On the contrary, it is in ALL our interests to keep the border secure. A timeline cannot be given because we cannot know when other countries will get their shit together and get this virus under control. Australia's daily new cases for the last 17 days were: 14, 11, 3, 9, 15, 6, 11, 23, 12, 10, 9, 17, 8, 11, 4, 5, 5 https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=australia+new+covid+cases
We have all put the hard work in but now some are putting their self interest first.
Australia's daily new cases for the last 17 days were
And the mass BLM protests, held against all official advice, is going to help how?
In reality I'm optimistic that events like this held outdoors are relatively low risk. Still I'm left to wonder that if even a single new COVID case and avoidable death arises as a consequence of these protests, whether anyone will be held accountable.
Still in principle it's pretty damned galling to see smug left wingers patting themselves on the back for NZ's remarkable achievement (and we should be bloody proud of it), while at the same time cheering on mass protests elsewhere.
One week it's 'lockdowns are good', the next week it's 'lockdowns are irrelevant get out and protest'. Does anyone else here have a really sore neck from this?
Look, covid exists, but there's no way to link an individual death to a systemic problem. Any protestors who spread the infection were just a few bad apples, right? Besides, you haven't presented any alternative to the protest, so obviously that must mean that every non-protestor supports the worst possible course of action of actively applauding murders by racist police officers. And lots of protestors were distant from other protestors, so that means all the protestors were distant from each other. Oh, and identity politics causes covid anyway.
Oh, and I still find it funny that you think “defund the police” must mean some sort of mad max dystopia.
Well I just produced solid real life evidence, you by contrast can't even begin to explain what you really mean by 'defund the police' even though I challenged you to do that numerous times last night.
Given you have completely rejected any political reform process, and despise 'incrementalism', then what exactly do you have in mind? Because it had better be damned good, the people most at risk here are the vulnerable and dispossessed you profess to care about.
I already said, several times and in several ways, that it's not for me to determine what system other communities choose to replace their obviously broken law enforcement services.
Your "does not compute" loop needs to throw a specific error type if you genuinely want me to help resolve the bug in your cognitive processing.
that it's not for me to determine what system other communities choose to replace their obviously broken law enforcement services.
Well the loudest voices at the moment are making it clear they want police forces to be abolished. I produced the links, that made the demand clear …. zero police.
Now you damn well know that's an insane demand, it's an invitation to revert to local warlordism.
The only rational path forward is to increase police funding and pay, reform training and build professionalism. Merge and eliminate most of the 18,000 separate highly localised agencies that exist today and get coherence and consistency across the whole nation. Eradicate places for bad cops to hide, get the police union on board and engage heavily with the diverse communities they serve. Start with a recognition that at least 95% of cops are good people who serve their communities to the best of their ability.
Well the loudest voices at the moment are making it clear they want police forces to be abolished. I produced the links, that made the demand clear …. zero police.
Elimination of the current paramilitary police does not necessarily mean "zero police" (e.g. camden), and "zero police" does not necessarily mean "local warlordism" (e.g. whatever anarchists come up with).
As for your idea that the way out is to increase police funding, much lols.
As for consolidating police forces with the current paramilitary crowd, state police are often also paramilitary thugs. So that likely won't work in the way you hope.
Start with a recognition that at least 95% of cops are good people who serve their communities to the best of their ability.
Elimination of the current paramilitary police does not necessarily mean "zero police" (e.g. camden), and "zero police" does not necessarily mean "local warlordism" (e.g. whatever anarchists come up with).
Sorry but that is what the BLM links demand. Crystal clear. Zero police. Vaguely implying that 'local communities' can replace them with 'something else' is pretty much the definition of local warlordism.
And what if white communities decide they want their own special armed gangs to return to full segregation and dismantle all progress toward multiculturalism. Return to the Jim Crowe laws, etc? It's a miserable, disgusting prospect, but you could have no possible argument against it.
Vaguely implying that 'local communities' can replace them with 'something else' is pretty much the definition of local warlordism.
No, it's not.
And what if white communities decide they want their own special armed gangs to return to full segregation and dismantle all progress toward multiculturalism.
You're conflating legislative change and the current US police system. Specifically:
And what if white communities decide they want their own special armed gangs
basically the current system; and
to return to full segregation and dismantle all progress toward multiculturalism.
Legislative change, nothing to do with actually how laws and societal norms are upheld.
In any real world society, outside of left wing fantasy land, you understand from your work as a bouncer, that someone has to impose a physical security reality.
That means an agency capable of kicking down doors, taking down violent and threatening offenders, taking meth dealers off the streets, protecting the vulnerable in domestic incidents, tracking down exploiters, fraudsters, thugs and criminals of every kind. You know this perfectly well.
And in the USA where the crims are all armed that means your hypothetical 'something else' must be armed too.
And if blacks can have their own armed gang, then so can the hispanics, the asians, the whites … well here is a list with at least 97 entries. And that's just the dimension of ethnicity. How about all women have their own police (except that these days there is no such thing as sex apparently) and then all catholics, every rich gated community can build it's wall's higher and employ their own heavily armed mercenaries. Every town and hamlet can do their own thing, all 18,000 of them.
Hell you are right, there are elements of this all through the current system. That's precisely what is wrong with it.
See, where you have a complete lack of imagination is that you can only see a standing army or warlords as options.
There's actually a full continuum of options of community involvement in law and order. What situations we need "bouncers" for, and where other services would be more appropriate, and where a variety of other historical options could be used instead of a standing army of paranoid bouncers. As long as the other options work within the legal system, cool. Read up on societies before what we know as police. Not all of them were warlord hellscapes.
Having a non-representative paramilitary force whose members mostly live separate from the citizens it controls has been an abject failure at working within the legal system. Defund those units. If communities want to try something different, they probably won't do too much worse than the current system.
You ask me to imagine something different, yet you cannot even explain what you alternative would look like. You just weakly resort to saying 'it's up to the locals'.
Dude, I'm not your social policy teacher and I'm not the official spokesperson for BLM or defund the police..
You can say it's "not good enough" all you want, but it's still a fuckload better than defending the current regime. It's pathetic to be whining about nobody liking the 95% of cops who aren't racist murderers. They don't deserve a medal for doing their fucking job without braining 75 year olds, and they're not doing their job if they're not immediately arresting the other 5%.
Fire them, and let the communities develop some new ideas, because your ossified perspective ain't working.
It's par for the course really. Hating on business and making it difficult for them then expressing outrage that they dare to ask for certainty about when travel can start again or that their revenue doesn't match expenses and there fore jobs have to go. The right might be coldly calculating, but the outraged naivety expressed by the vocal left is what allows parties like National back into power.
If international film workers are essential, why not any other form of international business person? is the arts somehow more essential than representatives of exporting companies
Inconsistencies create uncertainty.
Which was the point of my comment, and i believe i can speak for redlogix in this instance when i say that it was a point he was making too.
Screen industry workers are only about a quarter of the 200 let in so far. Construction is another obvious sector where (re)importing one foreign specialist can allow restarting dozens of local jobs.
I still don’t know what your comment had to do with 1.2.1.1. Never mind, I’m no mind reader like you.
You seem to be confusing the opening of our borders for the general public with the exemptions that can be and are granted. To manage the risk, the borders will remain closed for the wider public. A simple binary. When they will open depends on the virus in other countries. How long is a piece of string? What are the Lotto numbers this week?
One can apply for an exemption, e.g. as an essential worker. There are eligibility criteria and the decision allows for some discretion AFAIK. The apparent inconsistencies are based on our ignorance about the decision-making process and ignorance leads to uncertainty in some cases. Life is not always a nice binary situation. Tough.
Capitalists justify their lopsided share of profits on the basis that they take more risks than workers do. Yet just watch business owners put their hands out for the state to reduce that risk. Bludgers.
The exemptions at the border have long been in place, as the Prime Minister pointed out on that same RNZ interview.
Once you generate exceptions, there will always be pressure applied at the edges of that criteria.
There's a helluva lot more integration required between the Immigration part of MBIE, and the Business part of MBIE, to ensure that these rules get stretched. Twyford should have long since had the AC36 applications on his desk – and Lees-Galloway should have had the via applications for the same long since processed.
Otherwise we can expect a whole bunch more businesses that rely on specialist overseas inputs to start failing. Thankfully the PM got this immediately this morning when she talked of "knock-on effects" being an evaluative criteria. The lack of internal coordination is pretty stark.
If they can't get this kind of stuff sorted then business including the whole of the APEC visit is in serious doubt.
So yes, business should keep up the pressure on the exceptions for visits. They are in all our interests.
Do you think the government is keeping the border closed for the hell of it? And a bit of pressure might change their mind? This ‘pressure’ is more political than economic it seems to me.
Sod business–from self employed to SME to corporates, a number of flaws and myths have been well exposed for all to see. There is indeed a layer that viewed Alert Levels and Lockdown as little more than a barrier to “increased shareholder value” and profits–viewed of course from the safety of leafy suburbs and air conditioned rural spreads and boltholes.
Small operators and contractors are in reality closer to workers by another name. The corporates like Graham Hart’s Carter Holt Harvey have been amongst the worst exploiters of the Govt. bailouts. CHH wood division took over 7 million in wage subsidies, trousered it, and made workers take enforced leave entitlements, and now are making substantial numbers redundant (70% for example is proposed for the Marsden Pt LVL plant). Some workers are in “negative leave balance” so they may need to forgo portions of any redundancy payments.
The Govt. did the right thing per immediate bailouts on the “high trust” model to get buy in from the employing class and aspirational petit bourgeois sectors–it would likely had been anarchy, or patchy Lockdown buy-in without the wage subsidies.
I should add that CHH closed their saw mill in Whangarei earlier in the year, 111 jobs gone. They were restructuring their business before C19, but took the Govt. bailout anyway. That is the morality of business.
Does anyone have a handle on how much the big name corporates are putting into the high profile sports events that are about to resume. Nationwide golf tournaments appear to be back on the calendar and the big names are there boots and all. How many of these companies took bailouts over the last few months while making redundancies. The money-go-round starts again.
What business need to be aware of is that there is a risk to their business and their health were Covid -19 to take a hold in NZ. No government can be held to be responsible for the downturn in business which a virus causes.
With more unemployment and the uncertainty of the impact of the virus, people will be more careful with their money.
I don't think you need to be Sherlock Holmes to work out there are powerful right wing business interests that are a) furious at the lockdown b) deeply alarmed at the prospect of a landslide labour victory and c) really, really pissed off that their unfettered right to profit has been circumscribed. They are not so stupid as to break cover against such an overwhelmingly popular PM and empirical evidence of success. From Steven Joyce to Gareth Morgan to the corporate management of Auckland University they've got a shit ton of egg on their faces and their credibility is badly dented. But you can be sure their proxies in politics and the media are being left in no doubt as to what is expected of them. Think of the ridiculous (but well funded) Plan B group, or the incoherent and sullen recent columns from Fran O'Sullivan or hear the sneering and surly tone of voice used by the likes of Barry Soper when questioning the PM to get some idea of what certain business interests have in mind as a "reward" for the government over the next three months.
The sneering and surly tone of voice used by the likes of Barry Soper when questioning the PM started the day after Ardern became PM in 2017.
Fury and resentment was written all over his face and Ardern was well aware of it. I recall her neatly passing over his loaded questioning and on to the next questioner before he could respond. It used to infuriate him further.
One thing I am curious about is whether there is any transparency about things like redundancy and business branch closures. Do we know why they are happening in each case? Or is that confidential to businesses? Protecting shareholder profits? Business was overextended and will collapse if it doesn't scale down? Does anyone know?
Well the PM can be as angry as she wants to be, if she thought that was not going to happen then she needs more 'reality based' advisors. Besides these guys had the 'restructuring' already going on before Covid. Why should they stop now, its not as if they got more demand or customers with money thanks to Covid.
Also neither the tax payer nor the government is 'taking a hit' as the money the government has to spend is provided by the tax payer – which would be people in work paying PAYE. We all know that rich people pay accountants to 'avoid paying taxes' or at least pay no more then someone on 70.000 before tax a year.. So in essence the government just literally gave the tax payer of this country a refund. So if she feels that the country is a bit short on cash she can start instructing her cabinet / beige suits to start looking at preventing rich people from getting away with tax avoidance. After all the Country may not have enough workers left to pay for the upkeep of the country. http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/latest-edition/7549236/Half-NZs-super-rich-dodge-tax
So in essence she should be happy as the Wage subsidy did what it was supposed to do, pay workers who would other wise be claiming unemployment. It was known that at some stage many of these workers will end up on the unemployment benefit. It was known so much that they Government decided to pay the wage subsidy to people who claimed unemployment cause Covid.
As of the women in her 'late fifties' who is afraid of not finding a job in this economy or any other due to age? I feel ya sister. I do.
Now the government could allow for people like her to go onto 'early' retirement…might even give them a decent deal to do so, as this would also take pressure of a dead employment market. But hey, it appears the government and the PM is just not angry enough just yet.
With Covid-19 and a lot of people losing jobs other places it's hard to look somewhere else."
Gray, in her late 50s, said if any job did come up at The Warehouse she would have to reapply, and though she planned to look elsewhere she feared companies would not take on older workers.
Fact is that demand is down, mind, there is only so much crap one can buy and then demand is down. I would also assume that the businesses listed in this article – Warehouse, Noel Leeming, Warehouse Stationary – etc have now hard competition with KMART and all those two dollar shops, and all the other trash shops that we are happy to build big malls for.
But heck, people buckle up, the ride ain't over, heck it is just beginning.
Yep – it's the psychic shock of having it rammed in their face that a society is more than just a place where 'business' occurs. They are very vengeful right now.
Having said that with Oz covid cases having a rolling average of 9/day now I would support borders being open to Oz when this is 2/day and with strict testing/symptom analysis etc
While Democrats are expected to swiftly approve the legislation this month, it does not go as far as some activists want to “defund the police." The outlook for passing the package in the Republican-held Senate is slim.
Chokeholds have been banned by the NYPD since 1993, that didn't help Eric Garner.
For all that energy, seems like more noise than light.
There is already a system to take care of the police indiscretions, but the justice system in the US, is as broken, corrupt and not for for purpose as their many police forces.
Kneeling in general is also commonly an act of submission. Whereas in American football, taking a knee is an assertive act of control, and often also used out of respect for an injured player.
I was peripherally aware that the Flynn case was shonky to say the least, but this is new information. I've never listened to Ted before, man is he articulate.
Setting aside all partisanship, if the facts he is speaking to are even vaguely correct, then yes partisan law enforcement …. no matter which administration does it …. is incredibly dangerous. If nothing else it ensures that no-one in an administration trusts anyone else, and no-one will speak the truth without paying a terrible price.
It's a piece of public political masturbation Cruz posted to ingratiate himself with MADAmorons who might be still concerned he might still possess some remnant of spine and principle sufficient to squeak up against their Dear Leader.
I've scanned that Mother Jones reference. It's little more than a bunch of reckons flying in very loose formation.
As for the CNN so called fact check, yes it checks of a list of events, but none seem to directly address what Cruz is saying. Anything to do with this affair seems to vanish down endless rabbit holes very quickly.
In the early days of the Trump administration there seems to have been a genuine effort to reach out to both the Chinese and Russian governments in order to reopen and reset the terms of engagement with them. Whether this was a good idea or not, it's clear there were factions in Washington who have determined nothing like this was going to happen.
As I've repeatedly said, the USA has determined to abandon it's role as the global guarantor of security. And regardless of whether Trump's connections with Russia can be considered legitimate or not, this entire 'Russiagate' debacle only ensures that at least a generation of Presidents will never attempt a negotiation with Russia ever again. The domestic risk is now too high; talking to them in any terms other than sanctions and military posturing are the only modes allowed.
The fundamental premise of the US led post WW2 security order was that nations who trade beneficially with each other are less motivated to go to war. It's an imperfect, but also reasonably effective idea. Combined with the deterrent of nuclear weapons, the past 75 years has seen no major power kinetic conflict, and a general trend towards far less violence than any other time in our history.
Trump's background is a business man, and he would have no doubt framed his approach to Russia as a business opportunity. Whether he understood 'conflict of interest or not' is beside the point, the idea of normalising relations with Russia is essentially a good one. And now an idea that is dead and buried largely at the hands of the Democrats.
In the early days of the Trump administration there seems to have been a genuine effort to reach out to both the Chinese and Russian governments in order to reopen and reset the terms of engagement with them.
You still haven't worked out that any efforts along those lines were merely looking for openings to further personally enrich Odious Maximus and his shoats? Ivanka's trademarks, Moscow hotels and on and on and on and on? I guess some people really can be fooled all of the time.
As for further negotiations with Russia, I doubt there will be a problem for any administration that attempts to conduct negotiations openly, transparently, and with the interests of the American people foremost. All of which were lacking in the events of 2016 and 2017 at issue.
You still haven't worked out that any efforts along those lines were merely looking for openings to further personally enrich Odious Maximus and his shoats?
Maybe it was where I said this:
" Whether he understood 'conflict of interest or not' is beside the point,"
Was that it?
I doubt there will be a problem for any administration that attempts to conduct negotiations openly, transparently, and with the interests of the American people foremost.
Hilarious. Do you really imagine the Repugs sitting quietly by while Joe Biden opens up channels to Russia. And what makes you imagine that anything about such contacts, at least initially while each side explores it's positions, is ever held openly and transparently?
That "reopen and reset the terms of engagement" made it look like you were claiming there was a good faith effort to act in the interests of the US as a whole, when there plainly wasn't. The conflict of interest wasn’t a minor nuance, strictly personal benefit was the entire effort.
As far as initial approaches to open up channels, sure, historically there have always been hush-hush back channel negotiations, conducted by the State Department. It may be that CovidCamacho and his minions have so thoroughly fucked things up with respect to Russia that in the future there will need to be some very public positioning before anything substantial can actually happen. As a new way of managing relations, that might not be a bad thing.
historically there have always been hush-hush back channel negotiations, conducted by the State Department.
And going nowhere under Obama, or pretty much any other President since the end of the Cold War. No vision, no wider goals … strategic drift at it's worst.
I've made it clear elsewhere, Trump's foreign policy has been nothing but the inelegant charge of a psychopathic bull into a wobbly china shop.
But here's the thing, of the several million fine people who stood for the Democrat nominee, they all agreed on one thing, that Trump was being too soft on trade.
Whether layered over with a gentile veneer of 'legality' (like Hunter Biden's antics) or Trump's crass self interest, Washington's approach to Russia and foreign policy points in one direction only … inwards.
Given what Obama achieved with Iran and Cuba among others, I'm inclined to attribute lack of progress in Russia-US relations much more to Pootee being a colossal arse rather than Obama's failings. An impression that Pootee's actions since 2016 have only substantially reinforced.
Foreign policy is the one area that a President can act in with relatively little pushback from Congress or the Senate. Obama had two whole terms to implement a wholesale refresh and opening up of US foreign policy, to reset the mistakes of the past and reinvigorate the global trade order on a sustainable basis.
And it's fair to say he got some things done, but in hindsight it hasn't amounted to much. Much like John Key, heaps of political capital, mainly a bunch of very nice cycleways to show for it.
There is a large part of me that thinks the statue and others like it should stay in some form. With this proviso, an accompanying dominant sculpture or structure should pair it, informing those who pause to look, about the true nature and efforts of the original person, and how long it has stood as a reminder of corrupted power and historical ignorance.
I'm sure there are many other city assets named after Edward Coulston.
My opinion is, don't remove his statue and his name completely. People like him, who have been feted long after their death, despite the nature of their lives, need to be remembered truthfully. And their relationship with persistent power structures and the ongoing resistance to change should be recognised and recorded.
I'm sure there are a lot of activists and artists around that would come up with a diversity of ways to create paired sculptures – the original one (perhaps changed) to represent the failures of the past to address inequity and wrongdoing, and another to show – truth and progress.
I agree totally Molly. Human history is complex, nuanced, and deeply fascinating. There is much we can learn from it if we set aside our modern biases and look through the eyes of the people who lived through it.
I believe you'd need about 84,000 of them, Robert, to truly reflect his impact.
(Drilling 84 thousand holes into the original might have some impact, but I'm no creative.)
I just think that alongside the original atrocities committed by this man, there were accompanying ignorance and failure to recognise his harm by successive governments, councils and communities. The statue stood there for over a hundred years. That needs to be recognised and recorded in some way too.
nah, a cast bronze of a white slave holder raping his slave women for 'free slaves' that she will bear him….cause profit – cause that is what it was. Right?
Putting this one in a museum where the historical and contemporary contexts can be presented seems a reasonable compromise.
The site the statue was taken from seems a good place to do what you are suggesting, but my sense is it shouldn't involve this statue, because of the recent history.
That's a good idea. But does remove the discussion from a more visible public space, and that may sweep the reality away. In situations like this, the decision should lie with the local community on how to record and recognise not just the initial problem, but the systems that allowed it to stay prominently displayed for so long.
That would be true across many countries I would believe. It shows clearly the institutional racism, and the less able to be defined culture that allowed it to prevail for so long.
On a bit of a tangent, but on the same lines, I had discomfort about a local civic minded group who were funded to beautify the neighbourhood. Their idea, paid for by ratepayers, was to create a side garden on one of the main streets with pseudo gravestones commemorated selected deaths from WWI. We already have cemeteries and war memorial halls aplenty.
This infusion and constant repetition of what is considered important enough to commemorate, has an insidious effect on sharing knowledge and understanding. When I posted about an Auckland Transport (don't ask me..) project that signposted places around Auckland with tangata whenua links, I had several emails complaining that the land had been utilised by settlers for many years. Which is true. After it was confiscated.
Those very public – public spaces are important and should contain designs and sculpture that are constant reminders of the society we are aiming for.
Maybe the best thing that could be done is build a museums to the Slave traders, Slave holders, Slave Masters and their property and what they did with it. Make it free entrance and walk every child through it. Maybe that would change perception?
I'm glad Churchill's racism has been recognised. The neglect of the Bengal famine. His belief in conquest, despite his words for Britain. No Indian can respect him with full knowledge.
Hmm, few people attacking or at least suspicious of the SIS pod yesterday. I was ready to give it the benefit of the doubt. I think I said I was wary of Espiner, but he is a capable journo who has done a lot of principled work.
Quote pulled out today and on the 10am RNZ news is 'anti-nuclear movement' was a gift to the USSR. Which considering the PM's referencing of that is interesting.
Also there are a lot more issues with the 5 eyes over the last 30 years. Not much use to democracy to only get the 30 year old stuff.
Detailed research on the NZSIS using a new “snout” and reactionaries such as Mr Hensley who was close to traitorous to David Lange during the Nuclear Free NZ period, will certainly be of historic interest–and–it seems as an angle to poke at the current Govt.
The question is whether that can be considered an attack or just opportunistic promotion for his podcast. There's some cheap shade thrown for sure, but it's also possible he's not responsible for how it's used and which angles are considered newsworthy.
Given that we are now far from a benign strategic environment do we still take such close cues from our five eyes partners? Our intelligence community seems to be more important than ever. There seems to be much more active work now that the public is mostly unaware of.
The National Party has promised to scrap teacher registration fees if it wins the September election.
The party's new deputy leader and education spokeswoman Nikki Kaye says National would ask taxpayers to pick up the $16 million annual cost of abolishing the fees.
Teachers' unions have been campaigning against a Teaching Council decision to raise the fee from $220.80 every three years to $157 a year – roughly doubling the annual cost to teachers.
The months to the election are going to seem like years if this is to be the daily dross:
"Paul Goldsmith tells Prime Minister to 'stick to her knitting' after Ardern's outrage as mass job cuts." NZ Herald headline.
"I don't think it's helpful for the Prime Minister to be criticising struggling businesses, she should stick to her knitting," Goldsmith said. Rather than getting angry, Ardern should be "better focused" on the Government's plan to grow the economy, he said.
So she makes a remark, she should have used all of the time it took to make the observation and the time should have been used being focused on something else? She was 'outraged'?
Therefore Goldsmith believes that 'business' is above any form of democratic oversight, i.e. it's not a part of society, it is superior to it. Good to get such a clear, unambiguous demonstration of National's extremism and how unfit to govern they are.
I know a good way for politicians to raise funds and we can all have fun. There should be a Trust set up to run a book on who wins the election, split the funds up with most going to the smaller parties, but the threshhold has to stay at 4% or we'll have more prosperity church types seeing it as a good thing.
What a pragmatic way to raise funds from a sports-living nation where gambling is useful for funding from raffles at cake stalls, to lotteries of houses in Queensland. Under this veneer of rationality we all want to win something. If it is against the law, then change it. We want laws that help our society.
Here's your antifa – a wannabe cop who paraded in his flogged popo kit.
The Third Precinct was overrun during protests on May 28 and heavily damaged due to vandalism and arson, with investigators identifying multiple fires being started in the building.
On June 3, St. Paul police officers were called to a home improvement store in St. Paul about an individual, later identified as Wolfe, wearing body armor and a law enforcement duty belt and carrying a baton was trying to get into the store. Store employees said WOLFE had been working as a security guard at the store but was fired earlier that day over social media posts about stealing items from the Third Precinct.
Police arrested Wolfe and say they found him wearing multiple items stolen from the Third Precinct, including body armor, a police-issue duty belt with handcuffs, an earphone piece, baton, and knife. Officers say Wolfe’s name was handwritten in duct tape on the back of the body armor. Law enforcement says it recovered items belonging to the Minneapolis Police Department, including a riot helmet, 9mm pistol magazine, police radio, and police issue overdose kit, from Wolfe’s apartment.
these are samples used for testing the adhesion of polymer and other coatings to concrete surfaces using a method called the simple cup adhesion shear test. look at the markings on the cups you idiots; don't believe the cops. https://t.co/e4SoUBJ2si
— Venture Communist (@venturecommunis) June 8, 2020
a bit like how all those pallets of antifa bricks were actually for municipal works or acting as safety barriers, and had often been there for significant amounts of time before Floyd was killed..
It’s my understanding that there was a fake flyer promoting a #BLM Protest. All community and #BlackLivesMatter were notified this was a fake protest & could lead to a confrontation. It’s suspected white supremacist groups created the fake event. #GeorgeFloyd
Wanna know what Trump's priority is as hundreds of thousands of Americans are protesting in the streets and with more than 110,000 dead because of a botched response to the pandemic?
— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) June 8, 2020
edit: Rick Wilson’s original thread that started it really deserves a direct link here for those that might not otherwise find their way to it. Betcha can’t get through the first 20 replies without at least a half-dozen actual lols.
We need a name for the newly expanded White House Fence complex.
Politicians have been out on the campaign trail today.
Quality trolling from Ardern, going to a kiwifruit place in Muller's own electorate, getting a warm reception from the locals (sorry, "hard-working Kiwis").
A chorus of "the election should be delayed until November" (Paula Bennett, Winston Peters, various media mouths). File that one under Doom & Gloom During Lockdown, a long list, now shredded.
Chris Hipkins has become New Zealand’s 41st prime minister following Ardern’s unexpected resignation—perhaps the bold and unpredictable move Labour needed to improve its election chances. Just six days into his premiership and Labour had its first lead over National in thirteen weeks. National has had a largely uninterrupted run of ...
Good people can come into your life imperceptibly. It can seem they’re just there one day being remarkable. Nat Torkington, for instance.We were both online from the early days, I’m assuming that’s where we first connected; maybe in the UseNet newsgroups, or maybe later through Public Address.But it was when ...
One of New Zealand’s biggest electricity generators, Genesis Energy, has given the go-ahead for a large solar farm near Lauriston on the Canterbury Plains, an hour’s drive south of Christchurch. It is part of Genesis’ strategy of replacing thermal baseload with renewable generation – a mix of wind and solar. ...
Buzz from the Beehive We found just one fresh announcement on the Beehive website this morning, when we made our first visit since 4 February. It was posted in the name of Nanaia Mahuta, our Minister of Foreign Affairs, and explained why she was not at Waitangi at the weekend. ...
Hipkins is doing the right thing for New Zealanders already living in Australia, but there’s now a growing risk of a fresh surge of net emigration of frustrated young Kiwis across the Tasman. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTLDR: Employers here in Aotearoa are desperate to keep their best-trained, most-productive ...
This post contains two guest posts from readers, both of which were sent to us after the flooding on Friday 27 January, both of which discuss how we handle our stormwater. This is a guest post from Ed Clayton, who’s written for us before about Auckland’s relationship with freshwater, ...
TLDR: For paying subscribers, here’s the key breaking news, scoops and links I’ve found since 4 am this morning, as of 7 am, including:A 7.8 magnitude earthquake killed more than 2,200 in Turkey near its border with Syria; ReutersMetService has warned a new cyclone is forming north of Aotearoa that ...
The politics of Waitangi and the Treaty evident over the weekend have moved into a new space. The politics of Waitangi and the Treaty evident over the weekend have moved into a new space. There is a new wave of Maori activism, which sees the Treaty as a living ...
Originally published by The Hill After decades of failure to pass major federal climate legislation, Congress finally broke through last year with the Inflation Reduction Act and its close to $400 billion in clean energy investments. Energy modeling experts estimated that these provisions would help the U.S. cut its carbon pollution ...
Apology Accepted? “I dropped the ball on Friday, I was too slow to be seen …The communications weren’t fast enough – including mine. I’m sorry for that.”–Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown.HOW OFTEN do politicians apologise? Sincerely apologise? Not offer voters the weasel words: “If my actions have offended anyone, then I ...
At first blush, Christopher Luxon’s comment at the parliamentary powhiri at Waitangi this year sounded tone deaf. The Leader of the Opposition in talking about the Treaty of Waitangi described New Zealand as “a little experiment”. It seemed to diminish the treaty and the very idea of our nation. Yet ...
THE (new) Prime Minister said nobody understands what co-governance means, later modified to that there were so many varying interpretations that there was no common understanding. BRIAN EASTON writes: Co-governance cannot be derived from the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It does not use the word. It ...
A brief postscript to yesterday’s newsletter…Watching the predawn speeches just now, the reverence of those speaking and the respectful nature of those listening under umbrellas in the dark. I felt a great sadness at the words from Christopher Luxon last evening still in my head. The singing in the dark accompanied ...
by Don Franks While on holiday,I stayed a few days in Scotland with a friend who showed me one of the country’s great working-class achievements. It was a few miles out of central Edinburgh, a huge cantilever bridge across the river Forth. The Forth Bridge was the first major structure ...
Time To Call A Halt: Chris Hipkins knows that iwi leaders possess the means to make life very difficult for his government. Notwithstanding their objections, however, the Prime Minister’s direction of travel – already clearly signalled by his very public demotion of Nanaia Mahuta – must be confirmed by an emphatic and ...
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 29, 2023 thru Sat, Feb 4, 2023. Story of the Week Social change more important than physical tipping points1.5-degree Goal not plausible Photo: CLICCS / Universität Hamburg Limiting global ...
So Long - And Thanks For All The Fish: In the two-and-a-bit years since Jacinda Ardern’s electoral triumph of 2020, virtually every decision she made had gone politically awry. In the minds of many thousands of voters a chilling metamorphosis had taken place. The Faerie Queen had become the Wicked ...
Look at us here on our beautiful islands in the South Pacific at the start of 2023, we have come so far.Ten days ago we saw a Māori Governor General swearing in our new PM and our first Pasifika Deputy PM, ahead of this year’s parliament where they will be ...
The Herald’s headline writers are at it again! A sensible and balanced piece by Liam Dann on the battle against inflation carries a headline that suggests that NZ is doing worse than the rest of the world. Check it out and see for yourself if I am right. Is this ...
Photo by Anna Demianenko on UnsplashTLDR: Here’s my longer reads and listens for the weekend for sharing with The Kaka’s paying subscribers. I’ve opened this one up for all to give everyone a taste of the sorts of extras you get as a full paying subscriber.Subscribe nowDeeper reads and listens ...
Hello from the middle of a long weekend where I’m letting the last few days unspool, not ready, not yet, to give words to the hardest of what we heard.Instead, today, here are some good words from other people.Mother CourageWhen I wrote last year about Mum and Dad’s move to ...
Workers Now is a new slate of candidates contesting this year’s general election. James Robb and Don Franks are the people behind this initiative and they are hoping to put the spotlight on working people’s interests. Both are seasoned activists who have campaigned for workers’ rights over many decades. Here is ...
Buzz from the Beehive Politicians keen to curry favour with Māori tribal leaders have headed north for Waitangi weekend. More than a few million dollars of public funding are headed north, too. Not all of this money is being trumpeted on the Beehive website, the Government’s official website. ...
Insurers face claims of over $500 million for cars, homes and property damaged in the floods. They are already putting up premiums and pulling insurance from properties deemed at high risk of flooding. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: This week in the podcast of our weekly hoon webinar for paying subscribers, ...
Our Cranky Uncle Game can already be played in eight languages: English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. About 15 more languages are in the works at various stages of completion or have been offered to be done. To kick off the new year, we checked with how ...
The (new) Prime Minister said nobody understands what co-governance means, later modified to that there were so many varying interpretations that there was no common understanding.Co-governance cannot be derived from the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It does not use the word. It refers to ‘government’ on ...
It’s that time of the week again when and I co-host our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kaka. Jump on this link for our chat about the week’s news with special guests Auckland Central MP Chloe Swarbrick and Auckland City Councillor Julie Fairey, including:Auckland’s catastrophic floods, which ...
In March last year, in a panic over rising petrol prices caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the government made a poor decision, "temporarily" cutting fuel excise tax by 25 cents a litre. Of course, it turned out not to be temporary at all, having been extended in May, July, ...
This month’s open thread for climate related topics. Please be constructive, polite, and succinct. The post Unforced variations: Feb 2023 first appeared on RealClimate. ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two fresh press releases had been posted when we checked the Beehive website at noon, both of them posted yesterday. In one statement, in the runup to Waitangi Day, Maori Crown Relations Minister Kelvin Davis drew attention to happenings on a Northland battle site in 1845. ...
It’s that time of the week again when I’m on the site for an hour for a chat in an Ask Me Anything with paying subscribers to The Kaka. Jump in for a chat on anything, including:Auckland’s catastrophic floods, which are set to cost insurers and the Government well over ...
Australia’s Treasurer Jim Chalmers (left) has published a 6,000 word manifesto called ‘Capitalism after the Crises’ arguing for ‘values-based capitalism’. Yet here in NZ we hear the same stale old rhetoric unchanged from the 1990s and early 2000s. Photo: Getty ImagesTLDR: The rest of the world is talking about inflation ...
A couple of weeks ago, after NCEA results came out, my son’s enrolment at Auckland Uni for this year was confirmed - he is doing a BSc majoring in Statistics. Well that is the plan now, who knows what will take his interest once he starts.I spent a bit of ...
Kia ora. What a week! We hope you’ve all come through last weekend’s extreme weather event relatively dry and safe. Header image: stormwater ponds at Hobsonville Point. Image via Twitter. The week in Greater Auckland There’s been a storm of information and debate since the worst of the flooding ...
Hi,At 4.43pm yesterday it arrived — a cease and desist letter from the guy I mentioned in my last newsletter. I’d written an article about “WEWE”, a global multi-level marketing scam making in-roads into New Zealand. MLMs are terrible for many of the same reasons megachurches are terrible, and I ...
Time To Call A Halt: Chris Hipkins knows that iwi leaders possess the means to make life very difficult for his government. Notwithstanding their objections, however, the Prime Minister’s direction of travel – already clearly signalled by his very public demotion of Nanaia Mahuta – must be confirmed by an emphatic ...
Open access notables Via PNAS, Ceylan, Anderson & Wood present a paper squarely in the center of the Skeptical Science wheelhouse: Sharing of misinformation is habitual, not just lazy or biased. The signficance statement is obvious catnip: Misinformation is a worldwide concern carrying socioeconomic and political consequences. What drives ...
Mark White from the Left free speech organisation Plebity looks at the disturbing trend of ‘book burning’ on US campuses In the abstract, people mostly agree that book banning is a bad thing. The Nazis did us the favor of being very clear about it and literally burning books, but ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has undergone a stern baptisim of fire in his first week in his new job, but it doesn’t get any easier. Next week, he has a vital meeting in Canberra with his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese, where he has to establish ...
As PM Chris Hipkins says, it’s a “no brainer” to extend the fuel tax cut, half price public subsidy and the cut to the road user levy until mid-year. A no braoner if the prime purpose is to ease the burden on people struggling to cope with the cost of ...
Buzz from the Beehive Cost-of-living pressures loomed large in Beehive announcements over the past 24 hours. The PM was obviously keen to announce further measures to keep those costs in check and demonstrate he means business when he talks of focusing his government on bread-and-butter issues. His statement was headed ...
Poor Mike Hosking. He has revealed himself in his most recent diatribe to be one of those public figures who is defined, not by who he is, but by who he isn’t, or at least not by what he is for, but by what he is against. Jacinda’s departure has ...
New Zealand is the second least corrupt country on earth according to the latest Corruption Perception Index published yesterday by Transparency International. But how much does this reflect reality? The problem with being continually feted for world-leading political integrity – which the Beehive and government departments love to boast about ...
TLDR: Including my pick of the news and other links in my checks around the news sites since 4am. Paying subscribers can see them all below the fold.In Aotearoa’s political economyBrown vs Fish Read more ...
TLDR: Including my pick of the news and other links in my checks around the news sites since 4am. Paying subscribers can see them all below the fold.In Aotearoa’s political economyBrown vs Fish Read more ...
In other countries, the target-rich cohorts of swinging voters are given labels such as ‘Mondeo Man’, ‘White Van Man,’ ‘Soccer Moms’ and ‘Little Aussie Battlers.’ Here, the easiest shorthand is ‘Ford Ranger Man’ – as seen here parked outside a Herne Bay restaurant, inbetween two SUVs. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / ...
In other countries, the target-rich cohorts of swinging voters are given labels such as ‘Mondeo Man’, ‘White Van Man,’ ‘Soccer Moms’ and ‘Little Aussie Battlers.’ Here, the easiest shorthand is ‘Ford Ranger Man’ – as seen here parked outside a Herne Bay restaurant, inbetween two SUVs. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / ...
Transport Minister and now also Minister for Auckland, Michael Wood has confirmed that the light rail project is part of the government’s policy refocus. Wood said the light rail project was under review as part of a ministerial refocus on key Government projects. “We are undertaking a stocktake about how ...
Sometime before the new Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced that this year would be about “bread and butter issues”, National’s finance spokesperson Nicola Willis decided to move from Wellington Central and stand for Ohariu, which spreads across north Wellington from the central city to Johnsonville and Tawa. It’s an ...
They say a week is a long time in politics. For Mayor Wayne Brown, turns out 24 hours was long enough for many of us to see, quite obviously, “something isn’t right here…”. That in fact, a lot was going wrong. Very wrong indeed.Mainly because it turns ...
One of the most effective, and successful, graphics developed by Skeptical Science is the escalator. The escalator shows how global surface temperature anomalies vary with time, and illustrates how "contrarians" tend to cherry-pick short time intervals so as to argue that there has been no recent warming, while "realists" recognise ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTLDR: Here’s a quick roundup of the news today for paying subscribers on a slightly frantic, very wet, and then very warm day. In Aotearoa’s political economy today Read more ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTLDR: Here’s a quick roundup of the news today for paying subscribers on a slightly frantic, very wet, and then very warm day. In Aotearoa’s political economy today Read more ...
Tomorrow we have a funeral, and thank you all of you for your very kind words and thoughts — flowers, even.Our friend Michèle messaged: we never get to feel one thing at a time, us grownups, and oh boy is that ever the truth. Tomorrow we have the funeral, and ...
Lynn and I have just returned from a news conference where Hipkins, fresh from visiting a relief centre in Mangere, was repeatedly challenged to justify the extension of subsidies to create more climate emissions when the effects of climate change had just proved so disastrous. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The ...
Lynn and I have just returned from a news conference where Hipkins, fresh from visiting a relief centre in Mangere, was repeatedly challenged to justify the extension of subsidies to create more climate emissions when the effects of climate change had just proved so disastrous. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The ...
A new Prime Minister, a revitalised Cabinet, and possibly revised priorities – but is the political and, importantly, economic landscape much different? Certainly some within the news media were excited by the changes which Chris Hipkins announced yesterday or – before the announcement – by the prospect of changes in ...
Currently the government's strategy for reducing transport emissions hinges on boosting vehicle fuel-efficiency, via the clean car standard and clean car discount, and some improvements to public transport. The former has been hugely successful, and has clearly set us on the right path, but its also not enough, and will ...
Buzz from the Beehive Before he announced his Cabinet yesterday, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced he would be flying to Australia next week to meet that country’s Prime Minister. And before Kieran McAnulty had time to say “Three Waters” after his promotion to the Local Government portfolio, he was dishing ...
The quarterly labour market statistics were released this morning, showing that unemployment has risen slightly to 3.4%. There are now 99,000 people unemployed - 24,000 fewer than when Labour took office. So, I guess the Reserve Bank's plan to throw people out of work to stop wage rises "inflation", and ...
Another night of heavy rain, flooding, damage to homes, and people worried about where the hell all this water is going to go as we enter day twenty two of rain this year.Honestly if the government can’t sell Three Waters on the back of what has happened with storm water ...
* Dr Bryce Edwards writes – Prime Minister Chris Hipkins continues to be the new broom in Government, re-setting his Government away from its problem areas in his Cabinet reshuffle yesterday, and trying to convince voters that Labour is focused on “bread and butter” issues. The ministers responsible for unpopular ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins continues to be the new broom in Government, re-setting his Government away from its problem areas in his Cabinet reshuffle yesterday, and trying to convince voters that Labour is focused on “bread and butter” issues. The ministers responsible for unpopular reforms in water and DHB centralisation ...
Hi,It’s weird to me that in 2023 we still have people falling for multi-level marketing schemes (MLMs for short). There are Netflix documentaries about them, countless articles, and last year we did an Armchaired and Dangerous episode on them.Then you check a ticketing website like EventBrite and see this shit ...
Nanaia Mahuta fell the furthest in the Cabinet reshuffle. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: PM Chris Hipkins unveiled a Cabinet this afternoon he hopes will show wavering voters that a refreshed Labour Government is focused on ‘bread and butter cost of living’ issues, rather than the unpopular, unwieldy and massively centralising ...
Nanaia Mahuta fell the furthest in the Cabinet reshuffle. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: PM Chris Hipkins unveiled a Cabinet this afternoon he hopes will show wavering voters that a refreshed Labour Government is focused on ‘bread and butter cost of living’ issues, rather than the unpopular, unwieldy and massively centralising ...
Shortly, the absolute state of Wayne Brown. But before that, something I wrote four years ago for the council’s own media machine. It was a day-in-the-life profile of their many and varied and quite possibly unnoticed vital services. We went all over Auckland in 48 hours for the story, the ...
Completed reads for January Lilith, by George MacDonald The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (poem), by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Christabel (poem), by Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok, by Anonymous The Lay of Kraka (poem), by Anonymous 1066 and All That, by W.C. Sellar and R.J. ...
Pity the poor Brits. They just can’t catch a break. After years of reporting of lying Boris Johnson, a change to a less colourful PM in Rishi Sunak has resulted in a smooth media pivot to an end-of-empire narrative. The New York Times, no less, amplifies suggestions that Blighty ...
On that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth.Genesis 6:11-12THE TORRENTIAL DOWNPOURS that dumped a record-breaking amount of rain on Auckland this anniversary weekend will reoccur with ever-increasing frequency. The planet’s atmosphere is ...
Buzz from the Beehive There has been plenty to keep the relevant Ministers busy in flood-stricken Auckland over the past day or two. But New Zealand, last time we looked, extends north of Auckland into Northland and south of the Bombay Hills all the way to the bottom of the ...
Kia ora e te whānau. Today, we mark the anniversary of the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi - and our commitment to working in partnership with Māori to deliver better outcomes and tackle the big issues, together. ...
We’ve just announced a massive infrastructure investment to kick-start new housing developments across New Zealand. Through our Infrastructure Acceleration Fund, we’re making sure that critical infrastructure - like pipes, roads and wastewater connections - is in place, so thousands more homes can be built. ...
The Green Party is joining more than 20 community organisations to call for an immediate rent freeze in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, after reports of landlords intending to hike rents after flooding. ...
When Chris Hipkins took on the job of Prime Minister, he said bread and butter issues like the cost of living would be the Government’s top priority – and this week, we’ve set out extra support for families and businesses. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to provide direct support to low-income households and to stop subsidising fossil fuels during a climate crisis. ...
The tools exist to help families with surging costs – and as costs continue to rise it is more urgent than ever that we use them, the Green Party says. ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese today held their first bilateral meeting in Canberra. It was Chris Hipkins’ first overseas visit since he took office, reflecting the close relationship between New Zealand and Australia. “New Zealand has no closer partner than Australia. I was pleased to ...
New Zealand will immediately provide humanitarian support to those affected by the earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria, Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta announced today. “Aotearoa New Zealand is deeply saddened by the loss of life and devastation caused by these earthquakes. Our thoughts are with the families and loved ones affected,” ...
An historic Northland pā site with links to Ngāpuhi chief Hongi Hika is to be handed back to iwi, after collaboration by government, private landowners and local hapū. “It is fitting that the ceremony for the return of the Pākinga Pā site is during Waitangi weekend,” said Regional Development Minister ...
The Government is investing in a suite of initiatives to unlock Māori and Pacific resources, talent and knowledge across the science and research sector, Research, Science and Innovation Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall announced today. Two new funds – He tipu ka hua and He aka ka toro – set to ...
Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta departs for India tomorrow as she continues to reconnect Aotearoa New Zealand to the world. The visit will begin in New Delhi where the Foreign Minister will meet with the Vice President Hon Jagdeep Dhankar and her Indian Government counterparts, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and ...
Over $10 million infrastructure funding to unlock housing in Whangārei The purchase of a 3.279 hectare site in Kerikeri to enable 56 new homes Northland becomes eligible for $100 million scheme for affordable rentals Multiple Northland communities will benefit from multiple Government housing investments, delivering thousands of new homes for ...
The Government is supporting one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most significant historic sites, the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, as it continues to recover from the impacts of COVID-19. “The Waitangi Treaty Grounds are a taonga that we should protect and look after. This additional support will mean people can continue to ...
A memorial event at a key battle site in the New Zealand land wars is an important event to mark the progress in relations between Māori and the Crown as we head towards Waitangi Day, Minister for Te Arawhiti Kelvin Davis said. The Battle of Ohaeawai in June 1845 saw ...
More Police officers are being deployed to the frontline with the graduation of 54 new constables from the Royal New Zealand Police College today. The graduation ceremony for Recruit Wing 362 at Te Rauparaha Arena in Porirua was the first official event for Stuart Nash since his reappointment as Police ...
The Government is unlocking an additional $700,000 in support for regions that have been badly hit by the recent flooding and storm damage in the upper North Island. “We’re supporting the response and recovery of Auckland, Waikato, Coromandel, Northland, and Bay of Plenty regions, through activating Enhanced Taskforce Green to ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has welcomed the announcement that Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal, Princess Anne, will visit New Zealand this month. “Princess Anne is travelling to Aotearoa at the request of the NZ Army’s Royal New Zealand Corps of Signals, of which she is Colonel in Chief, to ...
A new Government and industry strategy launched today has its sights on growing the value of New Zealand’s horticultural production to $12 billion by 2035, Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor said. “Our food and fibre exports are vital to New Zealand’s economic security. We’re focussed on long-term strategies that build on ...
25 cents per litre petrol excise duty cut extended to 30 June 2023 – reducing an average 60 litre tank of petrol by $17.25 Road User Charge discount will be re-introduced and continue through until 30 June Half price public transport fares extended to the end of June 2023 saving ...
The strong economy has attracted more people into the workforce, with a record number of New Zealanders in paid work and wages rising to help with cost of living pressures. “The Government’s economic plan is delivering on more better-paid jobs, growing wages and creating more opportunities for more New Zealanders,” ...
The Government is providing a further $1 million to the Mayoral Relief Fund to help communities in Auckland following flooding, Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty announced today. “Cabinet today agreed that, given the severity of the event, a further $1 million contribution be made. Cabinet wishes to be proactive ...
The new Cabinet will be focused on core bread and butter issues like the cost of living, education, health, housing and keeping communities and businesses safe, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has announced. “We need a greater focus on what’s in front of New Zealanders right now. The new Cabinet line ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins will travel to Canberra next week for an in person meeting with Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. “The trans-Tasman relationship is New Zealand’s closest and most important, and it was crucial to me that my first overseas trip as Prime Minister was to Australia,” Chris Hipkins ...
The Government is providing establishment funding of $100,000 to the Mayoral Relief Fund to help communities in Auckland following flooding, Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty announced. “We moved quickly to make available this funding to support Aucklanders while the full extent of the damage is being assessed,” Kieran McAnulty ...
As the Mayor of Auckland has announced a state of emergency, the Government, through NEMA, is able to step up support for those affected by flooding in Auckland. “I’d urge people to follow the advice of authorities and check Auckland Emergency Management for the latest information. As always, the Government ...
Ka papā te whatitiri, Hikohiko ana te uira, wāhi rua mai ana rā runga mai o Huruiki maunga Kua hinga te māreikura o te Nota, a Titewhai Harawira Nā reira, e te kahurangi, takoto, e moe Ka mōwai koa a Whakapara, kua uhia te Tai Tokerau e te kapua pōuri ...
Carmel Sepuloni, Minister for Social Development and Employment, has activated Enhanced Taskforce Green (ETFG) in response to flooding and damaged caused by Cyclone Hale in the Tairāwhiti region. Up to $500,000 will be made available to employ job seekers to support the clean-up. We are still investigating whether other parts ...
The 2023 General Election will be held on Saturday 14 October 2023, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced today. “Announcing the election date early in the year provides New Zealanders with certainty and has become the practice of this Government and the previous one, and I believe is best practice,” Jacinda ...
Jacinda Ardern has announced she will step down as Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party. Her resignation will take effect on the appointment of a new Prime Minister. A caucus vote to elect a new Party Leader will occur in 3 days’ time on Sunday the 22nd of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra As well as her interviews with politicians and experts, Politics with Michelle Grattan includes “Word from The Hill”, where she discusses the news with members of The Conversation’s politics team. In this podcast Michelle and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe.Lukas Coch/AAP Australia’s cash rate has hit 3.35%, after the Reserve Bank raised interest rates for the ninth time in a row – and signalled ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Della Bosca, PhD Candidate and Research Assistant at Sydney Environment Institute, University of Sydney Shutterstock While the days of overt climate denial are mostly over, there’s a distinct form of denial emerging in its stead. You may have experienced ...
A potential cyclone that could bring more severe wet weather to the upper North Island is now forecast to form a day earlier, Stuff reports. Due to ideal cyclone-formation conditions over the Coral Sea, a low south of the Solomon Islands has a high chance of turning into a cyclone ...
Author I.S. Belle reveals the top five influences on her debut LGBT horror/paranormal YA novel, Zombabe.Zombabe is a LGBT found family horror/paranormal YA about a group of friends putting down an ancient evil inextricably linked to their sleepy town of Bulldeen, Maine. Does all of that bring anything to ...
New Zealand prime minister Chris Hipkins and his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese are holding a joint press conference in Canberra. Watch live here. ...
The New Zealand government is providing $1.5 million in humanitarian support to those affected by destructive earthquakes in Turkey and Syria last night, foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta has announced. The contribution of $1m to Turkey and $500,000 to Syria will be made via the International Federation of Red Cross and ...
In a state-of-the-nation-style lunchtime speech in Auckland today, the leader of the Act Party has taken aim at both major party leaders. “Throughout this speech,” David Seymour told supporters at the Maritime Museum, “I will do my best to differentiate between the Chrisses, but it may not be easy.” Seymour ...
In Canberra Chris Hipkins has met with Australia’s Anthony Albanese in Canberra, exchanging a few brief words to gathered reporters before heading inside for a closed doors meeting. Hipkins was driven into the courtyard of Parliament House, where he was greeted by Albanese in person. “Welcome prime minister,” said Albanese. A beaming ...
The acclaimed fashion designer has been crowned the ‘undisputed king of the frock’ – but with identical dresses widely available on fast fashion outlets, questions are being asked about his design practices.This story was first published on Stuff. He has been described as the “knight of New Zealand fashion”, his ...
In Canberra New Zealand’s media pack has arrived at Australia’s parliament ahead of this afternoon’s visit from prime minister Chris Hipkins. The PM will be met by his counterpart Anthony Albanese in the courtyard of parliament house, before heading inside for a closed doors meeting. Following the 45 minute meeting, ...
Two new funding initiatives, totalling $22 million, have been approved by Cabinet today to help ensure the cultural sector has the “certainty and support to thrive”, announced Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage. $10 million of Covid-19 recovery funding will support established arts, cultural and diversity festivals, while $12 ...
New Zealand Politics Daily is a collation of the most prominent issues being discussed in New Zealand. It is edited by Dr Bryce Edwards of The Democracy Project. Items of interest and importance todayWAITANGI, CO-GOVERNANCE, THREE WATERS Thomas Cranmer: Waitangi Day and the quiet revolution Glenn McConnell (Stuff): Waitangi in 2023: Plenty ...
ACT leader David Seymour has delivered a speech painting National and Labour as two sides of the same coin, and calling co-governance a "culture war". ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Quigley, Associate Professor of Earthquake Science, The University of Melbourne Mustafa Karali / AP A pair of huge earthquakes have struck in Turkey, leaving more than 3,000 people dead and unknown numbers injured or displaced. The first quake, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kalinda Griffiths, Scientia lecturer, UNSW Sydney Getty/Marianne Purdie Cancer figures provide stark evidence of the gap between the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and non-Indigenous people in Australia. The difference is confronting – and it’s increasing over ...
NZ Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese have used a joint media conference to affirm the nations' relationship is that of "family". ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Alcohol bans are being reimposed on Northern Territory Indigenous communities, as the federal and territory governments grapple with intractable problems in Alice Springs and elsewhere in the NT. The situation in Alice Springs and the ...
I was told to avoid gluten. I was told it was all in my head. When 10% of women experience endometriosis, why does it take so long for its classic symptoms to be recognised? It was 2011 when I had my first period. It felt like a very exciting moment ...
In Canberra Chris Hipkins has touched down in Australia’s capital – his first overseas visit since becoming prime minister just three weeks ago. After disembarking from the Airforce Boeing, Hipkins was greeted by his former caucus colleague and current high commissioner to Australia, Dame Annette King. The pair hugged on ...
The rise of TikTok-inspired ‘algospeak’ is making online communication even more of a nightmare, writes SYSCA‘s Lucy Blakiston.This is an excerpt from the Shit You Should Care About daily newsletter – sign up here.Content warning: sexual assault The other day I was chatting with a friend about algospeak – ...
School, finally, is back this week in the nation’s largest city to howls of relief from many parents and (one hopes) some students also. Yet the resumption of normal service shouldn’t obscure a curious inconsistency. The past few weeks have shown ...
MediaRoom column: On the eve of a Cabinet decision on the fate of the proposed public broadcasting merger, questions emerge over the engagement by the TVNZ chief executive of two former National government aides to change the narrative and push TVNZ's view on the Government's plan Within weeks of taking over ...
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So business wants clarity over the borders – https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/418557/nz-reaches-alert-level-1-but-businesses-want-clarity-over-borders
They are closed. Is that clear?
Lol. Business is the religion and profit the opium of the wealthy. Nothing shall stand in the way of it, especially not people.
Business need to keep the pressure on this.
It's in all our interests.
On the contrary, it is in ALL our interests to keep the border secure. A timeline cannot be given because we cannot know when other countries will get their shit together and get this virus under control. Australia's daily new cases for the last 17 days were: 14, 11, 3, 9, 15, 6, 11, 23, 12, 10, 9, 17, 8, 11, 4, 5, 5 https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=australia+new+covid+cases
We have all put the hard work in but now some are putting their self interest first.
Australia's daily new cases for the last 17 days were
And the mass BLM protests, held against all official advice, is going to help how?
In reality I'm optimistic that events like this held outdoors are relatively low risk. Still I'm left to wonder that if even a single new COVID case and avoidable death arises as a consequence of these protests, whether anyone will be held accountable.
Still in principle it's pretty damned galling to see smug left wingers patting themselves on the back for NZ's remarkable achievement (and we should be bloody proud of it), while at the same time cheering on mass protests elsewhere.
One week it's 'lockdowns are good', the next week it's 'lockdowns are irrelevant get out and protest'. Does anyone else here have a really sore neck from this?
lol
Calling for people to be held accountable for BLM-related covid deaths is some inception-level outrage.
Well go and ask one of your elderly relatives how they feel about dying because possibly BLM protests trigger a secondary wave of infection.
Look, covid exists, but there's no way to link an individual death to a systemic problem. Any protestors who spread the infection were just a few bad apples, right? Besides, you haven't presented any alternative to the protest, so obviously that must mean that every non-protestor supports the worst possible course of action of actively applauding murders by racist police officers. And lots of protestors were distant from other protestors, so that means all the protestors were distant from each other. Oh, and identity politics causes covid anyway.
I think that covers your shtick.
That's quite clever, pulling an insane, febrile act in the hope I'll back away very, very carefully.
Meanwhile back in the real world this is what happens when 'no police'.
(Incidentally if you have ever worked with a bunch of Trinidadian instrument techs, it's truly the most delightful experience ever.)
Why would you back away? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery lol
Oh, and I still find it funny that you think “defund the police” must mean some sort of mad max dystopia.
Oh, and I still find it funny that you think “defund the police” must mean some sort of mad max dystopia.
Well I just produced solid real life evidence, you by contrast can't even begin to explain what you really mean by 'defund the police' even though I challenged you to do that numerous times last night.
Given you have completely rejected any political reform process, and despise 'incrementalism', then what exactly do you have in mind? Because it had better be damned good, the people most at risk here are the vulnerable and dispossessed you profess to care about.
And camden is another real-life possibility.
I already said, several times and in several ways, that it's not for me to determine what system other communities choose to replace their obviously broken law enforcement services.
Your "does not compute" loop needs to throw a specific error type if you genuinely want me to help resolve the bug in your cognitive processing.
that it's not for me to determine what system other communities choose to replace their obviously broken law enforcement services.
Well the loudest voices at the moment are making it clear they want police forces to be abolished. I produced the links, that made the demand clear …. zero police.
Now you damn well know that's an insane demand, it's an invitation to revert to local warlordism.
The only rational path forward is to increase police funding and pay, reform training and build professionalism. Merge and eliminate most of the 18,000 separate highly localised agencies that exist today and get coherence and consistency across the whole nation. Eradicate places for bad cops to hide, get the police union on board and engage heavily with the diverse communities they serve. Start with a recognition that at least 95% of cops are good people who serve their communities to the best of their ability.
But you've rejected that as 'incrementalism'.
Elimination of the current paramilitary police does not necessarily mean "zero police" (e.g. camden), and "zero police" does not necessarily mean "local warlordism" (e.g. whatever anarchists come up with).
As for your idea that the way out is to increase police funding, much lols.
As for consolidating police forces with the current paramilitary crowd, state police are often also paramilitary thugs. So that likely won't work in the way you hope.
Well they did fuckall about the other 5%, so no.
Elimination of the current paramilitary police does not necessarily mean "zero police" (e.g. camden), and "zero police" does not necessarily mean "local warlordism" (e.g. whatever anarchists come up with).
Sorry but that is what the BLM links demand. Crystal clear. Zero police. Vaguely implying that 'local communities' can replace them with 'something else' is pretty much the definition of local warlordism.
And what if white communities decide they want their own special armed gangs to return to full segregation and dismantle all progress toward multiculturalism. Return to the Jim Crowe laws, etc? It's a miserable, disgusting prospect, but you could have no possible argument against it.
No, it's not.
You're conflating legislative change and the current US police system. Specifically:
basically the current system; and
Legislative change, nothing to do with actually how laws and societal norms are upheld.
In any real world society, outside of left wing fantasy land, you understand from your work as a bouncer, that someone has to impose a physical security reality.
That means an agency capable of kicking down doors, taking down violent and threatening offenders, taking meth dealers off the streets, protecting the vulnerable in domestic incidents, tracking down exploiters, fraudsters, thugs and criminals of every kind. You know this perfectly well.
And in the USA where the crims are all armed that means your hypothetical 'something else' must be armed too.
And if blacks can have their own armed gang, then so can the hispanics, the asians, the whites … well here is a list with at least 97 entries. And that's just the dimension of ethnicity. How about all women have their own police (except that these days there is no such thing as sex apparently) and then all catholics, every rich gated community can build it's wall's higher and employ their own heavily armed mercenaries. Every town and hamlet can do their own thing, all 18,000 of them.
Hell you are right, there are elements of this all through the current system. That's precisely what is wrong with it.
See, where you have a complete lack of imagination is that you can only see a standing army or warlords as options.
There's actually a full continuum of options of community involvement in law and order. What situations we need "bouncers" for, and where other services would be more appropriate, and where a variety of other historical options could be used instead of a standing army of paranoid bouncers. As long as the other options work within the legal system, cool. Read up on societies before what we know as police. Not all of them were warlord hellscapes.
Having a non-representative paramilitary force whose members mostly live separate from the citizens it controls has been an abject failure at working within the legal system. Defund those units. If communities want to try something different, they probably won't do too much worse than the current system.
You ask me to imagine something different, yet you cannot even explain what you alternative would look like. You just weakly resort to saying 'it's up to the locals'.
That's nowhere near good enough.
Dude, I'm not your social policy teacher and I'm not the official spokesperson for BLM or defund the police..
You can say it's "not good enough" all you want, but it's still a fuckload better than defending the current regime. It's pathetic to be whining about nobody liking the 95% of cops who aren't racist murderers. They don't deserve a medal for doing their fucking job without braining 75 year olds, and they're not doing their job if they're not immediately arresting the other 5%.
Fire them, and let the communities develop some new ideas, because your ossified perspective ain't working.
It's par for the course really. Hating on business and making it difficult for them then expressing outrage that they dare to ask for certainty about when travel can start again or that their revenue doesn't match expenses and there fore jobs have to go. The right might be coldly calculating, but the outraged naivety expressed by the vocal left is what allows parties like National back into power.
Which comment are you replying to, because it ain’t 1.2.1.1.
Don’t you think that anybody who’s asking for certainty about international travel is a tad naive?
If international film workers are essential, why not any other form of international business person? is the arts somehow more essential than representatives of exporting companies
Inconsistencies create uncertainty.
Which was the point of my comment, and i believe i can speak for redlogix in this instance when i say that it was a point he was making too.
Screen industry workers are only about a quarter of the 200 let in so far. Construction is another obvious sector where (re)importing one foreign specialist can allow restarting dozens of local jobs.
I still don’t know what your comment had to do with 1.2.1.1. Never mind, I’m no mind reader like you.
You seem to be confusing the opening of our borders for the general public with the exemptions that can be and are granted. To manage the risk, the borders will remain closed for the wider public. A simple binary. When they will open depends on the virus in other countries. How long is a piece of string? What are the Lotto numbers this week?
One can apply for an exemption, e.g. as an essential worker. There are eligibility criteria and the decision allows for some discretion AFAIK. The apparent inconsistencies are based on our ignorance about the decision-making process and ignorance leads to uncertainty in some cases. Life is not always a nice binary situation. Tough.
For more information: https://www.immigration.govt.nz/about-us/covid-19/border-closures-and-exceptions
Capitalists justify their lopsided share of profits on the basis that they take more risks than workers do. Yet just watch business owners put their hands out for the state to reduce that risk. Bludgers.
The exemptions at the border have long been in place, as the Prime Minister pointed out on that same RNZ interview.
Once you generate exceptions, there will always be pressure applied at the edges of that criteria.
There's a helluva lot more integration required between the Immigration part of MBIE, and the Business part of MBIE, to ensure that these rules get stretched. Twyford should have long since had the AC36 applications on his desk – and Lees-Galloway should have had the via applications for the same long since processed.
Otherwise we can expect a whole bunch more businesses that rely on specialist overseas inputs to start failing. Thankfully the PM got this immediately this morning when she talked of "knock-on effects" being an evaluative criteria. The lack of internal coordination is pretty stark.
If they can't get this kind of stuff sorted then business including the whole of the APEC visit is in serious doubt.
So yes, business should keep up the pressure on the exceptions for visits. They are in all our interests.
Isn’t that more an operational issue?
On the results it's a political issue that will only get louder as the AC36 and APEC events get nearer.
Becomes political when the agencies are so incompetent that they can't process papers for a high-profile public-funded event like the sportsboating.
And if it’s because the event organisers are trying to get govt to pay their quarantine expenses instead, let’s hear about it.
Do you think the government is keeping the border closed for the hell of it? And a bit of pressure might change their mind? This ‘pressure’ is more political than economic it seems to me.
It's in the interests of shareholders. F..k everybody else.
Sod business–from self employed to SME to corporates, a number of flaws and myths have been well exposed for all to see. There is indeed a layer that viewed Alert Levels and Lockdown as little more than a barrier to “increased shareholder value” and profits–viewed of course from the safety of leafy suburbs and air conditioned rural spreads and boltholes.
Small operators and contractors are in reality closer to workers by another name. The corporates like Graham Hart’s Carter Holt Harvey have been amongst the worst exploiters of the Govt. bailouts. CHH wood division took over 7 million in wage subsidies, trousered it, and made workers take enforced leave entitlements, and now are making substantial numbers redundant (70% for example is proposed for the Marsden Pt LVL plant). Some workers are in “negative leave balance” so they may need to forgo portions of any redundancy payments.
The Govt. did the right thing per immediate bailouts on the “high trust” model to get buy in from the employing class and aspirational petit bourgeois sectors–it would likely had been anarchy, or patchy Lockdown buy-in without the wage subsidies.
I should add that CHH closed their saw mill in Whangarei earlier in the year, 111 jobs gone. They were restructuring their business before C19, but took the Govt. bailout anyway. That is the morality of business.
Sports sponsorship
Does anyone have a handle on how much the big name corporates are putting into the high profile sports events that are about to resume. Nationwide golf tournaments appear to be back on the calendar and the big names are there boots and all. How many of these companies took bailouts over the last few months while making redundancies. The money-go-round starts again.
What business need to be aware of is that there is a risk to their business and their health were Covid -19 to take a hold in NZ. No government can be held to be responsible for the downturn in business which a virus causes.
With more unemployment and the uncertainty of the impact of the virus, people will be more careful with their money.
👍 what don't they understand. I cringe at the level of comprehension of these people.
I don't think you need to be Sherlock Holmes to work out there are powerful right wing business interests that are a) furious at the lockdown b) deeply alarmed at the prospect of a landslide labour victory and c) really, really pissed off that their unfettered right to profit has been circumscribed. They are not so stupid as to break cover against such an overwhelmingly popular PM and empirical evidence of success. From Steven Joyce to Gareth Morgan to the corporate management of Auckland University they've got a shit ton of egg on their faces and their credibility is badly dented. But you can be sure their proxies in politics and the media are being left in no doubt as to what is expected of them. Think of the ridiculous (but well funded) Plan B group, or the incoherent and sullen recent columns from Fran O'Sullivan or hear the sneering and surly tone of voice used by the likes of Barry Soper when questioning the PM to get some idea of what certain business interests have in mind as a "reward" for the government over the next three months.
How fucking true.
Spot on sadly.
let's hope the govt comes down hard on these companies who've gamed the wage subsidy by not passing it on…. abhorrent behavior.
Nice morning rant. I’m curious to know how the Plan B group is funded and you obviously know about that so why don’t you share it here with us?
The sneering and surly tone of voice used by the likes of Barry Soper when questioning the PM started the day after Ardern became PM in 2017.
Fury and resentment was written all over his face and Ardern was well aware of it. I recall her neatly passing over his loaded questioning and on to the next questioner before he could respond. It used to infuriate him further.
One thing I am curious about is whether there is any transparency about things like redundancy and business branch closures. Do we know why they are happening in each case? Or is that confidential to businesses? Protecting shareholder profits? Business was overextended and will collapse if it doesn't scale down? Does anyone know?
Case in point
Well the PM can be as angry as she wants to be, if she thought that was not going to happen then she needs more 'reality based' advisors. Besides these guys had the 'restructuring' already going on before Covid. Why should they stop now, its not as if they got more demand or customers with money thanks to Covid.
Also neither the tax payer nor the government is 'taking a hit' as the money the government has to spend is provided by the tax payer – which would be people in work paying PAYE. We all know that rich people pay accountants to 'avoid paying taxes' or at least pay no more then someone on 70.000 before tax a year.. So in essence the government just literally gave the tax payer of this country a refund. So if she feels that the country is a bit short on cash she can start instructing her cabinet / beige suits to start looking at preventing rich people from getting away with tax avoidance. After all the Country may not have enough workers left to pay for the upkeep of the country. http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/latest-edition/7549236/Half-NZs-super-rich-dodge-tax
So in essence she should be happy as the Wage subsidy did what it was supposed to do, pay workers who would other wise be claiming unemployment. It was known that at some stage many of these workers will end up on the unemployment benefit. It was known so much that they Government decided to pay the wage subsidy to people who claimed unemployment cause Covid.
https://www.interest.co.nz/news/105188/people-who-lose-their-jobs-could-be-eligible-250-490-week-payment-12-weeks-under-new
As of the women in her 'late fifties' who is afraid of not finding a job in this economy or any other due to age? I feel ya sister. I do.
Now the government could allow for people like her to go onto 'early' retirement…might even give them a decent deal to do so, as this would also take pressure of a dead employment market. But hey, it appears the government and the PM is just not angry enough just yet.
Fact is that demand is down, mind, there is only so much crap one can buy and then demand is down. I would also assume that the businesses listed in this article – Warehouse, Noel Leeming, Warehouse Stationary – etc have now hard competition with KMART and all those two dollar shops, and all the other trash shops that we are happy to build big malls for.
But heck, people buckle up, the ride ain't over, heck it is just beginning.
When it is from borrowing, the money actually comes from future generations of taxpayers and citizens.
They have more urgent things to fund like climate action rather than propping up today's capitalists. Let the owners pay their fair share for once.
Yep – it's the psychic shock of having it rammed in their face that a society is more than just a place where 'business' occurs. They are very vengeful right now.
Nice one Sanc….agree 100 per cent.
Having said that with Oz covid cases having a rolling average of 9/day now I would support borders being open to Oz when this is 2/day and with strict testing/symptom analysis etc
Good work to the US Democrats for introducing a series of sweeping Police reforms.
And they all took the knee on the floor before they did it.
Then Pelosi read out a list of killed Police victims.
This is good agit-prop politics, timed perfectly into electoral season.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52969375
The bill:
– forces federal police to use body and dashboard cameras
– bans chokeholds
– eliminates unannounced police raids known as "no-knock warrants"
– makes it easier to hold police liable for civil rights violations
– calls for federal funds to be withheld from local police forces who do not make similar reforms.
– Makes lynching a federal crime
– Limits the sale of military weapons to the police
– Gives the Department of Justice the authority to investigate state and local police for evidence of department-wide bias or misconduct
– Creates a "national police misconduct registry" – a database of complaints against police.
And of course, they get to then stick it to the Republicans in the Senate when the Republicans vote it all down.
And then stick it to the President as well.
Excellent politics, good initiatives.
Should include mandatory ID as Barr is using federal resources badged 'united states police' with zero ID as front line 'troops' in Trump's war.
Reform is just not needed in the USA police service, it is also required in healthcare.
It's political theatre.
Chokeholds have been banned by the NYPD since 1993, that didn't help Eric Garner.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/06/08/nation/house-democrats-propose-transformative-new-police-procedures-accountability/
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nyc-police-chokeholds_n_6272000
For all that energy, seems like more noise than light.
There is already a system to take care of the police indiscretions, but the justice system in the US, is as broken, corrupt and not for for purpose as their many police forces.
Never understood "take a knee". Such a weird compound verb. Why not just say "kneel"?
In American football rules, taking a knee is an action similar to a mark in rugby.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/take-a-knee
Kneeling in general is also commonly an act of submission. Whereas in American football, taking a knee is an assertive act of control, and often also used out of respect for an injured player.
Thanks for spelling all of that out Ad….a sensible parliamentary system would have that passed on a bi-partisan basis very quickly….so no chance.
Wow!
Anybody else been following this?
Dead cat much?
I was peripherally aware that the Flynn case was shonky to say the least, but this is new information. I've never listened to Ted before, man is he articulate.
Setting aside all partisanship, if the facts he is speaking to are even vaguely correct, then yes partisan law enforcement …. no matter which administration does it …. is incredibly dangerous. If nothing else it ensures that no-one in an administration trusts anyone else, and no-one will speak the truth without paying a terrible price.
"Setting aside all partisanship,"
Good luck with that Red
It's a piece of public political masturbation Cruz posted to ingratiate himself with MADAmorons who might be still concerned he might still possess some remnant of spine and principle sufficient to squeak up against their Dear Leader.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/06/amy-klobuchar-just-dismantled-ted-cruzs-absurd-smear-of-barack-obama/
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/03/politics/rosenstein-russia-hearing-fact-check/index.html
I've scanned that Mother Jones reference. It's little more than a bunch of reckons flying in very loose formation.
As for the CNN so called fact check, yes it checks of a list of events, but none seem to directly address what Cruz is saying. Anything to do with this affair seems to vanish down endless rabbit holes very quickly.
In the early days of the Trump administration there seems to have been a genuine effort to reach out to both the Chinese and Russian governments in order to reopen and reset the terms of engagement with them. Whether this was a good idea or not, it's clear there were factions in Washington who have determined nothing like this was going to happen.
As I've repeatedly said, the USA has determined to abandon it's role as the global guarantor of security. And regardless of whether Trump's connections with Russia can be considered legitimate or not, this entire 'Russiagate' debacle only ensures that at least a generation of Presidents will never attempt a negotiation with Russia ever again. The domestic risk is now too high; talking to them in any terms other than sanctions and military posturing are the only modes allowed.
The fundamental premise of the US led post WW2 security order was that nations who trade beneficially with each other are less motivated to go to war. It's an imperfect, but also reasonably effective idea. Combined with the deterrent of nuclear weapons, the past 75 years has seen no major power kinetic conflict, and a general trend towards far less violence than any other time in our history.
Trump's background is a business man, and he would have no doubt framed his approach to Russia as a business opportunity. Whether he understood 'conflict of interest or not' is beside the point, the idea of normalising relations with Russia is essentially a good one. And now an idea that is dead and buried largely at the hands of the Democrats.
In the early days of the Trump administration there seems to have been a genuine effort to reach out to both the Chinese and Russian governments in order to reopen and reset the terms of engagement with them.
You still haven't worked out that any efforts along those lines were merely looking for openings to further personally enrich Odious Maximus and his shoats? Ivanka's trademarks, Moscow hotels and on and on and on and on? I guess some people really can be fooled all of the time.
As for further negotiations with Russia, I doubt there will be a problem for any administration that attempts to conduct negotiations openly, transparently, and with the interests of the American people foremost. All of which were lacking in the events of 2016 and 2017 at issue.
You still haven't worked out that any efforts along those lines were merely looking for openings to further personally enrich Odious Maximus and his shoats?
Maybe it was where I said this:
" Whether he understood 'conflict of interest or not' is beside the point,"
Was that it?
I doubt there will be a problem for any administration that attempts to conduct negotiations openly, transparently, and with the interests of the American people foremost.
Hilarious. Do you really imagine the Repugs sitting quietly by while Joe Biden opens up channels to Russia. And what makes you imagine that anything about such contacts, at least initially while each side explores it's positions, is ever held openly and transparently?
That "reopen and reset the terms of engagement" made it look like you were claiming there was a good faith effort to act in the interests of the US as a whole, when there plainly wasn't. The conflict of interest wasn’t a minor nuance, strictly personal benefit was the entire effort.
As far as initial approaches to open up channels, sure, historically there have always been hush-hush back channel negotiations, conducted by the State Department. It may be that CovidCamacho and his minions have so thoroughly fucked things up with respect to Russia that in the future there will need to be some very public positioning before anything substantial can actually happen. As a new way of managing relations, that might not be a bad thing.
historically there have always been hush-hush back channel negotiations, conducted by the State Department.
And going nowhere under Obama, or pretty much any other President since the end of the Cold War. No vision, no wider goals … strategic drift at it's worst.
I've made it clear elsewhere, Trump's foreign policy has been nothing but the inelegant charge of a psychopathic bull into a wobbly china shop.
But here's the thing, of the several million fine people who stood for the Democrat nominee, they all agreed on one thing, that Trump was being too soft on trade.
Whether layered over with a gentile veneer of 'legality' (like Hunter Biden's antics) or Trump's crass self interest, Washington's approach to Russia and foreign policy points in one direction only … inwards.
… going nowhere under Obama …
Given what Obama achieved with Iran and Cuba among others, I'm inclined to attribute lack of progress in Russia-US relations much more to Pootee being a colossal arse rather than Obama's failings. An impression that Pootee's actions since 2016 have only substantially reinforced.
Foreign policy is the one area that a President can act in with relatively little pushback from Congress or the Senate. Obama had two whole terms to implement a wholesale refresh and opening up of US foreign policy, to reset the mistakes of the past and reinvigorate the global trade order on a sustainable basis.
And it's fair to say he got some things done, but in hindsight it hasn't amounted to much. Much like John Key, heaps of political capital, mainly a bunch of very nice cycleways to show for it.
Good Guardian article about the removal of the Coulston statue in Bristol.
There is a large part of me that thinks the statue and others like it should stay in some form. With this proviso, an accompanying dominant sculpture or structure should pair it, informing those who pause to look, about the true nature and efforts of the original person, and how long it has stood as a reminder of corrupted power and historical ignorance.
I'm sure there are many other city assets named after Edward Coulston.
My opinion is, don't remove his statue and his name completely. People like him, who have been feted long after their death, despite the nature of their lives, need to be remembered truthfully. And their relationship with persistent power structures and the ongoing resistance to change should be recognised and recorded.
I'm sure there are a lot of activists and artists around that would come up with a diversity of ways to create paired sculptures – the original one (perhaps changed) to represent the failures of the past to address inequity and wrongdoing, and another to show – truth and progress.
I agree totally Molly. Human history is complex, nuanced, and deeply fascinating. There is much we can learn from it if we set aside our modern biases and look through the eyes of the people who lived through it.
Thanks, but I'm not sure that we are actually agreeing…
A cast-bronze scattering of dying slave-women and children about the statue’s feet might provide balance.
I believe you'd need about 84,000 of them, Robert, to truly reflect his impact.
(Drilling 84 thousand holes into the original might have some impact, but I'm no creative.)
I just think that alongside the original atrocities committed by this man, there were accompanying ignorance and failure to recognise his harm by successive governments, councils and communities. The statue stood there for over a hundred years. That needs to be recognised and recorded in some way too.
nah, a cast bronze of a white slave holder raping his slave women for 'free slaves' that she will bear him….cause profit – cause that is what it was. Right?
Putting this one in a museum where the historical and contemporary contexts can be presented seems a reasonable compromise.
The site the statue was taken from seems a good place to do what you are suggesting, but my sense is it shouldn't involve this statue, because of the recent history.
That's a good idea. But does remove the discussion from a more visible public space, and that may sweep the reality away. In situations like this, the decision should lie with the local community on how to record and recognise not just the initial problem, but the systems that allowed it to stay prominently displayed for so long.
I agree. I gather some of the problem here is that the local council have been ignoring the community on what to do with the statue.
That would be true across many countries I would believe. It shows clearly the institutional racism, and the less able to be defined culture that allowed it to prevail for so long.
On a bit of a tangent, but on the same lines, I had discomfort about a local civic minded group who were funded to beautify the neighbourhood. Their idea, paid for by ratepayers, was to create a side garden on one of the main streets with pseudo gravestones commemorated selected deaths from WWI. We already have cemeteries and war memorial halls aplenty.
This infusion and constant repetition of what is considered important enough to commemorate, has an insidious effect on sharing knowledge and understanding. When I posted about an Auckland Transport (don't ask me..) project that signposted places around Auckland with tangata whenua links, I had several emails complaining that the land had been utilised by settlers for many years. Which is true. After it was confiscated.
Those very public – public spaces are important and should contain designs and sculpture that are constant reminders of the society we are aiming for.
i would assume that this one statue is only the smallest thing in what is a checkered history going back to what the 1600?
https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/03/28/592878135/an-english-city-grapples-with-the-slave-trading-past-of-its-most-celebrated-figu
also Scotland
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/time-scotland-reparations-slavery-181126095041892.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-52950006
Maybe the best thing that could be done is build a museums to the Slave traders, Slave holders, Slave Masters and their property and what they did with it. Make it free entrance and walk every child through it. Maybe that would change perception?
I'm glad Churchill's racism has been recognised. The neglect of the Bengal famine. His belief in conquest, despite his words for Britain. No Indian can respect him with full knowledge.
Hmm, few people attacking or at least suspicious of the SIS pod yesterday. I was ready to give it the benefit of the doubt. I think I said I was wary of Espiner, but he is a capable journo who has done a lot of principled work.
Quote pulled out today and on the 10am RNZ news is 'anti-nuclear movement' was a gift to the USSR. Which considering the PM's referencing of that is interesting.
Also there are a lot more issues with the 5 eyes over the last 30 years. Not much use to democracy to only get the 30 year old stuff.
My post yesterday was to enquire whether Guyon Espiner is essentially a tory–if not attack, then sheep worrier–type of dog. Within hours, Minister Andrew Little was being drawn into it–would he deny authorising Embassy Break Ins? A variation on the classic “when did you stop beating your wife” line of questioning.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/the-service/418531/sis-minister-andrew-little-refuses-to-deny-signing-off-on-embassy-break-ins
Detailed research on the NZSIS using a new “snout” and reactionaries such as Mr Hensley who was close to traitorous to David Lange during the Nuclear Free NZ period, will certainly be of historic interest–and–it seems as an angle to poke at the current Govt.
The question is whether that can be considered an attack or just opportunistic promotion for his podcast. There's some cheap shade thrown for sure, but it's also possible he's not responsible for how it's used and which angles are considered newsworthy.
Given that we are now far from a benign strategic environment do we still take such close cues from our five eyes partners? Our intelligence community seems to be more important than ever. There seems to be much more active work now that the public is mostly unaware of.
How kind (opportunistic?) of Mr Muller.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12338288
The months to the election are going to seem like years if this is to be the daily dross:
"Paul Goldsmith tells Prime Minister to 'stick to her knitting' after Ardern's outrage as mass job cuts." NZ Herald headline.
"I don't think it's helpful for the Prime Minister to be criticising struggling businesses, she should stick to her knitting," Goldsmith said. Rather than getting angry, Ardern should be "better focused" on the Government's plan to grow the economy, he said.
So she makes a remark, she should have used all of the time it took to make the observation and the time should have been used being focused on something else? She was 'outraged'?
Well, obviously, she should have been knitting.
Gubmint's job is to lavish subsidies on hard-working companies, not expect accountability from them!
Therefore Goldsmith believes that 'business' is above any form of democratic oversight, i.e. it's not a part of society, it is superior to it. Good to get such a clear, unambiguous demonstration of National's extremism and how unfit to govern they are.
The stunningly brilliant Rap News take on Black Lives Matter. Years old but unfortunately still totally on message.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqpjSLi2Cfg
That was good and will surely reach some people who will like the style and some of the message should get through. And so up to date!
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO2006/S00072/be-part-of-the-election-team.htm Lots of people needed to help with the election.
I know a good way for politicians to raise funds and we can all have fun. There should be a Trust set up to run a book on who wins the election, split the funds up with most going to the smaller parties, but the threshhold has to stay at 4% or we'll have more prosperity church types seeing it as a good thing.
What a pragmatic way to raise funds from a sports-living nation where gambling is useful for funding from raffles at cake stalls, to lotteries of houses in Queensland. Under this veneer of rationality we all want to win something. If it is against the law, then change it. We want laws that help our society.
[Link fixed]
Comment on online video about Washington last week and Barr's part in it:
"Why did the Attorney General gas the crowd? So the chicken could cross the road." I like that.
The same Barr of “Pepper spray is not a chemical irritant,” he told CBS News. “It’s not chemical.”
Clearly a condiment, not a chemistry.
Here's your antifa – a wannabe cop who paraded in his flogged popo kit.
The Third Precinct was overrun during protests on May 28 and heavily damaged due to vandalism and arson, with investigators identifying multiple fires being started in the building.
On June 3, St. Paul police officers were called to a home improvement store in St. Paul about an individual, later identified as Wolfe, wearing body armor and a law enforcement duty belt and carrying a baton was trying to get into the store. Store employees said WOLFE had been working as a security guard at the store but was fired earlier that day over social media posts about stealing items from the Third Precinct.
Police arrested Wolfe and say they found him wearing multiple items stolen from the Third Precinct, including body armor, a police-issue duty belt with handcuffs, an earphone piece, baton, and knife. Officers say Wolfe’s name was handwritten in duct tape on the back of the body armor. Law enforcement says it recovered items belonging to the Minneapolis Police Department, including a riot helmet, 9mm pistol magazine, police radio, and police issue overdose kit, from Wolfe’s apartment.
https://www.kimt.com/content/news/St-Paul-man-arrested-for–571111961.html
But 95% are okay guys..
/
https://www.motherjones.com/anti-racism-police-protest/2020/06/videos-show-cops-slashing-car-tires-at-protests-in-minneapolis/
we need to call the people who put vandals before the cou- oh damn.
antifa bad
a bit like how all those pallets of antifa bricks were actually for municipal works or acting as safety barriers, and had often been there for significant amounts of time before Floyd was killed..
Geardos out and about.
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=2634207596858824&set=pcb.2634208256858758
ouch
All these better go in the National Archives.
edit: Rick Wilson’s original thread that started it really deserves a direct link here for those that might not otherwise find their way to it. Betcha can’t get through the first 20 replies without at least a half-dozen actual lols.
Hehehe love this sign
https://twitter.com/cheecierom/status/1270102011778871296?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1270102011778871296&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rawstory.com%2F2020%2F06%2Ftinyman-square-internet-suggests-names-for-new-fencing-complex-around-white-house%2F
Can't have his feels hurt.
Kate Hawkesby:"…if the Prime Minister gets her way, no more working from home."
Has Jacinda actually said that people are not to work from home?
Politicians have been out on the campaign trail today.
Quality trolling from Ardern, going to a kiwifruit place in Muller's own electorate, getting a warm reception from the locals (sorry, "hard-working Kiwis").
A wee reminder too – only 2 months ago these were the headlines ..
A chorus of "the election should be delayed until November" (Paula Bennett, Winston Peters, various media mouths). File that one under Doom & Gloom During Lockdown, a long list, now shredded.
Lol…Winston may wish to play for time but would suggest he of all people probably should go asap