Roger Douglas has been wheeled out of his crypt to give us all the way forward for Labour by those caring folks at the Herald.
The Herald slaps the left yet again with a wet fish called Douglas.
Douglas thinks we should all adopt the ACT way and things will get much better to concise it.
How did we go wrong folks, if only we had followed Sir Shitforbrains we would get elected.
Now I’m not saying there is a little hatred on the left for Sir Moron, but please take a deep breathe after reading this. Don’t go to the Herald, you might have a stroke or worse.
But if anyone of you want a good gut laugh this morning here’s the link.
Granny continues its fine work as a national party rag, I guess hooten is too busy with all his other media gigs and prebbles a bit compromised after his act campaign leadership worked so well.
I read it yesterday but the comments should be a hoot if they haven’t been censoring them. Only 35 comments in a day, they must have been using the big delete button, as they didn’t want the shrivelled one to have a heart attack. But you need to have a heart first.
@ Richard aka Rawshark 1
Here is a good fishgut laugh. I couldn’t resist bringing some mirth into your day. Doctors recommend a laugh to keep the mind healthy and functioning. Here is your morning dose if you choose to accept it – from Monty Python – fish slapping dance 27 sec and 2nd longer of Palin pontificating. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9SSOWORzw4
Ebola in Spain: slack procedures, poor discipline, lacksadaisical attitude, poor equipment and official lies
Nurse contracts ebola from infected (now dead) patient in Spain. Several others now hospitalised.
Decades of BS managerialism and under funding dangerously worsens performance when it actually matters.
Who do you believe – officials who say strict quarantine was instituted straight away, or the hospital staff who say patient was just kept in a general ward surrounded by others.
Not being sarcastic much here CV, but if we ever get an Ebola case the way Nastinal are behaving they would take the patient on a meet the people tour. Poor people.
As with all these things the difference will be definitional.
A quarantine procedure was initiated. It is strict relative to just dumping everyone in a pile. But it involves people probably getting a lot closer to each other than we would be comfortable with.
Then there was the photo that was allegedly of the man cleaning vomit off the pavement from the Texas Ebola patient. No hazard suit, people walking past and through the area.
One thing that interests me is given the relatively high placement on public health priorities (epidemic prevention), countries like the US and Spain are repatriating people with Ebola rather than treating them in the country where they contracted it.
just looking at that Tues humour link, while I agree that there are issues around degradation of hospital services, I think the article is a bit unhelpful where it implies you need high tech to contain Ebola. If it were airborne, I would agree, but it’s not, so lower tech protocols would actually work if done properly (whether overworked, underfunded hospitals systems can do lower tech protocols is another matter).
Yes, but the fatality rate for influenza is much lower than that for Ebola. Having said that, the Spanish flu was far worse in terms of the combination of lethality and ability to spread than Ebola will ever be.
please see my reply below. Maybe we’ll look back on this ebola scare in 12 months and think it was an interesting but short lived minor fizzle. And maybe we won’t, with infected numbers currently rising exponentially, killing hundreds of healthcare workers this year alone.
As long as you realise that the current outbreak is around 15x more severe than the one you remember from your younger days, in terms of probable fatalities and cases, and was isolated to provincial rural villages, not million person cities like Freetown and Madrid.
@ McFlock
I understand that was how the Aids virus spread so effectively. It was transmitted by itinerant truck drivers having a quickie along their route. It was supposed to start off between males, but wasn’t long before it showed up in females.
The desire for a short break results in known locations being places for prostitutes to wait. I saw in Italy a truck driver hop down, near a roundabout, leave his engine running, and then back again and drive off, and a prostitute then waiting at the roadside. So I think that it could be surmised that sex would have taken place, and perhaps a pee after, a relief stop.
Well, the big example is the Spanish flu 1918, which was partially related to troop movements and civilian relocations from late WW1.
Basically, travel networks affect how quickly a disease spreads geographically. Economic or war refugees (or refugees from the disease itself in an established epidemic), standard migration, and the close quarters of travel and shared facilities increase transmission, and population density increases opportunities for transmission, too.
ISTR that the first few ebola outbreaks within local populations were in relatively isolated areas, so could burn themselves out more quickly.
As a rule of thumb, once you hit a city or traffic route, you need stronger artificial controls, education, and quarantine efforts. The NZ Health Act, for example, gives the Health minister dictatorial powers that would make CERA-brownlee cum at the thought.
The passing time might have generated a really virulent strain?
The Guardian ran a Q and A with one of the researchers who identified Ebola in 1976 in which he was asked about it becoming more infectious through mutation:
‘Yes, that really is the apocalyptic scenario. Humans are actually just an accidental host for the virus, and not a good one. From the perspective of a virus, it isn’t desirable for its host, within which the pathogen hopes to multiply, to die so quickly. It would be much better for the virus to allow us to stay alive longer.
Could the virus suddenly change itself such that it could be spread through the air?
‘Like measles, you mean? Luckily that is extremely unlikely. But a mutation that would allow Ebola patients to live a couple of weeks longer is certainly possible and would be advantageous for the virus.
Hi Tracey, to be honest I struggle with this kind of comment, which I see all the time for instance on Twitter. To me it represents a misunderstanding of both risk and uncertainty. The format is “x phenomena kills more people a year than Ebola ever has in its history.”
This is usually true as well, given that in its known history Ebola has killed only a few thousand people.
The difference is this – things like influenza or traffic accidents or gun violence in the USA are a very well described, thoroughly understood, self limiting phenomena which have been observed over long periods of time.
None of these descriptions match what is happening now re: ebola.
I am referring to the media fixation Cv. When we are not being kept in fear by media focus on killings, murder, car accidents and acts of war, we are kept cringing for fear of our own bodies.
Of course have strategies to deal with Ebola… Develop vaccines… But blast it in every paper news and radio report? Nah its just a continuation of keep the sheeple fearful. Its the fear de jour.
I agree with your general point and usually I would back it 100% as I saw the media/govt nonsense around swine flu etc.
However I understand the mathematical power of exponential growth in infections with an ebola R0 infection rate currently rated at ~1.75 (ea infected person is currently infecting 1.75 more) and until that comes down much closer to 1.0 (or of course ideally less than 1.0), the western world will have a serious problem within the next 6 months.
Currently, the number of cases is doubling every 3 weeks.
To stop this outbreak, more needs to be done to implement – on a much larger scale – well-known protective and preventive measures. Abundant evidence has documented their effectiveness
I don’t think we can trust our governments to run any real hazardous disease outbreak to the necessary level. In the USA he private profit approach will prevent whole-hearted effort there and then worries about affordability by states, especially the poorer ones, when viewing the lists of tasks government needs to do, also what private companies need to do and the bills that the patients and their family will have to face.
USA citizen Michael Katakis spoke to Wallace Chapman on Sunday 6th about his despair of the USA. He quotes the venality of the country there in a tale relating to his wife’s hospitalisation. While she was home recovering the hospital billing department phoned and asked when they could expect payment for $1200 that was outstanding. He explained that the insurance company had advised that $75,000 had been paid, and that a further $80,000 was pending. The clerk explained the bill was for doctors’ fees, and they were separate from the hospital fees paid by the insurance company. This was after paying $1,000 a month for a health insurance cover, and a $10,000 excess on hospital charges. So he had to manage finding $27,000 before the company would agree to cover them. He also had to sell most of their goods to cover all the costs including living costs before his wife eventually died.
Michael Katakis – Traveller ( 22′ 31″ ) Sunday, 6.10.2014 http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday
In NZ we have hospitals under stress with managers with a grab bag of practices they can use to appear to be managing efficiently which includes employing contractors for ‘short’ periods instead of having permanent staff doing the work for less. At present we have doctors leaving a lower south island hospital because they can’t practice effectively and are under budget pressure all the time. The managerial style that sets targets and controls from above, rather than working with the doctors and staff is a barrier to efficiency and effectiveness.
This radionz piece refers to a debit sum of $16 million at the Southern District Health Board. http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/regional/256398/%27changes-needed%27-at-southern-dhb
At the end related pieces with a list of woes:
DHB takes dispute to Serious Fraud Office
Ryall credits targets for stable ship
Southern DHB deficit over $15m
DHB’s funding below inflation – Labour
DHB: crackdown won’t affect care
In 2006 Swann an IT professional at the Otago DHB was charged with fraud of $16 million. What’s the bet that this huge cost is still weighing down the unfortunate hospital board ever since…. Further details of an alleged $16.9 million fraud at the Otago District Health Board were revealed in Parliament yesterday.
Mr Ryall told Parliament that Swann had bought a 50m former marine research vessel in Hawaii and refitted it to be a luxury launch.
The Otago Daily Times recently reported that the board was seeking to recover its losses through a High Court civil claim, which names Swann and 19 other defendants and lawyers, trustees, company directors and companies….
Swann served 1 month in prison for each $300K he defrauded society. Sounds like a sweetheart deal compared to what people might get for stealing a car or pinching $10,000 from their employer.
Colonial Rawshark
Did you know that or just know where to look it up? You are so well informed. Are you a …savant or have a photogenic/graphic memory? Or just lay newspapers on the floor and soak up facts through your soles??
Tell the Kurdish people that Phillip, that their innocence is not worth protecting. As the U S solutionis not palatable prey tell what is a more acceptable solution ?especially given the lack of the UN’s ability to solve any conflict or to successfully take any action against any leaders in regard to genocide or crimes against humanity.
All well meaning comments. And the Peshmerga would be able to hold off ISIS no problem if ISIS weren’t now equipped with the latest in US armour and artillery. And supported by many many Sunni ex-Iraqi Forces only recently trained up by the USA.
Whilst Isis have acquired equipment from the army I would expect the Turkish army to be better trained & better equiped than this group.
The Isis forces would be exposed if they do face the turkishy army around Kobani, which to me looks likely would take a more traditional & conventional battle, with air support working in co ordination with a ground force attack.
Unfortunately in such cases there is almost the justification othat the means of addressing such conflicts as by viewing the response by ” the lesser of 2 evils”. The problem I see is that “our” tradional view that of winning a conflict are not relevant in today’s world, or that those in the US even have an idea of what a successful outcome is
Yes the Kobani battle could be won by a major mobilisation of Turkish forces. But the Turks are unlikely to do that because they see what is happening there as a fortuitous case of ISIS taking out a long standing enemy for them, the Kurds.
Whilst the U.S. have their problems in their Wild West , john Wayne gun ho attitude, unfortunately with all their short commings, there appear no other alternatives, as what other confederation is willing to enter to attempt to halt any crimes against humanity ? the UN ha straditionally been lacking
As Obama does not confide with me as to his strategy and what outcomes he desires I cannot comment as to why the U.S. allowed the Syrian situation, perhaps they were unwilling to enter Syrian territory for obvious reasons.
Should the Isis issue be solved the Kurds situation will not have progressed and they will continue to be a culture persecuted 🙁
..mind you..going on parkers/labours ‘consent’ to this plan..they wd have been no different to key..
Parker’s statements remind me of the kind that a junior policy analyst would draft, that of a rambling weather-vane type which would be pointing there, pointing here, pointing somewhere in between, actually going nowhere and just pointing out as many directions as possible while rotating in the same spot.
AHH no P U you went off track there. Putting word in my mouth and claiming I had a pro USA stance. That was not in my comment at all. I think you owe me an apology for that.
perhaps I should have been clearer. I did not mention the war mongering USA and I agree with you on them. But and it’s a big but, Isis is a total different kettle of bad.
I only want ISIS wiped out to the last man if possible.
As for bush and Blair I’m still waiting for the Haig to charge them., as for the USA the people for the most part are ok, there political structure is not. Won’t delve into it I suspect you know as much as I do or more on that score regarding military manufacturing and the links to government.
In Albania, My Grandfather pre Hoxha was a top ranking general for King Zog,
He’s famous there so are my family for it, so am I. So much so the then President wanted to meet the son of the son of him.
During WW2 he led the Bali Kombatar fighting 3 invaders the Italians, the Germans, and later hoxha’s communists, My whole family was eventually after a 1 month fight from their castle estate, finally defeated by a bomb blowing the castle doors off.
Then they shot all of them that we’re of age, I’ve met all the survivors 8 years ago, as they had been looking for my father who escaped, but found me as he passed away years ago, reunited I found a shocking story.
The things they did to the survivors was so shocking I havn’t the time to tell you.
So when you don’t want to help, you think it’s not your business, you end up leaving REAL stories of REAL atrocities.
I care, I care a lot about all people, what I don’t care about, is people with no empathy what so fucking ever for the plight of others.
I have a Albanian doco on what happened as told by grandfathers daughter, my fathers, sister, she retells the story of their final stand, what they did to her would shake your foundations.
If you ever want to see it i’ll get it translated for you. At my cost, eventually when I get a pay rise.
Sometimes you have to fight for democracy, the way things are going we may need to fight here.
So harden up and grow a pair. Peace has to be fought for sometimes.
I’m happy to see ISIS wiped out – but sending troups over there may not help at all. ISIS is the renamed alquaeda in iraq which only exists as a significant issue because the west decided to go over there and blow stuff up in the first place.
Beheadings are bad – but they are only beheading these people on videos to ask you to come and bomb them. (and to get advertising so that they can recruit more soldiers). They need the bombing to distract the people from the fact that they can’t run the country and that they are made up largely of foreign invaders.
So to state phil’s point in pragmatic terms – will sending troups make the situation better or worse? So far it has made it worse.
Its hard to see how more killing will help but doing nothing while people are executed and people are killed in their homes from the various bombings around the world will help either.
More killing has not proven successful to date…
We tried to kill taleban… Then we tried to kill al quaeda and now IS has sprung up…. So more killing doesnt solve the problem.
Parker is talking like cullen, who would have been at home in national.
FFS grow a pair. On this I’m right your feeble don’t start another war , blow what I said all out of proportions is a joke.
Far out, they say there’s infighting amongst lefts, well all you lot do is argue for the sake of it sometimes. You lot like nothing more than rounding on people and I’ve had a hard day so fucking shut up.
If your family was about to be wiped out , your girls sold to some fighter for sex, and told to convert or die, or you had to run away, you’d be wanting some fucking help to.
The optimal strategy would be to mostly leave them be. If necessary use defensive airstrikes to prevent expansion at the periphery. Otherwise, leave them alone and the people who they purport to rule will get tired of them in no time or the movement will split. Intervention just gives them what they want – foreign devils to blame everything on.
…and Iraq was chock full of weapons of mass destruction.
How can you fall for it every time?
The problem with using biological agents is that at least some the people delivering them typically don’t want to be infected themselves. Given the biosecurity needed for this and the indiscriminate nature of the weapon, such bioweapons are really a non-starter.
The same goes for chemical weapons. Terrorists don’t need ISIS to supply them as they can make them themselves as the Aum Supreme Truth cult did. The problem with chemical weapons is that they aren’t suited for terrorism. The Aum cult would have killed far more people with a couple of nail bombs than it did with its home made nerve gas. Gas is a battlefield weapon for use against unprotected mass infantry formations (which is why Saddam had it). It’s next to useless as a weapon of terror.
This is all talk. Terrorists don’t use these weapons because they don’t work. They’ve tried before, and in the end you are better off using conventional weapons.
They did seem to be talking about biological weapons in relatively enclosed places for the distribution, not chemical weapons on a battlefield.
In terms of delivering them by people who don’t want to be infected these groups don’t seem to have much trouble getting enough people to be suicide bombers to cause a lot of trouble. The four planes involved in 9/11 had about 20 al Qaeda people involved who were by definition suicide forces. The didn’t have any trouble finding them did they?
The West has played its part in cultivating new generations of extremists in the middle east. Best to change course, don’t you think.
BTW in terms of casualties, the west has killed 1,000x more Muslims in middle eastern countries than Muslims have killed westerners in western countries.
They did seem to be talking about biological weapons in relatively enclosed places for the distribution, not chemical weapons on a battlefield. In terms of delivering them by people who don’t want to be infected these groups don’t seem to have much trouble getting enough people to be suicide bombers to cause a lot of trouble. The four planes involved in 9/11 had about 20 al Qaeda people involved who were by definition suicide forces. The didn’t have any trouble finding them did they?
If you were to successfully create an epidemic of bubonic plague in Britain or the United States, you would have to be able to do it on a scale that would render their first world health systems ineffective at responding to infections. But if their containment systems fail to cope, then it would automatically become a worldwide epidemic that would affect the poorer countries where the terrorists come from far worse than the targets. That makes no sense given the goals of groups like IS.
You also need to securely transport the biological agents to the target area and find a way to release them that will be effective. This is really hard to do. Chemical weapons have to be released on a grand scale to work (such as Saddam’s artillery barrages against Iranian infantry). Biological agents need a similarly wide spread to be effective if they’re ever going to be, and terrorists don’t have that luxury.
If chemical and biological weapons were of any use, the major powers would spend a lot of money on them. They don’t. They buy nukes, because nukes work. As for terrorists getting hold of a nuke. The very idea is risible.
1. There is documentation missing from the 9/11 investigation – which many suspect, (including the us military, which is not a bastion of left wingers by the way) points the finger at Saudi Arabia.
2. The problem with blaming al Qaeda was always the lack of technical ability. Yes al Qaeda were good at fight a guerrilla war, with people willing to die, but they lacked the skills to coordinate what we call 9/11. I:E- Piloting and logistical skill set to perform said attacks. Now go back to point 1.
So the question for me, is why do we want to fight a rag bag bunch of criminals? When there is a rogue state, which is supposed to be our allie, who attacked our other supposed allie?
We look to be entering a perpetual state of war economy, to prop up a failing economic system. Rather than look at the underlying social and economic issues.
Mr Ure, I hope you also want ISIS wiped out. Do you? Do you?
Or are you a secret supporter of these criminals? Maybe your hatred of America is even bigger.
@ Mr Ure: your “reply” does not answer my questions: are you for or against ISIS?
So, you believe this is a “muslim sectarian war” that poses no risk to the rest of the world. Incredible!
Maybe your anti-West position is supported by other reasons unknown to the readers.
Which makes me just a little suspicious that Clean power is some sort of SIS Black Ops type.
His (or her – probably his) framing of the issue as “Are you for or against ISIS” reminds me very much of an Israeli apologist called Hans who used to inflict various gotcha-style propaganda/rhetorical strategies on unsuspecting participants in The New Statesman discussion threads a few years ago (so much so that I used to refer to him as Hasbara Hans).***
Whenever people were discussing an article / opinion piece on Israel’s bombing or starvation of Gaza, dear old Hans would pop up to ask everyone whether they were For or Against the Evil Hamas. A very clear propaganda technique.
A year or two back, we all heard about SIS black ops, aiming to sew dissention on Left-leaning Blogs (although you’d have to wonder why they bother, there’s enough in-fighting going on as it is). Impossible to be sure, but there’s just a slight whiff of trouble-making underlying Clean power’s comments (taken collectively) since he suddenly turned up here in April.
He’s mainly focussed on making anti-Cunliffe comments (arguing the need for a leadership change 3 months out from the election and, ironically enough, accusing Cunliffe of sewing dissention in the Party) and anti-Hager comments as well as accusing Matt McCarten of being a “Mana Mole”, attacking sections of the Labour Party as representing “Left-wing extremism” and numerous comments on The Greens’ alleged “insanity”, suggesting Len Brown will go down in history as a philanderer and an incompetent, while pushing the Tory meme that Labour risks becoming a minor component of the Opposition after the 2014 Election. All the while playing the role of concerned Labour supporter.
I can’t help but notice a few signs of trying to create dissention – attacking Cunliffe and his advisors and demanding he stand down before this years Election, attacking the Left, but at the same time also making numerous comments blaming the ABCs for various things and attacking Mallard and King – before going on to change his tune somewhat after the Election (June 18: “The dirty hands of King and Mallard are all over this” / Sep 30 “Mallard knows loyalty to no one” / October 4 on Mallard “It seems the Labour Party and his voters love the man !”)
Clean power may just be a Right-leaning Labour bloke who advocates for Shane Jones one minute, then attacks Jones’s ABC faction the next, but I’ll be keeping an eye out for any more Hasbara-style techniques.
***Hasbara = Various Propaganda techniques / Rhetorical strategies that Israel’s supporters in the West are expected to carry out on social media and in the MSM (letters to the Editor etc) on behalf of Israel.
swordfish 3.31
Interesting.
While we are thinking of that sainted country – 1 June 2014 Israel renews restrictions on nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu
Despite serving 18 years in prison, including 11 in solitary confinement, Vanunu is forbidden from traveling and speaking to the media. Recently, he was denied a permit to speak before the British Parliament, following an invitation by 54 MPs. http://972mag.com/israel-to-renew-restrictions-on-nuclear-whistleblower-mordechai-vanunu/91564/
@ clean power
Why don’t you go and fight in the war. Offer yourself to the forces when they decide to go and fight in the Middle East. Your motto – have convictions, will fight and die and kill for them. And this feeling of yours will remain whether it is helpful to solving the problems and bringing world peace or not. It is a feeling, it is not real thought or understanding of the problem and the disaster unfolding. People like you don’t make me feel safer from menace, you just increase it.
..i have lived there..new york is my favourite city..
..i think americans are the most open/friendly people in the world..(nz’ers cd learn a thing or two from them in that area..tight-lipped little ‘i don’t know you!’s that we are..)
..like everyone else i am steeped in american culture/music etc..
..i do however admit to ‘hating’ their blood-thirsty/cynical abuses of their global-power..
But Isis are not Mulsim, I have many Muslim family in Albania, I’m non religious. However true Muslims would never do this sort of thing. Isis have earned their wiping out. Islamic state my arse.
The US defended Saudia Arabia and pushed them back. Bush senior had the decency to halt there, but along came the war monger Bush Jnr with an agenda like I’d not seen in a while. I reiterate Bush Jnr and Blair should be done at the Haig.
“..can we conclude you are just a serial war-monger..?..easily swayed/driven to blood-lust..?..”
Knowing how you like to bang on about an issue when you think it has mileage, it’s not all about the deaths of 5 westerners.
Paraphrasing the fighting Kurdish women on TV, actively engaging isis on a daily basis in a fight for their survival, it’s ‘kill or be killed’. And they are fighting a well equipped, combat experienced, motivated ruthless murderous enemy.
You are happy to leave them to it to fend for themselves, knowing the consequences of failure are rape and slavery as bounty of war?
Maybe you don’t have enough invested to to get over being right on for the sake of it, but I support those brave women and hope they get all the protection the UN have to offer.
Quick, Clean-power, take this test. If your score is above room temperature in Fahrenheit, we might be able to explain why the situation is a little more complicated.
I suspect we won’t, though.
There should be worldwide condemnation of America and their continued intervention in other countries affairs. These invasions by the yanks leave nothing but carnage. How many times have they invaded a country, taken out a so called despot dictator, only to pull out leaving the place in ruin and creating a civil war in their wake. Look at Sadam and the weapons of mass destruction nonsense, and the US backed tooling up of Bin Ladin, only for him too turn on them. Now this latest mess in Syria where they once supported the former leader to the tune of billions, only too take him out.
The whole American economy revolves around their war machine where 1 in 5 (last time I looked) jobs are military/arms related.
Your right Phil, our involvement does make us a very likely target for some nasty terrorist attack. What on earth Key thinks he is doing by telling the World “Our SIS will have a role like identifying targets for drone strikes and bombing missions.”
Most of us shudder to think if that happens we can expect to be a target, bringing the doors wide open for Uncle Sam to setup shop here, Key-National are already smoothing the way by the looks of our likely involvement.
“.. How many times have they invaded a country, taken out a so called despot dictator, only to pull out leaving the place in ruin and creating a civil war in their wake..”
..that..or similar..over 50 times since the end of the second world war..(57 ..i think..)
..each of them of course ..black and white battles of ‘good’ against ‘evil’…eh..?
Be careful what you ask for Skinny. Theres a small but growing group in the US who seem to think the way forward is to pull all the US troops home, leave the Middle East to sort its own crap, and use the newly home troops to actually enforce their border with Mexico, to upgrade the war on drugs, and evict all the non residents from the US, and then seal their borders. No money for illegals, no medical help for illegals – the only help they would get was to get them back to their home country.
And change the rules and get the oil out of Alaska and live independent of the rest of the world. And invite the UN head office to go to somewhere nice like Somlia.
Hey 50 years of that and the USA would be like an upsized Japan. 🙂
As one wag said recently “why spend all that money fighting “them” in the Middle East and having them hate us, when we can pull out and do nothing and they can still hate us for free”
you mean 5-6 westeners don’t you Phillip? Syrians and Iraqis are people too although their (mass) executions don’t get the headlines. IS are bad guys. However, the worst guys, Bush/Blair et al started this whole mess. National wanted a piece of that too. Thank God Helen had the sense to keep us out of it.
I don’t know what the answer to the problems in Iraq and Syria are, but given what Western military interventions have achieved in that region in the past, I’m pretty sure it’s not sending troops. The problems there now are happening on a stage mounted by the US and UK, and they have no ideas of doing anything except what hasn’t worked in the past.
Israeli atrocities in Gaza were far worse. Why didn’t the US bomb Tel Aviv, if that’s the way to stop vicious extremists?
Ex Wall Street banker John Key is very keen to rush us into the latest round of murderous blood letting in the Middle East.
Have you wondered why?
Just listen in horror as an outraged John Key delivers a screaming skull pro war speech in 2003, to know.
“Our traditional allies are in there, (in this agreement). We, in our name are missing.
“MIA, just like it was in the war in Iraq. Missing.
“And this country will… This country will pay for that, don’t you worry about that. Don’t you worry about that!
“There will be no free trade arrangement here in New Zealand.
“There will be one thing we won’t have to worry about, that is container ships going to America, because there will none of them leaving from out of this country, because there will no free trade arrangement……”
John Key, Parliament, 2003
In 2003 in parliament on behalf of his US masters John Key impotently screams and threatens trade sanctions against New Zealand to force us into war. (Threats that were never carried out).
In a nightmarish reversal we now have this disgusting quisling in charge.
John Key’s 2003l Hitler like rant in support of war and demands that we submit to his hollow threats of trade sanctions, should never be forgotten.
How many more New Zealand families would be mourning their war dead now if we had given in to this traitor’s threats.
And what for?
After ten years of incessant war and ten New Zealand dead, Iraq and Afghanistan are worse than ever.
[lprent: I am not sure why you are getting put in auto-moderation all of the time. I suspect the ‘ in O’Dea. It will probably be the weekend before I can check. ]
If Al Qaeda are the bad guys, why is the U.S. arming them?
And is the A.P. a news organisation or a propaganda arm of the government?
In the 1980s the United States funded and supported the fanatics who became Al Qaeda. Now it’s bombing them AND arming them at the same time. The media, loyal and unquestioning as ever, are solidly in behind the Obama regime on this. Not only the bloodthirsty chickenhawk outlets like Fox News, but virtually all the media. The following Associated Press article is typical of the unquestioning support for whatever the government does. I’ve highlighted the first few examples of odious hypocrisy in bold, italicised type…..
Obama praises House vote on arming Syrian rebels
by JOSH LEDERMAN and DARLENE SUPERVILLE, 17 September 2014
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama praised a House vote Wednesday granting him authority for the U.S. military to train and arm moderate Syrian rebels, calling it an important step toward confronting the Islamic State group.
The Republican-controlled House voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to authorize the program. Final approval in the Senate was expected Thursday.
Obama said in a statement that the House vote shows there’s bipartisan support for a critical component of his strategy to confront Islamic State extremists, who have seized territory in Iraq and Syria. He said the training won’t be conducted in Syria and U.S. military personnel won’t be on the ground in Syria as part of the program, adding that the U.S. has learned from fighting al-Qaida that it’s better to use America’s capabilities to help partners on the ground defend themselves.
At a White House picnic later Wednesday for members of Congress and their families, Obama singled out House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for helping shepherd the legislation quickly through the House. He said the U.S. had gone through a difficult time recently with terrorist attacks and the financial crisis, but said the House vote showed that “when it comes to America’s national security, America is united.”
Seeking to build on the brief moment of bipartisanship, Obama said if Republicans and Democrats can come together over the Islamic State threat, there’s no doubt they can work together to improve schools, cure diseases and rebuild the nation’s infrastructure.
Won’t be long before he calls on his BFF John Key to provide help. Here we go again. Will we never learn.
Might be a good time to go watch the great Bobby Darin and what he had to say about war
If data is not property WTF were the plods looking for when they turned Hager over?.
.
In a decision released by the court today, it concluded the convictions should be quashed.
“We conclude that the convictions entered in the District Court should be quashed, but only on the ground conceded by the Crown, namely that computer data is not ‘property’ as defined.
“Having rejected all other grounds of appeal, it is now necessary for us to address the Crown’s submission that we should substitute convictions based on obtaining a ‘benefit’.”
However, the court said it would not enter substitute convictions.
“We consider the grounds for substituting new verdicts are not met in the present case.”
It looks like property needs to be redefined in the statutes. If the data had been in written form and he’d photocopied it, would that have been property?
I’m not going to cry any tears for TAG oil. In fact I wish he’d wiped their database, but this troubles me. It opens a whole can of worms about IP.
Australian couple tell Pope about joys of sex etc.
A good article for a paradigm shift, understanding and enlightenment in the catholic church boldly spearheaded by the present pope. A good thought provoking article. Includes the homosexuality issue.
That news about Alex Sweeney Auckland identity, owing millions in tax. Now I find his name is spelt Alex Swny or Swyney. or something. The obvious answer to the charge here is that he has been paying his tax correctly, under his peculiarly spelt name. It will be just an administrative error . The credit has gone to the normally-spelled name.
So all you people called Smth and Brwn and Hne had better check.
Textor is actually in defence mode. It was Ev that was in right wing attack mode in her weird post that extrapolated Textor’s part time gig writing for an specialist Aussie business mag being a sign that he totally controls Fairfax in NZ. Like it or not, Textor had her pinned exactly right when he suggested she was probably into chemtrails etc. And yes, Ev, you are batshit crazy, but then, you already knew that, eh?
Ha ha! Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after Ev! While you’re probably correct that Textor already knew she was a flake, he wouldn’t need a file. Ev’s home page is chock fulla nuts, so he would have seen that when he read the original half arsed story.
Batshit, just a point of perspective, if She’s batshit , key and English are barking mad and howling at the moon. As for Textor. just another bully who if confronted would run away from the repercussions of his crap like any other bully.
but Putake, since I’m sure your very close to him tell him to bring the shit to my door if he’s got the kahuna’s. but no eh? he sends dogs like you to defend him. Tiny balls.
Adobe’s Digital Editions 4 e-reader gathers user’s content and metadata and transmits it in the clear back to Adobe.
My source told me, and I can confirm, that Adobe is tracking users in the app and uploading the data to their servers. (Adobe was contacted in advance of publication, but declined to respond.)
And just to be clear, I have seen this happen, and I can also tell you that Benjamin Daniel Mussler, the security researcher who found the security hole on Amazon.com, has also tested this at my request and saw it with his own eyes.
Adobe is gathering data on the ebooks that have been opened, which pages were read, and in what order. All of this data, including the title, publisher, and other metadata for the book is being sent to Adobe’s server in clear text.
I am not joking; Adobe is not only logging what users are doing, they’re also sending those logs to their servers in such a way that anyone running one of the servers in between can listen in and know everything,
I’m reading activist Margaret Thorns book Stick Out Keep Left. The great days of Labour and the thoughts of an intelligent dedicated couple serving their fellows.
A bit about the heady Labour days of 1920s and 1930s. Looking back, the enormous party propaganda…is hardly believable. Radio broadcasting had not yet arrived and big crowds would gather in halls and on street corners….The Empress Theatre could be filled on Sunday nights easily, and there was a plethora of capable and well-informed speakers. The Labour Party headquarters at 80 Manners Street was the scene of…lectures, debates, drama classes, socials and dances….
We watched as Ramsay MacDonald formed a Labour Government in London in 1924 but the same pattern of post-war unemployment and declining prices prevailed, and no easement could come from a government without real power. Misery deepened… perhaps deepest of all in Germany. We read Maynard Keynes’s Economic Consequences of the Peace. That startled the horses.
Why high tax rates have a negative effect on jobs and real wages, and tend to lower productivity, which is essential if wages are to rise.
Now let see, I have just become CEO of widget corp, and I decide to sell off my best dividend producing assets, downsize my service delivery, and raise more of my tax revenue from the poorer stockholders while giving the top few shareholders a huge bonus. Sure, it looks like a tax cut to the wealthiest, but was anything but.
Our economy will continue to fail when people like Roger Douglas fail to see what happened right before their eyes, the massive reallocation of wealth from middle and lower NZ to the upper few. Strangely most of the TV medai who would have seen the tax cut boost their take home pay. You know their names, Henry, Campbell..
You see productivity is a problem, and it starts with the productivity of our media to talk truth to power. That Key’s legacy of shorting us all, will increasingly cause pain across the NZ economy and into every household.
Pro-weed party gets over twice votes that United Future got! Are we in Israel now? Dunne becomes minister, most outspoken minister in favor of industrial highs which would directly compete with natural weed. Imagine that, say, Pepsi being banned and more voters voting Pepsi yet Mr Industrial Coke gets a ministerial position.
Greens gain one MP in final count, back to 14. Labour lost two MPs from last election. Espom still has three MPs, Seymour, Goldsmith and Genter. And nobody in Labour has a clue about how MMP works, since most Labour constituencies have just one member of parliament, and they like it that way.
The Herald always writes headings like that
“PM : NZ won’t be a target.”
Well if Key says so, it must be right.
Go back to sleep New Zealand……The Block is on TV
I haven’t seen any discussion about the Te Tai Tokerau judicial recount, but then again I may have missed it (as I’ve mainly had TS open in a background tab while concentrating on other things rather than musing over every comment these last few days). I’m just surprised that it’s not Waiariki & Ikaroa-Rāwhiti (or in fact; all the Māori electorates), as well – seeing as the MANA movement has shown itself willing to question the methods of those employed by the Electoral Commission. I would have expected Ōhāriu too, but that’s down to Labour or the GP (rather than the IMPs who stood no candidate in that electorate).
“I have applied for a judicial recount of the votes in the Tai Tokerau election because it is one step in trying to restore credibility to the electoral process in the north, and, I suspect, in all other Maori electorates as well” said MANA leader Hone Harawira.
“Irrespective of whether the recount changes the result of the election in Te Tai Tokerau, these issues need to be independently examined and substantial improvements made ahead of the next election to ensure our people’s basic rights are respected and their participation in the democratic process is encouraged and affirmed.”
Being predicted by Davis (and thus his associates), there may not be much evidence left to find in Te Tai Tokerau; other electorates may have been less well scrubbed. But this is the only electorate that I know of that is facing even moderately independent scrutiny. Scrutineers were, in my experience, limited in the actual amount of scrutiny they could do. This recount is still in the “electorate’s returning office in Auckland”, but at least this time; “overseen by District Court Judge Tom Broadmore”: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11338559
I’ve read stuff on Mana’s FB pages about it. It doesn’t seem designed to get Hone a seat, not this time around anyway. What Mana is concerned about is the way Maori voters have been treated by electorate officials in the north. People were told they couldn’t vote in Whangarei and had to go to Waipu, for example. It’s all anecdotal at the moment, but it looks like a lot of rubbish went on. It reminds me of the lengths they go to in the US and A to stop minorities voting. If correct, the stories are extremely concerning. As someone who lived in Whangarei until I was 15, they ring true.
“I agree entirely with Michelle.”
The dismal double act of Boag and Edwards is back. The Panel, Radio NZ National, Tuesday 8 October 2014
Jim Mora, Michelle Boag, Brian Edwards, Zara Potts
Brian Edwards is like Josie Pagani, Deborah Mahuta Coyle and Mike Williams: he says he’s a Labour supporter, but he’s more concerned about currying favor with whatever scowling right winger happens to be in the vicinity. This afternoon, the scowling right winger was the National Party power-broker—and mortal enemy of the Slater faction—Michelle Boag.
Edwards seems bewitched and bewildered by the charms of the Prime Minister, and he’s not shy about expressing just how much he admires him…..
BRIAN EDWARDS: Cundliffe’s performance is Shakespearian, you know. It’s big, grand, over the top. His interruptions of the Prime Minister led to Hosking having to intervene, and say “David you’re shouting.” The adjudicator had to stop him interrupting. And people DON’T LIKE THAT. MICHELLE BOAG:[approvingly] Ex-ACT-ly! BRIAN EDWARDS: Whereas John Key, on the other hand, is someone I’d be happy to have a beer with. MICHELLE BOAG: I can arrange that for you. BRIAN EDWARDS: Ha ha ha ha ha! But Key is easy and relaxed. The reality of television is that there are two people talking quietly in a studio. It’s an intimate medium.
Later on….
MICHELLE BOAG: Auckland Council should sell off its assets, such as the Ports of Auckland. BRIAN EDWARDS: I agree. MICHELLE BOAG: It should cease this ideological opposition to selling off assets. JIM MORA: Brian, what do you think? BRIAN EDWARDS: I agree entirely with Michelle.
Perhaps the nadir of the program came in the course of a learned discussion about ISIS, just after Michelle Boag called it “totally evil” and averred: “These people don’t UNDERSTAND democracy like we do.” Mora paused for effect, then earnestly asked Professor Al Gillespie to answer the sort of moronic question that usually gets aired on Rupert Murdoch’s barking mad Fox News….
JIM MORA:[with utmost gravitas] Are we looking at a great clash of civilizations?
Or WAS it the nadir? Incredibly, Mora—or his producer—seems determined to make this show even lighter, even more trivial than what you hear on NewstalkZBigot. Just before the end of the show, Jim Mora raised the subject of tonight’s total eclipse (the “Blood Moon”). To learnedly discuss this, he wheeled on an astrologer, Don Murray.
Edwards exercised his trademark sarcasm against Murray for a while, but clearly his heart was not in it.
Having just read the latest post on NRT’s blog I expect him to come out shortly announcing that the ACT party leader during the election has been dreadfully maligned and the NRT s going to vote ACT in future! http://norightturn.blogspot.co.nz/
RNZ The Panel this afternoon – good to hear the bossy, somewhat bawling Michelle Boag forthrightly corrected on her claim (apparently a significant factor in first home buyers’ housing difficulties) – “All these young couples expect to be able to get their first home in Herne Bay……” or some such throwaway rubbish. What ???
So that’d be why there aren’t any busy high street real estate agencies south of Onehunga then ?
Guest contributor Mark Graham (name?)…….an apparently qualified voice on the topic…….”No Michelle, that’s just not correct”. The dear lady chose not to argue.
Such contemptibly dishonest spin from the National Party corner. Apparently……as long as you say ‘something’, however patently stupid…….lo, no problem. Or if undeniably there remains a problem – “Well, it’s their own fault !”
And then she waxes lyrical about “Mang-a-ree Bridge” as fertile ground for the would-be home buyer. Oh really madam ? Not to dis’ Mangere Bridge at all but has she ever been there ? And has she ever seen current prices there ?
Abbott in Australia is reported as having been angry that some Muslims are visiting and holding meetings critical of the US intervention. Apparently he calls it hate speech.
I hope that criticism, even strong criticism, isn’t inflated to meet the hyperbole about terrorism.
The great majority of the New Zealand public saw the entire Dirty Politics prices, and decided that it was not sufficiently important to alter their vote.
We need to accept that.
Not saying it will be easy.
National now have a further term to permanently install a new level of ethics, legal tests for slander, journalistic intimidation, renew every single public sector board to tilt governance their way for a generation, instal favorable judges for decades, and crushing the remaining parliamentary opposition.
If we want an alternative government to form, it will include winning – and including people like Nash – despite all of that.
The great majority of the New Zealand public saw Key’s description of Dirty POlitics as a left wing smear campaign, and thinks Dirty Politics is when Labour does something wrong. The serious stuff of the inquiries has yet to happen. When it does, Nash will be toast.
I think the dirty politics thing did have some impact – just it was not enough to change most people’s votes because people were already going to vote right. It instead just made them want to vote NZfirst and Conservatives in the same way that a major labour scandal of corruption would probably not result in a huge defection to National (but might result in a significant defection to green).
So I think one can say the public was taking it seriously and yet it not make a significant difference in the election due to other more significant factors.
Don’t like the look of all those mouthful of white teeth on Nash – couldn’t be rawshark could it. And I think Bomber is concentrating on Labour getting onto the government benches. I don’t want a new crop of right-wing oriented types carrying forward the soiled red banner worn down since 1984.
Can’t we actually get a crop of young Labour guys and girls who are involved in the politics and get trained and would have been thoroughly vetted? And then we will have some newcomers with broad interests and background coming forward. If it already happens, make it better.
I suspect that most NZ politicians have an ugly side where they have sacrificed ethics for political progress in some sense.
Overseas they talk about how if you were ethically clean you could never even get off the ground in politics. Maybe it isn’t quite as bad here but I’m sure it still applies to an extent
The problem is that if you turn on your advocates for this, you will cripple your own pool of advocates (which is relevant if one considers Nash an advocate of their general position).
We need this whole collective mind to start debating what an effective and coherent opposition would look like. The opposition is too scattered to do it themselves.
The goal is an alternative government. This is not going to be evident in Parliament until either late this term or early the next one, because they’re still reeling from the evident distance from attaining power.
So absent anyone else able to span the divides, we here are the default ground for thinking through an alternative government.
Personally I would like to see more post from MPs from Labour, the Greens, and NZFirst. Could the Moderators reach out to the parties to do this?
I have yet to hear how the left, and labour in particular intend countering two track strategy and cult key. Until that is addressed it wont matter who leads, the left wont be back in power til national shoots itself through the heart.
I imagine the labour politicians have a “hope he retires” strategy.
One could try ones luck with a One track Muldoon strategy I suppose. then undermine the faith of the public in politicians and then see if people will vote for the rat or the snake.
They have a precedent for corrupting, like they did Shane Jones they seem to be playing a game with this Nash fellow I’ve never heard of until recently.
Does he have a wiki page yet? Who is this Nash fellow, some National MP planted to cross the floor if Labour won?
I was reading that pathetic piece by the treacherous Roger, decided to step out to look at the moon, and then stood under the clear skies baying for blood 🙂
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Odd fact about the Broadcasting Standards Authority: for the last few years, they’ve only been upholding about 5% of complaints. Why? I think there’s a range of reasons. Generally responsible broadcasters. Dumb complaints. Complaints brought under the wrong standard. Greater adherence to broadcasters’ rights to freedom of expression in the ...
And I said, "Mama, mama, mama, why am I so alone"'Cause I can't go outside, I'm scared I might not make it homeWell I'm alive, I'm alive, but I'm sinking inIf there's anyone at home at your place, darlingWhy don't you invite me in?Don't try to feed me'Cause I've been ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ star is on the rise, having just added the Energy, Local Government and Revenue portfolios to his responsibilities - but there is nothing ambitious about the Government’s new climate targets. Photo: SuppliedLong stories short, the top six things in our political economy around housing, climate ...
It may have been a short week but there’s been no shortage of things that caught our attention. Here is some of the most interesting. This week in Greater Auckland On Tuesday Matt took a look at public transport ridership in 2024 On Thursday Connor asked some questions ...
The East Is Red: Journalists and commentators are referring to the sudden and disruptive arrival of DeepSeek as a second “Sputnik moment”. (Sputnik being the name given by the godless communists of the Soviet Union to the world’s first artificial satellite which, to the consternation and dismay of the Americans, ...
Hi,Back on inauguration day we launched a ridiculous RFK Jr. “brain worms” tee on the Webworm store, and I told you I’d be throwing my profits over to Mutual Aid LA and Rainbow Youth New Zealand. Just to show I am not full of shit, here are the receipts. I ...
The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts & talking about the week’s news with regular and special guests, including: on the week in geopolitics, including the latest from Donald Trump over Gaza and Ukraine.Health expert and author David Galler ...
In an uncompromising paper Treasury has basically told the Government that its plan for a third medical school at Waikato University is a waste of money. Furthermore, the country cannot afford it. That advice was released this week by the Treasury under the Official Information Act. And it comes as ...
Back in November, He Pou a Rangi provided the government with formal advice on the domestic contribution to our next Paris target. Not what the target should be, but what we could realistically achieve, by domestic action alone, without resorting to offshore mitigation. Their answer was startling: depending on exactly ...
Photo by Mauricio Fanfa on UnsplashKia oraCome and join us for our weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm today.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream for our chat about the week’s news with myself , plus regular guest David Patman and ...
I don't like to spend all my time complaining about our government, so let me complain about the media first.Senior journalistic Herald person Thomas Coughlan reported that Treasury replied yeah nah, wrong bro to Luxon's claim that our benighted little country has been in recession for three years.His excitement rose ...
Back in 2022, when the government was consulting internally about proactive release of cabinet papers, the SIS opposed it. The basis of their opposition was the "mosaic effect" - people being able to piece together individual pieces of innocuous public information in a way which supposedly harms "national security" (effectively: ...
With The Stroke Of A Pen:Populism, especially right-wing populism, invests all the power of an electoral/parliamentary majority in a single political leader because it no longer trusts the bona fides of the sprawling political class among whom power is traditionally dispersed. Populism eschews traditional politics, because, among populists, traditional politics ...
I’ve spent the last week writing a fairly substantial review of a recent book (“Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism: How we crushed the curve but lost the race”) by a couple of Australian academic economists on Australia’s pandemic policies and experiences. For all its limitations, there isn’t anything similar in New Zealand. ...
Mr Mojo Rising: Economic growth is possible, Christopher Luxon reassures us, but only under a government that is willing to get out of the way and let those with drive and ambition get on with it.ABOUT TWELVE KILOMETRES from the farm on the North Otago coast where I grew up stands ...
You're nearly a good laughAlmost a jokerWith your head down in the pig binSaying, 'Keep on digging.'Pig stain on your fat chinWhat do you hope to findDown in the pig mine?You're nearly a laughYou're nearly a laughBut you're really a crySongwriter: Roger Waters.NZ First - Kiwi Battlers.Say what you like ...
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. ...
Today marks a historic moment for Taranaki iwi with the passing of the Te Pire Whakatupua mō Te Kāhui Tupua/Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill in Parliament. "Today, we stand together as descendants of Taranaki, and our tūpuna, Taranaki Maunga, is now formally acknowledged by the law as a living tūpuna. ...
Labour is relieved to see Children’s Minister Karen Chhour has woken up to reality and reversed her government’s terrible decisions to cut funding from frontline service providers – temporarily. ...
It is the first week of David Seymour’s school lunch programme and already social media reports are circulating of revolting meals, late deliveries, and mislabelled packaging. ...
The Green Party says that with no-cause evictions returning from today, the move to allow landlords to end tenancies without reason plunges renters, and particularly families who rent, into insecurity and stress. ...
The Government’s move to increase speed limits substantially on dozens of stretches of rural and often undivided highways will result in more serious harm. ...
In her first announcement as Economic Growth Minister, Nicola Willis chose to loosen restrictions for digital nomads from other countries, rather than focus on everyday Kiwis. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to stand firm and work with allies to progress climate action as Donald Trump signals his intent to pull out of the Paris Climate Accords once again. ...
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 ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour has today visited Otahuhu College where the new school lunch programme has served up healthy lunches to students in the first days of the school year. “As schools open in 2025, the programme will deliver nutritious meals to around 242,000 students, every school day. On ...
Minister for Children Karen Chhour has intervened in Oranga Tamariki’s review of social service provider contracts to ensure Barnardos can continue to deliver its 0800 What’s Up hotline. “When I found out about the potential impact to this service, I asked Oranga Tamariki for an explanation. Based on the information ...
A bill to make revenue collection on imported and exported goods fairer and more effective had its first reading in Parliament, Customs Minister Casey Costello said today. “The Customs (Levies and Other Matters) Amendment Bill modernises the way in which Customs can recover the costs of services that are needed ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Department of Internal Affairs [the Department] has achieved significant progress in completing applications for New Zealand citizenship. “December 2024 saw the Department complete 5,661 citizenship applications, the most for any month in 2024. This is a 54 per cent increase compared ...
Reversals to Labour’s blanket speed limit reductions begin tonight and will be in place by 1 July, says Minister of Transport Chris Bishop. “The previous government was obsessed with slowing New Zealanders down by imposing illogical and untargeted speed limit reductions on state highways and local roads. “National campaigned on ...
Finance Minister Nicola Willis has announced Budget 2025 – the Growth Budget - will be delivered on Thursday 22 May. “This year’s Budget will drive forward the Government’s plan to grow our economy to improve the incomes of New Zealanders now and in the years ahead. “Budget 2025 will build ...
For the Government, 2025 will bring a relentless focus on unleashing the growth we need to lift incomes, strengthen local businesses and create opportunity. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon today laid out the Government’s growth agenda in his Statement to Parliament. “Just over a year ago this Government was elected by ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour welcomes students back to school with a call to raise attendance from last year. “The Government encourages all students to attend school every day because there is a clear connection between being present at school and setting yourself up for a bright future,” says Mr ...
The Government is relaxing visitor visa requirements to allow tourists to work remotely while visiting New Zealand, Economic Growth Minister Nicola Willis, Immigration Minister Erica Stanford and Tourism Minister Louise Upston say. “The change is part of the Government’s plan to unlock New Zealand’s potential by shifting the country onto ...
The opening of Kāinga Ora’s development of 134 homes in Epuni, Lower Hutt will provide much-needed social housing for Hutt families, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I’ve been a strong advocate for social housing on Kāinga Ora’s Epuni site ever since the old earthquake-prone housing was demolished in 2015. I ...
Trade and Investment Minister Todd McClay will travel to Australia today for meetings with Australian Trade Minister, Senator Don Farrell, and the Australia New Zealand Leadership Forum (ANZLF). Mr McClay recently hosted Minister Farrell in Rotorua for the annual Closer Economic Relations (CER) Trade Ministers’ meeting, where ANZLF presented on ...
A new monthly podiatry clinic has been launched today in Wairoa and will bring a much-needed service closer to home for the Wairoa community, Health Minister Simeon Brown says.“Health New Zealand has been successful in securing a podiatrist until the end of June this year to meet the needs of ...
The Judicial Conduct Commissioner has recommended a Judicial Conduct Panel be established to inquire into and report on the alleged conduct of acting District Court Judge Ema Aitken in an incident last November, Attorney-General Judith Collins said today. “I referred the matter of Judge Aitken’s alleged conduct during an incident ...
Students who need extra help with maths are set to benefit from a targeted acceleration programme that will give them more confidence in the classroom, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Last year, significant numbers of students did not meet the foundational literacy and numeracy level required to gain NCEA. To ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has announced three new diplomatic appointments. “Our diplomats play an important role in ensuring New Zealand’s interests are maintained and enhanced across the world,” Mr Peters says. “It is a pleasure to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and ...
Ki te kahore he whakakitenga, ka ngaro te Iwi – without a vision, the people will perish. The Government has achieved its target to reduce the number of households in emergency housing motels by 75 per cent five years early, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. The number of households ...
The opening of Palmerston North’s biggest social housing development will have a significant impact for whānau in need of safe, warm, dry housing, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. The minister visited the development today at North Street where a total of 50 two, three, and four-bedroom homes plus a ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced the new membership of the Public Advisory Committee on Disarmament and Arms Control (PACDAC), who will serve for a three-year term. “The Committee brings together wide-ranging expertise relevant to disarmament. We have made six new appointments to the Committee and reappointed two existing members ...
Ka nui te mihi kia koutou. Kia ora, good morning, talofa, malo e lelei, bula vinaka, da jia hao, namaste, sat sri akal, assalamu alaikum. It’s so great to be here and I’m ready and pumped for 2025. Can I start by acknowledging: Simon Bridges – CEO of the Auckland ...
The Government has unveiled a bold new initiative to position New Zealand as a premier destination for foreign direct investment (FDI) that will create higher paying jobs and grow the economy. “Invest New Zealand will streamline the investment process and provide tailored support to foreign investors, to increase capital investment ...
Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins today announced the largest reset of the New Zealand science system in more than 30 years with reforms which will boost the economy and benefit the sector. “The reforms will maximise the value of the $1.2 billion in government funding that goes into ...
Turbocharging New Zealand’s economic growth is the key to brighter days ahead for all Kiwis, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says. In the Prime Minister’s State of the Nation Speech in Auckland today, Christopher Luxon laid out the path to the prosperity that will affect all aspects of New Zealanders’ lives. ...
The latest set of accounts show the Government has successfully checked the runaway growth of public spending, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. “In the previous government’s final five months in office, public spending was almost 10 per cent higher than for the same period the previous year. “That is completely ...
The Government’s welfare reforms are delivering results with the number of people moving off benefits into work increasing year-on-year for six straight months. “There are positive signs that our welfare reset and the return consequences for job seekers who don't fulfil their obligations to prepare for or find a job ...
Jon Kroll and Aimee McCammon have been appointed to the New Zealand Film Commission Board, Arts Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “I am delighted to appoint these two new board members who will bring a wealth of industry, governance, and commercial experience to the Film Commission. “Jon Kroll has been an ...
Finance Minister Nicola Willis has hailed a drop in the domestic component of inflation, saying it increases the prospect of mortgage rate reductions and a lower cost of living for Kiwi households. Stats NZ reported today that inflation was 2.2 per cent in the year to December, the second consecutive ...
Two new appointed members and one reappointed member of the Employment Relations Authority have been announced by Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden today. “I’m pleased to announce the new appointed members Helen van Druten and Matthew Piper to the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) and welcome them to ...
A long time ago, Brian Turner wrote a poem in which, among the mountains, as he slept on a river flat … My speechless ancestors played like mice among my dreamsand he woke to the river running over my bed of stone. I have come to know that where a ...
Pacific Media Watch President Donald Trump has frozen billions of dollars around the world in aid projects, including more than $268 million allocated by Congress to support independent media and the free flow of information. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has denounced this decision, which has plunged NGOs, media outlets, and ...
Otago University professor of international relations Robert Patman says New Zealand should provide a robust response to Donald Trump's Gaza plan, and also "should stop tip-toeing" around Trump. ...
The new minister of transport has opened the door for public consultation on at least some of the speed limit changes the government said would be automatic. ...
Officially, they’re called ‘memecoins,’ but Kōura Wealth founder Rupert Carlyon says the crypto world has another name for them: ‘shitcoins’.In digital finance, that phrase is used for tokens that have no true value – in essence, a money-grab.A few days before his inauguration, US President Donald Trump launched his own ...
Madeleine Chapman reflects on the week that was. Guy Williams has made a whole show off the joke that he is a “volunteer” journalist. So getting publicly owned by David Seymour while trying to act as a journalist is a good and timely reminder not to underestimate the nuance and ...
Many of Sāmoa’s beloved dishes are the result of cultural collaboration, writes Madeleine Chapman. All photos by Jin FelletIf you ever find yourself at a barbecue in a Sāmoan home, there’s 99% chance that sapasui (chop suey) will be on the table. For the past century, sapasui has ...
The funnyman takes us through his life in television, including Jono and Ben mayhem, live Telethon flubs, and funnelling all those experiences into his new comedy Vince. There’s an inciting incident in Three’s new comedy Vince where morning television presenter Vince Walters (Jono Pryor) is visiting sick kids in hospital ...
People often claim they just want Waitangi Day to be a celebration. At Waitangi, away from the headlined political acrimony and the marae ātea, celebrating is what most people are doing. The Spinoff Essay showcases the best essayists in Aotearoa, on topics big and small. Made possible by the generous ...
Is there anything more fashionable than a Māori get together? One of the best things about Northland is that nobody cares what they look like — probably because they’re all naturally more stylish than the rest of us, famously. Māori from the Far North, especially. In 27 degree heat, wearing ...
I’ve been in love with him since last July, but it’s only now in this tepid hotel room that I find myself wondering why. The first thing he does when we arrive is smoke a cone in the bathroom – he emerges, hacking up a lung, fists thrust into his ...
MONDAY“Name,” barked a representative of the lower orders.I regarded him with a look of stern disapproval, and told him from up high, “May I remind you that I have name suppression. I shall also thank you to ask with more respect as befits a former president of the Act Party, ...
Books of Mana: 180 Māori-Authored Books of Significance, edited by Jacinta Ruru, Angela Wanhalla and Jeanette Wikaira has just been released by Otago University Press. In this essay, Books are Taonga, Jeanette Wikaira explores her personal relationship to books and their value.For me, books are taonga. The knowledge ...
Get to know Tara, our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Tara’s human for their support! Dog name: Tara Age: Two Breed: Mostly Border Collie and a little bit Catahoula Leopard dog If dog ...
Health NZ's CEO has resigned, but frontline healthworkers are sceptical that installing new leadership will make any difference to a system grappling with problems. ...
Health NZ's CEO has resigned, but frontline healthworkers are sceptical that installing new leadership will make any difference to a system grappling with problems. ...
Gail Duncan, Chairperson of the St Peter’s on Willis Social Justice Group, one of the organisations invited to submit on the Bill, says the Government’s actions are unprecedented. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amani Kasherwa, School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, The University of Queensland In late January, a rebel group that has long caused mayhem in the sprawling African nation of Democratic Republic of Congo took control of Goma, a major city of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yee-Fui Ng, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Monash University An ad falsely depicting independent candidate Alex Dyson as a Greens member.ABC News/Supplied The highly pertinent case of a little-known independent candidate in the Victorian seat of Wannon has exposed a gaping ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lauren Ball, Professor of Community Health and Wellbeing, The University of Queensland Nik/Unsplash You might have heard that eating too many eggs will cause high cholesterol levels, leading to poor health. Researchers have examined the science behind this myth again, and ...
Everything you missed from the third day of the Treaty principles bill hearings, when the Justice Committee heard four hours of oral submission. Read our recaps of day one of the hearings here, and day two here. Parliament was quiet on Friday for the third day of hearings on the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thomas Jeffries, Senior Lecturer in Microbiology, Western Sydney University Tijana Simic/Shutterstock The news last week that three people in Sydney were hospitalised with botulism after receiving botox injections has raised questions about the regulation of the cosmetic injectables industry. The ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jens Blotevogel, Principal Research Scientist and Team Leader for Remediation Technologies, CSIRO Mino Surkala, Shutterstock Lithium-ion batteries are part of everyday life. They power small rechargeable devices such as mobile phones and laptops. They enable electric vehicles. And larger versions store ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Edith Jennifer Hill, Associate Lecturer, Learning & Teaching Innovation, Flinders University Netflix Netflix’s new limited series, Apple Cider Vinegar, tells the story of the elaborate cancer con orchestrated by Australian blogger Annabelle (Belle) Gibson. The first episode opens with Gibson’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dee Ninis, Earthquake Scientist, Monash University Greece’s government has just declared a state of emergency on the island of Santorini, as earthquakes shake the island multiple times a day and sometimes only minutes apart. The “earthquake swarm” is also affecting other ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne The Western Australian state election will be held on March 8. A Newspoll, conducted January 29 to February 4 from a sample ...
She’s back behind the wheel, and this time, she wants to find out what it is that makes us tick. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. After a prolific career on stage and screen, 83-year-old Miriam Margolyes is on the road again. ...
A new poem by Jordan Hamel. Real Poet Every word earned its place and so did he, so should you. Real poet lives in the capital but writes himself into the Mackenzie country golden hour, man of the paper land, he neglects to mention his pollen ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Understanding Te Tiriti by Roimata Smail (Wai Ako Press, $25) No better time to get ...
The committee has published this list to inform the public about its work, and to give clarity to submitters who have contacted the committee asking if they will be invited to make an oral submission. ...
Alex Casey and Gabi Lardies dissect their Laneway 2025 experience. Gabi Lardies: Hi Alex :))))))) Congratulations on not getting sunburnt. Everyone I talked to at Laneway yesterday was braving the sun for one thing. Charli XCX. How was your brat experience?Alex Casey: We will talk about the rest of ...
The US President's suggestion, which sparked enormous debate globally, has been labelled as a threat, not a proposal, by the Federation of Islamic Associations. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christine McCarthy, Senior Lecturer in Interior Architecture, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington Interior of Auckland South Men’s Prison.Getty Images Prisons are not colourful places. Typically, they are grey or some variation of a monochrome colour scheme. But increasingly, ...
FICTION1Tree of Nourishment (Kāwai 2) by Monty Soutar (David Bateman, $39.99)Interesting to note that the author of the biggest-selling New Zealand novel in Waitangi Week is Māori (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Awa, Ngāi Tai, and Ngāti Kahungunu).2 Kāwai: For Such a Time as This (Kāwai 1) by Monty Soutar (David ...
Remembering the renowned New Zealand writer, who died on February 5, 2025. The Stopover When the trout rise like compassion It is worth watching when the hinds come down from the hills with a new message it will be as well to listen. – Brian Turner Poet, environmentalist, sportsman, journalist, ...
Survivors can choose to have former High Court judge Paul Davison assess their individual claims to tailor payments to their personal circumstances. ...
Roger Douglas has been wheeled out of his crypt to give us all the way forward for Labour by those caring folks at the Herald.
The Herald slaps the left yet again with a wet fish called Douglas.
Douglas thinks we should all adopt the ACT way and things will get much better to concise it.
How did we go wrong folks, if only we had followed Sir Shitforbrains we would get elected.
Now I’m not saying there is a little hatred on the left for Sir Moron, but please take a deep breathe after reading this. Don’t go to the Herald, you might have a stroke or worse.
But if anyone of you want a good gut laugh this morning here’s the link.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11337963
Granny continues its fine work as a national party rag, I guess hooten is too busy with all his other media gigs and prebbles a bit compromised after his act campaign leadership worked so well.
I read it yesterday but the comments should be a hoot if they haven’t been censoring them. Only 35 comments in a day, they must have been using the big delete button, as they didn’t want the shrivelled one to have a heart attack. But you need to have a heart first.
The Herald did not publish my comment!
I’d suggest to people that they also post a copy here, after they upload their comments on that rag and indicating here that is what they have done.
Douglas should worry about the popularity of ACT instead of advising us. What an arrogant fool.
And where was Douglas while writing that? Where is he these days, while drawing on the NZ people’s money?
@ Richard aka Rawshark 1
Here is a good fishgut laugh. I couldn’t resist bringing some mirth into your day. Doctors recommend a laugh to keep the mind healthy and functioning. Here is your morning dose if you choose to accept it – from Monty Python – fish slapping dance 27 sec and 2nd longer of Palin pontificating.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9SSOWORzw4
🙂 ahh you know what I like.
Monty Pyhon fan since a kid.
Best is the silly walk by Cleese which Colin thunderbirds Craig has adopted a style of.
Ebola in Spain: slack procedures, poor discipline, lacksadaisical attitude, poor equipment and official lies
Nurse contracts ebola from infected (now dead) patient in Spain. Several others now hospitalised.
Decades of BS managerialism and under funding dangerously worsens performance when it actually matters.
Who do you believe – officials who say strict quarantine was instituted straight away, or the hospital staff who say patient was just kept in a general ward surrounded by others.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/07/ebola-crisis-substandard-equipment-nurse-positive-spain
Not being sarcastic much here CV, but if we ever get an Ebola case the way Nastinal are behaving they would take the patient on a meet the people tour. Poor people.
As with all these things the difference will be definitional.
A quarantine procedure was initiated. It is strict relative to just dumping everyone in a pile. But it involves people probably getting a lot closer to each other than we would be comfortable with.
Maybe this will be comforting
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-07/tuesday-humor-spains-ebola-containment-protocols
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-07/spain-warns-something-went-wrong-suspected-ebola-cases-rise-madrid
Then there was the photo that was allegedly of the man cleaning vomit off the pavement from the Texas Ebola patient. No hazard suit, people walking past and through the area.
One thing that interests me is given the relatively high placement on public health priorities (epidemic prevention), countries like the US and Spain are repatriating people with Ebola rather than treating them in the country where they contracted it.
just looking at that Tues humour link, while I agree that there are issues around degradation of hospital services, I think the article is a bit unhelpful where it implies you need high tech to contain Ebola. If it were airborne, I would agree, but it’s not, so lower tech protocols would actually work if done properly (whether overworked, underfunded hospitals systems can do lower tech protocols is another matter).
Lots more people die annually from influenza
Yes, but the fatality rate for influenza is much lower than that for Ebola. Having said that, the Spanish flu was far worse in terms of the combination of lethality and ability to spread than Ebola will ever be.
Am not sayong Ebola isnt bad but the fixation is out of proportion to the many other lesser diseases killing millions more.
please see my reply below. Maybe we’ll look back on this ebola scare in 12 months and think it was an interesting but short lived minor fizzle. And maybe we won’t, with infected numbers currently rising exponentially, killing hundreds of healthcare workers this year alone.
The key word in my comment is fixation…
I was alive thirty odd years ago when Ebola last hit the headlines in a major way.
As long as you realise that the current outbreak is around 15x more severe than the one you remember from your younger days, in terms of probable fatalities and cases, and was isolated to provincial rural villages, not million person cities like Freetown and Madrid.
The passing time might have generated a really virulent strain?
4 strains of Ebola with the Zaire strain having more than 80% fatality rate.
Nah. It’s hitting populated areas with good road communications.
@ McFlock
I understand that was how the Aids virus spread so effectively. It was transmitted by itinerant truck drivers having a quickie along their route. It was supposed to start off between males, but wasn’t long before it showed up in females.
The desire for a short break results in known locations being places for prostitutes to wait. I saw in Italy a truck driver hop down, near a roundabout, leave his engine running, and then back again and drive off, and a prostitute then waiting at the roadside. So I think that it could be surmised that sex would have taken place, and perhaps a pee after, a relief stop.
Well, the big example is the Spanish flu 1918, which was partially related to troop movements and civilian relocations from late WW1.
Basically, travel networks affect how quickly a disease spreads geographically. Economic or war refugees (or refugees from the disease itself in an established epidemic), standard migration, and the close quarters of travel and shared facilities increase transmission, and population density increases opportunities for transmission, too.
ISTR that the first few ebola outbreaks within local populations were in relatively isolated areas, so could burn themselves out more quickly.
As a rule of thumb, once you hit a city or traffic route, you need stronger artificial controls, education, and quarantine efforts. The NZ Health Act, for example, gives the Health minister dictatorial powers that would make CERA-brownlee cum at the thought.
The passing time might have generated a really virulent strain?
The Guardian ran a Q and A with one of the researchers who identified Ebola in 1976 in which he was asked about it becoming more infectious through mutation:
‘Yes, that really is the apocalyptic scenario. Humans are actually just an accidental host for the virus, and not a good one. From the perspective of a virus, it isn’t desirable for its host, within which the pathogen hopes to multiply, to die so quickly. It would be much better for the virus to allow us to stay alive longer.
Could the virus suddenly change itself such that it could be spread through the air?
‘Like measles, you mean? Luckily that is extremely unlikely. But a mutation that would allow Ebola patients to live a couple of weeks longer is certainly possible and would be advantageous for the virus.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/04/ebola-zaire-peter-piot-outbreak
Hi Tracey, to be honest I struggle with this kind of comment, which I see all the time for instance on Twitter. To me it represents a misunderstanding of both risk and uncertainty. The format is “x phenomena kills more people a year than Ebola ever has in its history.”
This is usually true as well, given that in its known history Ebola has killed only a few thousand people.
The difference is this – things like influenza or traffic accidents or gun violence in the USA are a very well described, thoroughly understood, self limiting phenomena which have been observed over long periods of time.
None of these descriptions match what is happening now re: ebola.
I am referring to the media fixation Cv. When we are not being kept in fear by media focus on killings, murder, car accidents and acts of war, we are kept cringing for fear of our own bodies.
Of course have strategies to deal with Ebola… Develop vaccines… But blast it in every paper news and radio report? Nah its just a continuation of keep the sheeple fearful. Its the fear de jour.
I agree with your general point and usually I would back it 100% as I saw the media/govt nonsense around swine flu etc.
However I understand the mathematical power of exponential growth in infections with an ebola R0 infection rate currently rated at ~1.75 (ea infected person is currently infecting 1.75 more) and until that comes down much closer to 1.0 (or of course ideally less than 1.0), the western world will have a serious problem within the next 6 months.
Currently, the number of cases is doubling every 3 weeks.
Ebola is easily contained and has an extremely low R0 when compared to Measles or the flu.
Damn facts.
/
The last sentence is the key point:
http://www.virology.ws/2014/10/06/who-on-ebola-virus-transmission/
http://www.virology.ws/ebolavirus/
I don’t think we can trust our governments to run any real hazardous disease outbreak to the necessary level. In the USA he private profit approach will prevent whole-hearted effort there and then worries about affordability by states, especially the poorer ones, when viewing the lists of tasks government needs to do, also what private companies need to do and the bills that the patients and their family will have to face.
USA citizen Michael Katakis spoke to Wallace Chapman on Sunday 6th about his despair of the USA. He quotes the venality of the country there in a tale relating to his wife’s hospitalisation. While she was home recovering the hospital billing department phoned and asked when they could expect payment for $1200 that was outstanding. He explained that the insurance company had advised that $75,000 had been paid, and that a further $80,000 was pending. The clerk explained the bill was for doctors’ fees, and they were separate from the hospital fees paid by the insurance company. This was after paying $1,000 a month for a health insurance cover, and a $10,000 excess on hospital charges. So he had to manage finding $27,000 before the company would agree to cover them. He also had to sell most of their goods to cover all the costs including living costs before his wife eventually died.
Michael Katakis – Traveller ( 22′ 31″ ) Sunday, 6.10.2014 http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday
In NZ we have hospitals under stress with managers with a grab bag of practices they can use to appear to be managing efficiently which includes employing contractors for ‘short’ periods instead of having permanent staff doing the work for less. At present we have doctors leaving a lower south island hospital because they can’t practice effectively and are under budget pressure all the time. The managerial style that sets targets and controls from above, rather than working with the doctors and staff is a barrier to efficiency and effectiveness.
This radionz piece refers to a debit sum of $16 million at the Southern District Health Board.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/regional/256398/%27changes-needed%27-at-southern-dhb
At the end related pieces with a list of woes:
DHB takes dispute to Serious Fraud Office
Ryall credits targets for stable ship
Southern DHB deficit over $15m
DHB’s funding below inflation – Labour
DHB: crackdown won’t affect care
In 2006 Swann an IT professional at the Otago DHB was charged with fraud of $16 million. What’s the bet that this huge cost is still weighing down the unfortunate hospital board ever since….
Further details of an alleged $16.9 million fraud at the Otago District Health Board were revealed in Parliament yesterday.
Mr Ryall told Parliament that Swann had bought a 50m former marine research vessel in Hawaii and refitted it to be a luxury launch.
The Otago Daily Times recently reported that the board was seeking to recover its losses through a High Court civil claim, which names Swann and 19 other defendants and lawyers, trustees, company directors and companies….
A question asked – Is he [Mr Hodgson] telling the house that no one at the DHB asked how a former bankrupt and hospital manager on $200,000 a year could afford such extravagance over such a period of time?”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10411886
Swann served 1 month in prison for each $300K he defrauded society. Sounds like a sweetheart deal compared to what people might get for stealing a car or pinching $10,000 from their employer.
Colonial Rawshark
Did you know that or just know where to look it up? You are so well informed. Are you a …savant or have a photogenic/graphic memory? Or just lay newspapers on the floor and soak up facts through your soles??
parker on tv3 confirming that ..yes..!..labour too are keen that we go to war…
..against this latest version of ‘the bad guys’..
..(question:..how many innocent men/women/children have been blown to pieces by american drones…in the period of these executions by isis..?..
..i’m picking it is far more than the 5-6 people executed by isis..
..where is labours’/our indignation at that..?..no..?..)
..and from key i understand we will be doing ‘humanitarian work’..that we ‘specialise in’..
..which actually involves targeting sites to be bombed..
..(which is..one of the more unusual definitions of ‘humanitarian work’ i have heard in awhile..)
..and of course..this will make nz a legitimate ‘soft’ target for retaliation/terror-attacks..
..really great to see that labour didn’t just have a knee-jerk reaction there..eh..?
..and an unseemly rush to war…
..(oh..!..hang on..!..)
On this one PU I want Isis wiped out. I want to see them suffer. The beheadings are atrocious and innocent people are dieing.
Sometimes you have to fight.
at times war is appropriate.
On this topic I’m all for action. The bigger the better. I’d be prepared to defend them against slavery, forced prostitution and conversion or die.
They are beheading humanitarians just like most left people are.
@ richard..
maybe you need to see some videos of those innocent men/women/children that have been blown apart by american drones..?
..you may also find you find that ‘atrocious’…
..and yes..’innocent people are dieing’ (sic..) there too..
..eh..?
..and you are all gung-ho that we help ‘target’ those drones/bombers..
..as our ‘humanitarian’-effort in the region..?
..eh..?
..it’s all pretty black and white thru yr eyes..eh..?
..and america is the one wearing the white hat..eh..?
Tell the Kurdish people that Phillip, that their innocence is not worth protecting. As the U S solutionis not palatable prey tell what is a more acceptable solution ?especially given the lack of the UN’s ability to solve any conflict or to successfully take any action against any leaders in regard to genocide or crimes against humanity.
All well meaning comments. And the Peshmerga would be able to hold off ISIS no problem if ISIS weren’t now equipped with the latest in US armour and artillery. And supported by many many Sunni ex-Iraqi Forces only recently trained up by the USA.
Howxdo you see the problem being resolved?
I do not believe that there is any resolution; just awful choices and worse ones.
Whilst Isis have acquired equipment from the army I would expect the Turkish army to be better trained & better equiped than this group.
The Isis forces would be exposed if they do face the turkishy army around Kobani, which to me looks likely would take a more traditional & conventional battle, with air support working in co ordination with a ground force attack.
Unfortunately in such cases there is almost the justification othat the means of addressing such conflicts as by viewing the response by ” the lesser of 2 evils”. The problem I see is that “our” tradional view that of winning a conflict are not relevant in today’s world, or that those in the US even have an idea of what a successful outcome is
Yes the Kobani battle could be won by a major mobilisation of Turkish forces. But the Turks are unlikely to do that because they see what is happening there as a fortuitous case of ISIS taking out a long standing enemy for them, the Kurds.
@ hero..aahh..!..the ‘plucky’ kurds..we are there to help them..eh..?
..try and wrap yr head around this then..(a story/link i posted this morn..)
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/07/us-kurds-iraq-isis-massacre-syria-kobani
“..Why did the US help the Kurds in Iraq – but leave Isis to massacre them in Syria?..
..The fall of Kobani is a microcosm for a policy that is doomed to fail.
It was an avoidable tragedy..”
(cont..)
..eh..?
Whilst the U.S. have their problems in their Wild West , john Wayne gun ho attitude, unfortunately with all their short commings, there appear no other alternatives, as what other confederation is willing to enter to attempt to halt any crimes against humanity ? the UN ha straditionally been lacking
As Obama does not confide with me as to his strategy and what outcomes he desires I cannot comment as to why the U.S. allowed the Syrian situation, perhaps they were unwilling to enter Syrian territory for obvious reasons.
Should the Isis issue be solved the Kurds situation will not have progressed and they will continue to be a culture persecuted 🙁
y’ see..hero..
..this little/latest clusterfuck is a direct outcome of the ‘crime against humanity’ that was the american invasion of iraq..
..(and if i am scratching for something good to say about clark.i can cite her standing up against the screaming/hysterical war-mongers of the time..
..and not making us part and parcel of that ‘crime’..)
..and at that time the tory armchair warriors were jonesing/frothing for war..
..and simon power coined/cribbed his defining political-statement..
..when he said we should be ‘all the way..with george w..!’
..key is also on record voicing his disgust at clark for not taking us to that war..
..so that now he can’t even wait to be asked..he is that eager to be a spear-carrier..comes as no real surprise..
..i knew/predicted that if key won the election..he would rush to take us to war..
..mind you..going on parkers/labours ‘consent’ to this plan..they wd have been no different to key..)
..and so..hero..us getting involved in another ‘long war’ in the middle east..
..is the answer..eh..?…
..btw..what was the question..?
..mind you..going on parkers/labours ‘consent’ to this plan..they wd have been no different to key..
Parker’s statements remind me of the kind that a junior policy analyst would draft, that of a rambling weather-vane type which would be pointing there, pointing here, pointing somewhere in between, actually going nowhere and just pointing out as many directions as possible while rotating in the same spot.
http://www.3news.co.nz/tvshows/firstline/caution-needed-in-dealing-with-foreign-fighters—parker-2014100905
He meets the grade for being an undertaker for the Labour Party.
AHH no P U you went off track there. Putting word in my mouth and claiming I had a pro USA stance. That was not in my comment at all. I think you owe me an apology for that.
perhaps I should have been clearer. I did not mention the war mongering USA and I agree with you on them. But and it’s a big but, Isis is a total different kettle of bad.
I only want ISIS wiped out to the last man if possible.
As for bush and Blair I’m still waiting for the Haig to charge them., as for the USA the people for the most part are ok, there political structure is not. Won’t delve into it I suspect you know as much as I do or more on that score regarding military manufacturing and the links to government.
In Albania, My Grandfather pre Hoxha was a top ranking general for King Zog,
He’s famous there so are my family for it, so am I. So much so the then President wanted to meet the son of the son of him.
During WW2 he led the Bali Kombatar fighting 3 invaders the Italians, the Germans, and later hoxha’s communists, My whole family was eventually after a 1 month fight from their castle estate, finally defeated by a bomb blowing the castle doors off.
Then they shot all of them that we’re of age, I’ve met all the survivors 8 years ago, as they had been looking for my father who escaped, but found me as he passed away years ago, reunited I found a shocking story.
The things they did to the survivors was so shocking I havn’t the time to tell you.
So when you don’t want to help, you think it’s not your business, you end up leaving REAL stories of REAL atrocities.
I care, I care a lot about all people, what I don’t care about, is people with no empathy what so fucking ever for the plight of others.
I have a Albanian doco on what happened as told by grandfathers daughter, my fathers, sister, she retells the story of their final stand, what they did to her would shake your foundations.
If you ever want to see it i’ll get it translated for you. At my cost, eventually when I get a pay rise.
Sometimes you have to fight for democracy, the way things are going we may need to fight here.
So harden up and grow a pair. Peace has to be fought for sometimes.
did you feel the same way about saddam hussein..?
..and about gaddaffi..?
..that we had to fight them there..so we don’t need to fight them ‘here’..
..(you are sounding like the hysterics who built the guns on north head..
..’cos the russians were coming..eh..?..)
..and if you find that thinking back that yes..you did support overthrowing those ‘evil’ men..hussein and gaddaffi..
..you need to look at yr own propensity to be suckered by the propaganda-du-jour..eh..?..
..did you support them being overthrown – because they were the evil-du-jour..?
I’m happy to see ISIS wiped out – but sending troups over there may not help at all. ISIS is the renamed alquaeda in iraq which only exists as a significant issue because the west decided to go over there and blow stuff up in the first place.
Beheadings are bad – but they are only beheading these people on videos to ask you to come and bomb them. (and to get advertising so that they can recruit more soldiers). They need the bombing to distract the people from the fact that they can’t run the country and that they are made up largely of foreign invaders.
So to state phil’s point in pragmatic terms – will sending troups make the situation better or worse? So far it has made it worse.
Its hard to see how more killing will help but doing nothing while people are executed and people are killed in their homes from the various bombings around the world will help either.
More killing has not proven successful to date…
We tried to kill taleban… Then we tried to kill al quaeda and now IS has sprung up…. So more killing doesnt solve the problem.
Parker is talking like cullen, who would have been at home in national.
You just asked for another decade long, hundred thousand white troops on the ground in a Muslim country, war.
Just remember that was how we got here. And you want to do it again?
FFS grow a pair. On this I’m right your feeble don’t start another war , blow what I said all out of proportions is a joke.
Far out, they say there’s infighting amongst lefts, well all you lot do is argue for the sake of it sometimes. You lot like nothing more than rounding on people and I’ve had a hard day so fucking shut up.
If your family was about to be wiped out , your girls sold to some fighter for sex, and told to convert or die, or you had to run away, you’d be wanting some fucking help to.
Fuck pissed me off their you did.
The optimal strategy would be to mostly leave them be. If necessary use defensive airstrikes to prevent expansion at the periphery. Otherwise, leave them alone and the people who they purport to rule will get tired of them in no time or the movement will split. Intervention just gives them what they want – foreign devils to blame everything on.
You had better hope that they will just fade away then and that this story in The Telegraph is only a fairy story then.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/11064133/Islamic-State-seeks-to-use-bubonic-plague-as-a-weapon-of-war.html
If there is any truth in it will be vastly worse than Ebola or the 9/11 attacks won’t it?
…and Iraq was chock full of weapons of mass destruction.
How can you fall for it every time?
The problem with using biological agents is that at least some the people delivering them typically don’t want to be infected themselves. Given the biosecurity needed for this and the indiscriminate nature of the weapon, such bioweapons are really a non-starter.
The same goes for chemical weapons. Terrorists don’t need ISIS to supply them as they can make them themselves as the Aum Supreme Truth cult did. The problem with chemical weapons is that they aren’t suited for terrorism. The Aum cult would have killed far more people with a couple of nail bombs than it did with its home made nerve gas. Gas is a battlefield weapon for use against unprotected mass infantry formations (which is why Saddam had it). It’s next to useless as a weapon of terror.
This is all talk. Terrorists don’t use these weapons because they don’t work. They’ve tried before, and in the end you are better off using conventional weapons.
Read this. It doesn’t work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine_bombings_in_Iraq
Completely agree with your comments, Tom.
They did seem to be talking about biological weapons in relatively enclosed places for the distribution, not chemical weapons on a battlefield.
In terms of delivering them by people who don’t want to be infected these groups don’t seem to have much trouble getting enough people to be suicide bombers to cause a lot of trouble. The four planes involved in 9/11 had about 20 al Qaeda people involved who were by definition suicide forces. The didn’t have any trouble finding them did they?
The West has played its part in cultivating new generations of extremists in the middle east. Best to change course, don’t you think.
BTW in terms of casualties, the west has killed 1,000x more Muslims in middle eastern countries than Muslims have killed westerners in western countries.
If you were to successfully create an epidemic of bubonic plague in Britain or the United States, you would have to be able to do it on a scale that would render their first world health systems ineffective at responding to infections. But if their containment systems fail to cope, then it would automatically become a worldwide epidemic that would affect the poorer countries where the terrorists come from far worse than the targets. That makes no sense given the goals of groups like IS.
You also need to securely transport the biological agents to the target area and find a way to release them that will be effective. This is really hard to do. Chemical weapons have to be released on a grand scale to work (such as Saddam’s artillery barrages against Iranian infantry). Biological agents need a similarly wide spread to be effective if they’re ever going to be, and terrorists don’t have that luxury.
If chemical and biological weapons were of any use, the major powers would spend a lot of money on them. They don’t. They buy nukes, because nukes work. As for terrorists getting hold of a nuke. The very idea is risible.
Two things alwyn:
1. There is documentation missing from the 9/11 investigation – which many suspect, (including the us military, which is not a bastion of left wingers by the way) points the finger at Saudi Arabia.
2. The problem with blaming al Qaeda was always the lack of technical ability. Yes al Qaeda were good at fight a guerrilla war, with people willing to die, but they lacked the skills to coordinate what we call 9/11. I:E- Piloting and logistical skill set to perform said attacks. Now go back to point 1.
So the question for me, is why do we want to fight a rag bag bunch of criminals? When there is a rogue state, which is supposed to be our allie, who attacked our other supposed allie?
We look to be entering a perpetual state of war economy, to prop up a failing economic system. Rather than look at the underlying social and economic issues.
That and stopping arms being supplied to them.
Yes.
Mr Ure, I hope you also want ISIS wiped out. Do you? Do you?
Or are you a secret supporter of these criminals? Maybe your hatred of America is even bigger.
@clean power..
..you are seeking a simple answer to a complex issue/problem..
..an issue/problem that has been fuelled exacerbated by the west/invasion of iraq..etc..
..and an outcome that was predicted by many of those opposed to that initial-invasion….
..and that is at heart..a muslim sectarian war…sunni vs. shia..
..(b.t.w..where were you back then..?..c.p..?..
..were you one of those insistant we must ‘wipe out’ that ‘evil’ saddam hussein..eh..?
..followed by yr support for getting rid of that ‘evil’ gaddaffi..eh..?
..can we conclude you are just a serial war-monger..?
..easily swayed/driven to blood-lust..?..
.d’yareckon..?..)
@ Mr Ure: your “reply” does not answer my questions: are you for or against ISIS?
So, you believe this is a “muslim sectarian war” that poses no risk to the rest of the world. Incredible!
Maybe your anti-West position is supported by other reasons unknown to the readers.
@ clean power..
“..Maybe your anti-West position is supported by other reasons unknown to the readers…”
now i am fascinated..(and you seem to be breathing a bit heavier..)
..what on earth could those ‘reasons unknown’ be..?
please clean-power..i am on the edge of my seat here..!
..what..in yr mind..are these ‘reasons unknown’..?
..am i a ‘secret agent’ of some murky power..?
.(you aren’t confusing me with slater..are ya..?..
..he’s yr ‘secret-agent/murky-power’ go-to-person..eh..?..)
..(hang on..! i do have a copy of the koran on my bookshelf..!
..tho’..in my defence..it is one of a mix of different theological-tracts..whew..!..)
..please..!..do tell..!
..(and chrs 4 the belly-laffs..eh..?..)
And answer came there none.
Which makes me just a little suspicious that Clean power is some sort of SIS Black Ops type.
His (or her – probably his) framing of the issue as “Are you for or against ISIS” reminds me very much of an Israeli apologist called Hans who used to inflict various gotcha-style propaganda/rhetorical strategies on unsuspecting participants in The New Statesman discussion threads a few years ago (so much so that I used to refer to him as Hasbara Hans).***
Whenever people were discussing an article / opinion piece on Israel’s bombing or starvation of Gaza, dear old Hans would pop up to ask everyone whether they were For or Against the Evil Hamas. A very clear propaganda technique.
A year or two back, we all heard about SIS black ops, aiming to sew dissention on Left-leaning Blogs (although you’d have to wonder why they bother, there’s enough in-fighting going on as it is). Impossible to be sure, but there’s just a slight whiff of trouble-making underlying Clean power’s comments (taken collectively) since he suddenly turned up here in April.
He’s mainly focussed on making anti-Cunliffe comments (arguing the need for a leadership change 3 months out from the election and, ironically enough, accusing Cunliffe of sewing dissention in the Party) and anti-Hager comments as well as accusing Matt McCarten of being a “Mana Mole”, attacking sections of the Labour Party as representing “Left-wing extremism” and numerous comments on The Greens’ alleged “insanity”, suggesting Len Brown will go down in history as a philanderer and an incompetent, while pushing the Tory meme that Labour risks becoming a minor component of the Opposition after the 2014 Election. All the while playing the role of concerned Labour supporter.
I can’t help but notice a few signs of trying to create dissention – attacking Cunliffe and his advisors and demanding he stand down before this years Election, attacking the Left, but at the same time also making numerous comments blaming the ABCs for various things and attacking Mallard and King – before going on to change his tune somewhat after the Election (June 18: “The dirty hands of King and Mallard are all over this” / Sep 30 “Mallard knows loyalty to no one” / October 4 on Mallard “It seems the Labour Party and his voters love the man !”)
Clean power may just be a Right-leaning Labour bloke who advocates for Shane Jones one minute, then attacks Jones’s ABC faction the next, but I’ll be keeping an eye out for any more Hasbara-style techniques.
***Hasbara = Various Propaganda techniques / Rhetorical strategies that Israel’s supporters in the West are expected to carry out on social media and in the MSM (letters to the Editor etc) on behalf of Israel.
swordfish 3.31
Interesting.
While we are thinking of that sainted country – 1 June 2014
Israel renews restrictions on nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu
Despite serving 18 years in prison, including 11 in solitary confinement, Vanunu is forbidden from traveling and speaking to the media. Recently, he was denied a permit to speak before the British Parliament, following an invitation by 54 MPs.
http://972mag.com/israel-to-renew-restrictions-on-nuclear-whistleblower-mordechai-vanunu/91564/
@ swordfish..
“..And answer came there none…”
..and i am bummed about that..
..i mean..imagine finding out what yr ‘reasons unknown’ are..?
..i was so looking forward to the fevered imaginings of that little mind..
..i guess being anti-war..and in general..not believing/calling-out the bullshit..
..isn’t enough…
CP has probably got you pegged as one of the hash smoking assassins from that old Middle Eastern sect, Mr Ure. The evidence is in your own posts. 😛
@ clean power
Why don’t you go and fight in the war. Offer yourself to the forces when they decide to go and fight in the Middle East. Your motto – have convictions, will fight and die and kill for them. And this feeling of yours will remain whether it is helpful to solving the problems and bringing world peace or not. It is a feeling, it is not real thought or understanding of the problem and the disaster unfolding. People like you don’t make me feel safer from menace, you just increase it.
btw..f.y.i…i don’t ‘hate’ america…
..i have lived there..new york is my favourite city..
..i think americans are the most open/friendly people in the world..(nz’ers cd learn a thing or two from them in that area..tight-lipped little ‘i don’t know you!’s that we are..)
..like everyone else i am steeped in american culture/music etc..
..i do however admit to ‘hating’ their blood-thirsty/cynical abuses of their global-power..
..in everything there are nuances..eh..?
..’black and white’ are very rare..
@ phillip ure
You would find Michael Katakis interesting. Wallace Chapman interview on Sunday 5/10/2014.
chrs..
That’s better. I have the same mentality.
But Isis are not Mulsim, I have many Muslim family in Albania, I’m non religious. However true Muslims would never do this sort of thing. Isis have earned their wiping out. Islamic state my arse.
The US defended Saudia Arabia and pushed them back. Bush senior had the decency to halt there, but along came the war monger Bush Jnr with an agenda like I’d not seen in a while. I reiterate Bush Jnr and Blair should be done at the Haig.
“..can we conclude you are just a serial war-monger..?..easily swayed/driven to blood-lust..?..”
Knowing how you like to bang on about an issue when you think it has mileage, it’s not all about the deaths of 5 westerners.
Paraphrasing the fighting Kurdish women on TV, actively engaging isis on a daily basis in a fight for their survival, it’s ‘kill or be killed’. And they are fighting a well equipped, combat experienced, motivated ruthless murderous enemy.
You are happy to leave them to it to fend for themselves, knowing the consequences of failure are rape and slavery as bounty of war?
Maybe you don’t have enough invested to to get over being right on for the sake of it, but I support those brave women and hope they get all the protection the UN have to offer.
“.d’yareckon..?..)”
Quick, Clean-power, take this test. If your score is above room temperature in Fahrenheit, we might be able to explain why the situation is a little more complicated.
I suspect we won’t, though.
http://www.free-iqtest.net/
IQ tests mean fuck all.
That’s the only reasonable thing I’ve ever seen you post.
I concur Murray, I was shocked to read something sensible from BM, and had thoughts someone had hacked his computer.
Why is that? Because he finds himself unable to reason.
There should be worldwide condemnation of America and their continued intervention in other countries affairs. These invasions by the yanks leave nothing but carnage. How many times have they invaded a country, taken out a so called despot dictator, only to pull out leaving the place in ruin and creating a civil war in their wake. Look at Sadam and the weapons of mass destruction nonsense, and the US backed tooling up of Bin Ladin, only for him too turn on them. Now this latest mess in Syria where they once supported the former leader to the tune of billions, only too take him out.
The whole American economy revolves around their war machine where 1 in 5 (last time I looked) jobs are military/arms related.
Your right Phil, our involvement does make us a very likely target for some nasty terrorist attack. What on earth Key thinks he is doing by telling the World “Our SIS will have a role like identifying targets for drone strikes and bombing missions.”
Most of us shudder to think if that happens we can expect to be a target, bringing the doors wide open for Uncle Sam to setup shop here, Key-National are already smoothing the way by the looks of our likely involvement.
@ skinny..
“.. How many times have they invaded a country, taken out a so called despot dictator, only to pull out leaving the place in ruin and creating a civil war in their wake..”
..that..or similar..over 50 times since the end of the second world war..(57 ..i think..)
..each of them of course ..black and white battles of ‘good’ against ‘evil’…eh..?
..the ‘evil’-du-jour…
Agreed PU but your mixing the issues, just because they previously fucked up big style doesn’t mean this time is wrong too.
Be careful what you ask for Skinny. Theres a small but growing group in the US who seem to think the way forward is to pull all the US troops home, leave the Middle East to sort its own crap, and use the newly home troops to actually enforce their border with Mexico, to upgrade the war on drugs, and evict all the non residents from the US, and then seal their borders. No money for illegals, no medical help for illegals – the only help they would get was to get them back to their home country.
And change the rules and get the oil out of Alaska and live independent of the rest of the world. And invite the UN head office to go to somewhere nice like Somlia.
Hey 50 years of that and the USA would be like an upsized Japan. 🙂
As one wag said recently “why spend all that money fighting “them” in the Middle East and having them hate us, when we can pull out and do nothing and they can still hate us for free”
+100 pu and Skinny…John Key is making New Zealanders and New Zealand a target…this is NOT in New Zealander’s interests!
you mean 5-6 westeners don’t you Phillip? Syrians and Iraqis are people too although their (mass) executions don’t get the headlines. IS are bad guys. However, the worst guys, Bush/Blair et al started this whole mess. National wanted a piece of that too. Thank God Helen had the sense to keep us out of it.
it is the execution of those 5-6 westerners that is being used to whip up war-fever…
..the west shrugs its’ shoulders at arabs killing each other..
Them, villages, towns, cities as ISIS continue to march on for more converts to their version of Islam. Will they stop, not until they are.
Your safe here in NZ be glad about that. But for those in the firing line that’s not an option.
I don’t know what the answer to the problems in Iraq and Syria are, but given what Western military interventions have achieved in that region in the past, I’m pretty sure it’s not sending troops. The problems there now are happening on a stage mounted by the US and UK, and they have no ideas of doing anything except what hasn’t worked in the past.
Israeli atrocities in Gaza were far worse. Why didn’t the US bomb Tel Aviv, if that’s the way to stop vicious extremists?
Kiwi Blood for US trade deal?
Ex Wall Street banker John Key is very keen to rush us into the latest round of murderous blood letting in the Middle East.
Have you wondered why?
Just listen in horror as an outraged John Key delivers a screaming skull pro war speech in 2003, to know.
Thanks to Travellerev @ A Wider Perspective
Direct evidence from John Key himself that he believes we must kill foreigners to be allowed to sell our wares in the US.
Disgusting.
What a lowly human being.
In fact, his beliefs and actions make him worse than the beheaders in IS.
In 2003 in parliament on behalf of his US masters John Key impotently screams and threatens trade sanctions against New Zealand to force us into war. (Threats that were never carried out).
In a nightmarish reversal we now have this disgusting quisling in charge.
John Key’s 2003l Hitler like rant in support of war and demands that we submit to his hollow threats of trade sanctions, should never be forgotten.
How many more New Zealand families would be mourning their war dead now if we had given in to this traitor’s threats.
And what for?
After ten years of incessant war and ten New Zealand dead, Iraq and Afghanistan are worse than ever.
[lprent: I am not sure why you are getting put in auto-moderation all of the time. I suspect the ‘ in O’Dea. It will probably be the weekend before I can check. ]
If Al Qaeda are the bad guys, why is the U.S. arming them?
And is the A.P. a news organisation or a propaganda arm of the government?
In the 1980s the United States funded and supported the fanatics who became Al Qaeda. Now it’s bombing them AND arming them at the same time. The media, loyal and unquestioning as ever, are solidly in behind the Obama regime on this. Not only the bloodthirsty chickenhawk outlets like Fox News, but virtually all the media. The following Associated Press article is typical of the unquestioning support for whatever the government does. I’ve highlighted the first few examples of odious hypocrisy in bold, italicised type…..
Obama praises House vote on arming Syrian rebels
by JOSH LEDERMAN and DARLENE SUPERVILLE, 17 September 2014
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama praised a House vote Wednesday granting him authority for the U.S. military to train and arm moderate Syrian rebels, calling it an important step toward confronting the Islamic State group.
The Republican-controlled House voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to authorize the program. Final approval in the Senate was expected Thursday.
Obama said in a statement that the House vote shows there’s bipartisan support for a critical component of his strategy to confront Islamic State extremists, who have seized territory in Iraq and Syria. He said the training won’t be conducted in Syria and U.S. military personnel won’t be on the ground in Syria as part of the program, adding that the U.S. has learned from fighting al-Qaida that it’s better to use America’s capabilities to help partners on the ground defend themselves.
At a White House picnic later Wednesday for members of Congress and their families, Obama singled out House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for helping shepherd the legislation quickly through the House. He said the U.S. had gone through a difficult time recently with terrorist attacks and the financial crisis, but said the House vote showed that “when it comes to America’s national security, America is united.”
Seeking to build on the brief moment of bipartisanship, Obama said if Republicans and Democrats can come together over the Islamic State threat, there’s no doubt they can work together to improve schools, cure diseases and rebuild the nation’s infrastructure.
Read more if you can bear it…..
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/fd504e179697404ebcecec0f00448e30/obama-praises-house-vote-arming-syrian-rebels
Won’t be long before he calls on his BFF John Key to provide help. Here we go again. Will we never learn.
Might be a good time to go watch the great Bobby Darin and what he had to say about war
All those muslims look the same to you eh, Moz? It must be the beards.
All those muslims look the same to you eh, Moz? It must be the beards.
?????
What on Earth are you trying to say?
Are you trying to be funny?
Workers become serfs and banksters as crooks…and threats to democracy in UK
See Keiser Report :
http://rt.com/shows/keiser-report/193724-uk-us-economy-windfall/
Keiser interviews:
1. Stacy Herbert on mythologies of Neoliberal Capitalism
2. Neil Mitchell who has staked his all on pursuing the corruption of the Bank of Scotland…with implications of threats to democracy
If data is not property WTF were the plods looking for when they turned Hager over?.
.
In a decision released by the court today, it concluded the convictions should be quashed.
“We conclude that the convictions entered in the District Court should be quashed, but only on the ground conceded by the Crown, namely that computer data is not ‘property’ as defined.
“Having rejected all other grounds of appeal, it is now necessary for us to address the Crown’s submission that we should substitute convictions based on obtaining a ‘benefit’.”
However, the court said it would not enter substitute convictions.
“We consider the grounds for substituting new verdicts are not met in the present case.”
The court also said it would not order a retrial.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/10589294/TAG-Oil-secret-stealing-conviction-quashed
It looks like property needs to be redefined in the statutes. If the data had been in written form and he’d photocopied it, would that have been property?
I’m not going to cry any tears for TAG oil. In fact I wish he’d wiped their database, but this troubles me. It opens a whole can of worms about IP.
Australian couple tell Pope about joys of sex etc.
A good article for a paradigm shift, understanding and enlightenment in the catholic church boldly spearheaded by the present pope. A good thought provoking article. Includes the homosexuality issue.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11339020
Quick one for the morning. Apologies if someone else has already posted it as I have not read every comment on TS in recent days:
TTIP (the Transatlantic version of the TPP): Six reasons to reject it
1. National Health Service
2. Food and environmental safety
3. Banking regulations
4. Privacy
5. Jobs
6. Democracy
Read:
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/what-is-ttip-and-six-reasons-why-the-answer-should-scare-you-9779688.html
That news about Alex Sweeney Auckland identity, owing millions in tax. Now I find his name is spelt Alex Swny or Swyney. or something. The obvious answer to the charge here is that he has been paying his tax correctly, under his peculiarly spelt name. It will be just an administrative error . The credit has gone to the normally-spelled name.
So all you people called Smth and Brwn and Hne had better check.
Seems Mark Textor read my article on him and Fairfax. Oops!
MMMmmm and straight into attack mode. These rightwing players are just so obvious.
Textor is actually in defence mode. It was Ev that was in right wing attack mode in her weird post that extrapolated Textor’s part time gig writing for an specialist Aussie business mag being a sign that he totally controls Fairfax in NZ. Like it or not, Textor had her pinned exactly right when he suggested she was probably into chemtrails etc. And yes, Ev, you are batshit crazy, but then, you already knew that, eh?
He would’ve simply pulled that content out of travellerev’s file at CT, and passed it off as his own off the cuff smart ass guessing.
Put another way, these guys are professionals and don’t fucking guess when they take a swipe, they know.
Ha ha! Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after Ev! While you’re probably correct that Textor already knew she was a flake, he wouldn’t need a file. Ev’s home page is chock fulla nuts, so he would have seen that when he read the original half arsed story.
Batshit, just a point of perspective, if She’s batshit , key and English are barking mad and howling at the moon. As for Textor. just another bully who if confronted would run away from the repercussions of his crap like any other bully.
but Putake, since I’m sure your very close to him tell him to bring the shit to my door if he’s got the kahuna’s. but no eh? he sends dogs like you to defend him. Tiny balls.
You are famous now.
Adobe’s Digital Editions 4 e-reader gathers user’s content and metadata and transmits it in the clear back to Adobe.
My source told me, and I can confirm, that Adobe is tracking users in the app and uploading the data to their servers. (Adobe was contacted in advance of publication, but declined to respond.)
And just to be clear, I have seen this happen, and I can also tell you that Benjamin Daniel Mussler, the security researcher who found the security hole on Amazon.com, has also tested this at my request and saw it with his own eyes.
Adobe is gathering data on the ebooks that have been opened, which pages were read, and in what order. All of this data, including the title, publisher, and other metadata for the book is being sent to Adobe’s server in clear text.
I am not joking; Adobe is not only logging what users are doing, they’re also sending those logs to their servers in such a way that anyone running one of the servers in between can listen in and know everything,
http://boingboing.net/2014/10/07/adobe-ebook-drm-secretly-build.html
Yep, it’s utterly shite and compromised. E-Books. In fact anything that you open and read with Adobe products needs to be considered suspect.
I’m reading activist Margaret Thorns book Stick Out Keep Left. The great days of Labour and the thoughts of an intelligent dedicated couple serving their fellows.
A bit about the heady Labour days of 1920s and 1930s.
Looking back, the enormous party propaganda…is hardly believable. Radio broadcasting had not yet arrived and big crowds would gather in halls and on street corners….The Empress Theatre could be filled on Sunday nights easily, and there was a plethora of capable and well-informed speakers. The Labour Party headquarters at 80 Manners Street was the scene of…lectures, debates, drama classes, socials and dances….
We watched as Ramsay MacDonald formed a Labour Government in London in 1924 but the same pattern of post-war unemployment and declining prices prevailed, and no easement could come from a government without real power. Misery deepened… perhaps deepest of all in Germany. We read Maynard Keynes’s Economic Consequences of the Peace. That startled the horses.
Why high tax rates have a negative effect on jobs and real wages, and tend to lower productivity, which is essential if wages are to rise.
Now let see, I have just become CEO of widget corp, and I decide to sell off my best dividend producing assets, downsize my service delivery, and raise more of my tax revenue from the poorer stockholders while giving the top few shareholders a huge bonus. Sure, it looks like a tax cut to the wealthiest, but was anything but.
Our economy will continue to fail when people like Roger Douglas fail to see what happened right before their eyes, the massive reallocation of wealth from middle and lower NZ to the upper few. Strangely most of the TV medai who would have seen the tax cut boost their take home pay. You know their names, Henry, Campbell..
You see productivity is a problem, and it starts with the productivity of our media to talk truth to power. That Key’s legacy of shorting us all, will increasingly cause pain across the NZ economy and into every household.
Did you just try and put Paul Henry and John Campbell in the same sentence? Come on man!!!
Pro-weed party gets over twice votes that United Future got! Are we in Israel now? Dunne becomes minister, most outspoken minister in favor of industrial highs which would directly compete with natural weed. Imagine that, say, Pepsi being banned and more voters voting Pepsi yet Mr Industrial Coke gets a ministerial position.
Greens gain one MP in final count, back to 14. Labour lost two MPs from last election. Espom still has three MPs, Seymour, Goldsmith and Genter. And nobody in Labour has a clue about how MMP works, since most Labour constituencies have just one member of parliament, and they like it that way.
Grrrrr.
classic double think from the men @ the ministry
We have to go to war because of the threat to New Zealanders from terrorism
but dont worry because
Isis fight: NZ won’t be a target – PM
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11339239
The Herald always writes headings like that
“PM : NZ won’t be a target.”
Well if Key says so, it must be right.
Go back to sleep New Zealand……The Block is on TV
we call that show “mortgage porn” at home
I haven’t seen any discussion about the Te Tai Tokerau judicial recount, but then again I may have missed it (as I’ve mainly had TS open in a background tab while concentrating on other things rather than musing over every comment these last few days). I’m just surprised that it’s not Waiariki & Ikaroa-Rāwhiti (or in fact; all the Māori electorates), as well – seeing as the MANA movement has shown itself willing to question the methods of those employed by the Electoral Commission. I would have expected Ōhāriu too, but that’s down to Labour or the GP (rather than the IMPs who stood no candidate in that electorate).
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1410/S00087/recount-just-one-step-to-restoring-credibility.htm
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/northern-advocate/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503450&objectid=11339030
Being predicted by Davis (and thus his associates), there may not be much evidence left to find in Te Tai Tokerau; other electorates may have been less well scrubbed. But this is the only electorate that I know of that is facing even moderately independent scrutiny. Scrutineers were, in my experience, limited in the actual amount of scrutiny they could do. This recount is still in the “electorate’s returning office in Auckland”, but at least this time; “overseen by District Court Judge Tom Broadmore”:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11338559
I’ve read stuff on Mana’s FB pages about it. It doesn’t seem designed to get Hone a seat, not this time around anyway. What Mana is concerned about is the way Maori voters have been treated by electorate officials in the north. People were told they couldn’t vote in Whangarei and had to go to Waipu, for example. It’s all anecdotal at the moment, but it looks like a lot of rubbish went on. It reminds me of the lengths they go to in the US and A to stop minorities voting. If correct, the stories are extremely concerning. As someone who lived in Whangarei until I was 15, they ring true.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYFZ8M5NX0o
How will the recount address that?
I don’t know, but maybe publicity around it can have some effect.
“I agree entirely with Michelle.”
The dismal double act of Boag and Edwards is back.
The Panel, Radio NZ National, Tuesday 8 October 2014
Jim Mora, Michelle Boag, Brian Edwards, Zara Potts
Brian Edwards is like Josie Pagani, Deborah Mahuta Coyle and Mike Williams: he says he’s a Labour supporter, but he’s more concerned about currying favor with whatever scowling right winger happens to be in the vicinity. This afternoon, the scowling right winger was the National Party power-broker—and mortal enemy of the Slater faction—Michelle Boag.
Edwards seems bewitched and bewildered by the charms of the Prime Minister, and he’s not shy about expressing just how much he admires him…..
BRIAN EDWARDS: Cundliffe’s performance is Shakespearian, you know. It’s big, grand, over the top. His interruptions of the Prime Minister led to Hosking having to intervene, and say “David you’re shouting.” The adjudicator had to stop him interrupting. And people DON’T LIKE THAT.
MICHELLE BOAG: [approvingly] Ex-ACT-ly!
BRIAN EDWARDS: Whereas John Key, on the other hand, is someone I’d be happy to have a beer with.
MICHELLE BOAG: I can arrange that for you.
BRIAN EDWARDS: Ha ha ha ha ha! But Key is easy and relaxed. The reality of television is that there are two people talking quietly in a studio. It’s an intimate medium.
Later on….
MICHELLE BOAG: Auckland Council should sell off its assets, such as the Ports of Auckland.
BRIAN EDWARDS: I agree.
MICHELLE BOAG: It should cease this ideological opposition to selling off assets.
JIM MORA: Brian, what do you think?
BRIAN EDWARDS: I agree entirely with Michelle.
Perhaps the nadir of the program came in the course of a learned discussion about ISIS, just after Michelle Boag called it “totally evil” and averred: “These people don’t UNDERSTAND democracy like we do.” Mora paused for effect, then earnestly asked Professor Al Gillespie to answer the sort of moronic question that usually gets aired on Rupert Murdoch’s barking mad Fox News….
JIM MORA: [with utmost gravitas] Are we looking at a great clash of civilizations?
Or WAS it the nadir? Incredibly, Mora—or his producer—seems determined to make this show even lighter, even more trivial than what you hear on NewstalkZBigot. Just before the end of the show, Jim Mora raised the subject of tonight’s total eclipse (the “Blood Moon”). To learnedly discuss this, he wheeled on an astrologer, Don Murray.
Edwards exercised his trademark sarcasm against Murray for a while, but clearly his heart was not in it.
Rating for today’s show: D.
Thanks for listening to the Panel, Morrissey.
It saves me bothering.
This is our national broadcaster.
Groan.
Try sticking to foreign media.
Try sticking to foreign media.
????
Is there a problem with our coverage of local media?
Having just read the latest post on NRT’s blog I expect him to come out shortly announcing that the ACT party leader during the election has been dreadfully maligned and the NRT s going to vote ACT in future!
http://norightturn.blogspot.co.nz/
Meanwhile the west uses Isis as a war cry and reasons for more survailence.
While innocent people suffer.
Can’t win on that one. Totally wrong.
Freaking UN should do something about Isis not the bloody western democracies using it for political purposes.
Some people will be against helping them(those suffering and about to suffer ISIS) for that reason.
But my opinion is still they need help, we just have to find the honest and un political way to do it.
Meanwhile the west uses Isis as a war cry and reasons for more survailence.
While innocent people suffer.
Can’t win on that one. Totally wrong.
Freaking UN should do something about Isis not the bloody western democracies using it for political purposes.
Some people will be against helping them(those suffering and about to suffer ISIS) for that reason.
But my opinion is still they need help, we just have to find the honest and un political way to do it.
Is there any chance nats are trying to shaft Nash to force a buy election.
@ b waghorn
a buy election. Very witty.
RNZ The Panel this afternoon – good to hear the bossy, somewhat bawling Michelle Boag forthrightly corrected on her claim (apparently a significant factor in first home buyers’ housing difficulties) – “All these young couples expect to be able to get their first home in Herne Bay……” or some such throwaway rubbish. What ???
So that’d be why there aren’t any busy high street real estate agencies south of Onehunga then ?
Guest contributor Mark Graham (name?)…….an apparently qualified voice on the topic…….”No Michelle, that’s just not correct”. The dear lady chose not to argue.
Such contemptibly dishonest spin from the National Party corner. Apparently……as long as you say ‘something’, however patently stupid…….lo, no problem. Or if undeniably there remains a problem – “Well, it’s their own fault !”
And then she waxes lyrical about “Mang-a-ree Bridge” as fertile ground for the would-be home buyer. Oh really madam ? Not to dis’ Mangere Bridge at all but has she ever been there ? And has she ever seen current prices there ?
Abbott in Australia is reported as having been angry that some Muslims are visiting and holding meetings critical of the US intervention. Apparently he calls it hate speech.
I hope that criticism, even strong criticism, isn’t inflated to meet the hyperbole about terrorism.
So that Nash story on 3news.
Him and Lusk are denying that Nash ever paid Lusk, but Nash’s mates did. So that’s that story.
The other story is how and why this came out.
Bomber had this post 4 hours ago:
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/10/08/nash-lusk/
It included an image of a section of the email. So there’s that.
And Andrea Vance says she was shown the story a while back but didn’t touch it because:
https://twitter.com/avancenz/status/519716850674855937
So there’s that.
and nash saying people have had enough of this dirty politics, meaning stop talking about it, made him sound just like Key…
People have been discussing the lusk/nash connection on this site for ages.
Glad hes not in the leadership race. He seems to be another pretending hes not in the wrong party cos he wants to return labour to its Douglas days.
The great majority of the New Zealand public saw the entire Dirty Politics prices, and decided that it was not sufficiently important to alter their vote.
We need to accept that.
Not saying it will be easy.
National now have a further term to permanently install a new level of ethics, legal tests for slander, journalistic intimidation, renew every single public sector board to tilt governance their way for a generation, instal favorable judges for decades, and crushing the remaining parliamentary opposition.
If we want an alternative government to form, it will include winning – and including people like Nash – despite all of that.
lol
I agree.
NZ isn’t some pommie/unionist outpost any more, if Labour ever wants to gain power again they have to completely change their approach.
First thing I’d do if I was making the decisions is neuter the party member input, those ass hats have no idea.
Bunch of myopic train spotters, they’ll be the death of labour unless you get them under control.
Did you vote for this government?
The great majority of the New Zealand public saw Key’s description of Dirty POlitics as a left wing smear campaign, and thinks Dirty Politics is when Labour does something wrong. The serious stuff of the inquiries has yet to happen. When it does, Nash will be toast.
I think the dirty politics thing did have some impact – just it was not enough to change most people’s votes because people were already going to vote right. It instead just made them want to vote NZfirst and Conservatives in the same way that a major labour scandal of corruption would probably not result in a huge defection to National (but might result in a significant defection to green).
So I think one can say the public was taking it seriously and yet it not make a significant difference in the election due to other more significant factors.
I presume Nash is hoping that NZ first implodes and he can set up a middle party and be the king maker.
Don’t like the look of all those mouthful of white teeth on Nash – couldn’t be rawshark could it. And I think Bomber is concentrating on Labour getting onto the government benches. I don’t want a new crop of right-wing oriented types carrying forward the soiled red banner worn down since 1984.
Can’t we actually get a crop of young Labour guys and girls who are involved in the politics and get trained and would have been thoroughly vetted? And then we will have some newcomers with broad interests and background coming forward. If it already happens, make it better.
And put them through years of this?
Best of luck.
I suspect that most NZ politicians have an ugly side where they have sacrificed ethics for political progress in some sense.
Overseas they talk about how if you were ethically clean you could never even get off the ground in politics. Maybe it isn’t quite as bad here but I’m sure it still applies to an extent
The problem is that if you turn on your advocates for this, you will cripple your own pool of advocates (which is relevant if one considers Nash an advocate of their general position).
We need this whole collective mind to start debating what an effective and coherent opposition would look like. The opposition is too scattered to do it themselves.
The goal is an alternative government. This is not going to be evident in Parliament until either late this term or early the next one, because they’re still reeling from the evident distance from attaining power.
So absent anyone else able to span the divides, we here are the default ground for thinking through an alternative government.
Personally I would like to see more post from MPs from Labour, the Greens, and NZFirst. Could the Moderators reach out to the parties to do this?
We are the collective base.
I have yet to hear how the left, and labour in particular intend countering two track strategy and cult key. Until that is addressed it wont matter who leads, the left wont be back in power til national shoots itself through the heart.
Forget Labour for now.
It’s years before they recover into a believable fighting force.
How would you do it?
How can we start it?
I imagine the labour politicians have a “hope he retires” strategy.
One could try ones luck with a One track Muldoon strategy I suppose. then undermine the faith of the public in politicians and then see if people will vote for the rat or the snake.
Expel Nash immediately.
Expel Nash immediately.
Expel Nash immediately.
Why, he’s one of labours stars?
He will be a competent and popular MP and member of the opposition.
Deal with it.
We don’t need more self interested right wingers in the Labour Party caucus.
It may be that he was set up by Lusk et al. Can’t find the 3 News item om it tonight, but this tweeted by Gower was the bit I was looking for:
As I recall from 3 News tonight, Bowker was a banking associate from Key’s bankster days overseas.
They have a precedent for corrupting, like they did Shane Jones they seem to be playing a game with this Nash fellow I’ve never heard of until recently.
Does he have a wiki page yet? Who is this Nash fellow, some National MP planted to cross the floor if Labour won?
Special issue on Piketty’s Capital
real-world economics review
Anyone else staying up for the blood moon eclipse later on?
Time Weka? Wouldn’t mind avid astronomer, but bad night here, spotted the moon earlier for a brief glimpse.
It’s happening now, about half the moon is black. Full eclipse starts at 11.27pm.
It’s meant to be a reddy colour, but looks black to me. Maybe it looks better through a telescope.
The full eclipse should be red.
Binocs bring out the colour.
flipping from a screen to themoon doesn’t help, either 🙂
Even better when listening to ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ playing in the background. 🙂
I was reading that pathetic piece by the treacherous Roger, decided to step out to look at the moon, and then stood under the clear skies baying for blood 🙂
The Blams sum it up pretty well to round the night off.
Love the old NZ scenes half way through. Good old, bad days.
Excellent. I have the cassette release of that concert. Wish they would rerelease it on digital!
“there is no spying in New Zealand,
we can all keep perfectly calm”