Russia is said by the west to have incited the war in Ukraine, others that the US engineered a coup that was resisted by the eastern Ukrainians .
But some are far-right extremists who have set their gaze on Ukraine, a place that has become a destination and training ground for such types in the West. As far-right extremism has risen in the US, so has the interest among American white supremacists in militarized right-wing Ukrainian groups that have had success in growing and mainstreaming their organizations and movements. They include violent neo-Nazis like those from the Rise Above Movement who have gone to Ukraine to meet and train with some of the groups — and then export what they learnedto the US.
Felling trees contributes to climate change because it depletes forest cover, which is vital for absorbing carbon dioxide. Forests are, it’s said, being cleared at a rate of 30 football pitches’ worth a minute.
An agreement to call a halt to this staggering level of deforestation – reached on Tuesday – was one of the high points of Cop26’s first week.
As part of the deal, more than 100 world leaders agreed to reverse deforestation by 2030. Crucially, Brazil –which has cut down huge stretches of the Amazon rainforest in recent years – was among the signatories. However, observers have pointed out that a previous international agreement, in 2014, failed to slow deforestation in any way.
Hard to trust the current Brazilian government on anything that they say at present. Especially bearing in mind the increased rate of Amazon clear felling in the last 4 years.
It is like trusting the Australian Federal government to deal with international and bilateral commitments in a manner that doesn’t simply reflect their idiotic and ineffective political system.
tell the bastards I’ll never be arrested,” the former army captain told the roaring crowd at the September 7 rally. “Only God can take me from the presidency.” It was music to the ears of Bolsonaro’s hardcore supporters, many of whom had travelled hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometres to cheer on the politician they believe is saving Brazil from its corrupt institutions: in their eyes a deceitful media, a venal Congress and, most importantly, an imperious Supreme Court. For others, including the nearly 65 per cent of Brazilian voters who now disapprove of the Bolsonaro administration — in power since January 2019 — the comments were a clear warning of the president’s growing radicalism and the risk that he may try to undermine, or even abandon, elections scheduled for October 2022…
The president’s anti-democratic rhetoric has done little to endear him to voters beyond his 20 per cent core support. In addition, he has alienated large parts of Brazil’s influential business community, which backed the former paratrooper as the dark horse candidate in the 2018 race but is now losing faith.
The Freedom and Rights Coalition goes to the Auckland / Northland border to impinge on the freedom and rights of others to go about their lawful business.
"At 8am, many protesters had dropped away, leaving 12 to 15 at the border." (Stuff)
They cast themselves as the great freedom marchers. As we all know, campaigners for Civil Rights in Montgomery and Selma won their battles because they hung around for an hour and then got bored and buggered off.
So about 15000 people in NZ protested today about mandates and govt over reach. Nothing like Jan 6 in America. Politians over reacted and Whipped up fear about over running parliament. Who is crazy, the peaceful protesters or the fear mongers? Get a grip, disagreeing does not make you an enemy of the state.
Now do some reading. It wasn't "disagreeing", was it?
If you genuinely believe we live in a dictatorship then you have a right – no, a duty – to revolt. If you don't believe we live in a dictatorship, don't be an apologist for those who say we do.
Peaceful protesters? We have harrassment, intimidation, threats online and in person and violence in general. I note someone bit a policeman today who was just doing his job. And then there is the racism. A few days ago someone smashed the windows of a vaccination centre for our South Pacific peoples.
Fear mongers? Who is doing the fear mongering and over reacting? The protesters. Spreading crazy conspiracy theories, disinformation, calling people – who are trying to save lives and put their fellow NZers first – Communists, Nazis, Stalinists and a further assortment of highly offensive names.
There's a name for those who transpose their own misconduct onto other people but have forgotten what it is.
What rubbish. Peaceful protest about govt mandates and control. Nothing like Jan 6. It is scary that there is a need to demonise or minimise people who disagree with the populist thinking. If your vaccine works then there is nothing to be afraid of. What has happened that we can't cope with differing voices.
"What has happened that we can't cope with differing voices."
Part of what has happened is the Prime Otherer saying many times a week, the unvaccinated are responsible for; Christmas being threatened, your freedoms being impacted, businesses going to the wall, your safety being jeopardised, travel being curtailed.
This is what othering and scare-mongering does.
The responsibility for our health system being so brittle, vulnerable and understaffed lies at the feet of every centrist Finance, Health and Prime Minister for the last 35 years, not the wary, the contrarians, the reluctant, the immuno-compromised or full-blown anti-vax.
Only just noticed this – to be crystal clear no it's not. I'd hope the cops track this one down and have a talk with the perpetrator. As a starting point.
Otherwise all protests attract idiots on the fringe. The trick is keeping them there and hopefully away from the media.
In usual times I'd probably agree completely with you Ad. A healthy democracy can sustain a fair bit of verbal biffo without much harm.
But it's my sense that many people have been psychologically activated by COVID, by the uncertainty, the social isolation and above all the chronic state of low-grade fear being pumped at them. In these circumstances I'd want to be extra cautious around inflammatory language – especially if it's political.
I recall you're a fan of World War Z – well I've always imagined zombies to be a metaphor for the mind-killed, unthinking mob.
All those protests we went in our tens of thousands in the mid-eighties armed with lots of weapons and shields and heavily orchestrated moves and taking on the state,
in our many thousands in the '90s against union-crushing and benefit reductions and privatisations,
in our lower thousands in the early noughties, …
… look at them now in their hundreds.
WE used to have that same fire. We inflamed wholesale.
We used to forge whole new political movements on it.
All of those leftie marches looked like anarchistic unthinking undead to the majority and to the government.
But probably the Tooth Fairy will get the shits and call in the Minister for SIS for a chat, because actually she's the biggest flake we have. Spare us from brittle authoritarians.
I would normally agree, but the threats on the internet are downright scary. Thanks Observer.
“The tooth etc” Get a grip Ad .You sound flaky. Saying stuff like that at this time is unhelpful.
I think the casual references to lynching etc. that I see and hear across Facebook, among people who have till recently posted interesting, heart-warming things, is very worrying indeed. They seem unaware of the sinister tone of their words. I believe their world-view has been contaminated by the American situation and the influencers who whipped that up.
The UN has assigned Climate Minister James Shaw a key negotiating role in this final week of the CO26 meeting in Glasgow.
He will co-facilitate the Transparency workstream with Sir Molwyn Joseph, Minister of Health, Wellness and the Environment of Antigua and Barbuda, a Caribbean nation. “Since the Paris Agreement does not have compliance and enforcement measures, transparency is a critical component for enabling accountability and trust,” Chatham House, a leading UK policy institute, wrote in a paper shortly before the start of the negotiations. Progress on the workstream is considered vital to ensure comparability of nations’ climate pledges and integrity in measuring and reporting their implementation. It is also vital for the trustworthiness of carbon markets, both regulatory and voluntary.
For the record, the largest single “delegation” of officially registered attendees at COP26 is the 503 people with links to fossil fuel interests, Global Witness, an NGO reported today.
By comparison, Brazil is largest country delegation, with 479 members. The UK, as hosts, has the 10th largest delegation, with 230, and the US has 135 official delegates. New Zealand’s is likely the smallest from a developed country, numbering fewer than 10.
And I bet they're all wearing suits. The visual signal that one is actually part of the control system whilst pretending to be part of the solution is obligatory. I predict only Lab/Nat voters will be fooled by the simulation.
Blah? APEC has managed what the UN couldn't; an online conference.
The largest piece of work facing APEC leaders is putting the finishing touches on an implementation plan for the “Putrajaya Vision” agreed to in 2020, a high-level outline of the organisation’s priorities for the next two decades. “We are working on a set of individual and collective actions that will be measurable, that will be concrete, and that will be dynamic: in other words, this will be a living document that we will be able to review every five years to ensure that it genuinely is fit for purpose for our region,” Vitalis said.
Kiwi diplomat Vangelis Vitalis anticipates "the time for actual action, to actually do something."
18 & 10 Years ago we had a couple of opportunities for the government at the time to buy this gem. Hopefully someone will attract the attention of Hon Kiritapu Allan to IMO.
I posted support to purchasing this way back in 2011, and back then the Labour blog and the then leader Phil Goff urged National to purchase had a post to support such an acquisition !!!
I have seen beaches in the area inundated with balls of jelly, a little offsetting in the area where the waves break but once you get beyond that, the water is perfect for beach activities. Not nice for toddlers playing on the waters edge.
I will say that New Chums/Wainuiototo beach has some dangers attributed to it, that those who are even familiar with the beach can be caught out. A short challenging walk that opens up to a great place that IMO for a small amount can be totally protected for the publics benefit, and with no overseas travel perhaps we should be enhancing local spots to be available for all.
Small school in limbo as all staff refuse mandatory Covid-19 vaccine.
"She said she was not opposed to getting the vaccination herself, but as the only fully registered teacher she had not been able to take time off to get her shot."
A school teacher I know took time off to get her shot recently – in the school holiday break. It was two weeks long.
The principal wants the Ministry of Education to waive the vaccination mandate and instead require weekly testing. I'm not sure how they'll able to "take time off" for that every week.
It's sort of funny when teachers who force people to do things they mightn't want to do rail against being told to do something.
Central King Country Principals' Association chairwoman Maria Gillard said convincing those not wanting to vaccinate to change their minds was tough. Like it being tough to get kids to change their minds I suppose except that in the school environment power rules. Those with the power deem that they know best and the kids should bow to that 'superiority' of knowledge.
Do you think any teacher who wanted to get vaccinated would dare to do so in the face of the display by the Board of Trustees? On your bike would I expect to be their response.
As for the Principal who "hadn't been able to take time off to get vaccinated". There were school holidays from the second to the seventeenth of October. She couldn't find any single day on which to get a vaccination?
I'm trying to think how or why the principal would know the vaccination status of the members of the board and what relevance it would be to her past any requirements made on the non-vaccinated not being accepted in the school.
A board can't get rid of a staff member because they choose to be vaccinated. Members of a board setting out to make sure a principal in such circumstances is unwelcome and seeking to force them out would be showing they are fuckwits who should not have anything to do with a school. That is the sort of stuff for employment courts.
In such a situation if the locals are on about individual choice and no compulsion they would be be taking the choice away from the principal and in some senses forcing the principal to not get a vaccination.
Can't staff the school? No problem. Close it. Bus the kids into Taumarunui or Ongarue. Can't staff those schools because they're backwaters and no-one would want to be there? Some might say the attitude of the locals suggests it is a backwater.
Many people have rightly noted how challenging the logistics of policing Auckland's border will be at Xmas – as 30,000 people a day leave in their cars. I think some of those same people were less convinced of the logistical challenges of doing some other things – such as stopping Covid leaks from MIQ, or rolling out millions of vaccine doses.
Rule of thumb seems to be: if I do want something to happen, the logistics aren't an issue and someone else just needs to do it; if I don't want something to happen, the logistics are impossible and the idea should be abandoned.
People's supposed principles and their logic seem to align uncannily well with their self-interest. Who wouldn't be a misanthrope at times like this?
Everyone needs a plan B every day from now on when it comes to travelling, shopping for non essentials and entertaining. People need to consider being unwell with Covid or having a person unwell with Covid in your household.
It is about doing the right thing for yourself, your home and your neighbourhood.
Protesters are not considering the households of the police, some have babies and young children in the home and are on the frontline. No pay rise and the work conditions would be terrible when it comes to managing groups breaking the rules.
What are the three flags? I recognise a Trumpist banner, a Tino Rangatiratanga flag, but the red-crossed white flag with the top right quadrant infilled?
That knowledge would help identify the influences in this coalition of the silly.
Only a matter of time and an MP will be a Covid case. Probably already cases in the police as they do get deployed around the country. The viral load an infectious protester or an agro person at a check point has would be an additional risk.
Thanks for that…I stumbled across an 'independent reporter's report' earlier when the group was gathering…he was busy scanning the assembled for the white supremacists MSM said were in charge of these anti- vaxxers. Good times.
The hangers on are those people who are using this cause to promote another. AFAIK people from Destiny have been involved in anti-lockdown protests for some time. The hangers on are the pro-trumpites, the anti-1080 crowd etc.
Tamaki is an opportunist using the covid situation. Covid is just an excuse.
Unfortunately there are plenty of morons running here to join in. Here they don't necessarily wear red caps.
Destiny/Tamaki has been involved in being peed off for a long time.
May 1919
"Destiny Church and its leaders Brian and Hannah Tamaki have announced a new political party – Coalition New Zealand.
"You're going to see politics with teeth," Brian Tamaki said at a press conference on Thursday afternoon, "you'll see a party led by leaders as leadership is what is lacking right now.
"Labour has been taking us in the wrong direction. Our freedom is endangered due to harmful politics coming from the Government."
Tamaki may well be 'using' Covid for his own agenda, but then so are politicians. My point was he isn't a 'hanger on' in the context of earlier comments. He's made his position on the core issues very clear some time ago. Opponents of 1080 and supporters of Trump are certainly there for very different causes.
In short: It’s a fact we love American stuff. American food, TV and celebrity.
So maybe it should come as no surprise that in New Zealand’s Telegram channels, there’s a love of capitol riots.
“NEXT TUESDAY” they announce in all caps: “There is going to be THE STAND OF ALL STANDS in Wellington at Parliament grounds!”
“It’s time to get Bill Gates and Jacinda. We need to concentrate on physically arresting her.”
“Fuck me” is all I could think. It was a combination of alarming and tragic. It’s alarming because we’re already seeing violence towards the media in New Zealand. Mihingarangi Forbes tweeted about it last week:
“As a journo I have always felt safe at protests, most understand we have a job to do but the “Freedom and Choice” protests feel different. “Fuck the Media” is the new catch phrase. It’s dangerous. Kia kaha te hunga pāpaho.”
Oh, but they're not the real protesters, the real ones are salt of the earth Kiwis (etc, etc … repeat denial ad nauseam).
And if anyone is in any doubt, you can find plenty more of this crap on their social media, which I won't link to or platform (NSFW) but you all have Google too.
He has put his entire credibility on its success with this article, and essentially requests that the GreaterAuckland activists hold off criticising for fear of killing the project as the Auckland Cycle Path was.
This is an unusual move for a Minister to make on multiple counts. In political terms it is pretty bold.
once we hit the magic 90% number and restrictions ease, the community could still be looking at 20 cases of infection arriving in its midst from offshore every week. Hopefully, home isolation will screen some of those out. Or as indicated above, this could just mean that the family/whanau home will become a potential incubator for the disease. Well, the marriage vows did say through sickness and health.
our handling of the Covid threat coming at us from offshore seems out of sync with our handling of the internal threat – if that’s the right word – that Auckland will pose to the rest of the country once the three Auckland region DHBs have hit their magical 90% full vaccination target.
The joke is on… whoever God's will decides. I wonder if the govt will force Aucklanders to wear an identification symbol so we can see them coming and keep our distance?? The yellow star worked well a while back, eh?
At some point it will dawn on the GOP they will have to cast votes for those who died to win elections – I wonder how they will enable this for white voters only, or do they expect SCOTUS to rubber stamp everything put up?
It seems Wellington (on a good day) has flushed out those of profoundly anti-democratic sentiments. From those with throbbing power between their legs (a hint of SA with overtones of ambition to be King Bishop Brian's blackshirts) to those who would like it all to go away and think appeasing the coronavirus will set them free from any resistance struggle (leaving the burden to health workers).
The elitism of the bare-faced contempt for majority opinion and the public good … the uber-romanticisation of social media minority echo chambers displayed … from a self-appointed governing aristocracy of no bodies in the Maori world claiming to represent its sovereignty to affluent PMC (the neo-liberal corporate regime enabling corporate and capitalist dominance ) ideologues manipulating discontent for their political purposes (and we await National waking up their inner Mr Orewa to take advantage of the chaos).
I say prescribe them all ivermectin to be on the way – rid the capitol hill of that small party worm.
"This aligns with an increasing use of Māori voices,narratives, and imagery for agendas of white supremacist individuals and groups," the study noted – the goal being to make Māori as a population appear to be anti-vaccination, which results in "the intensification of anti-Māori racism" and makes them more susceptible to future disiformation campaigns
the goal being to make Māori as a population appear to be anti-vaccination,
Which when they had the lowest vaccination rates was kind of easy to do. And given that this time the usual 'it's all the fault of a racist health system' doesn't quite fly – they're reduced to blaming 'white supremacist people' again.
This constant ethnic power struggle narrative will lead NZ nowhere good.
Maori has a younger age demographic – so were a larger proportion of those who could not vaccinated till September (go to MOH vaccination stats and check the vaccinations by age).
Maori advocated for Maori to be vaccinated earlier so their vaccination rate would not be slower because of their age and because Maori had poorer health. The government chose otherwise (possibly influenced by the He Puapua issue NACT raised) – Maori are saying told ya so.
There are more younger Maori in the provincial NI, these HB's were behind the rest in September and are doing catch up – and in areas where the population is quite spread out.
All good and fair points SPC. They underline my contention that the best explanation for different outcomes is not always racism.
I was equally scathing of Reti's attempt to use the ethnic card on vaccines as well. I'm vividly conscious that in a pandemic there is real potential for the kind of mass psychosis that leads very directly to violence.
Yes racism and ethnic fault lines are real – but using them as a power play is unbelievably dangerous. Sometime in the 90's I remember listening to a 30 min BBC "Foreign Correspondent" report on Yugoslavia and the hell that got unleashed in that country after the fall of the dictators.
The reporter led with a simple question. Why is it that a relatively modern nation fall apart so fast and dramatically? If you had visited the place before these horrors you might have come home and said what warm and friendly people they are. After exploring this question and setting the social and political background the narrative shifted from the general to the specific.
It moved to a small town that had seen some of the worst violence. I still cannot bring myself to type out the atrocity that was described in graphic detail by the correspondent. But the point was – the people who did this to each other were neighbours, they knew each other, as had their families for generations. How the fuck had this happened?
The answer is this. Every society has a small fraction of psychopathic, resentful damaged individuals who will commit horrors for the sheer pleasure and gratification of it. Normally they're kept in check by social boundaries and institutional norms. But they lurk.
But when that leash is loosened by public figures exploiting divisions within any society for their own political purposes – during a period of instability, uncertainty and fear – that first these dangerous people will feel emboldened to act. And then very rapidly – one atrocity upon another – the Yugoslavian nation unraveled into hell.
The irony being that Croat, Serb and Bosnian Moslem probably had the same ancestral group – carving out separate borders occurs by acceptance of then then regional arrangements or by plebiscite or by war (also Pakistan and India and say the land west of the Jordan). Apparently events in Bosnia are worsening, the Serb and Croat political leadership are seeking to divide up the Bosnian military and form their own.
Don't worry the white race God is going to rapture its mammalian Greek brotherhood …
The middle ear contains three tiny bones:
Hammer (malleus) — attached to the eardrum.
Anvil (incus) — in the middle of the chain of bones.
Stirrup (stapes) — attached to the membrane-covered opening that connects the middle ear with the inner ear (oval window)
As they say beware defenestration (1618), Des Gorman would know very well that coming out of a flood of judgment has to be done carefully or there may be consequences.
Northern Ireland's health minister is suing Van Morrison after the singer called him "very dangerous" for his handling of coronavirus restrictions. Morrison, 76, who was knighted in 2016, has dismissed the coronavirus pandemic – the death toll for which surpassed 5 million people last week – as media hype and has criticised Covid-19 restrictions though his music.
He denounced Northern Ireland Health Minister Robin Swann during a gathering at Belfast's Europa Hotel in June after a Morrison concert was canceled at the last minute because of virus restrictions. The defamation suit relates to three incidents in which Morrison criticised Swann, calling him "a fraud" and "very dangerous."
Swann responded in an article for Rolling Stone magazine, calling the "Moondance" singer's claims "bizarre and irresponsible." Swann's lawyer, Paul Tweed, said proceedings "are at an advanced stage with an anticipated hearing date early in 2022."
This is the language used by a main speaker at today's Wellington protest. (Note – not some random drunken vox pop, not a fringe freeloader, but the chosen speaker from "Freedoms and Rights", the Brian Tamaki group).
Ardern trying to create a Communist nation. Auckland "the largest concentration camp in the world". "This is our 9/11 in New Zealand… people have come to signal the collapse of the Government … a dictatorship".
"We are not standing here waiting for another three years when the next election rolls down … We will roll this place and take them out with a revolution of the people."
Standard right wing position. Probably a Dirty Politics memo.
Auckland "the largest concentration camp in the world".
I've seen centre left Aucklanders on TS say similar (with a somewhat more retrained rhetoric)
"This is our 9/11 in New Zealand…
Kind of true. Big even that shifts political and social culture, and includes given the government more powers to control the population.
people have come to signal the collapse of the Government … a dictatorship".
"We are not standing here waiting for another three years when the next election rolls down … We will roll this place and take them out with a revolution of the people."
That will be in the SIS and police files, and it's part of the dangerous that Mihi Forbes is naming. It ties into the right's use of Trumpian politics (also dangerous). It's why we should be concerned and looking at the deeper reasons for the mix of dynamics rather than just framing it as US imports. Those three flags.
At its core it’s the language of fascism – mob activity on the street as the source of political legitimacy.
9/11 – as a pretext to posit "overthrow" of a government.
It's one small step from DT boasting he could shoot and kill and get away with it, to legitimising those serving his empowerment being able to do the same.
The protests today are another downside of wide spread manadates. They pushing what were previously productive members of society into the margins and arms of existing fringe groups emboldened by an influx of numbers and the camouflage they provide.
Add today's lot to groundswell who will be invigorated by three waters reforms its potentially going to get very messy. Especially if Police are mandated and all of a sudden we find ourselves 1200 short in the face of increasingly angry protest groups.
We'll get to 90% vaxxed so for long term societal benefit and to diffuse things a bit we should back away from the wide spread mandates and move towards a rapid testing focused approach as well as recent pcr testing to activate a short term passport.
Not so sure the PCR test passports would reduce angst. Some of these protestors have some pretty weird theories about the tests too…and are against any sort of social cooperation requirement generally.
Yes. One of the demands from the "Freedoms and Rights Coalition" is to shut down testing stations.
The gov't could either a) waste time and energy trying to reason with people who have already decided the gov't are commies/nazis/apartheid/Voldemort.
or b) just carry on with all the public health measures and let the ranters rant.
None of this is uncharted territory. The playbook was written in the USA. Some had deathbed conversions, some didn't. They have to get there in their own time – or not.
It wont make the hard core anti vax conspiracy theorists happy.
But the numbers have built due to unhappiness with mandates. Plenty of people find that a step to far. Get rid of mandates and the crowd will be 100s not thousands. I really feel we need to get some heat out of this having it get ugly isnt good for anyone in the end.
"The protests today are another downside of wide spread manadates."
"We'll get to 90% vaxxed so for long term societal benefit and to diffuse things a bit we should back away from the wide spread mandates and move towards a rapid testing focused approach…"
Thanks for pointing this out.
A bit like current job site drug testing. The P freak can be fried all day and will test negative the next day, the midnight toker will be positive, even if not impaired while at work.
Akin to Paula Bennett's meth hysteria in state housing and the upset that caused to so many. But they were in state housing so 'nothing to see here'.
shopping will cure most of the protests – another free market miracle is it?
You know, I think I'd rather see them run headlong into the rule of law. Waiting for shopping to cure things is how you get an enduring Trumpist movement – screw that. There's incitement going on there, with their Nuremberg and citizens arrest bullshit. Throw the (deleted expletives) in prison and let them out through the courts, where they can get a full measure of the scorn in which they are held.
80 hour weeks at a bakery turned into sub-minimum wage was the opener a day or two back.
Now it includes:
copious threats of detailed harm;
intimidation by associates of the employer;
wage theft from employees to pay for food and accommodation in "appalling conditions"; and
some decisions delayed until the court of appeal rules on "another relevant case".
My coffee card for their cafe is half used. And will remain that way. That's fucking disgusting. I know hospo tends to use wage theft and bullying as a business model, but even for that industry this is pretty extreme.
Good to see some of these cases making it through the ERA, but I would guess there are more we and they just don't know about. And the original complaint was in 2017.
Do we still have a Labour department? Is that who the inspectors were?
Yep. The Labour Inspectorate conducts an investigation and can take a case to the ERA.
With the amount of issues involved, this case would have taken a lot of time, especially as some of the issues apparently occurred during the investigation, so would have needed further examination.
Then there are the complicated financial arrangements, reviewing of documents like timesheets and employees' personal records, then the accounts to see how much gain their might have been.
Throw in a covid delay or two, timeframes for right of response and consultation with lawyers, staff workloads at the inspectorate, an xmas break or three… But the wheels turned inexorably, if slowly, to deliver some justice.
It's almost as if the power structures of the state treat the same crime differently according to the class of the offender… but but that's just crazy talk…
Well, no, a party formed within structural inequality is by nature an incrementalist platform for worker representation, rather than a revolutionary one.
But then revolutionary organisations tend to be self-corrupting.
I guess before the government makes any decision about anything, on any issue, they are meant to ask the population what should happen. I'm not sure whether that's by way of referenda.
Imagine it, February last year the announcement:
"There's a weird new flu-like virus. It looks like it's going to be a pandemic affecting just about every country in the world. It seems probable that many millions will get the virus and many hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, will die.
What do you think we should do? We are inviting written submissions. You have three weeks to get your ideas in. Note: we are inviting submissions from epidemiologists, immunologists and other scientists.
From the submissions we will formulate a plan. The intention is to repeat this exercise each month after implementation so that everyone is involved on our journey."
Apparently too, we had an election not so long ago. A government was elected, to govern.
Malcontents pissed off that their favourites were slaughtered at the ballot booth are throwing their toys out of the cot. For the noisy minority, a rabble including professionals piqued the mass of experts didn't pick their game plan, joined by an assortment of toerags, the terminally disaffected and out and out fruit loops, it's party time.
As COP 26 concludes, one can remember when the last Maunder minimum occurred.
It coincided with the 30 Years War, the English Civil War and the Fronde in France. It got colder and so less agricultural production. Discontent was expressed in printed pamphlets (the bible was weaponised in the social media of the day).
Then there was the period of the Sea Peoples, a century or so of of regional drought and people migrating … with force.
Environmental factors, incl weather, can destablise civil society.
Movement into Greece, the Hittites lost control of western Anatolia, movement out of Greece … the arrival in Gaza … the attacks on Egypt. Peak c 1200BCE.
Circa 1500 BC, maybe a century earlier, according to sources I've read. Dating it is via circumstantial evidence only. But he was referring to a separate climate trigger for those invasions, not the Maunder.
It was the Maunder that killed off the viking settlements in Greenland which had done okay for around five or so centuries. Inuit in Greenland survived due to their more resilient economy. I've even seen it asserted authoritatively that the Greenland vikings died because they refused to catch fish!!
Note how they refuse to ascribe a causal inference to the Maunder even though it looks suspiciously so. They frame it as correlative only: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
One event impacting economic life c1600-1500BCE would have been the Santorini/Thira eruption.
(Egypt was overun by the Hyksos shortly before this).
As I said, the Sea peoples migrations were consequence of drought.
The interesting thing about the Maunder minimum period 1600's CE, was its coincidence with an early form of social media (printing pamphlets to disseminate dissent).
Environmental factors, incl media transforming the social environment can destablise civil society.
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Eric Crampton writes – Grudges are bad. Better to move on. But it can be fun to keep a couple of really trivial ones, so you’re not tempted to have other ones. For example, because of the rootkit fiasco of 2005, no Sony products in our household. ...
A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
Is the economy in another long stagnation? If so, why?This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be ...
The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
In the weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel I wrote about the possible 2nd, 3rd and even 4th order effects of the conflict. These included new fronts being opened in the West Bank (with Hamas), Golan … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
Right now, in Aotearoa-NZ, our ‘animal spirits’ are darkening towards a winter of discontent, thanks at least partly to a chorus of negative comments and actions from the Government Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
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Blowback .
Russia is said by the west to have incited the war in Ukraine, others that the US engineered a coup that was resisted by the eastern Ukrainians .
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christopherm51/craig-lang-ukraine-war-crimes-alleged
You might be interested in the deployment of migrants by the Russia-backed Belarus regime. EU accuses Belarus of 'gangster' methods as migrants shiver at Polish border | Reuters
On the blah blah blah front we have blah:
Thank blah for that!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/07/so-what-has-cop26-achieved-so-far
Hard to trust the current Brazilian government on anything that they say at present. Especially bearing in mind the increased rate of Amazon clear felling in the last 4 years.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-55130304
It is like trusting the Australian Federal government to deal with international and bilateral commitments in a manner that doesn’t simply reflect their idiotic and ineffective political system.
"Hard to trust the current Brazilian government "
Yet James Shaw wants to tax kiwis and send the money over there as carbon credits, !! What could go wrong??
The Freedom and Rights Coalition goes to the Auckland / Northland border to impinge on the freedom and rights of others to go about their lawful business.
Love this bit:
"At 8am, many protesters had dropped away, leaving 12 to 15 at the border." (Stuff)
They cast themselves as the great freedom marchers. As we all know, campaigners for Civil Rights in Montgomery and Selma won their battles because they hung around for an hour and then got bored and buggered off.
Aren't they storming the "wasp hive" today? Arresting the PM etc? It's hard to keep up.
Yep, there are anti-1080 flags, trump flags, jeebus flags, something about the Nuremberg trial flags, nazi flags….
They sure want their idea of Freedum, but what the fuck?
It seems so American, like storming the Capitol, we've been swamped by American culture, firstly Hollywood, now the internet and social media
Nov 9, 2021 12:52 PM
RNZ Live
Yep. They're trying to emulate the Capitol Hill riots. Not surprising given the Trump Brigade seem to have taken over the "Freedom" movement.
It is just not the safety of the MPs, people work there, salaried or on contract.
Emboldened fools are chucking these at the press.
Tennis balls were thrown earlier this year during an anti lock down protest – "with not very nice messages on them".
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/london-parliament-government-metropolitan-police-houses-of-parliament-b942797.html
So about 15000 people in NZ protested today about mandates and govt over reach. Nothing like Jan 6 in America. Politians over reacted and Whipped up fear about over running parliament. Who is crazy, the peaceful protesters or the fear mongers? Get a grip, disagreeing does not make you an enemy of the state.
Disagreeing doesn't.
Now do some reading. It wasn't "disagreeing", was it?
If you genuinely believe we live in a dictatorship then you have a right – no, a duty – to revolt. If you don't believe we live in a dictatorship, don't be an apologist for those who say we do.
16,000 people got their second dose yesterday.
A lot of nooses in the crowd for a peaceful protest.
Peaceful protesters? We have harrassment, intimidation, threats online and in person and violence in general. I note someone bit a policeman today who was just doing his job. And then there is the racism. A few days ago someone smashed the windows of a vaccination centre for our South Pacific peoples.
Fear mongers? Who is doing the fear mongering and over reacting? The protesters. Spreading crazy conspiracy theories, disinformation, calling people – who are trying to save lives and put their fellow NZers first – Communists, Nazis, Stalinists and a further assortment of highly offensive names.
There's a name for those who transpose their own misconduct onto other people but have forgotten what it is.
What rubbish. Peaceful protest about govt mandates and control. Nothing like Jan 6. It is scary that there is a need to demonise or minimise people who disagree with the populist thinking. If your vaccine works then there is nothing to be afraid of. What has happened that we can't cope with differing voices.
"What has happened that we can't cope with differing voices."
Part of what has happened is the Prime Otherer saying many times a week, the unvaccinated are responsible for; Christmas being threatened, your freedoms being impacted, businesses going to the wall, your safety being jeopardised, travel being curtailed.
This is what othering and scare-mongering does.
The responsibility for our health system being so brittle, vulnerable and understaffed lies at the feet of every centrist Finance, Health and Prime Minister for the last 35 years, not the wary, the contrarians, the reluctant, the immuno-compromised or full-blown anti-vax.
Is "Hang Ardern" ok? or do want us to believe it is just "a bit of slang".
Only just noticed this – to be crystal clear no it's not. I'd hope the cops track this one down and have a talk with the perpetrator. As a starting point.
Otherwise all protests attract idiots on the fringe. The trick is keeping them there and hopefully away from the media.
Anyone who takes that as a threat needs their head read.
If they get a little chat afterwards from the Police well OK.
Otherwise it's a metaphor. I've seen plenty of effigies of Bolger and Shipley burnt with fireworks and tyres on the street.
Anyone who takes that as a threat needs their head read.
If you can't even be bothered to read the reporting (and there's plenty) then why bother discussing something you choose not to know about?
All over social media, all over news media. Inform yourself.
Just one example:
https://twitter.com/henrycooke/status/1457840568428482562
If someone gets a talking to, I'll believe it's a threat. The Police can assess that better than anyone.
The PM can't handle being shouted at in a media conference.
At the Foreshore and Seabed march the Labour Ministers who fronted were spat at and and abused far worse.
In usual times I'd probably agree completely with you Ad. A healthy democracy can sustain a fair bit of verbal biffo without much harm.
But it's my sense that many people have been psychologically activated by COVID, by the uncertainty, the social isolation and above all the chronic state of low-grade fear being pumped at them. In these circumstances I'd want to be extra cautious around inflammatory language – especially if it's political.
I recall you're a fan of World War Z – well I've always imagined zombies to be a metaphor for the mind-killed, unthinking mob.
All those protests we went in our tens of thousands in the mid-eighties armed with lots of weapons and shields and heavily orchestrated moves and taking on the state,
in our many thousands in the '90s against union-crushing and benefit reductions and privatisations,
in our lower thousands in the early noughties, …
… look at them now in their hundreds.
WE used to have that same fire. We inflamed wholesale.
We used to forge whole new political movements on it.
All of those leftie marches looked like anarchistic unthinking undead to the majority and to the government.
But probably the Tooth Fairy will get the shits and call in the Minister for SIS for a chat, because actually she's the biggest flake we have. Spare us from brittle authoritarians.
Someone sing me Rage Against the Machine.
I would normally agree, but the threats on the internet are downright scary. Thanks Observer.
“The tooth etc” Get a grip Ad .You sound flaky. Saying stuff like that at this time is unhelpful.
I think the casual references to lynching etc. that I see and hear across Facebook, among people who have till recently posted interesting, heart-warming things, is very worrying indeed. They seem unaware of the sinister tone of their words. I believe their world-view has been contaminated by the American situation and the influencers who whipped that up.
Probably only the ones on benefits left!!😏
Rod Oram, economist gone Green:
And I bet they're all wearing suits. The visual signal that one is actually part of the control system whilst pretending to be part of the solution is obligatory. I predict only Lab/Nat voters will be fooled by the simulation.
Blah? APEC has managed what the UN couldn't; an online conference.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/politics/nzs-digital-apec-time-for-actual-action
Beyond blah? I'll believe that if I ever see it…
18 & 10 Years ago we had a couple of opportunities for the government at the time to buy this gem. Hopefully someone will attract the attention of Hon Kiritapu Allan to IMO.
I posted support to purchasing this way back in 2011, and back then the Labour blog and the then leader Phil Goff urged National to purchase had a post to support such an acquisition !!!
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/tide-turning-on-coastal-property-prices/46VLFYEZAOT2CICJQ3WLSXMMLY/
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO2111/S00079/new-chums-headland-for-sale-needs-permanent-protection-says-eds.htm
http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/4509605/Message-to-protect-New-Chums-Beach
. https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-14102011/#comment-385591
ps great to be able to search for posts 10+ years ago well done to the administrators who manage this site 👍🏾
Yes New Chums is a must to preserve. We have been supporting its preservation from development for a good while now as well.
God I was dismayed to see the amount of small plastic pellets all over the beach when I visited last year
I have seen beaches in the area inundated with balls of jelly, a little offsetting in the area where the waves break but once you get beyond that, the water is perfect for beach activities. Not nice for toddlers playing on the waters edge.
I will say that New Chums/Wainuiototo beach has some dangers attributed to it, that those who are even familiar with the beach can be caught out. A short challenging walk that opens up to a great place that IMO for a small amount can be totally protected for the publics benefit, and with no overseas travel perhaps we should be enhancing local spots to be available for all.
https://mymykerikeri.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/balls-of-jelly-all-over-matauri-bay/
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ourchangingworld/audio/2018676118/salps-a-surprising-jelly-like-relative
Kiri is on Facebook.
Small school in limbo as all staff refuse mandatory Covid-19 vaccine.
"She said she was not opposed to getting the vaccination herself, but as the only fully registered teacher she had not been able to take time off to get her shot."
A school teacher I know took time off to get her shot recently – in the school holiday break. It was two weeks long.
The principal wants the Ministry of Education to waive the vaccination mandate and instead require weekly testing. I'm not sure how they'll able to "take time off" for that every week.
It's sort of funny when teachers who force people to do things they mightn't want to do rail against being told to do something.
Central King Country Principals' Association chairwoman Maria Gillard said convincing those not wanting to vaccinate to change their minds was tough. Like it being tough to get kids to change their minds I suppose except that in the school environment power rules. Those with the power deem that they know best and the kids should bow to that 'superiority' of knowledge.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300449404/small-school-in-limbo-as-all-staff-refuse-mandatory-covid19-vaccine
The problem starts at the top:
"None of the school's board of trustees were vaccinated either."
Do you think any teacher who wanted to get vaccinated would dare to do so in the face of the display by the Board of Trustees? On your bike would I expect to be their response.
As for the Principal who "hadn't been able to take time off to get vaccinated". There were school holidays from the second to the seventeenth of October. She couldn't find any single day on which to get a vaccination?
I'm trying to think how or why the principal would know the vaccination status of the members of the board and what relevance it would be to her past any requirements made on the non-vaccinated not being accepted in the school.
A board can't get rid of a staff member because they choose to be vaccinated. Members of a board setting out to make sure a principal in such circumstances is unwelcome and seeking to force them out would be showing they are fuckwits who should not have anything to do with a school. That is the sort of stuff for employment courts.
In such a situation if the locals are on about individual choice and no compulsion they would be be taking the choice away from the principal and in some senses forcing the principal to not get a vaccination.
Can't staff the school? No problem. Close it. Bus the kids into Taumarunui or Ongarue. Can't staff those schools because they're backwaters and no-one would want to be there? Some might say the attitude of the locals suggests it is a backwater.
Crazy that these are the people we are mandated to trust with our childrens education
Many people have rightly noted how challenging the logistics of policing Auckland's border will be at Xmas – as 30,000 people a day leave in their cars. I think some of those same people were less convinced of the logistical challenges of doing some other things – such as stopping Covid leaks from MIQ, or rolling out millions of vaccine doses.
Rule of thumb seems to be: if I do want something to happen, the logistics aren't an issue and someone else just needs to do it; if I don't want something to happen, the logistics are impossible and the idea should be abandoned.
People's supposed principles and their logic seem to align uncannily well with their self-interest. Who wouldn't be a misanthrope at times like this?
Everyone needs a plan B every day from now on when it comes to travelling, shopping for non essentials and entertaining. People need to consider being unwell with Covid or having a person unwell with Covid in your household.
It is about doing the right thing for yourself, your home and your neighbourhood.
Protesters are not considering the households of the police, some have babies and young children in the home and are on the frontline. No pay rise and the work conditions would be terrible when it comes to managing groups breaking the rules.
In case anyone missed it, Daniel Ellsberg was on Kim Hill. He said he believes that JA is the best PM in the world. High praise indeed.
(around 25mins)
https://www.rnz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018819433
Good interview.Ellsberg was interesting and very sharp @90.
Hill has little sympathy for Assange as she showed once again.
Yes I heard that. The young don't listen to Kim hill or a ninety year old guest, no matter what they say.
Remarkable photo, those three flags at a protest outside of parliament.
https://twitter.com/writeonleah/status/1457793131533856770?s=21
What are the three flags? I recognise a Trumpist banner, a Tino Rangatiratanga flag, but the red-crossed white flag with the top right quadrant infilled?
That knowledge would help identify the influences in this coalition of the silly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Tribes_of_New_Zealand
Predates Te Tiriti.
Trump, independent tribes, strange bedfellows.
I know people who believe in both.
Thanks, weka.
Well there goes Wellington covid free'
And at the same time excited shoppers are waiting for Sylvia Park shopping mall to open, queuing up ahead of opening time 9am tomorrow
Freedom's just another word to shop until you drop
https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/covid-19/covid-19-delta-outbreak-people-already-queuing-outside-auckland-shopping-mall-ahead-of-level-3-2/
As long as you do not drop because you queued to shop.
Only a matter of time and an MP will be a Covid case. Probably already cases in the police as they do get deployed around the country. The viral load an infectious protester or an agro person at a check point has would be an additional risk.
That photo was taken at 8.30. Here's the scene later in the morning:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300449296/covid19-live-thousands-descend-on-parliament-in-protest-of-vaccine-mandates
Good to see lots of NZ flags amongst the collection.
Thanks for that…I stumbled across an 'independent reporter's report' earlier when the group was gathering…he was busy scanning the assembled for the white supremacists MSM said were in charge of these anti- vaxxers. Good times.
I'm sure there will be hangers on, that's normal for any protest. But the numbers at this march look to be substantial. Even granny herald are reporting the large numbers.
So who are the "hangers-on" and who are the protesters who aren't?
The organisers are linked to Brian Tamaki and Destiny Church. Are they hangers-on or the regular good guys?
We've been here before, and how did it work out for them?
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0408/S00233/images-enough-civil-unions-is-or-isnt-enough.htm
The hangers on are those people who are using this cause to promote another. AFAIK people from Destiny have been involved in anti-lockdown protests for some time. The hangers on are the pro-trumpites, the anti-1080 crowd etc.
Tamaki is an opportunist using the covid situation. Covid is just an excuse.
Unfortunately there are plenty of morons running here to join in. Here they don't necessarily wear red caps.
Destiny/Tamaki has been involved in being peed off for a long time.
May 1919
"Destiny Church and its leaders Brian and Hannah Tamaki have announced a new political party – Coalition New Zealand.
"You're going to see politics with teeth," Brian Tamaki said at a press conference on Thursday afternoon, "you'll see a party led by leaders as leadership is what is lacking right now.
"Labour has been taking us in the wrong direction. Our freedom is endangered due to harmful politics coming from the Government."
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/112938679/destiny-church-launches-political-party-promising-politics-with-teeth
Brian Tamaki is a deluded egoist on a personal mission.
Remember this? "In 2004, Tamaki predicted the Destiny Church would be "ruling the nation" before its tenth anniversary in 2008."
I didn't know Tamaki was over 100 y.o. Whats his secret to longevity?
Tamaki may well be 'using' Covid for his own agenda, but then so are politicians. My point was he isn't a 'hanger on' in the context of earlier comments. He's made his position on the core issues very clear some time ago. Opponents of 1080 and supporters of Trump are certainly there for very different causes.
Hang on, is that the a set of Russian flags?
I wonder why
Russian kiwi's?
Samuel Johnson
probably came over with the dolt45 flags.
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it."
Mark Twain
I guess we're there.
https://twitter.com/byroncclark/status/1457857272109879296
https://twitter.com/nealejones/status/1457842894312599552
In short: It’s a fact we love American stuff. American food, TV and celebrity.
So maybe it should come as no surprise that in New Zealand’s Telegram channels, there’s a love of capitol riots.
“NEXT TUESDAY” they announce in all caps: “There is going to be THE STAND OF ALL STANDS in Wellington at Parliament grounds!”
“It’s time to get Bill Gates and Jacinda. We need to concentrate on physically arresting her.”
“Fuck me” is all I could think. It was a combination of alarming and tragic. It’s alarming because we’re already seeing violence towards the media in New Zealand. Mihingarangi Forbes tweeted about it last week:
As if to prove Mihi correct, a OneNews camera operator was attacked by an anti-vax protestor over the weekend.
“Do you want this camera fucking smashed, you c—t?” the man said, before physically assaulting the camera operator.
https://www.webworm.co/p/capitolriots
Oh, but they're not the real protesters, the real ones are salt of the earth Kiwis (etc, etc … repeat denial ad nauseam).
And if anyone is in any doubt, you can find plenty more of this crap on their social media, which I won't link to or platform (NSFW) but you all have Google too.
YEP, MUST BE WHAT THEY MEAN WHEN THEY ORGANISE A CAPITAL RIOT. AN ALL-CAPITAL RIOT.
Normally they would just barricade the doors with planks, this time they were using barriers to prevent entry via the windows.
Minister Wood opines in a long article on the GreaterAuckland blog about the preferred mode for Auckland light rail.
The Minister's View on Light Rail – Greater Auckland
He has put his entire credibility on its success with this article, and essentially requests that the GreaterAuckland activists hold off criticising for fear of killing the project as the Auckland Cycle Path was.
This is an unusual move for a Minister to make on multiple counts. In political terms it is pretty bold.
Surprise!! Gordon Campbell has a sense of humour.
The joke is on… whoever God's will decides. I wonder if the govt will force Aucklanders to wear an identification symbol so we can see them coming and keep our distance?? The yellow star worked well a while back, eh?
"The yellow star worked well a while back, eh?"
How about a Jaffa jammed up each nostril?
… if we can still find those
We will ride by the tens of thousands, swathed in black cloaks, holding our credit cards aloft.
Fascinating story on change in the demographics of Covid 19 deaths in the USA. Compared to the first 100k deaths (no vaccines), the most recent 100k deaths (Delta + vaccines available) are:
Vaccination rates seem to be driving most of it.
Differences in the Covid-19 death rate by political affiliation are also rapidly widening, with Trump-supporting counties suffering three times higher death rates than Biden-supporting counties. Vaccination rates again seem to be key, with 40% of Republican adults unvaccinated compared to only 10% of Democratic adults.
At some point it will dawn on the GOP they will have to cast votes for those who died to win elections – I wonder how they will enable this for white voters only, or do they expect SCOTUS to rubber stamp everything put up?
It seems Wellington (on a good day) has flushed out those of profoundly anti-democratic sentiments. From those with throbbing power between their legs (a hint of SA with overtones of ambition to be King Bishop Brian's blackshirts) to those who would like it all to go away and think appeasing the coronavirus will set them free from any resistance struggle (leaving the burden to health workers).
The elitism of the bare-faced contempt for majority opinion and the public good … the uber-romanticisation of social media minority echo chambers displayed … from a self-appointed governing aristocracy of no bodies in the Maori world claiming to represent its sovereignty to affluent PMC (the neo-liberal corporate regime enabling corporate and capitalist dominance ) ideologues manipulating discontent for their political purposes (and we await National waking up their inner Mr Orewa to take advantage of the chaos).
I say prescribe them all ivermectin to be on the way – rid the capitol hill of that small party worm.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/11/coronavirus-100-fold-increase-in-kiwis-following-disinformation-groups-online-study.html
the goal being to make Māori as a population appear to be anti-vaccination,
Which when they had the lowest vaccination rates was kind of easy to do. And given that this time the usual 'it's all the fault of a racist health system' doesn't quite fly – they're reduced to blaming 'white supremacist people' again.
This constant ethnic power struggle narrative will lead NZ nowhere good.
The explainer
There are more younger Maori in the provincial NI, these HB's were behind the rest in September and are doing catch up – and in areas where the population is quite spread out.
All good and fair points SPC. They underline my contention that the best explanation for different outcomes is not always racism.
I was equally scathing of Reti's attempt to use the ethnic card on vaccines as well. I'm vividly conscious that in a pandemic there is real potential for the kind of mass psychosis that leads very directly to violence.
Yes racism and ethnic fault lines are real – but using them as a power play is unbelievably dangerous. Sometime in the 90's I remember listening to a 30 min BBC "Foreign Correspondent" report on Yugoslavia and the hell that got unleashed in that country after the fall of the dictators.
The reporter led with a simple question. Why is it that a relatively modern nation fall apart so fast and dramatically? If you had visited the place before these horrors you might have come home and said what warm and friendly people they are. After exploring this question and setting the social and political background the narrative shifted from the general to the specific.
It moved to a small town that had seen some of the worst violence. I still cannot bring myself to type out the atrocity that was described in graphic detail by the correspondent. But the point was – the people who did this to each other were neighbours, they knew each other, as had their families for generations. How the fuck had this happened?
The answer is this. Every society has a small fraction of psychopathic, resentful damaged individuals who will commit horrors for the sheer pleasure and gratification of it. Normally they're kept in check by social boundaries and institutional norms. But they lurk.
But when that leash is loosened by public figures exploiting divisions within any society for their own political purposes – during a period of instability, uncertainty and fear – that first these dangerous people will feel emboldened to act. And then very rapidly – one atrocity upon another – the Yugoslavian nation unraveled into hell.
None are immune. Guard against this.
The irony being that Croat, Serb and Bosnian Moslem probably had the same ancestral group – carving out separate borders occurs by acceptance of then then regional arrangements or by plebiscite or by war (also Pakistan and India and say the land west of the Jordan). Apparently events in Bosnia are worsening, the Serb and Croat political leadership are seeking to divide up the Bosnian military and form their own.
I think we have to take it, from the photo, that the COP 26 outcome is a failure and that the dolphins are all leaving.
Can't you hear it whistling "So long and thanks for all the fish"?
I was going for Florida man mulitplying via social media.
The dolphin is only observing.
Cant say I blame them the stupid going on is just getting to much.
Although if I self identify as a cetacean I wonder if they'll take me withim??
Don't worry the white race God is going to rapture its mammalian Greek brotherhood …
The middle ear contains three tiny bones:
Hammer (malleus) — attached to the eardrum.
Anvil (incus) — in the middle of the chain of bones.
Stirrup (stapes) — attached to the membrane-covered opening that connects the middle ear with the inner ear (oval window)
As they say beware defenestration (1618), Des Gorman would know very well that coming out of a flood of judgment has to be done carefully or there may be consequences.
so long and thanks for all the fish…………..
Van the Man lacks a fan:
This is the language used by a main speaker at today's Wellington protest. (Note – not some random drunken vox pop, not a fringe freeloader, but the chosen speaker from "Freedoms and Rights", the Brian Tamaki group).
Ardern trying to create a Communist nation. Auckland "the largest concentration camp in the world". "This is our 9/11 in New Zealand… people have come to signal the collapse of the Government … a dictatorship".
"We are not standing here waiting for another three years when the next election rolls down … We will roll this place and take them out with a revolution of the people."
(citation: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/11/live-updates-latest-on-covid-19-community-outbreak-tuesday-november-9.html)
Now imagine somebody at a leftie demo talking about a National government in those terms. The SIS would be watching them like a hawk. And did.
The cossacks are dancing.
Cannot find image of Massey's Cossacks on quad bikes
You can be confident all those speakers have files on them already.
Anyway, as of tomorrow the shopping will cure most of the protests.
They have body bags on special at Kmart?
Standard right wing position. Probably a Dirty Politics memo.
I've seen centre left Aucklanders on TS say similar (with a somewhat more retrained rhetoric)
Kind of true. Big even that shifts political and social culture, and includes given the government more powers to control the population.
That will be in the SIS and police files, and it's part of the dangerous that Mihi Forbes is naming. It ties into the right's use of Trumpian politics (also dangerous). It's why we should be concerned and looking at the deeper reasons for the mix of dynamics rather than just framing it as US imports. Those three flags.
At its core it’s the language of fascism – mob activity on the street as the source of political legitimacy.
9/11 – as a pretext to posit "overthrow" of a government.
It's one small step from DT boasting he could shoot and kill and get away with it, to legitimising those serving his empowerment being able to do the same.
Some at the rally are soldiers for the endarkenment.
Like the OTT debacle of the Tuhoe Raids. Who can forget the cow catapult.
not the reference you were thinking of, I'm guessing. But still a goodie,
Still enjoy that show.
I'd forgotten how groundbreaking it was.
Yes the words from a megalomaniac, Brian Tamaki.
The protests today are another downside of wide spread manadates. They pushing what were previously productive members of society into the margins and arms of existing fringe groups emboldened by an influx of numbers and the camouflage they provide.
Add today's lot to groundswell who will be invigorated by three waters reforms its potentially going to get very messy. Especially if Police are mandated and all of a sudden we find ourselves 1200 short in the face of increasingly angry protest groups.
We'll get to 90% vaxxed so for long term societal benefit and to diffuse things a bit we should back away from the wide spread mandates and move towards a rapid testing focused approach as well as recent pcr testing to activate a short term passport.
The presence of patched bodgies should raise concerns.
Good points.
Not so sure the PCR test passports would reduce angst. Some of these protestors have some pretty weird theories about the tests too…and are against any sort of social cooperation requirement generally.
Yes. One of the demands from the "Freedoms and Rights Coalition" is to shut down testing stations.
The gov't could either a) waste time and energy trying to reason with people who have already decided the gov't are commies/nazis/apartheid/Voldemort.
or b) just carry on with all the public health measures and let the ranters rant.
None of this is uncharted territory. The playbook was written in the USA. Some had deathbed conversions, some didn't. They have to get there in their own time – or not.
It wont make the hard core anti vax conspiracy theorists happy.
But the numbers have built due to unhappiness with mandates. Plenty of people find that a step to far. Get rid of mandates and the crowd will be 100s not thousands. I really feel we need to get some heat out of this having it get ugly isnt good for anyone in the end.
"The protests today are another downside of wide spread manadates."
"We'll get to 90% vaxxed so for long term societal benefit and to diffuse things a bit we should back away from the wide spread mandates and move towards a rapid testing focused approach…"
Thanks for pointing this out.
A bit like current job site drug testing. The P freak can be fried all day and will test negative the next day, the midnight toker will be positive, even if not impaired while at work.
Akin to Paula Bennett's meth hysteria in state housing and the upset that caused to so many. But they were in state housing so 'nothing to see here'.
shopping will cure most of the protests – another free market miracle is it?
You know, I think I'd rather see them run headlong into the rule of law. Waiting for shopping to cure things is how you get an enduring Trumpist movement – screw that. There's incitement going on there, with their Nuremberg and citizens arrest bullshit. Throw the (deleted expletives) in prison and let them out through the courts, where they can get a full measure of the scorn in which they are held.
On a separate note, this Dunedin story keeps getting worse and worse.
80 hour weeks at a bakery turned into sub-minimum wage was the opener a day or two back.
Now it includes:
My coffee card for their cafe is half used. And will remain that way. That's fucking disgusting. I know hospo tends to use wage theft and bullying as a business model, but even for that industry this is pretty extreme.
Good to see some of these cases making it through the ERA, but I would guess there are more we and they just don't know about. And the original complaint was in 2017.
Do we still have a Labour department? Is that who the inspectors were?
Yep. The Labour Inspectorate conducts an investigation and can take a case to the ERA.
With the amount of issues involved, this case would have taken a lot of time, especially as some of the issues apparently occurred during the investigation, so would have needed further examination.
Then there are the complicated financial arrangements, reviewing of documents like timesheets and employees' personal records, then the accounts to see how much gain their might have been.
Throw in a covid delay or two, timeframes for right of response and consultation with lawyers, staff workloads at the inspectorate, an xmas break or three… But the wheels turned inexorably, if slowly, to deliver some justice.
Imo this should be in criminal court.
Theft as a servant is a criminal matter so should delibrate wage theft. This sort of shit deserves criminal conviction.
It's almost as if the power structures of the state treat the same crime differently according to the class of the offender… but but that's just crazy talk…
If only we had a party started by the workers with its hand on the levers of power, surely then such discrepancies would be urgently addressed…
Well, no, a party formed within structural inequality is by nature an incrementalist platform for worker representation, rather than a revolutionary one.
But then revolutionary organisations tend to be self-corrupting.
so damned either way?
It's a stairway to heaven, but there's a highway to hell.
Funny, watching the bikies in the protest today, more highway to hell than stairway to heaven I think.
The album cover of Bat out of Hell.
https://trademe.tmcdn.co.nz/photoserver/plus/1364390831.jpg
@SPC: Brian Tamaki's never looked that good lol
"Theft as a servant is a criminal matter so should delibrate wage theft. This sort of shit deserves criminal conviction."
One thing I have learned is violence travels down the hierarchy, if it ever travels up, it is viewed as abhorrent.
Apparently we have a "dictatorship."
I guess before the government makes any decision about anything, on any issue, they are meant to ask the population what should happen. I'm not sure whether that's by way of referenda.
Imagine it, February last year the announcement:
"There's a weird new flu-like virus. It looks like it's going to be a pandemic affecting just about every country in the world. It seems probable that many millions will get the virus and many hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, will die.
What do you think we should do? We are inviting written submissions. You have three weeks to get your ideas in. Note: we are inviting submissions from epidemiologists, immunologists and other scientists.
From the submissions we will formulate a plan. The intention is to repeat this exercise each month after implementation so that everyone is involved on our journey."
Apparently too, we had an election not so long ago. A government was elected, to govern.
Malcontents pissed off that their favourites were slaughtered at the ballot booth are throwing their toys out of the cot. For the noisy minority, a rabble including professionals piqued the mass of experts didn't pick their game plan, joined by an assortment of toerags, the terminally disaffected and out and out fruit loops, it's party time.
As COP 26 concludes, one can remember when the last Maunder minimum occurred.
It coincided with the 30 Years War, the English Civil War and the Fronde in France. It got colder and so less agricultural production. Discontent was expressed in printed pamphlets (the bible was weaponised in the social media of the day).
Then there was the period of the Sea Peoples, a century or so of of regional drought and people migrating … with force.
Environmental factors, incl weather, can destablise civil society.
Weren't the Sea Peoples ancient Greece, like 1000bc?
Movement into Greece, the Hittites lost control of western Anatolia, movement out of Greece … the arrival in Gaza … the attacks on Egypt. Peak c 1200BCE.
Ah, so not the little ice age. My history order has been a bit off lately, thought this was another instance lol
Circa 1500 BC, maybe a century earlier, according to sources I've read. Dating it is via circumstantial evidence only. But he was referring to a separate climate trigger for those invasions, not the Maunder.
It was the Maunder that killed off the viking settlements in Greenland which had done okay for around five or so centuries. Inuit in Greenland survived due to their more resilient economy. I've even seen it asserted authoritatively that the Greenland vikings died because they refused to catch fish!!
Note how they refuse to ascribe a causal inference to the Maunder even though it looks suspiciously so. They frame it as correlative only: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
One event impacting economic life c1600-1500BCE would have been the Santorini/Thira eruption.
(Egypt was overun by the Hyksos shortly before this).
As I said, the Sea peoples migrations were consequence of drought.
The interesting thing about the Maunder minimum period 1600's CE, was its coincidence with an early form of social media (printing pamphlets to disseminate dissent).
Environmental factors, incl media transforming the social environment can destablise civil society.