not-normally-have-sex/
Yeah. Sanctimonious panty-sniffers are a bit like the poor … they will always be with us.
Yeah my view is this:
If the couples kid needed the toilet why didn’t one parent take the kid to another toilet and the other parent go find security/management but instead they waited 10 minutes filing the incident
If no laws were broken then whose business is it anyway but If a law was broken then charge Aaron Smith and the women involved
Why does Aaron Smith have to be paraded on TV and beg forgiveness as if he’s done something terrible
Having said all that…if you’re a public figure then its best not to do anything dodgy in public
Getting serious now.
#HurricaneMatthew
And then there’s shit like this.
For the Nact train smash and all its attendant little carriages, it is now 5 minutes to midnight. Woooo Hoooo!!!!
?
You know, Pucky – Doogs is doing for the Left what you do for the right – mocking and eroding your confidence, over-playing any perceived advantage and aiming to discourage adherents (in this case, you and your mob).
I’m amazed you didn’t recognise it!
Well I tend to post something to back up what I say, polls, articles that kind of thing, people may not believe it but at least I try to base it on something
This is really close to the “I sense the tide is going out on National because I spoke to someone” kind of thing with nothing to back it up with
You’re a link spammer.
You’re a spink lammer.
And a bad link spammer at that
Well I admit I’ll never be as good as you at link spamming
With sources like Kiwiblog, that’s clear.
Spelunking.
Paul takes link spanning to dizzy new heights, unfortunatky he only link span the same shite and authors on and on and on and on and on zzzzzz
He’s a spambot dick pic ……. a dick pic stalking a site …. a troll
In earlier days he would have been that heavy breather on the phone ….
What he most certainly is not is a person who walks into a meeting or party and walks around offending and insulting everybody …….. in real life that would have consequences
http://www.listener.co.nz/current-affairs/politics/wellington-politics-pragmatic-mr-nick-leggett/
A very interesting read.
Yes very interesting. It says a lot about Guyon Espiner’s political views.
And it’s very interesting ( and a kiss of death) that ACT supporters like yourself promote Nick Leggett.
You all support the neoliberal wing of the Labour Party.
A much better prospect for Wellington….
Paul – not an act supporter. But thanks for guessing wrong yet again.
Interesting that an overt right winger supports Leggett.
Like all those Tories in the UK supporting Owen Smith and all those large corporates supporting Clinton.
Do you get all your news from kiwiblog?
He is just trolling.
Repeating what Farrar tells him to say.
When the biggest troll on the site (Paul) says someone’s trolling then there might be something to it 🙂
I dunno about you, but I thought this was a left wing site.
And you only come on this site to stir up trouble.
That’s trolling.
I know about you and when you’re faced with an opinion you don’t agree with you cry troll
It’s interesting. No sooner is there an anti-Little/Labour cut and paste from Farrar than it miraculously appears here.
Muttonbird – yes got link from kiwiblog. Then read it and found it interesting. This posted in here – you know a blog that discusses politics.
Paul – you will see there was no commentary from me other than it was an interesting read.
How you take that as repeating farrar I don’t know.
All I can guess is that the two of you are so pathetic that you actually have no reasonable comment and just have to follow post of people who disagree with you and make unfounded and bullshit (Paul looking at you) comments.
So I’m guessing hat makes you guys the trolls – and second rate ones at that.
Cutting and pasting from Kiwiblog is repeating farrar.
This is a left wing blog.
Literally. Cutting and pasting the cut and paster is the sincerest form of flattery.
Indeed.
I will type this slowly for you. I clicked on the link from kiwiblog and then after reading the article copied the link and pasted here.
That’s not repeating dpf it’s using a little thing call hyperlinks. They are all over the internet.
And congrats yes this is a left wing blog. Well done. I’m sorry comrade I missed the bit where everything written has to be be left good – right bad and no other discussion is allowed or must be called lies or trolling.
Dull.
If you ever posted anything ‘leftgood’ you might get a different reaction – but you only come here to exhibit your biases. You have no content and you don’t engage. That’s trolling.
Since when did you become god re the rules on this site
Since now.
Cower, brief mortal!
And Minister Parata was speaking to the U Learn Conference of teachers in Rotorua yesterday.
Actually everything that she said was true to my ears, though I thought that most schools had been innovating already.
“Going forward, some of the key themes that will characterise New Zealand’s future education system are:
-every student can be in the driving seat of their own learning through digital technologies, with support from highly skilled teachers who help them chart a course to achieve their goals for the future;
-the collapse of traditional institutional boundaries with students able to learn from a range of settings, both physical and virtual;
-learning in collaboration with their peers and others, face-to-face and virtually;”…
and many more.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1610/S00084/speech-to-ulearn16-conference-rotorua.htm
heh
Brief video compiling the lies Hillary Clinton has told to the public:
– Claiming that ISIS uses videos of Donald Trump to recruit new members
– Lies she told to the victims families of the Benghazi embassy attacks
– Claiming that she arrived in Bosnia under sniper fire
– Pretending that she has always been against NAFTA
– etc
The narcissistic bully wins tiny fingers down, 25 outright lies in a single speech.
25! in one speech! WTF I wonder how don monetizes that shit – he’s sitting 0.1% 5ppm like scrooge mcfuckenduck! I bet all his advisers are working hard on that one – how do we get the money, come on think, THINK!
Can’t help himself.
edit: patsy questions, huh
That video tries to argue that free trade, off shoring production and having goods manufactured in China have CREATED more US jobs than it has destroyed.
Do you really believe that?
And if you really believe that, why do you think Trump has picked up so many voters from blue collar families and from counties who have been directly affected by high levels of unemployment?
ummm he’s LIED to them perhaps
He’s a compulsive liar.
#TrumpCheck
So you believe the video joe90 put up?
That free trade does actually create more jobs in the USA than it destroys?
I believe trump is a liar.
Cv I get voting for trump is not voting for Hillary, but that does not mean we make out trump to something that he is not, both are despicable
Well, there is that point.
A doco on the indiscriminate Russian bombing in Aleppo, Syria. Just awful.
You need to be a bit more discerning about your sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera_controversies_and_criticism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_Syrian_Civil_War
http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/4941
http://www.globalresearch.ca/al-jazeera-from-media-power-to-laughing-stock/30159?print=1
http://www.globalresearch.ca/journey-to-aleppo-exposing-the-truth-buried-under-nato-propaganda/5547333
Looking at the documentary I find it difficult to come to the conclusion that it’s been fabricated.
It’s part of the reason why I’m not sure if I want to take sides anymore on who’s right and wrong. There’s atrocities from all sides.
yep and fanatics on both – I always get very wary of those who profess to know, from the other side of the world, what is going on in such a messed up, complex and confusing situation. The squeaky door technique does not mean they know more.
There is one side that is most certainly wrong and that is Turkey allowing a flow of arms, men and materiel to resupply the Islamists with in an illegal effort to take down Assad, and NATO/US at the very least implicitly approving of that.
I’m wary, nay skeptical, of anything you say – as I’ve said to you before your ability to discern is gone, your ability to consider is gone – all that is left is gone, you are a puppet saying set lines to spin a story – probably a fanatic by most of the inaccurate and frankly embarrassing spin you seem to love to tell us all, along with slogans NKorea would be proud of.
Well, if you can’t judge for yourself the last several years role played by Erdogan and Turkey in Syria, you probably shouldn’t be criticising my abilities of discernment.
Where did I say that?
Where did you say what?
About Erdogan/Turkey and their role in the Syrian conflict, or about my ability to discern “being gone.”
Just look up a comment or two, it’s right there.
What does ‘amost certainly’ mean?
I think your narrative is as flawed as the rest of them. It’s propaganda.
Huh? How does that relate to what I said to you at 4:58 or at 6:23?
What the hell? I’ve reread the sub thread and i can’t understand what bits you can’t understand. Sorry.
Actually Al Jazeera is quite good – probably because Qatar has no hegemonic agenda for Syria. If only Russia could say the same – but they can not.
What’s the “hegemonic agenda” that Russia has for Syria?
What’s the “hegemonic agenda” that the US has for Syria?
BTW the Qatari want control of Syria to go to a friendly government willing to deny Syrian territory to Gazprom, and instead put Qatari pipelines through to Europe.
I’m sure you knew that, right?
Russia’s hegemonic agenda includes permanent ground force basing and a Mediterraean naval base. It also includes dumping shit on everything the US does or attempts, whether or not it might be constructive.
You believe yourself remarkably well-informed about Qatari ambitions. Now, get a map and draw a line consistent with this pipeline you envisage. If such a pipeline is planned rest assured Qatar is a pretty minor player compared to others on its route.
And do explain why Gazprom is entitled to veto a Qatari pipeline anyway.
Why should the US have a score of military bases located around the Med and Russia not even have one or two?
After all, the Mediterranean is far closer to Russian national interests than to US national interests.
Gazprom doesn’t. However, the Syrian Government does, and it declined the Qatari pipeline proposal in 2009.
No problem with Syrian bases for Russia – if you ascribe the same predatory hegemonic agenda to them that we do to US base expansion.
So Gazprom isn’t really part of the equation – you brought them up – they are irrelevant. Qatar is entitled to support or press for a pipeline – though not by force of arms.
There is rather a lot of force of arms in Syria atm. Everywhere that Russia goes armed force, not public assent, is seen to triumph. This is not democracy. Putin rigging his first election was not democracy. Putin having Politkovskaya and Nemtsov killed and revising the Russian constitution to become effectively president for life is not democracy.
And Assad’s lifelong ‘presidential’ misrule of Syria is not democracy. Democracies do not barrel bomb their citizens – only despots do that.
Important to remember that over 3/4 of Aleppo is under government or YPG control now.
Unfortunately in the remaining area several thousand Jihadist/ISIS fighters have created a whole tunnel/bunker network around, under and through many civilian buildings.
Eliminating these entrenched forces will be tough, deadly work and yes despite safe evacuation corridors created earlier in the year for civilians, there will be many civilian deaths.
It’s kind of funny how much your comments these days read like US spokesthings’ announcements from its more unsavoury wars. I used to read shit like the comment above all the time when I was working for the US Army during the Iraq War – it’s as stomach-turning coming from you as it was from them.
Syrian Government forces with Russian air support will be doing exactly the same thing in South West Aleppo as US/Iraqi forces have done to cities like Mosul/Fallujah/Ramadi with US air support.
Even in 2003, the US military wasn’t bombing cities by unloading barrels full of explosive out of the back of a helicopter, and generally managed to avoid hospitals. The indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets you’re promoting as reasonable are actually worse, by a long way, than the activities of the US military in Iraq that you constantly treat as a benchmark of western criminality. And orders of magnitude worse than the drone strikes you get so irate about.
So you say.
But barrel bombs delivered by helicopter are just another BS western propaganda trope. Firstly if they existed they are nothing more than low yield IEDs.
Secondly helicopters are highly vulnerableto small arms fire and are thus a useless delivery platform for these weapons.
lol
Stop pretending you know what you’re talking about. They can be equivalent in size to the largest regularly used conventional bombs (2,000 pounds), and the “yield” in this context is meaningless (I suspect you came across the term in arguments about nukes, and didn’t realise that the explosive power of a nuke has more to do with its construction than its net weight in explosive material).
Secondly, yes helicopters are vulnerable. that’s why there’s footage of them dropping barrel-shaped objects that seem to be associated with large explosions where they land, and helicopters being shot down. Someone who avidly seeks online videos like you do will have seen it. It’s a pretty simple youtube search. Similarly wikipedia has a page devoted to them and another to their use in Syria, both with source links.
None so blind as those who will not see, I guess.
Why is “yield” in this context meaningless? You yourself have noted that conventional warheads and bombs are measured by “yield”.
Huh? Nukes?
But so what? The Syrian airforce has a very limited number of helicopters and each of these helicopters would only be able to carry a bomb load of a few of these barrels.
With a high risk of getting shot down.
Totally combat ineffective weapon, and hence a silly propaganda trope used by the west.
BTW when you see photos and video of places like Homs totally levelled to the ground, that was done by artillery, not by primitive ineffective improvised “barrel bombs” whatever the hell they are.
Well, obviously it must be sensible to them because there’s so much film of them actually doing it.
Cheap substitute for jet bombs, and more accurate. So a few older choppers and younger pilots get zotzed. Plenty more aid from Putin when that becomes and issue.
Have I? Where?
But barrel bombs delivered by helicopter are just another BS western propaganda trope.
The eye-witness accounts, the video footage, the unexploded barrel bombs… no expense spared on those BS western propaganda tropes, huh?
Secondly helicopters are highly vulnerable to small arms fire and are thus a useless delivery platform for these weapons.
It’s funny how often you dismiss things that actually happened with some made-up bullshit about how something like that couldn’t happen. Here’s a heuristic that could improve your life dramatically: if your theory and actual events in the real world are in dispute, it’s very unlikely to be the actual events in the real world that are mistaken.
How many barrel bombs in total have been dropped? What % of the total munitions used during the Jihadist invasion of Syria have been barrel bombs?
“Barrel bombs” are just a propaganda trope used by the west.
I have no doubt that a few have been used here and there, but they are clumsy, slow improvised weapons and the Syrian government doesn’t want their helicopters so easily shot down.
A standard 155 mm howitzer shell has way more destructive potential than some ad hoc rarely to never used “barrel bomb.”
Really? 100lbs of HE vs up to 2000lbs in a barrel?
I see you still haven’t bothered to look up “barrel bomb” in wikipedia. Most if not all your questions would be answered.
Oh yes wikipedia. How many US officers were convicted of war crimes for using “barrel bombs” on Vietnamese and Laotian villagers?
OK one barrel bomb might at times kill more people than a single 155mm howitzer shell. But an improvised, unreliable IED is exactly that: improvised and unreliable.
And in fifteen minutes you can deliver fuck all barrel bombs in comparison to the saturation shelling you can accomplish with artillery.
BTW who needs dangerous, unreliable and difficult to deliver “barrel bombs” now that the Russian air force is using precision bunker buster munitions in theatre.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Syrian_Civil_War_barrel_bomb_attacks
“The war in Afghanistan brought with it losses by attrition.[16] The environment itself, dusty and often hot, was rough on the machines; dusty conditions led to the development of the PZU air intake filters. The rebels’ primary air-defense weapons early in the war were heavy machine guns and anti-aircraft cannons, though anything smaller than a 23 millimetre shell generally did not do much damage to an Mi-24. The cockpit glass panels were resistant to 12.7 mm (.50 in caliber) rounds.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil_Mi-24
Your trademark non-sequitur.
Anyway, your questions will be answered if you go to wikipedia, search “barrel bomb”, and then click on “syria”. Knock yourself out.
then again we may need the people to sing.
I was just reading Fisk on Aleppo – it’s curious how Aleppo was the centre of genocides in 1915 too.
News FLASH!!!!!
OMFG it’s a catastrophe!!!
Standardista’s grab a coffee and sit down.. this is going to be rough..
You know Russia and the US are preparing for war, and they are almost launching nukes over Syria, and that China’s is a communist country allied with Russia, well…..
This is far more important.. John Key is flying there now, I presume.
http://www.newshub.co.nz/sport/dan-carter-and-joe-rokocoko-fail-drugs-test—report-2016100711
Our media is awful.
Bill Hicks.
Professor Steve Keen (Kingston University) says property prices could fall up to 70%, and why Australia will be hit by a recession in 2017.
Cripes. I really admire Steve for a lot of reasons …. but my god he has a propensity for putting his nuts on the line!
Logically his argument is good, but reality has a way of being less logical. A lot will depend on just how much longer China keeps exporting vast amounts of flight capital into the Australasian property markets.
Yep – you cannot underestimate how long they can keep this game of pretend and extend going.
It's not reality that's less logical but that our financial system is totally delusional.
Well, the Chinese authorities do seem to be trying to stop that.
It just keeps getting better for rugby.
Carter and Rokocoko test positive for steroids – French report
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/sport/315087/carter-and-rokocoko-test-positive-for-steroids-french-report
Since we also have this:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/international/85072693/dan-carter-joe-rokocoko-fail-drug-tests-but-cleared-for-banned-substance–agent-says
So how about instead of jumping to a conclusion based on your own particular dislike of rugby you wait until more information comes to hand…
If your agent doesn’t come to your defence you’d be wanting another agent damn quick.
So a newspaper reports something and that’s it? No need to look any further? If its printed it must be 100% correct?
Isn’t it amazing the amount of high performance athletes like Sharapova, Serena/Venus Williams, Tour de France cyclists, and all those olympic athletes who are all carrying debilitating medical conditions while competing at the highest level in sport. Thank god for Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUE’s) they must be thinking!
When you consider the amount of punishment their joints would take its not really, like imagine what its like to spend a couple of hours running up and a clay court, day after day and week after week, not counting the practice as well
Then consider the extra punishment players in contact sports take as well, like Dan Carter will be called on to stop 110kgs plus running at him time and time again, it makes sense that TUEs are allowed, in certain situations
However if its found they’ve broken the rules then they should be dealt with accordingly
No, it creates an avenue to cheat, and it’s obvious this is rife now for anyone who isn’t nieve. If you can take a substance that can enhance your performance some people will do that and take advantage of the rules.
If you don’t think that the increasing size of players and the amount of extra stress on joints means an increase in TUE then you are the one who is naïve
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/all-blacks/71656588/all-blacks-2015-world-cup-squad-make-the-class-of-87-look-like-figurines
“At 92kg, right wing John Kirwan was like Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians during the 1987 Rugby World Cup, a physical anomaly. Seven of the All Blacks’ 12 backs weighed under 80kg.
To put things in perspective, Kirwan would have been four kilograms lighter than the average All Black back in the 2015 squad Fox helped select for this year’s World Cup.”
As long as what they players are doing are within the rules then its just another media beat up
All my comments are going into moderation again – just letting you know L
[thanks marty. It’s happening to a few of us – weka]
Thanks to the mods who have been working hard to release these caught comments, it’s a pain I know
+ 1 Yep Thanks so much
Indeed. I noticed after I’d released a very few. So I spent a few minutes to do a diagnosis of why it was happening.
It was a feature that I had turned off on the original install of Wordfence. However it is a valid and useful security measure against the odd fool that wants to indulge in identity theft, so this time around I’ll shift behavior.
I also want to reactivate the ability for established commenters to use logins if they wish to. It bypasses the issues that Anne and others have commented about with the blocked cookies not remembering the comment details. And I’m pretty sure that I can fix the issues with the damn bots seeking logins.
Bill Hicks on alcohol.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11724494
Bloody CV s been in New York i see.
Haha the guys who unfurled that flag have a very dry, very American sense of humour
“PEACEMAKER” indeed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colt_Single_Action_Army
That’s a pretty damn impressive move
Happy birthday Mr Putin, he’s 64 today.
Timing would have been spot on for morning news in Moscow
Here’s my student loan rant from a few days ago that i posted as a comment to one of the contributors on a series about student loans on stuff.co.nz.
I just thought it contained some good valid points and maybe could provoke some more intelligent debate about a scheme that’s clearly very dysfunctional and unegalitarian and stuff rarely sees any good analysis, just emotive and nasty snide comments:
This article on stuff I’m responding to sounds like it was written by a right wing think tank policy person perhaps representing The New Zealand Business Roundtable or their new name ‘The New Zealand Initiative’.
The writer is however correct about one thing which is that the responsibility for the paying of a much larger proportion of tertiary education has been switched from the taxpayer and placed on to the shoulders of students themselves unlike any other previous generation in New Zealand which did not have to endure this (which includes many current and former National Party politicians who benefited from previous schemes but instituted this one)
The systemic problem with this scheme is that in a deregulated neo-liberal environment in New Zealand today where jobs are scarce, wages are low and not only not keeping pace with productivity but with the disestablishment of the requirement of employers to conclude collective bargaining means that students with student loans struggle to pay them back at all.
Now couple this economic environment with a student loans scheme that has a much lower repayment threshold (NZ$18,000) than several other developed European countries including Australia (about $40,000) and interest placed on top of this if you are forced to work overseas because getting a job in New Zealand was much harder than anticipated and you have a recipe for inter-generational debt ultimately causing poverty.
The working overseas after 6 months (184 days) category is particularly punitive in that it doesn’t take into account the borrowers income at all but simply states that you must pay for example $5000 per year if your loan is over $50,000. That amount of payment (if you can afford it) barely covers the interest for one year and at that rate it would take more than 100 years to pay it off.
The Student Loans scheme as it stands now is simply unworkable, unsustainable, punitive and generally unfair. To effectively create a ‘tax switch’ from taxpayers to students via a right wing ideological ‘userpays’ system (in order to keep other tax rates such as corporate tax at a much lower level than they should be) we are ‘building in’ inter-generational inequity, poverty, and homelessness.
Working exactly as designed then.
Sir Ngatata Love immediately appeals two-and-a-half year jail sentence for deceiving trust
So, does he lose his knighthood for this deception?
Maybe. Thinking of precedent, what happened with Carrick Graham’s ex-MP father Doug in the end?
We shouldn’t have to wonder. A crime of such deception, of such fraud should be an automatic loss of the knighthood.
Quite, but look at the dodgy pricks who get to decide.
Graham didn’t lose his knighthood because the conviction wasn’t for something he deliberately set out to do. Was more about failing to take reasonable care. Love, on the other hand, is a different story. Unless there’s a successful appeal he’s likely to lose his knighthood.
Ta. Couldn’t remember how that played out.
I’m not forgiving him or excusing him but I feel very sad about this. Sad it happened and has come to this conclusion.
The Kiwi CEO of ANZ Bank has pledged to look at cutting credit card rates and apologised for failing customers on day two of a parliamentary committee review critics say is increasingly playing out a familiar, sorry, and soft, script.
Echoing comments yesterday from Commonwealth Bank boss Ian Narev, Shayne Elliott told the second day of the hearings into the big four banks his industry had lost touch with its customers, was full of apologies for past wrongdoings by ANZ, and promised to do better.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/banking/news/article.cfm?c_id=126&objectid=11723790
https://youtu.be/fRh_vgS2dFE
Well, thank goodness for Colonial Viper and Paul.
People tell me I’ve lost all sense of discernment and logic, but so be it 🙂
Au contraire CV , I find your discernment and logic far superior to those that decry you.
Well, you’d be wrong because CV frequently makes logically fallacious arguments.
well, I prefer to refer to them as “logically flexible” arguments, but suit yourself.
Logical fallacies aren’t “flexible”. If you have make logically fallacious arguments in order to prove your point it means your point isn’t valid and you need to start again
How do you people even cope with the 96.79% of human behaviour which isn’t remotely logical or rational?
Because 96.79% of life isn’t spent forming and defending arguments on The Standard. If I go the shop and buy something I don’t expect nor receive the following:
“$4.50 for bread, that’s a bit steep.”
“Yeah but Hillary is a misogynist”
Talking to you here, however, the preceding is pretty standard issue.
Well the super smart super logical super accurate left wing must be winning everywhere
And your response is a non-sequitur, surprising no one.
Get a grip man.
You are most gracious, sir.
Thanks Garibaldi
I am inclined to agree with Garibaldi. CV has never praised Trump as far as I remember: he admits all Trump’s failings, but then gets into trouble by trying to warn you that Hillary may well be worse. He has not praised Trump, but gets accused of doing so for criticising Hilary. Sorry..
Given the confused state of things – especially, it seems , of the USA electorate, it would not surprise me if Trump did win. That does not mean I want him to.
Given the hostile trolls that spend endless time in disrupting discussion on this site, I echo Garibaldi’s praise of CV and Paul.
Alex Jones – a character as ever – decries Hillary Clinton using a minor and child actor as a political tool in a town hall meeting to further her campaign’s attack narrative on Trump
The most interesting part about this segment is watching how Hillary Clinton lies to the entire crowd by pretending to be surprised and delighted by a ‘random question’ that she knew was coming, and which was probably written for the child actor.
https://youtu.be/ceJldaor7nI?t=255
Pretty weak cv, goodness next thing trump will be asking the terminally Ill to hold on a bit and give him their vote but I doubt even he’d sink that low and desperate eh.
Trump has been telling people for ages that lying down terminally ill on their death bed is not an excuse to not go out and vote on Nov 8
Oh
Yes he did sink that low usually gleefully, and with a smile and laughs from the different crowds
Why Russia Is Preparing For The Worst RIGHT NOW!
http://robinwestenra.blogspot.co.nz/2016/10/deteriorating-relations-between-russia.html
16 out of 23 Obamacare non-profit insurance co-ops have failed, US$1.7B in Federal loan money lost in failed bureaucracies
Only 7 of the original non-profit 23 health insurance provider co-ops remain solvent.
Obama’s signature health insurance initiative is becoming increasingly crippled by the month.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/sallypipes/2016/07/25/obamacares-co-op-disaster-an-unfunny-comedy-of-errors/#4a19a2cec91f
My thoughts on being a candidate in this year’s (admittedly rather lack-lustre) local body elections.
I will also say that if the media had spent less time telling everyone how poor turnout was going to be, and more time analysing candidates in their regions, we might have had a more interesting campaign overall.
http://anthonyrimell.com/blog/25-there-and-back-again